|
Post by bry7x7x7 on Jul 15, 2020 9:16:35 GMT -6
Something I noticed is there is text in the game for heavy bombers Really i have noticed for sometime but now I'm wondering if it was a featured planed but never implemented or is it still a possibility? I can see a number of uses in game for them. Being longer ranged than medium bombers, they would be great for recon/scouting, provide ASW as they did historically, and as the B-17 was designed for, provided attack power for fleet engagements as do medium bombers, but without torpedo capacity would be weak at it for a good while until specialist techs. Though really their more massive bomb loads and range would work better towards what I really thought I could use them for is suppressing enemy airbases. Think, if you're in more crowed areas, such as the Mediterranean, the English channel, or the Caribbean, these would be good places to arm more heavy bombers to take out enemy airbases with more efficiency than Medium bombers and if the AI uses them in this manor, then if you incentive for stationing more fighters for CAP. This could even bring down the dominance of mass land air strikes in the Med for at least a few more years. Perhaps that's taking it a bit too far, but what do you think about adding heavy bombers into the game?
|
|
|
Post by oldpop2000 on Jul 15, 2020 10:53:11 GMT -6
Something I noticed is there is text in the game for heavy bombers Really i have noticed for sometime but now I'm wondering if it was a featured planed but never implemented or is it still a possibility? I can see a number of uses in game for them. Being longer ranged than medium bombers, they would be great for recon/scouting, provide ASW as they did historically, and as the B-17 was designed for, provided attack power for fleet engagements as do medium bombers, but without torpedo capacity would be weak at it for a good while until specialist techs. Though really their more massive bomb loads and range would work better towards what I really thought I could use them for is suppressing enemy airbases. Think, if you're in more crowed areas, such as the Mediterranean, the English channel, or the Caribbean, these would be good places to arm more heavy bombers to take out enemy airbases with more efficiency than Medium bombers and if the AI uses them in this manor, then if you incentive for stationing more fighters for CAP. This could even bring down the dominance of mass land air strikes in the Med for at least a few more years. Perhaps that's taking it a bit too far, but what do you think about adding heavy bombers into the game? Using history as a guide, I don't believe heavy bombers are valuable in anti-fleet operations and I would not waste a heavy bomber on scouting. The heavy bomber attacks on ships were never effective because level bombing on ships from altitudes about 10,000 or above were ineffective and we have examples of this in the Pacific in many battles. With ships making S turns and at flank speed, with fighters and AA guns blazing it just did not work. Now, having said that, they were and could be effective against coastal forts and harbors, along with airfields so they could be implemented in that way. The only way a heavy bomber could be effective against a fleet, theoretically, is to come in very low, and hit the enemy ships from low altitude say about 100-150 feet. The problem with that is it puts that heavy bomber in harms way for fighters and AA guns. Do you really want to risk an expensive heavy bomber and its crew in an operation that a medium bomber; dive bomber or torpedo could do more effectively? Remember to weigh cost per performance in the production of any aircraft or ship.
|
|
|
Post by bry7x7x7 on Jul 15, 2020 11:02:51 GMT -6
and as the B-17 was designed for, provided attack power for fleet engagements as do medium bombers, but without torpedo capacity would be weak at it for a good while until specialist techs I didn't say they would be most effective in that role, even pointing out that the b-17 was designed for that but failed. Level bombing isn't a great way to engage ships until glide bombing, but in game terms that didn't stop a medium bomber in the eary 30's blowing a deadly hole in my capital ships with a 1600 Ib bomb with a lucky hit
|
|
|
Post by jwsmith26 on Jul 15, 2020 17:12:45 GMT -6
The PB classification is intended to include some planes that could be classified as heavy bombers, though they were not used as bombers. The Americans developed the Consolidated PB4Y-2 Privateer as a maritime patrol aircraft late in WW2. It was derived from the Consolidated B-24 Liberator. The Avro Shackleton, derived from the Avro Lancaster heavy bomber, was used for maritime patrol in the early 50s, and prior to this, the Lancaster itself had been pressed into maritime service late in WW2.
