Phew! Buff pilots can never catch a break. Ok so you want to remove my F3 view? No problem. I want Auto-Gunners to counter the loss of my SA, and I KNOW you'll love that.
Now lets clear up some myths. Gunning from F3 view. If you can gun from F3 view and actually hit things on a regular basis, then you are the uber gunner. And don't say you center the mouse cursor on the screen and then hit F3 as the whole plane would be in your way when you fired, and moving the view around would throw the arc off.
There are many times, even with F3 view, that I get caught off guard in buffs simply because I'm focusing on to much stuff like whats my speed, whats my heading, am I high enough to clear the ack, etc etc etc. Most of our bombers have crews of 3+ men and at least one of them is looking to the rear, so at the least bombers have a 360° field of view on the horizon and a 90° view above them.
Now about F3 view giving IL-2s an unfair advantage vs GVs. If you're a true GV hunter you don't use F3 view to find your targets, you use sound. I fly over an area where I suspect GVs might be approaching from and kill my engine. If I hear something I check it out, if there is no friendly icon where I hear the sound then I know an enemy GV is there and to begin hunting. Now F3 view does help me zone in on the GV, but most of the time I already know it's there by the sound, or because the guy starts shooting at me from 6k out.
Removing F3 view from buffs would only serve to make them even weaker than they are now. If you're dying to IL-2's or buffs in general then it's not a problem with the bombers, its a problem with your tactics. Bombers can only fly defensively. Almost every fighter in AH can catch our prop driven buffs, even the full power B17's flying at 25k. This means that buff pilots are at the mercy of fighters and have to rely on them making mistakes, one of which is NOT taking the time to setup for an attack and coming in dead six. I get the idea from suggestions like this that alot of pilots are just to lazy to do anything and just want silver platter kills.
Sorry for the rambling rant...I just had to vent.