Bomber Gunners a WAY too Uber in AH

[KetteJG26]

Bomber Gunners are way too Uber in AH.  Bombers need to be escorted...ask any 8th AF vet lol. You could write a book on ballistics of Air to Air gunnery so this is not an end all...just brushing the surface. Please bear with and read.

  Lets examine the Air to Air gunnery problem.  I am a career soldier in combat arms in the US Army.  Its is difficult to hit a fixed target at a known distance with a fixed gun.  Many factors influence the ballistic path of a bullet.  Variations in tempature, humidity, bullet weight, powder amount, ignition speed of the propellant etc... not to mention the shooters skill combine to make fixed gun/fixed target shooting difficult.  Now add in just the environmental factors in Air to Air gunnery and its a miracle that with fixed guns mounted on a fighter you can hit anything.  Galland said "You just get the feel for the right amount of lead".  That's because the ballistic influence's are so great that each shot is different.  That's why most fighter pilots waited til the "whole windshield was black with enemy" before firing.  
Wind velocity greatly influence's your ballistics.  A slight breeze can mean holding a .50 cal bullet several meters off target to compensate at 1200 meters.  Now consider your plane traveling at several hundred miles an hour.  As soon as that bullet leaves the barrel the relative wind begins to influence it. Its called Aerodynamic Drag and the size, weight, and shape of the projectile determine its exact effect.  That is why most shooting is done from 6 or 12 o'clock.  This is why a stern attack on a bomber is suicide.  The relative wind pushes the bomber gunners bullet toward the attacking fighter but slows the fighter's bullet down degrading effective range.  If there is any deflection angle then the relative wind blows the bullet off course related to its value.  The greater the deflection angle the greater the influence.  That's why you didn't attack bombers from the side..just about impossible to hit.
  Gravity also influence the round and the firing platform.  Gun barrels flex m8's.  The slight force of a rifleman gripping his rifle will move the point of impact.  That's why "floating" barrels are put on rifles.  In a fixed wing mounted gun any G's pulled by the plane will bend the barrel further complicating the ballistic problem. Engineer's term this "trajectory jump".  Basically it means that the Gun-Bore line and the point of impact can be radically different.
Now consider the flexible mounted gun of a bomber gunner.  The turret is powered but the guns are flexible.  As the gunner swings his 60-100 lbs of Machinegun/ammo (depending on whether he is firing one or two guns) on to gun/target line he will greatly hampered by the inertia of his own weapon system.  Just the push of the relative wind on his barrels will make alignment with target difficult.  Any G's pulled by the bomber would make the gunners job impossible.  A 60 lb gun would be 120lb at 2g's. Finally the recoil of his own weapon system in a flexible mount would send his bullets all over the sky.  During WWII the US .50 cal outranged the German fighters guns.  German fighter pilots lining up for a shot on a bombers would see tracers buzzing all around them making any attack unnerving.  The fire from the bomber gunners was extremely inaccurate though due to the overwhelming ballistic problem faced by the gunner. During the Schweinfurt raid on 17 August 1943 B-17 gunners claimed more German fighters destroyed than were even present at the battle.  The 8th Air Force allowed most of the claims to stand for morale purposes.  The reality is that in JG 26 (approximately 118 aircraft that made contact with the bomber stream and attacked) only 5 pilots were hit by B-17 gunners.  1 was KIA and 3 WIA and 1 pilot had to bail out but was unhurt.  The 3 WIA made it back to base.  

BOTTOM LINE- Unescorted Bombers should be fighter fodder.

Ketten        

Sources:
1.  "Fighter Combat:  Tactics and Maneuvering" by Robert L. Shaw - Excellent book written by a 20 year fighter pilot and engineer.  Required reading for US Fighter Pilots
2. "JG26 War Diaries: Vol II 1943-1945" by Don Caldwell - Day by Day chronicle of one Luftwaffe fighter wing from the beginning of WWII to the end.  Transcribed from the units official War Diary it includes allied/axis ground controller input, victory/casualty list, and Allied/Axis personal accounts. One of the best books I've found on the Air War in Europe..even has gun camera stills ID'ing pilot and plane being destroyed.  Rather pricey though, the set will run 100 bucks.

