Allied Bomber performance ques

[jackyo123]

I am getting extremely poor results from my Allied bomber crews.

Its mid '42, and I have squadrons of Flying Fortresses and Marauders flying out of Port Moresby and Townsville who have, despite over 40 missions each, a *ZERO* percent bombing accuracy. Their experience numbers are in the sixties, their commander is something like 65/55. and yet they cannot hit *anything*.

Ive tried bombing from 100ft, from 1000ft, from 5000ft, from 8000, from 10000 from 15000ft, and from 25000.

Nothing. 12 planes roughly are always in service in these 3 squadrons, and they have hit *nothing*, despite attacking every turn (sometimes Lae, sometimes Buna, sometimes Wau, once or twice finschaven.).

My catalinas and Avengers, oth, with lower experience (low fifties) and mid 40/50 leaders, do much better, and have bombing accuracy of maybe 8% and score hits.

So whats the secret? Are the early allied bombers 'tweaked' in some way? I remember reading that air was 'tuned down' for AE - is this one of the results?

Extremely frustrating, esp as the Japanese AI seems to do better, though I havent loaded up that side yet to see what the pilot rankings are.

any ideas? does it get better with units over 70 expiernece?

[treespider]

What are you trying to bomb?

[ADB123]

ORIGINAL: treespider

What are you trying to bomb?

I'm guessing from the "8%" comment that he is speaking of bombing ships -particularly since I don't think that you can use Catalinas to bomb bases.

Certainly in my games against the AI my B-17s do wonders against bases and facilities, even during the first couple of months. But then, I base them in big airfields with lots of supplies, Air HQs, and good leaders, and I also only fly them when they are rested and when the weather is good.

As far as sinking enemy ships goes - that's what my carrier planes are for...

[John Lansford]

My Allied level bombers are so ineffective against ships that I use them almost exclusively to attack airbases and ground units, or on ASW/naval search missions.  I've got some squadrons (Hudsons and B-25's) with 70+ experience levels now and they only hit ships when flying at 100' (skip bombing), or the ships are docked.

[EUBanana]

Level bombers are useless against ships in AE. You get the odd hit if you skip bomb but you pay the price in the damage you take and its impact on fatigue.

Even if you do hit, 500lb or 250lb bombs do almost nothing to ships, not even merchants. A bit of sys damage that'll be fixed in a fortnight in a yard.

[jackyo123]

ORIGINAL: treespider

What are you trying to bomb?

naval attacks. I've chosen pilots/commanders with the highest naval skill i could get.

[jackyo123]

interesting, i didnt realize that AE nerfed bombers to be useless against ships.

Historically, the high level bombers WERE almost useless against moving warships - but when attacking ships in port or merchies unloading, they were effective. The ones flying out of Espiritu Santo took out a fair number of transports at Tsaffaronga.

[EUBanana]

ORIGINAL: jackyo123

interesting, i didnt realize that AE nerfed bombers to be useless against ships.

Historically, the high level bombers WERE almost useless against moving warships - but when attacking ships in port or merchies unloading, they were effective. The ones flying out of Espiritu Santo took out a fair number of transports at Tsaffaronga.

You can hit ships in port alright still.

At 15k feet in WITP they were ineffective, but at 6k feet you'd get hits - not many, but enough to be somewhat effective at least.

Not anymore. Need to be under 6k feet to do any real damage, and there is a high price.

[xj900uk]

Medium & High Level bombers were useless against ships.  The IJN knew this and usually equipped their G4M's to carry torpedos, although not all the IJAAF were aware of this.
The US realised it quicker (although pundits in the USAAF held out for a long time that the B17 was the ultimate 'ship killer',  and Kenney and his crew decided to put everything down at wavetop height and concentrate on improving 'skip bombing' and straffing techniques.  Fortunately they already had the Beaufighter based in Australia which was perhaps the greatest ever anti-shipping strike aircraft, and modified the Mitchells to carry more nose guns and trained the crews to go in 'lower than the gulls'

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: John Lansford

My Allied level bombers are so ineffective against ships that I use them almost exclusively to attack airbases and ground units, or on ASW/naval search missions.  I've got some squadrons (Hudsons and B-25's) with 70+ experience levels now and they only hit ships when flying at 100' (skip bombing), or the ships are docked.

+1

[John Lansford]

My Beaufighters and other specialized attack bombers should be more effective against shipping than the usual medium bomber, but I've not seen any indication of it.  I've got a Beaufighter squadron at PM that has a high experience level and it gets no more hits than my usual medium bomber squadrons out of Cooktown (B-25's,
B-26's and Hudsons).

[crsutton]

Are your beaufighters going in at 100 ft?

[xj900uk]

They need to,  that way they can use their heavy 4x20mm cannons in the nose + the air-to-ground (or air-to-ship) batteries of rockets

[John Lansford]

Yes, I've got the Beaufighters at 100'; every once in a while I get the "Beaufighter strafing..." message, but very few hits with either cannon or bombs.

