Attacking Ships

[Minotaur]

I'm talking about attacking ships from the air.  After 3 or 4 hours of practice offline today I have gotten the SUICIDAL attacks down.  One ship for one plane, I guess, is a good trade off.  The exception is the CV requires 4 suicidal attacks.

Has anyone made a attacking ships a less suicidal trade off?

Torpedo runs are pretty much a waste of time.  Accuracy is very bad, my average is 0%.   The torpedoes of the ju88 don't run long enough to make a non-suicidal attack, or for that matter any attack probable.  Dauntless torpedoes run longer, but you only get one.  At any rate, any torpedo attack that actually has a chance of a hit is a suicide mission.  The only respectable chance that I can see is a head-on torpedo run.

The same with medium alt dive bomb attacks.  Accuracy is a little better, maybe 10%.   All but the CV will die in one hit, but hitting accuracy is non-esistent if you stay up out of the AAA.

The shipboard AI AAA guns are very accurate.  It does not seem as though the guns have any pan rate limitation.  They can pan fast enough to knock down airborne targets flying at almost mach speed.  Also it seems that, but I'm not sure, that the guns don't not have interuptors and it appears all guns shoot all the time regardless of target orientation.

So my question is, has anyone perfected an attack on ships from the air that does not rely on the absolute suicidal mentality?  Also what are the percentages of success for such an attack?

Thanks

[Innominate]

Divebombing with a true divebomber.

Using an SBD, TBM, or maybe even a lone 88 against a CV is the only regularly survivable attack method I've found.

The idea is that your dive brakes will slow you down enough that you can release your bombs, and pull out well before you're within the acks "you're screwed" zone.

[Fancy]

A few weeks ago a squadmate and I took out a CV with two heavy F6's.  We did suicide, but it is possible anyway.

As for the difficulty of attacking CV groups, have you ever seen footage from the Pacific Theatre when the CVs were defending?  It's a horrifying site.  Even Zero's intent on honor through death could rarely make it to the CV without getting shredded into bite-sized pieces.

[bojc]

Here's the tired and true SBD attack taught to me by  -worr- of the famous flying pigs, 6 years ago.

come in at 12,000 feet until over CV and just ahead of it.

engine at idle dive brake out, nose over

aim just ahead of ship

dive as near to vertical as you can

no control inputs for 2 full seconds before release, release at 3500, engine to full, dive brakes up, and get the hell out of there.

IF you have at least three SBD's in this attack you can " scratch one flattop!" every time.

bojc and major HJ

[SKurj]

I've made several non-suicide passes in jug and 38, don't let speed get too high, and drop high, you can dip into the ack and survive usin roll.


Skurj

[Innominate]

Three SBDs?  Try seven.

[DrDea]

9 out of 10 times if your intent on hitting the ship your gonna get nailed.Depends on how close you want to get.I have hit a cv and sunk it from 10K in a d hog but thats a rare shot and it had been hit previously.The key is no imput till the plane is set.Let em go ahead of the ship ripple off the rockets if ya got em on a salvo max # and break hard to one side.My survival rate on eggin cv's is about 25% and then with damage most of the time.It aint easy.The best plan is several diveing at the same time from diffrent angles to spread out the ack.

[Roscoroo]

I myself use an F4u and start from 8-10k ussually 10 ,I come in from a 2 or 10 o-clock position and a 60 deg angle ... chop the throttle and get the plane to "float" while aiming for the "bow" of the carrier, release at 4k , pull out with full wep and try to roll alittle .(Note you have about 2 seconds to get bombs released when floating "neg G" the plane for the drop any longer and your dead )

For the final run on the carrier (after ive got 6k worth on it)
ill do the same but release bombs at 4k then switch and fire rockets at 2-2.5k .zoom down to the deck kick up lots of water and watch the carrier sink. I also use this last pass method on the battleship (it works everytime and i almost always survive on this attack run)

I survive about 1 outta 4 on carrier attacks, a good ship gunner will get me just after i drop bombs , or the AI ack fills me full of holes on the zoom out .
but i ussually always manage to score the bombs on the target .

as for using the other planes ..p 38,51,47. i find that they dont roll as well and i think because of that there a better target for the AI ack .

I wish we got kills for sinking the ships and for the human gunners that are on the ship (i find this the most lacking in this game) Ive sunk many battleships w/ 3-4 players manning the guns.

[Soda]

People forget that when dive-bombing a CV it isn't like you need to hit a tiny target.  The CV is huge and pretty hard to miss even from 10K in a dive bomb attack.  If you are bringing rockets then all you have is a death wish anyway.  Drop from 8K, not 3K, and you are likely to survive and hit the target.

I wish they'd stop the suicide CV attack anyway.... they are unnecessary 95% of the time since you can survive.  Getting shot down kamkaze style actually helps suicide dweebs since it puts them back in their next suicide plane that much sooner.

-Soda
The Assassins.

[JB73]

you are all talkin about dive bombing....
has anyone bombed with a b17 or lanc with the new bomb model?

before the model changed i dropped many a CV with the lanc... flying about 15k (out of ack range) and droppin 10 1000lb bombs 1.5 ship lengths srtaight ahead of the carrier.

i havent even tried to bomb anything yet with the new model but im guessing from what i've heard you can be almost as accurate with some seroius practice.

i imagine that with 3x10 1000lb bombs you could make a real mess of the CV

[Soda]

Level bombing hasn't changed that much against carriers.  The old pattern was to grab 10K and come into the attack on a parallel course, either from the front or rear, and drop 1 CV length ahead of the carrier.  Since 10K is still below the wind-layer the process shouldn't have changed.  Ack only extends up to about 9K and you can never get above the 5 inch anyway so why climb higher.

A couple of cavets though:
- radically turning ships are going to be tough if you don't get a nice course and can't just rudder turn to the aim point.
- calibrate on a shoreline or something, not over open water.  Calibrating on open water can be more difficult because of lack of contrast points.
- formations increase bomb load enough that even a B-26 formation can likely sink a CV in one pass.  Figure on only 4 direct hits, but the other bombers will usually drop close enough to get blast damage, enough to sink the CV.

I tried it once last tour, used a Lanc and nailed the CV just like old times....

-Soda
The Assassins.

[TracerX]

Level bombing in B-26 at 10K is still my preferred method of killing a CV.  I do it on a regular basis.  Soda and JB explained it very well.  The hardest part is finding out which way the CV is headed, and lining up along its direction of travel.  I usually communicate with a fellow countryman over the target to get this information.  Salvo all 4 1,000 lbrs with a short delay, Btwn .05 and .2, and drop one boat length ahead for every 10,000 ft of alt.  It takes patience, and sometimes more than one pass  I have even nailed turning CV's before, but it is much easier if they hold still.  

I enjoy this mission more than almost anything else in the Main Arena, and compared to dive bombing, sure beats trying to out maneuver those ship guns after the drop.