Should Flying Boats have wing bombs?

[brygun]

In thinking of dabbling in drawing a "my plane" in looking over the flying boat stats it shows that they are carrying bombs in singles. Shouldn't flying boats be using wing carried bombs rather than central bombs?

My own limited research has only heard of wing bombs. The engineering of a central bomb bay for something that puts that floats by putting that compartment into water is a tad "fishy".

The suggestion would be to tweak new flying boats to have their expected bomb loads split into two and thus each bomb only half the load. For example 1 x 500 lb would become 2 x 250 lb.

There is an affect to game balance though it seems fairly minor. Flying boats aren't normally doing heavy bombing in tactical battles anyway. Also they aren't normally under player control as they fly from AI land bases.

Floatplane scouts wouldn't be affect. Many, though not all, used two main pontoons thus could carry a larger central single bomb.

[sagaren]

I suggest looking at the Short Sutherland for examples of water bound planes with ordnance compartments.

[brygun]

May 7, 2020 0:13:03 GMT -6 sagaren said:

I suggest looking at the Short Sutherland for examples of water bound planes with ordnance compartments.

Thanks Ill take a look at.

IIRC that was a later 1940s design vs the earlier ones like PBY had wing mounts


edit 1
Handy link for a modeller doing one:


www.seawings.co.uk/ModArticle-Sunderland-McCabe.htm

edit 2:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Sunderland

Introduction 1938

"The specification to which the Sunderland was developed to conform with had called for an offensive armament of a 37 mm gun and up to 2,000 lb (910 kg) of bombs, mines or (eventually) depth charges.[13] The ordnance was stored inside the fuselage in a purpose-built bomb room and was winched up to racks, under the wing centre section, that could be traversed out through doors on each side of the fuselage above the waterline to the release position."


edit 3:

"Bombs were loaded in through the "bomb doors" that formed the upper half walls of the bomb room on both sides. The bomb racks were able to run in and out from the bomb room on tracks in the underside of the wing. In order to load them, weapons were hoisted up to the extended racks that were run inboard and either lowered to stowages on the floor or prepared for use on the retracted racks above the stowed items. The doors were spring-loaded to pop inwards from their frames and would fall under gravity so that the racks could run out through the space left in the top of the compartment. The bombs could be released locally or remotely from the pilot's position during a bomb run."

Me: So the bombs are on a sliding rack that goes out to the wing to release. Interesting solution. It does mean they dont fall out on the center. The bottom hull of the flying boat remains intact.

[brygun]

For reference on another plane in the early flying boat era listing wings.

weaponsandwarfare.com/2016/01/14/felixstowe-f2af3/

The F.2A operated on anti-submarine patrol missions. Each plane could carry two 230 lb (104 kg) bombs under the lower wings. It was also defended by a machine gun position in the nose and three machine guns at mid-fuselage stations.


>>>>

Note that for the Short Sunderland it was multiple lighter bombs showing on the bomb racks and not one huge bomb like RTW2 game stats are for.