[iculus]

Recall if you will that the 8th was flying thousand bomber raids, and did indeed have escort.  In short, there were plenty of .50 cals in the air.  In AH, you are hardly ever going to get escort, and raids with more than two bombers are rare (i.e. few guns in the air).  Please also note that there is no AI gunner in AH. All gunners are humans.  Buff guns are fine...there is also a net lag problem for the buff as well when any fighter attack is from the rear.

[KetteJG26]

It detracts from the fun of the game when you make a 90 degree deflection attack on a bomber and get killed long before your fighter can even line up to attack.  Or you are killed in a head to head attack. Both happenend to me.  We actually halted major daylight bombing raids using unescorted bombers because the casualty rates were too high. The development of long range escort fighter (P-51) was considered crucial to the continuation of the bombing campaign. It wasn't until Doolittle changed the 8th AF fighters mission from "bring back the bombers" to "destroy German fighters" and freed them to actively hunt did the Allies win Air superiority.  Before that German fighters could concentrate on simply piercing the escort screen and killing bombers.  After that they had to fight from the moment they left their fields just to reach the bomber stream.  It wasn't bomber gunners that brought down the Luftwaffe.  They were simply the bait to lure the Jagdwaffe into a war of pilot attrition Germany couldn't afford. More often than not attacking a lone bomber is suicide in AH....that is no where close to a simulation of Air to Air combat in WWII.
  Flex mount gunnery just needs to be more difficult than it is now.  This could be easily done by making the sight "float" to simulate inertia so that it is much more difficult to line up and not as precise.  When the gun is fired simulate recoil by having it jump.  Wouldn't be hard and would add realism.  I think it would be cool to be lining up on a bomber and see tracer whizzing past me.  Its not cool to be smoked 9 out of 10 times by AH hokey flakship's.    

[SKurj]

Bombers are not very common now, a lone fighter who wants more kills against buffs is all this looks like to me.
A buff stands a good chance against 1 fighter, rarely in RL did a lone fighter attack a buff in RL either.  If you want to fight against buffs bring a friend, coordinate attacks.  
Without being able to replicate large buff formations, a buff needs uber guns.

Personally I think bombers are modelled ok at the moment.  If it were riskier than it is now to fly a buff we wouldn't see any.  If it were any easier we'd see too many...

My thots

SKurj

[KetteJG26]

Lone fighter who wants more kills against Buffs....
Please m8..I bypass bombers in AH if at all possible.
Unless-
1. There is more that one fighter attacking with me
2. I have plenty of alt and can go H2H

The ONLY Argument for keeping such unrealistically accurate bomber gunners is "game" Play...
Well that would adapt just like it's adapted to the "Flakship's" AH has now.
Only difference is even more teamwork would have to take place.  That's not a bad thing is it?  I would like the challenge of penetrating an escort screen.  

[KetteJG26]

Lone bombers were dead meat m8.  Why do you think the AF's of the world emphasize tight formations?  Mutual support.  Look at the Luftwaffe's kill points system.  You got more points for seperating a bomber from formation than killing a lone one.  3 for an outright kill..2 for separating one from formation..and only ONE for killing a straggler. 1/2 point if it was a twin engine bomber.  

[Lephturn]

That's the point... we don't have the numbers to have large formations, so AH can't have lone buffs being as easy to kill as the would be "in real life".  It's a game, so adjustments must be made for gameplay's sake.

With the right fighter and a bit of patience, a lone buff is still meat on the table.  It's a bit more of a fight I'll grant you, but that's the fun part I find.  

