The bombers, alone, were easy prey for fighters. One doesnt need to be a rocket scientist to know it, we just have to take a look at the Regensburg/Schweinfurt raids, the return to Schweinfurt, and all the major bombings wich took part in the latter part of 1943 over Germany, to know that a big formation of bombers wont stand a chance against a fighter force. The losses of those raids were simply too much for the 8th AF to stand, and was only the introduction of the fighter escorts wich brought the bleeding back to an acceptable rate.
And the last sentence of that paragraph explains why there were losses..they had little or no fighter escort, early on in the war they never had the fighters with the range to make it much further than the other side of the channel but even so the Luftwaffe took heavy casualties and a ratio of 2:1 in favour of the bombers was not an uncommon situation for a mission when taking into account the ratio's of fighters vs bombers being greater. Those raids you talk about were made when the Luftwaffe more or less at full strength which is why you obviously picked those one or two instances because they fitted your argument with such bias, any bombers that were picked off easily were damaged by earlier attack or flak over target and had dropped out of formation but even in that situation I've read many recollections of LW pilots that said they were still 'salamanderly targets' even when damaged.
Dont try to use the argument of the "the LW also came in formations" because is not true
Oh but it is unless you read the same comics as Lazs for your historical references. The Luftwaffe sent hundreds of planes to strike at formations smaller than their own (of course they would be they wee on home soil stopping an invading airforce gettign to their cities, factories etc)
If the Luftwaffe were able to pick off bombers so easily why were
Sturmgruppen set up with the heavily modified 190A8/R8
Sturmbock? surely if it was such and easy job there was no need for these heavily modified planes which were so heavy and unresponsive because they carried twice the armour that they had to be escorted themselves by regular fighters.
Because the guns are overpowered on the buffs?. Hitech said that they weren't. So we have to believe him. then why?
Because he coded the sim? because he's already shown you pictures of the dispersion and accuracy of the buff guns with the aid of a new gunenry tool? Wake up and drop the persecution complex there is no bomber conspiracy!
Are the icons?...oh, no. Not the icons. Not JUST the icons. The icons give accurate rangefinding but they aren't all the problem (in fact IMO they aren't a 10% of the problem for the buff gunnery of AH)
The icons are just as bad for bombers, not only can you ID the bomber at ridiculous distances but the icons are also visible through cloud! but again your persecution complex does not allow you to see this
1-Some of the turret firing arcs are, and I will use the word required, ridiculous. The ball turret in the B17 is laughable, for instance, and is not the one and only turret with this problem.
Yes there are problems with the guns on the bombers, particularly on the B17 and I've noticed the B26 guns pointing through the airframe at some points
3- The linked defensive fire is TOO accurate. I mean, when the waist gunner started firing at an incoming bandit, that didnt mean that ALL turrets were INSTANTLY traking it!. and if they were, they werent firing in the coordinated way they do in AH! (they dont have convergence but all shoot in paralel, thus making a BIG shotgun effect, wich is NOT realistic)
Again I'll agree on that
BUT whats the alternative? otto? perhaps its time we had otto in Aces High because the gunnery system is bogus on buffs and not only for the fighters. As it stands now I can either have
one human gunner or leave the controls and gun myself..is that realistic in a B17 with 7 gunner positions?
I DON'T THINK SO! Its also bogus that all guns are linked, not only for the fighters attacking me but also for us bombers as I can only fire at one target..is that realistic in a multi gunned bomber?
I DON'T THINK SO! Because of these linked guns and unless on the rare occassion I get someone willing to gun for me I have no defensive capabilities when I am in the norden sight which on many many occassions has led to the unrealistic occurances of fighters actually allowing me to get to the target and wait for me to drop my bombs before they start to attack..is that realistic in a multi gunned bomber?
I DON'T THINK SO! 5-Turret gunners were KILLABLE TARGETS, especially the ones in the tail, dorsal and ball positions. In AH is almost imposssible o effectively disable the dorsal and tail gun positions of a bomber before getting your fighter blasted to bits. they are SIMPLY TOO HARD to be put out of action. In RL, a 20mm on a turret would render it almost useless (if it didnt kill the gunner before). From my experience in AH, you can spray MG or 20mm cannon fire over the tail and dorsal zones of a B17, and not killing the turrets. Of course, sometimes a gunner gets killed and/or turret disabled. But it is a relatively rare incident.
I seem to loose turrets with no problems at all if the fighter attackign me actually bothers to target them and not just spray and pray.
Simple result of the review: the Buff gunnery in AH is SERIOUSLY overmodelled, giving an ,in my humble opinion, unproporcionated ammount of advantage to the bombers over the fighters. This, added to the point-and-click laser bombsight able to hit targets from altitudes of 30K+, simply give the bombers a seriously unballancing advantage in this game.
Read Hitech's post on this, you're getting it all out of proportion, he's posted here and said online the buff guns are no stronger than the fighter guns. Man I love you 'born again' Luftwaffe types that take on the LW persecution complex when it comes to buffs, I've been a part of a JG and enjoyed it, killed buffs and was killed by buffs. If you want to learn to kill buffs I know of one person who I really do fear if I know he's near my buff and thats Wilbus. Ask him to take you into the TA or make a few films and watch how he does it and if you say it takes too long then sadly you're wanting an arcade game and might I suggest you go take a look at Fighter Ace when you quit again

FWIW when I fly bombers I fly them to their historical operational altitudes, when I'm in a B17 I fly to 28k, when in a Lanc I fly to 22k etc etc, thats not tosay they can't go higher as B17's had a ceiling of 34k or so and a Lanc around 28k and even though I continue to get shot down by fighters who seem to be unrestricted in their ammounts of oxygen they can carry <shrug>
As a bomber pilot I'd like to see the norden made less accurate, to have to have skill to drop on target taking into account wind etc but the wind is bogus in AH as well as the way targets need pinpoint drops on them to destroy them, until bomb blast radius is tweaked and buildings take realistic ammounts of damage (not to mention runways!) then the laser norden is a neccessity. Over in Warbirds III you now have the capability of carpet bombing which makes the .salvo .delay comamnds actually mean something, would be nice to have that in AH one day.
So now I'll just wait for the historically challenged Lazs to turn up spouting more innaccuracies from his latest 'Bullwinkle does WW2' comic..oh and yes Lazs this time I did get the first insult in.
[ 09-30-2001: Message edited by: Revvin ]