I spend 95% of my time in this game in bombers. Now, I realize players in this game can use "auto takeoff", wallow around, find some poor guy who is also wallowing around, get him on your nose, pull the trigger and get a kill. Same with bombers, you can takeoff same way, watch the clipboard map and gradually get to your intended bombing target, drop some bombs and RTB to field of choice, land gear up and record some damage points or kills. But is that really the way to play this game? I think not!
Less talk about a couple of instruments which you can use, with a little practice, to improve your flying skills in the game and give you personal satisfaction of doing some presion flying, even though you are in a flight sim. Following is a copy of a post I made on our squadron forum training section.
The Turn and Bank indicator is the instrument on your aircraft instrument panel which has a vertical needle and a ball, outlined with two vertical small lines. This instrument's vertical needle tells you if you are turning left or right, and the ball tells you if you are slipping or skidding in the turn or if you are making a coordinated turn. If you apply the correct amount of aileron and rudder to make the aircraft turn, the ball will stay inside the two small vertical lines. If you are making a left turn and the ball is outside the lines to the left, you are slipping in the turn. If the ball is outside the lines to the right, you are skidding in the turn. This is important as a slipping or skidding turn will decay the airspeed an amount which could mean the difference in avoiding a boogie in a dogfight or slowing down and the boogie catching and killing you. The vertical needle, which moves left or right, depending on which way you are turning, has two small “dog houses”, left and right of center. If your needle is pointing at one of those “dog houses”, this means you are turning at the rate of 3 degrees per second in that direction. Anytime that you are turning in an aircraft which has drones with it, it is important to maintain the needle deflection on that “dog house”, and you will never lose one or both of your drones due to a large amount of bank while turning.
A note about the 3 degrees per second statement. The compass in an aircraft has 360 degrees of direction in which it may turn to. The “dog house” indicator means that if your vertical needle is pointing steady on one the dog houses, this means that your aircrafts nose is moving at a rate of 3 degrees per second around the horizon and if you continue your turn for 2 full minutes, you would make a complete turn and would be headed in the same direction where you started the turn from to begin with. If you turned for 1 minute, you would make a 180 degree turn and would be moving in the opposite directions from which you started the turn from. This important to you for figuring out your headings away from a target which you just bombed, but you want to return from the opposite directions in order to finish your bombing run. Example, if you are on a 360 degree heading on your first run, you must first continue on past your target far enough so that when you complete your turn, you will be far enough away so that on your return leg you will have enough time to line up and calibrate. If you turn to a heading of 045 on your compass and flew for 4 minutes, how many minutes would it take me to turn back to a heading of 180 degrees, which would take me to my target? Again, remember, if you turn left, you must turn 225 degrees to return on a 180 heading. If you keep the vertical needle on the little dog house, you are turning at the rate of 3 degrees per second and it would take you 75 seconds or 1 minute and 15 seconds to complete your turn back to target. This might sound a little complicated at first, but try it a few times and it’s a snap! (Note: The amount of time on the 045 degree heading would be according to your ground speed, so as to know when to start your 225 degree turn back in order to arrive at the desired heading, this case, 180 degrees.)
Of course, above 14K in this game, you have wind from different directions, so now you also have an additional problem to work out, but holding a constant altitude in your mission, you should, using your ground speed on your E6B, figure out how far away from your base line course of 180 degrees, prior to starting your turn back to line up for your second pass over the target. I prefer to use 180 ground speed in the B-17, because it is easier to compute in my head when I should turn back. 180 being 3 miles per minute. so I know that if I want to move away from the base course of 180 degrees, I need to fly 2 full minutes, which is 6 miles. Sounds, as I said before, complicated, but give it a try and before long you can be flying some precision bombing missions.
Remember, if you are new to this game, the clip board maps, which have lines on them with sector numbers are laid out in a North-South direction, vertical lines on map and East-West, horizontal lines from left to right or East to West. While they have no heading information, you can mentally over lay a compass rose over a sector to give you some idea of what heading on your directional gyro to fly to get where you want to go. (Would be nice if AH would impose compass headings on the edge of the clipboard map). Pand did this on his field maps and it sure helps in lining up on targets from a distance out.
