Fdiron, from the SB2C protoype to the first operational plane, about 18000 changes had to be made. I dont know about any other plane as bogus, in the whole story of aviation. Even the He177 needed less number of modifications.
The plane was a squeak to fly from start to end. That some of the worse bugs were squashed doesnt make the plane a good one. Right to the last day of war pilots said it was a terrible thing to fly. The most "optimistic" defenders of the plane said it was "capable".
In short: that thing was a nightmare. Add to that, that a divebomber will be used on Scenarios only and you'll find that the Dauntless is the american divebomber to model (was the divebomber used in all the aeronaval pacific battles, xcept the Marianas battle).
A divebomber has no place in MA, because it's a sitting duck vs enemy planes, and anyway almost any fighter will do good divebombing and straffing. Maybe not as good divebombing, but the straffe part is unbeatable.
Originally posted by Buzzbait:
S! Ra
Dive Bombers aren`t gonna win any contests for air to air, top speed or carrying the most ordanance. But there is one thing they do well:
Put bombs right on the money.
Dive bombing is more accurate than any other method of delivering ordanance.
Say what?. The most accurate way to delivering ordnance is with a fully laden, 25K lancaster using the mega-laser-guidance Hitonspotfromstratosphere Mk.I bombsite.

. No divebomber will ever beat that (another reason I hate that gameplay concession, btw

)
In real life, of course, you are right...but we are talking about MA here, and none in his sense would take a divebomber from a carrier in the MA, having the option to spawn a Dhog with 2000lbs of bombs and 8 HVAR rockets (not to mention the 3000 rounds of 50 cals...). And if he was not to get a fighterbomber he'd fly a TBM (Wich also loads rockets and has a magic-bombsite to hit exactly on the aim).
Even in real life, anyway, in the latter part of the war the divebomber role was overtaken by fighter-bombers wich could do the job almost as well.
Divebombers will be only seen in scenarios. So if we are to see one modelled, I'd love to see one wich can be used in the most, the better. A dauntless, a Val, and a Stuka, get my vote (not on that order, btw

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