I have always found that bombers have relatively little in stats to "tell their story" and to track their work. Flying fighters, you can always look at the killstats and see "oh, back then I was flying the A6M a lot, in that tour I was obviously mainly killing bombers" and so on - despite some rumors the main goal & activity of fighters is still fighting other planes (and GV).
Bomber guys have only their score and that one is even less meaningful than looking at fighter score. It doesn't show what you attacked, what you destroyed. And, due to a very 'special way' the damage points are computed, you can't even really say how much destruction you caused.
So as I was missing a lot of stats to track, I decided to log all my bomber sorties with the arrival of the new, updated strats system. Each sortie I was noting down a lot of mission information - date, time, plane, loadout, mission target, resistance, destruction caused, losses suffered and many many more.
And here I present an abstract of one year of bombing in the LW area. Maybe someone else is interested in it - and if not, feel free to ignore it
If there's any point to it, it is this one:
I wish AH would track stuff like that on a individual player history page!1. My bomber missions. Each "mission" is a player sortie of mine, I called it 'mission' to distinguish it from AH's 'plane sorties'.
Mission type explanation: 'Milking' is attacking targets (town centers) for score or perks only, 'Tactical' = attacking bases to help my side in attack or defense (porking ords, killing hangars or bombing a town during a capture attempt)
Of course, missions weren't always "pure". On many B-29 strat missions I would also drop a bomb or two on a town or a radar tower - and when flying G4M porking sorties, I was often doing "3 bombs for the base and one for my perks (town)"
As you can see, contrary to the majority of bomber pilots in AH, I don't really like the Lancaster at all. If it hadn't been remodeled, I most probably would have had even less sorties in it.
On the other hand, I grew quite fond of the G4M during the past year. It's not about the size of the load you drop, it's how you do it!
2. Average AltitudeInitial bombing altitude
I never understood the reason to fly the B-29 at 34k exclusively... After some intitial high altitude experiments, I settled with 27-29k on large maps and 30k on small maps (with a few exceptions in both directions)
On the other hand, i would have liked to take the He-111 that high for improved survival, but that pig doesn't like to climb at all
3. Average Mission DurationTime from tower to tower.
Being mostly used as a long range strategic bomber, it's no surprise that the 29 leads the competition. But as a interesting note, my strategic missions in the B-17 or 24 had not been that much shorter. Only less efficient
4. Combat LossesCombat losses are all losses due to hostile fire, be it from players or AI puffy ack. Not counted were disco's or losses purely based on pilot errors like flying into a mountain after takeoff of augering while descending afk
Of course the losses depended a lot on
how and
where I was flying those bombers. I would never use it to claim the G4M is more survivable than the B-17
Still, my relatively high loss rate in the Flying Fortress came as a surprise to me.
5. Air to Air K/DTrue A2A K/D, kills of and deaths by GV & ack ignored
A lot of luck was involved in the Ki-67 results.
And I consider my K/D in the He 111 to be almost miraculously high
6. Targets DestroyedNo fancy graph, just take that info from this synopsis:
I just noticed ships sunk are missing, but I suck at sinking them from a bomber anyways
Sorties & tonnage by map, sorties & tonnage by month, tons dropped per AH chesspiece, takeoff timesI think you care even less about this than about the stuff above
And yes, I know that I'm a nerd without a life, thank you
