There are basically three ways to fly bombers with a certain amount of success in AH.
High Altitude - 10k-15k
Medium Altitude - 5k-10k
Tree top or NOE (which I rarely if ever have done, so I will not cover this tactic here)
The most realistic, historically, is High Altitude bombing. The big plus is the survival rate... you have a much better chance of returning home and landing any kills and getting more bonus for damages. Your bomber score will be better. The minus side... these missions can take a long time, but some people enjoy the longer missions. With a B24J you will want to start out at least 2 sectors away from target to achieve the desired altitude, or alternatively, you can take off from an adjacent base flying in the wrong direction, gain 3-5k, turn around, and continue to gain alt while approaching target.
Medium Altitude - my preference, involves taking off at an adjacent base, getting up to at least 5k, preferably 6k+ over the targets 'actual altitude'. Thus, if the target is 1.0k, you will want to be a little over 7.0k which will avoid most AA, but may still leave you vulnerable to manned flaks.
SETTING UP A SUCCESSFUL BOMBING MISSION (resulting in hitting desired targets, and returning to base to land)
(1) My first basic rule is I do not fly bombers to an enemy base that has radar up. If I have to fly a 110g2 in to take it out myself, I do so. Sometimes I like to fly in to take out ords or a few AA anyway, mainly because I can get a feel for the terrain and layout of the base, which will help in planning a good bombing mission.
(2) Once the target base has been selected, I choose an attack base and launch a B24J. I use 1k bombs, spread .50, delay .05, but others have preference for other spread and delay settings. I use the 1k bomb loads because a tight group of 1k bombs gives more chances to hit, and this has worked really good for me and you have more drops than with 2k bombs. You don’t have to be as precise.
(3) Right click on the clipboard, and select 'clipboard maps' at the bottom. If you are bombing a medium size base, pull up map for medium base. This can help you plan your approach to the target. You want to line up your flight path with as many targets as possible, because you may not have a second chance. Draw a line between the hangars... and this will be the best flight path to inflict the most damage in 1st pass.
(4) Now that you have a target and a flight plan, launch your bomber formation. After your drones catch up to you, turn as necessary to line up on your flight plan and begin gaining altitude. Whether you are high or medium level bombing, when you hit the dar ring around the enemy target (or before, level off. This is one of the big tips for bombing accuracy. You should attain MAXIMUM CRUISING SPEED before calibrating. With a B24J that is around 240 mph. If you fail to obtain maximum speed before final calibration, you will tend to overshoot your target.
(5) About midway from radar ring to the base, do a calibration and check the speed. If calibration shows a speed of 230 or less, this is a problem, because your aircraft is still accelerating. If you use this calibration you will overshoot your target. If you have no choice but to go with it, you can throttle back slightly, and recalibrate and this sometimes will help. You can also drop the bombs slightly before crosshairs touch the hangar, to compensate for the overshoot. This is where using the 1k bomb load can help, because you have 8 drops. You can drop two or three times per hangar, with one or two drops slightly before crosshairs reach hangar and one dead on, and you still have 5 more loads to hit other hangars with.
If you calibrated a speed of say 242 or 245 mph, you shouldn’t have much overshoot… so you shouldn’t need to drop too early, but I usually drop when crosshairs first touch the hangar just to be sure. It is much more likely to overshoot than to undershoot.
It is possible to swing the bombsight slightly with joystick and try for next target, but you will need to have lined up fairly close to begin with to have a good chance.
Other tips: A medium sized airbase has two hangar pads… one of them has two hangars very close together. You can take both of these out with a carefully placed drop between them (of 2k bombs) but I usually drop 2 or 3 loads of 1k bombs. This leaves 5 loads to take out remaining 2 hangars.