|
|
|
Post by brygun on Jul 15, 2020 20:30:27 GMT -6
IIRC, and I welcome Oldpop2000 to detail us up, that the B-25 B-17 made famous for the US army bombing in Europe was actually built as near-failed naval heavy bomber. Sure it had range but high dropping at moving ships that can.... gasp.... turn... while the bombs are falling makes hit rates real crappy. IIRC I saw stats on how just many bombs they could do. Basically think of Vietnam era carpet bombing of jungles to get one to three hits on a ship. The B-25 B-17 with the Norden (*) bombsight that was a mechanical computer specialized for high dropping at static targets now that worked really well. edits: = (*) whoops, as pointed out Norden is the bombsight, Nordenfelt is a type of earlier machine gun = B-25 B-17 is the correct plane. This also explains oldpop2020s reply which now makes sense as I was the one using the wrong plane identifier. = This is clarified also in a new post later in the thread. The video reference for the B-17 as being used for bombing ships but doing it very badly is: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhIGuE530gs
|
|
|
Post by oldpop2000 on Jul 15, 2020 21:49:22 GMT -6
IIRC, and I welcome Oldpop2000 to detail us up, that the B-25 made famous for the US army bombing in Europe was actually built as near-failed naval heavy bomber. Sure it had range but high dropping at moving ships that can.... gasp.... turn... while the bombs are falling makes hit rates real crappy. IIRC I saw stats on how just many bombs they could do. Basically think of Vietnam era carpet bombing of jungles to get one to three hits on a ship. The B-25 with the Nordenfelt bombsight that was a mechanical computer specialized for high dropping at static targets now that worked really well. The B-25 was originally designed as an entry by North American into the Twin Engine Attack Bomber competition of 1938. The Doolittle Raid was an aberration, flying out of Australia and Port Moresby it did become an excellent antishipping weapon, much to the chagrin of the Army. The Navy requested 900 B25's but only got 750 of the slightly navalized aircraft. They were designated PBJ's. The Marines flew most of them. The plane was never originally designed nor considered a naval attack bomber. The Marines had a squadron designated Marine Bombing Squadron 413 or VMB-413. My Father did fly in some of the planes, it was cooling upstairs than on Guadalcanal.
|
|
|
Post by director on Jul 16, 2020 5:29:57 GMT -6
Just a small correction - Norden made a bombsight, Nordenfelt made a type of multi-barrel gun. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norden_bombsighten.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordenfelt_gunThe Norden bombsight actually worked well (Germany introduced a version of it), it's just that the time it takes for a bomb to fall from altitude allows it to be deflected slightly by winds at various altitudes. And of course there are other sources of error as listed in the paragraph below... but the bombsight did work, within the limitations of all such devices. It did not live up to the extreme claims of its promoters... but, neither did high-level strategic bombing, whether by night or by day, live up to what some people claimed it could do, either. Pinpoint accuracy depends on dive-bombing, skip-bombing or on the projectile having some means of correction in flight. From the Wiki: "In spite of this success, the design also demonstrated several serious problems. In particular, the gyroscopic platform had to be levelled out before use using several spirit levels, and then checked and repeatedly reset for accuracy. Worse, the gyros had a limited degree of movement, and if the plane banked far enough the gyro would reach its limit and have to be re-set from scratch – something that could happen even due to strong turbulence. If the gyros were found to be off, the levelling procedure took as long as eight minutes. Other minor problems were the direct current electric motors which drove the gyroscopes, whose brushes wore down quickly and left carbon dust throughout the interior of the device, and the positioning of the control knobs, which meant the bombardier could only adjust side-to-side or up-and-down aim at a time, not both. But in spite of all of these problems, the Mark XV was so superior to any other design that the Navy ordered it into production." Perhaps instead of B-25 Mitchell you are thinking of the B-24 Liberator? The former was a medium bomber, the latter the most-produced heavy bomber of WW2. The B-24 was fast and could carry a heavy load over long distances, but it was harder to fly than a B-17 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_B-24_Liberator) and it was less-resistant to damage. If you needed heavy transport, heavy bomb-load or long-range ASW work, the B-24 was your bird of choice. As I recall, the Condor was used effectively against convoys, and skip-bombing let the B-25 and A-20 be used quite well against the Japanese despite the failure of the Norden. And of course the B-24 helped close the Atlantic gap to U-boats. High-level 'bombers' are also quite useful in today's navies - the P-3 Orion and P-8 Poseidon are two examples. They are able to launch air-to-surface missiles and are great for anti-submarine warfare. Missile-armed Russian 'Bear' bombers were considered quite a threat to US task forces. So in my view, heavy and medium bombers (seaplane or not) should be useful for ASW and scouting and should have some ability to attack shipping, perhaps with increased chance to damage. In the missile era, they should be quite lethal.
