Bomb damage, circular or point?

[Malleus]

Hi guys, sorry if this has been asked before, but I'm still relatively new, this is my second tour currently.

We've all dropped bombs on hangers, VHs, whatever, and the circle of the bomb has half covered the target, yet the target doesn't go down. I can deal with that, I guess, however, the problem I saw was this.

I was flying a Typhoon (I think) while we were Pizza, defending a city against a M3 incursion. They were stopping some distance from the city and just drunk rushing.

I thought to myself, nah, this is easy, selected my 500lber, rolled, and dropped one. It landed smack dab in the middle of them, and killed...... one.

I've also run into this problem using rockets against drunks.

So, is he damage from bombs and rockets circular or point? And if it is point, is there any way to fix it?

My thanks

Malleus
Cruentus Legio
(1st Bloodstained Legion)

[Wotan]

you gotta think of the effect the bomb has when it hits the ground.

When bombers went on missions the intel guys would look over the the target and from the type of structures then decide on bomb type and fusing. Improper fusing on one bomb can cause only cosmetic damage, when on a properly fused bomb of the same type it can destroy the structure.

This doesnt help in AH, but when killing structures you try to get your load into the structure boundary to get the full effect of the bomb damage. It takes 2500lbs to kill a fh, bh, vh. I am not sure how "partial damage" is "scored" for say near miss but at one time the small fields had a different layout. 2 fhs were side by side. Getting 2500 lbs between them was enough to kill both.

The only way to be sure to get the full effect of your ord on a structure is to get your bombs dead on target. The more you do it the easy it will become.

Now the gvs, 1st people have trouble understanding the scale of the gvs in size in relation to the visual crater. The crater may over lap where a gv is placed but that doesnt mean you hit him. If look at real data from ww2 you find that bombs and rockets werent a very efficient way to kill armored vehicles. On mbts you would have needed nearly a direct hit to kill most tanks. people think the stuka in its dive bomb version was a tank killer, it wasnt. It was a battle interdiction weapon in that it attacked troop concentration, artillery, supply and fixed defense positions. It wasnt until the Kannonknocker and Rudel that the ju87 was a tank buster. Even at the Falaise Gap and the so called "Day of the Typhoon" it wasnt mbts that were destroyed but the soft support vehicles.

Which brings us back to the m3. The m3 is what 24ft length. Ifs the gvs in question were 2 or 3 lengths away from each then if you put you bomb in the center of them thats 30ft apart. What happens when a bomb strikes the ground is it actually buries then detonates. The explosion is blown back up and away, not out to the sides. This is what creates the "crater". Its quite possible that, being 30-50 away from the bomb impact point,  a lightly armored vehicle may survive.

These arent fuel air bombs that create a massive over pressure wave. Most of the force is blown up and away. The blast wave dissipates quickly.

This doesnt help in ah much. Ht has never said how close you need to be to a gv to get partial damage. Remember the crater is more eye candy then a true guage of the blast area. With anything under 1000lbs you need to be farely accurate. With tigers you need to be almost dead on. Its more efficient to kill m3, m16s and m8s by straffing, especially 50 and hispano armed planes.

Also I sm not sure how bomb damage is calculated. Whether its on your fe like bullets or on the gv guys fe. Sometimes you will hear the gv guy say the bomb was way off when on my fe is looked to be right on. I suspect its more an illusion created by the crater.

[ccvi]

Originally posted by Malleus
I thought to myself, nah, this is easy, selected my 500lber, rolled, and dropped one. It landed smack dab in the middle of them, and killed...... one.

I've also run into this problem using rockets against drunks.

I've never been able to kill troops with anything else than guns or cannons.

Maybe the troop you thought you killed was just missing because the M3 driver made a small pause when dropping them?

[hazed-]

Wotan while i understand what you are saying and agree on some points have you actually seen the damage a small bomb does?

I had the missfortune of seeing the aftermath of the IRA bomb set off in Londons financial district.
It was some 400 to 500 lbs and it caused horrendous damage.Threw vehicles hundreds of feet!.

I think a 500lb bomb dropped next to a halftrack would not only destroy it, it would throw it around like a matchbox, the shockwave alone would probably kill or disable the crew.

In the desert there were instances of bombs 'digging-in' and not being too effective but this was because sand is probably the best blast stopper there is.
To counter this they developed weird looking contact fuses, you may have seen them in photos, They look like bombs with long spikes on the front, which meant the bomb would explode on the surface rather than burrying in the sand and thus dissapating the power of the blast.These specially fused bombs were very effective.

Rockets were a different matter and often required almost direct hits to be effective against heavy armour but even these were by no means ineffective vs relatively thin skinned vehicles like M3s, m16s, lorries and trains etc.

The problem with AH is that we dont have the many different types of bombs that were used by the various airforces.I think AH merely has a fragmentation type bomb.
I think it would be a great addition if HTC introduced the many different types.

LW used SC SB and AB.Heres a breif description of them from combat legends fw190 book.

'SC 50/250/500/1000/1800: The fw190 was able t carry a wide range of SC or Spiltterbombe (splinter bomb) types up to the SC 1800 weighing 3,968lb including its explosive charge of 2,315lb.The bombs most commonly used operationally were the SC 50 which weighed 110lb with a 55lb charge, the SC250 of 551lb(298lb charge) and the SC 500 of 1,102lb(595lb charge) Fw190s were also configured t carry the SB 1000 Sprengbombe (demolition bomb) and the AB 250 and 500 bomb containers which contained SD-2 bomblets.'

there were also hollow charge 5kg anti-armour bomblets, 2kg anti-personel bomblets in fact all manner of different bombs for different jobs.Maybe in AH we have the wrong type for use against armour?

[PSYKO]

also bombs allways have the same creater size no matter what size the bomb is eg a 240iber has the sames creator size (and there 4 damage range aswell) as a 40000ib bomb! it sucks y is this?

[Mickey1992]

CCVI is spot on.  Guns and cannons work best against troops.  I was hitting running troops with an Ostie's main gun from about 100 yards and they would not die.  But when I changed to the hull gun, they died easily.