How do you hit something (anything) with dumb bombs?

[MarechalJoffre]

I have my flight of 2 F-15s come in at 2000 ft on cruise speed, they release 12 Mk82 bombs and guess what - not a single one hits their target! Most miss by 300 ft or more. How do I hit anything with those things?

[stww2]

When using dumb weapons I usually fly at the lowest altitude possible (at which the weapons can still be released). I usually find them to be fairly accurate when used this way, insofar that at least several of the weapons will impact the target and this is usually enough to destroy it. It also depends what target you are trying to destroy, though; targets with a smaller area will be much harder to hit than ones with a larger area, and heavily armored targets will likely require multiple direct hits from bombs with armor piercing warheads-something that is often not possible when using iron bombs.

[KungPao]

What are their target?
you should be able to score dozen hits on a power plant. But if your target is a BMP-2, well, there will be a lot of miss

[MarechalJoffre]

A medium sized building, apparently. Although the F-15s I used were Israeli modified Eagles - not Strike Eagles. Could it be that they lack some equipment, CCIP or whatnot?

[alphali]

There are a lot of factors that affect the success of the bombing run, from the type of bomb, to the aircraft and targeting computer, to the type of target (size, orientation..etc). I would highly recommend Bombing Tutorial (P Gatcomb Youtube Channel) and also all his videos and are priceless.

[KungPao]

Operation Wooden Leg , 1985?

Maybe just a bad luck? I setup a Patrol Zone mission, attack altitude at 2000ft, attack throttle at Cruise. I tried five times, 3 out of 5 I have two bombs hit target, one time 4 bombs hit the target and another one with 3 hits.

this is one of the strike mission's screenshot

[DracheTek]

just ran a quick test with standard bomb target (can be found in generic facility. 5*5m in size) and F-15 Strike Eagle with 500lb LDGP. Here is the result.

When set release height to 36000 ft:
R50(maximum radius that 50%(60rnds) of bombs hit) 105m
R100(maximum deviate distance) 396m

release height 1000ft:
R50 130m
R100 602m(!!!)

There must be something wrong.

[DracheTek]

Let's go for conclusion.
Bombs and rockets strictly follow normal distribution in calculating their distribution, but the distribution peak is at "30% off" (that is, 300m at 30000ft and 30m at 600ft.) instead of "on target". As a result, the hit rate of generic bombs against 5*5 target is around 70/10000. If taking blast radius into account and count "3~5m off target" as hit as well, the result will be around 3%. Unguided rockets and guns follow the same distribution pattern as well.

Further, Setting pilot to "ACE" increases accuracy by 50% (from 3% to 4.5%), and reduces deviation mean from 30m to 26m.

[Fido81]

Keep in mind that your probability of hitting a target is also affected by

1 the releasing pilot's proficiency (see Manual 9.1.2)
2 the target's speed (see Manual 9.2.5)
3 the terrain features on which the target is sitting, if enabled for the scenario

[Rob322]

This conversation illustrates why we invented smart bombs; there's way too much randomness in dumb bombs. That's also why in the past an air force might've sent more aircraft on strike missions then might be done today.

As for the planes you used, Strike Eagles might've been more successful. If I recall, the original F-15 was designed with the philosophy of "Not A Pound For Air To Ground" as the designers didn't want to see the best air superiority fighter wasted hitting targets on the ground.