just a thought on the bomber debate....

[hazed-]

It just occoured to me that these bombers could well have been very manouverable at high altitude.Ive never flown one or read about it or seen it on film but then lets face it we wont will we?
no pilot with 10 of his closest buddies sitting along side him is going to try it just to see if it can is he?
It made me think..the reason we get annoyed with the bombers is that they dont fly like they did in the movies all level etc.Its not that the b17s 'Shouldnt' be able to do high alt manouvers , its that we just dont 'WANT' them to  
As a bomber flyer in AH myself, ill do what ever i can devise to escape getting hit.In the war they flew in formations with strict rules etc.we can risk mad manouvers and loops etc because we havent got 5-10 screaming mates sitting next to us !  

what i think id be prepared to do is give up the rudder control whilst in gunner position but would it be possibble to set a bank manouver (same as auto climb) so as we switch to gunner the aircaft will turn one way or the other.in order to straghten the manouver or change we would have to go back to pilot seat?.

In the MA everyone, fighters included does whatever it takes to live and its wrong to expect buff pilots to fly straight and level or not use what the aircraft is good at (eg b17 at alt).Im on both sides of this really.As a fighter I have been annoyed chasing a skillfull rudder using b26 gunner and ive used the rudder well in a ju88 to defend and beaten off quite a few.

maybe we should leave it as it is.

[Kweassa]

As amazing as it is, I've seen a Boeing 747 perform a barrel roll on its test flight. If a 747 can do that... well, maybe a B-17 can do more amazing things... Anyhow, what we really wonder is not about the 'maneuverability', but rather the altitude issue.. What can we do to stop a buff at 38k ft. ??

[Tac]

yeah we need me163's whose guns would only work ABOVE 25k.

Buffs are untouchable above 27k, any fighter will get 1 or 2 passes MAX at it, then the turn and climb rate and the extremely poor perfomance of fiters at that alt makes them 6-oc targets with ease.

[Ghosth]

Actually while I have no problems with your ideas hazed I think part of the problem is the altitude.

If the Norden bombsite got too cold & "frosted up" at 25k or higher I think it would solve a lot of the problems.

Personally the only times I've even approached 25k are on a couple of mass HQ runs where we had 6 sectors to climb.

[janjan]

The best solution is usually to see what is different between RL ww2 and AH. The solution lies in bomb accuracy of course.

I imagine extra high bombers were really tough to get down in real life as well, just think of all recon planes.

[Dowding]

While in formation, on the way to the target, bombers would fly straight and level.

But on the way back, if separated from the pack or (more commonly) after night raids the pilot would put the plane through as much as it could take to avoid being hit.

This is especially true for lancaster night bombing pilots. There are lots of accounts of the evasive manoevers (usually called out by a gunner) to avoid night fighters.

Although altitude is an issue the fact that it happeded isn't. Moreover, I think it's safe to say that most raids on any target were not carried out by single aircraft.

[bowser]

Like Dowding says, there was a reason they had to fly straight and level...so that the Norden was accurate.  If the Norden worked in RL like it did in AH, they wouldn't have had to maintain course.  So if you want some sort of realism, fix the Norden.  WBs had a good implementation, you had to maintain course for a certain amount of time to calibrate the Norden, otherwise it was inaccurate. Don't know why they don't do that here. If they had to maintain course over target, the fighters would be happier.  If they want to turn elsewhere, who cares, let them.  You can just ignore them, they're not doing damage.

Also, they had to have huge formations to get enough bombs on target to do worthwhile damage.  Another thing not reproduced in AH.   One bomber can do plenty of damage stratwise.  If you have huge formations, you sure don't want people turning all over the place, you would have mass chaos.

Lastly, the huge formations served as self-protection.  With the current guns, etc. not needed in AH.