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Lephturn - Chief Trainer
A member of The Flying Pigs  http://www.flyingpigs.com


"My P-47 is a pretty good ship, she took a round coming 'cross the Channel last trip.
Just thinking 'bout my baby and lettin' her rip, always got me through so far."
 - Steve Earl

[iculus]

You do know that all buff guns are player controlled?

Accuracy comes from the pilot, not the computer.

Flex mounts: only in the waist.
Head on attack?  Not against the B-17G! (6 maybe 7x.50 cal)

[Karnak]

Bombers in AH are easy to kill with any fighter.

If you haven't learned how then go get some practice in the TA.  Don't whine about it and try to get the whole game modified so that you can kill them without any threat to you.  What you propose would result in no bombers being flown in AH.

Frankly, I find them too easy to kill.  12 hits from a 50 cal will pop the wing off of a 17 or Lanc.

Sisu
-Karnak

[KetteJG26]

It's not a whine so quit trying to flame me. The effectiveness of AH gunners needs to be toned down not elimated. Any mount were the gun moves is a flexible mount.  Fire a Machinegun mounted with TO&E and tripod sometime.  Now its more solid than freegunning but still isn't superacurate.  The Brits ran a sniper school outside of Caen in WWII.  To demonstrate the effectiveness of sniping they set up a range with equal numbers of targets from 400 to 800 meters.  The students sat in the bleachers center of the range.  A camoflaged machinegun bunker with a tripod mounted MG was on on side of the range in the woods and a sniper on the other.  Everytime the Sniper team would have ALL of their targets knocked down before the MG was close to being through. Any Military MG is going to be about a 3-4 MOA weapon right out of the box.  That means at 600 yards your cone of fire can be as large as a 4 foot circle and at 1200 yards an 8 foot circle. MG's are designed for rapid not accurate fire.  That's not taking into account any other factors just the inherent inaccuracy of the gun itself.  Wear and tear on it will reduce this quickly. Its seems very solid in that turret till the trigger is pulled.  The mechanism that allows the gun to swivel by nature of the fact that it moves makes it unstable under recoil.  

[JimBear]

You have some interesting info, thanks for sharing. But the bottom line is that the bombers gunfire is as accurate as the fighters that are attacking them, In this game. And a lone bomber is at the mercy of any fighter that has alt or patience to get into postion. Also please consider that some of the people you run into flying bombers have spent some serious time learning to man their guns quite well. Most of them are on one way trips and want to make them count  

[juzz]

Explain how the guns mounted in a Sperry ball turret are flexible...?

[GrinBird]

Kette.. I have earlier made some posts like the one you have made, so I know very well what you mean. But I dont think bombers are a big problem right now. In earlier AH versions the bombers seemed much stronger and we saw swarms of em used as Ackplatforms. As it is now, I think its allmost acceptable. The problem is that levelbombing in real life wasnt very fun, while most memories by fighterpilot show that flying a fighter even in a real war was quite fun. IMHO thats the main problem with having level bombers in an arena sim. If flying a levelbomber was boring and frustrating in real life then a simulation cant be accurate without making it boring and frustrating. So.. If we want levelbombers in AceHigh we gotta accept some compromizes between gameplay and historic accuracy.
IMHO levelbombers are not a very big problem in AH anymore. For some time ago I feared that the effiency of the levelbombers would do that nobody would use divebombing (jabo) with fighters. Time has shown that it isnt true. Most base captures I participate in is done by pure Jabo attacks.
So Kette if you see a lonely B17, let him fly, untill you get some friendly fighers to back you up.

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GrinBird

[KetteJG26]

That seems to be the prevailing wind grinbird.  

If you read my entire post then it explains how the guns of a sperry ball turret are flexible mounts....Just as a TO&E is a flexible mount M8 even though it is "Locked" for firing.

[Eagler]

All I know is that I die on more bomber missions than I live through. Between piloting, bombing and gunnery any less accuracy (I can't hit a barn), I wouldn't want to fly one.

Eagler