|
|
|
Post by arminpfano on Jul 16, 2020 9:18:28 GMT -6
A good usage for heavy bombers would be kamikaze duty. In WW2 even DDs survived kamikaze hits by small planes frequently. A B-17 could do this a lot better, up to 70.000 t+ ships. Considering costs, this should be a quite economical aproach...
|
|
|
Post by oldpop2000 on Jul 16, 2020 9:19:53 GMT -6
|
|
|
Post by wlbjork on Jul 16, 2020 11:59:24 GMT -6
As has previously been stated, the accuracy of weapons plays a key part in this. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_XIV_bomb_sight has a useful summary of the sorts of issues faced - for example, a high altitude bomb drop could travel 2 miles before impact, greatly reducing accuracy. Indeed, the best defence would be to turn towards the bombers to cause the bombs to overshoot. Guided weapons (glide bombs) weren't significantly better - bear in mind these were still first generation weapons. I understand Fritz X was used for a month or more before the Allies noticed. Nor does it seem AZON or BAT were much more successful. I wouldn't complain if heavies turn up in a future patch - but I won't campaign for them either.
|
|
|
Post by oldpop2000 on Jul 16, 2020 14:29:15 GMT -6
Don't be overawed by the FW-200 Condor. While it claimed about 90,000 tons of shipping and 343,000 in total, it had heavy losses especially after the British put hurricanes on catapults. It also had structural issues. It really wasn't that effective.
|
|
|
Post by bry7x7x7 on Jul 16, 2020 14:59:20 GMT -6
Again, I believe they *could* be used in naval attacks looking at how early Medium bombers in-game preform, though would be as limited if not more so with the potential for late game techs to improve this role if only by so much (something that was all of one sentence in the post). But specifically the bombing of ships wasn't my main point and desire to see them used in game, but rather providing a ASW score and above all the suppression of enemy airbases along with scouting opportunities as they could provide a critical thing lacking for mid game aircraft, range.
|
|
|
Post by noshurviverse on Jul 16, 2020 15:16:49 GMT -6
A good usage for heavy bombers would be kamikaze duty. In WW2 even DDs survived kamikaze hits by small planes frequently. A B-17 could do this a lot better, up to 70.000 t+ ships. Considering costs, this should be a quite economical aproach... I disagree. Four engine bombers generally have very poor maneuvering characteristics, they usually cannot dive in any meaningful sense and are very obvious. Also take into account that one of the largest limitations to aircraft manufacturing is engine production. And of course, a larger crew means that every mission results in the death of several times more crew members.
|
|
|
Post by director on Jul 16, 2020 16:43:04 GMT -6
oldpop2000 - yes... but a lot of weapons have a limited lifespan of effective use. arminpfano - the US was developing a system to allow a heavy bomber loaded with explosives to be crashed into a target. The crew were (I think I remember) supposed to parachute out before the end. The progeam pretty much ended with the mishap that killed Joseph P Kennedy Jr, JFK's older brother.
|
|
|
Post by wlbjork on Jul 16, 2020 18:05:47 GMT -6
Don't be overawed by the FW-200 Condor. While it claimed about 90,000 tons of shipping and 343,000 in total, it had heavy losses especially after the British put hurricanes on catapults. It also had structural issues. It really wasn't that effective. I think the FW-200 sometimes takes the credit for the actions of the less well known Ju-290. Both of which would nonetheless be better described as patrol aircraft, being somewhat long ranged with comparatively light payloads, which in turn made them better for calling in the wolf packs.
|
|