Not really much in common between RL and AH when it comes to bombers is there?

bowser

[ 09-22-2001: Message edited by: bowser ]

[hazed-]

dowding is it possible we sort of agree? lol

i personally have come to the conclusion that the bombing aspect of AH is probably the least 'real' thing about the whole game, but only in certain areas.
For instance the size of the targets we have are probably 10x smaller than the targets the bombers in WW2 had to hit.If you consider that the devastation to the surrounding infrastructure was also helping to stop the targets functioning.So in AH the targets are compressed and therefore true norden accuracy would be too much(or overly innaccurate).if you think about it a whole fuel factory and its surrounding buildings probably covered .5 to 1 mile square so the real norden would be accurate enough.as our targets are spead out on what is probably 2-2.5 football pitches in size we need the sights in AH to be that much more accurate.what we have though, is 'pin point' accuracy which is good for the single player bomber but very unrealistic.
If like ive suggested before we made bombs land randomly(say within 0-200 ft or more from aim point at higher alts) but upped their area of effect so that 1000-lbers dont need to be spot on (as in real life) we could acheive almost the same effects.except hitting those acks with 100-lbers would be very difficult but 250-lbers or heavier would pretty much do the job if it landed up to 100ft away.
a direct hit on a structure should do even more damage of course.obviously the lower you drop the less the variations.
Certain Hangers or structures could be resistant to anything other than a direct hit and this would mean the bomber pilot ,with 4 bombs, could either risk 4 seperate drops, where he could near miss each time no matter how spot on his sight was, or salvo all 4 and drop the cluster in a delay pattern that would garentee almost 1 hitting out of the 4 and the rest close enough to help finnish the job.
Jabo bombing was used because of its extra accuracy for smaller targets as it should be in AH.
I think with the extra blast area and less accuracy we would have to fly with others to be 'assured' of totally closing a base.I see many complaints of lack of cooperation and not enough forming of groups but IF this was the only way it could be done we would do it more.not the other way around.
Id still fly bombers and id still try to fly with some others but i would not be capable 'alone' of almost closing a base (eg fuel ammo and acks) unless i risked a low drop with more risk of interception or ground fire.which again is how it should be right?
If they wanna fly to 30k make it so it takes literally 3 times the bombers to be as accurate as 1 single bomber who risks the ack and fighters down low.Reward the riskier flying and we'll see less of the 30+ buffs i think.

[ 09-22-2001: Message edited by: hazed- ]

[Dowding]

There's a first for everything, hazed.  

It seems to me that AH's representation of bomber action is just that. It's not meant to be as realistic as other aspects, for the simple reason that that would be nigh on impossible. For instance, its very difficult to get more than 3 or 4 bombers in one attack, so how could recreate the squadron or group size attacks seen in WW2? It's a coninuation of the whole strategy system, which is designed with fun in mind. A compromise that I think works very well.

I like the Norden sight idea, and perhaps there is scope for a re-design of the strategy system. Maybe one day we will see it.

[eskimo2]

My father-in-law was a gunnery instructor in WWII.  One of his jobs was to mock attack B-17s with an AT-6.  The students in the B-17 would "fire" 8mm movie cameras mounted on dummy MGs, to be analyzed later on the ground.
One mission, after all film had been spent, he was told by the B-17 pilot to head back to base.  He wheeled over and dove toward the base.  Eventually, he looked his shoulder to check where the B-17 was.  It wasn't hard to spot... the B-17 was "glued" to his six.  
My father-in-law, Bill, was good friends with the B-17 pilot and wasn't surprised to see him showing off.  Bill thought "I'll show him", and put his AT-6 into a steep spiral dive.  Eventually again, Bill looked back to see where his friend in the B-17 was.  It wasn't hard to find...  Yup, the B-17 was still "glued" to his six.

My point:
B-17s can/could do much more than we would intuitively guess they could.  

eskimo

P.S.
A few months later, Bill saw his friend collide with an AT-6.  Everyone died.

 

[ 09-22-2001: Message edited by: eskimo2 ]

[Wotan]

i bet u dollars to donuts they couldnt split esse with full bomb load....

or scissor with a 190 at 27k.........

[iculus]

The B-17 was a strong bird.  When initially approved, the army ordered one for static testing (literally ripped apart to test its strengh).  Before they got it, another fort, flying over the states, had "found" itself in a thunderhead.  The plane was violently thrown around, and was rolled over.  The plane survived with a bent wing strut.  After hearing of this, the army cancelled any need for ststic testing on the B-17.

[jpeg]

If HTC decides to limit the bombers performance then I hope they add a "otto" - automatic guns to the bombers.. other than that I like the bombers in AH.

Air warriors' bombers behave similar, and their bombing sight is the same.. no need to stay on course to calibrate the sight.