I completely agree with Lazs.
Facts:
No American or Japanese CV was ever sunk by land-based aircraft.
No American or Japanese CV was ever damaged by heavy bombers
With few exceptions, AP and SAP bombs where not available to land-based fighter units.
AP and SAP bombs were commonly carried by naval bombers, but only on rare occasions by fighters.
HE bombs were generally ineffective against warships with even minimal armor protection. Using delay-action fuzed, HE bombs proved highly ineffective due to the light-weight bomb case rupturing before the delayed fuze detonated the charge.
To reduce the level of suicide jabos, there are five things that can be done.
1) Reduce the effectiveness of HE bombs to just 25% of their current value against ships. This will require 32k of HE ord to sink the CV (although 8k of AP or SAP will still do the job).
2) AP/SAP bombs will only be available to naval bomber aircraft. This makes naval aircraft the more effective type for killing ships.
3) All bomb fusing set at 2k altitude minimum for attacking ships and structures. No more flying straight into the ship or hanger, releasing the bombs at the last second. If you release below 2k, bombs will not detonate.
4) No perk points will be awarded for bombing ships or structures unless sortie is landed.
5) Introduce CVE TGs to supplement the CV groups. Aircraft restrictions shall allow for only FM-2/F4F and TBM aircraft to be available on CVEs.
The net result is that the most effective anti-warship aircraft will be dive-bombers and torpedo bombers, as God intended.
It will also require jabo pilots to develop minimal bombing skills.
Implementing this or a similar solution will allow Carrier Task Groups to assume their proper role without being destroyed in a manner utterly opposed to historical reality. As it stands now, CVs are generally a non-factor due to the ease with which they can be sunk.
My regards,
Widewing
