Best Allied Med Bomber for Naval Attack - early war

[KPAX]

Best Allied Med Bomber for Naval Attack - early war

What is the best Allied Med Bomber for Naval Attack early in the war? And, why?

And, on what Mission?

How do you train them up? If you do Low-Nav, there are no pilots with that skill.

With the lack of DB which are land based early on, there is the need for some Arieal Naval Attack. Decent amount of Med Bombers, but not sure, which aircraft is the best, and how to both use them and train them up.

Thank you. This forum is wonderful, with great advise and super patient folks ….. thanks!

[RangerJoe]

The Allies do have land based dive bomber units. Look at the US Marines, some are US Navy.

You can train some 2E pilots in Low Nav, Low Ground, and Strafe for when you get the attack bombers.

Most Allied pilots need training anyway.

[Jorge_Stanbury]

early war you use whatever is available,

best early medium bomber is probably the B-25B because of its range and bomb load; but I personally prefer to use against ground targetd

the one level bomber I use the most for naval is the Australian Wirraway; only because they are very abundant and naval attack is a bloody business; no way I can keep the kind of attrition levels with any other plane, early on

in addition to USN, USMC and British DB and TB, very soon in the war, you will get Banshees (they will also leave soon). For me at least naval bombing is more a marine& navy thing; so the few USA naval trained pilots get the Banshees, and then they die or kind retrain for ground, until much later on when the attack planes arrive

[BBfanboy]

The A-20s are an attack bomber but the initial models are anemic in forward firepower, have a small bomb load and max range of only 6 hexes.

B-25s are too precious and fragile to waste on low naval attack. Their long range makes them useful for raids on airfields that the enemy is not protecting, e.g. transfer them to an area that you have not been attacking at all, mount one surprise attack and vamoose next turn.

B-26s are also fragile but are more plentiful than B-25s and they have decent range. No MGs in the nose to suppress AA though.

IMO the best are the torpedo carrying Beauforts and Beaufighters until attack versions of the B-25 are available. There are also a couple of land-based Swordfish squadrons which can hit out to about 8 hexes, but replacements are thin.

The big thing to remember is that attack bombers at 1000 or 100 feet are very vulnerable and will suffer high losses, so escort them well if you can and don't send them with bombs against cruisers and battleships.

[KPAX]

Thank you fro the information.

On the training of pilots ....Say LowNav, there are not any pilots with a 60+ skill rating in LowNav at the beginning to drop into a training unit as the Vet.

Any tricks to a training unit, which odes not have a skilled Vet to add as the instrictor for the unit.?

[RangerJoe]

They will still train even without a veteran there.

[inqistor]

Code for attack rolls for every bomb, until hit is scored, so the more bombs, the greater chance for hit. Therefore you want plane with largest number of bombs. Trust me, B-29 hits 100% of the time skip bombing with fresh pilots at 40 exp.

Almost all Allied planes uses 500lb bombs, but Dutch 139WH-3 carries 300kg bomb, so it should be used for attack on armored ships. Bomb causes more damage, and have better penetration, but that plane is not armored. Still, your best bet is working torpedo.

Except for bombload, you can check number of MGs at front, bombers probably use them during low-naval attack to suppress AA fire.

You want full number of planes in training unit, as that slightly increases speed of training. Otherwise, cut it at 60, as that extra 10 for 70 takes another whole month.

[KPAX]

For the USN DBs, fighters and TBs land based units, the ones that come on line soon after the war begins (even those FP work for training platforms) I have taken a vet out of the CV’s airgroups, one from each airgroup and placed them in training groups. I have found this to make a big difference in the acceleration of their training of the newbies in the training units. One pilot out a group will not impact them very much and give the timing units a big boost. With all the restricted airgrpus sitting on the West Coast you can train up 100's of pilots in 4 months, even before the transferable groups come on line and ready for movement to Oz.

But, the LowNav, ASW, NavSear and other unique missions do not have any vets and just take forever to train.

Did not know if anyone found a method to get around the lack of vets.

As always, thank you!

[BBfanboy]

Regardless of the skill you are training, a leader with high AIR skill helps the training greatly.

[KPAX]

Wow .... ok, so a high AIR skill will help to train up those other, hard to initially train, skills, like LowNav and such ....?

Did not know that .... will have to try that. [&o]

[RangerJoe]

I find that Inspiration works good, I also try to have a decent number on leadership.

[Taxcutter]

I agree. In almost any enterprise good leaders help a lot.

Good leaders are worth the PP expenditure.

[Lokasenna]

I don't use USAAF bombers on naval attack until the Attack Bomber types arrive (B-25D1 and beyond), as they don't suffer penalties while strafing... which is the skill they use when set to 100 ft for attack, not Low Nav. So I can use fighter pilots in them with high Strafe and Defense skills without needing to alter my training programs at all.

[traskott]

I tried to use fighterbombers but they don't have enough range and even they are fighter, use to be murdered by CAP.