[xj900uk]

What is the experience of their crews?  Need to be at least 60 (preferably 70+) to do any worthwhile damage with low level bombing/straffing attacks

[EUBanana]

I found Beaufighters to be practically useless in an anti-shipping role - and they were reasonably trained, with an average experience around 65. I was quite disappointed as they'd be painstakingly trained for some time. [:(]

They are the ultimate bomber killers, though.

[jackyo123]

I ran a test last night - set some aircrews up to training 50% and then ran the game 'continuous' for about 120 turns or so with all message delays at zero and all reports/animations/summaries off. Ran for about 7 hours or so.
 
Woke up this morning, and its now mid september (was mid april when i started). I've lost a lot of ships from my negligence, and every one of my 'patrols' are sitting in port, but thats beside the point. I wanted to test out my newly trained bombers.
 
 
2 groups now had experience of 70+, and several were close (at 68/69). The pilots had something like 80 experience, and good ratings (mid sixties to mid seventies).
 
Set all my crews to NAVAL (running out of moresby/horn island/ townsvile (which i've gotten up to level 4 or 5 airfield i think, and plenty of supply).
 
Ran 5 continuous turns, but with combat reports ON.
 
The results?
 
group 1 - 12 b17's; 5 missions against Buna, from 10,000 feet - 3 japanese ships docked there.
 
NO HITS. 7 b17's damaged, 3 destroyed.
 
group 2 - 12 mitchells; 2 missions against Buna, 3 missions against LAE. 6000 ft. 3 ships at Buna, 2 ships at LAE.
 
NO HITS. 6 damaged, 2 destroyed.
 
group 3 - 7 DB12's (I think that was the designation) - 3 missions Buna, 2 missions LAE. 100 ft. 3 ships Buna, 2 ships Lae.
 
3 bomb hits (hooray!!!). 3 DB12s damaged, 1 destroyed
 
group 4 - 4 Catalinas - 1 mission Rabaul, 2 missions Buna, 1 mission LAE, height 6000ft. 3 ships buna, 2 ships lae, 4 ships rabaul.
 
1 bomb hit. 3 Catalinas damaged, 1 destroyed.
 
group 5 - 8 Winnaway - 4 mission Buna, 15000 ft. 3 ships. (presumably didnt run 5th mission since no planes left serviceable)
 
NO HITS. 7 winnaways damaged, 1 destroyed.
 
group 6 - 18 B17's - 2 missions Buna, 1 Mission Lae, 2 missions Rabaul. 5000 ft.
 
NO hits. 10 b17's damaged, 4 destroyed.
 
 
In sum:
 
28 missions flown. Total starting with 61 planes. From various altitudes.
 
4 bomb hits totAl. 2 ships on fire, 1 ship Heavy fires.
 
25 planes damaged. 12 planes destroyed.
 
All hits were from low flying planes (6000 ft for the Catalinas, 100 ft for the db12's). 3 of 4 hits were from skipbombers. All attacks were made against cargo ships unloading (you get the 'ak maru was caught unloading cargo' message).
 
 
 
Pretty bad results. And I think probably pretty a-historical.
 
The Port Moresby/Aussie/Espiritu Santo high level bombers were, historically, not a very effective group prior to 43, esp against naval vessels. However, they *did* achieve hits on transports, and even a couple of docked warships. Richard Frank's great book on Guadalcanal discusses the massed transports that the B17's demolished on several occassions, and some books on Cartwheel (and there are a couple of great reference works on the air forces of SoPac, just dont remember their names) go to some length to discuss the contributions of the USAAF bomber force.
 
I think a better way to 'neuter' the air threat that everyone says was too great from LB air in WITP stock would be to increase *weather* effects on land based air. Often, planes wouldnt fly because of weather on the target, or early morning fog at the base, etc. THAT would be a better way to counter high level bombing - by factoring in the  weather more. I dont think ive seen a single LB mission from Australia or PM not actually complete its raid - which means that its a constant threat to any transports on the north coase of new guinea. But by all accounts weather there was NOT always favorable for flying - maybe have a die check against the weather, that would reduce the chance of the high altitude raid from actually having clear enough weather to actually put bombs on target or fly. But the ones that *do* fly, should have more than a 1 in 50 mission chance on putting a bomb onto an unloading transport.
 
alternatively, a check can be made when running high altitude bombing of a port/base hex. - if there are any 'unloading' ships present, a bonus 'to hit' could be applied. With all those supplies, ammo crates, etc on the docks being unloaded, accuracy to do damage does not need to be very high. Yet all those b17's caused not *one whit* of damage at all.
 
hopefully there is a solution for this.

[FatR]

In my experience, Allied bombers made supplying forward bases by normal transports pretty much impossible in the Guadalcanal scenario. Rabaul was pretty safe, thanks to massed flak from ships in the harbor, relatively large CAP and lack of bomber escorts, but no slow transport convoy ever made a run to Buna, Lae and, later, Lunga, and returned without losing 1-2 xAKs/xAKls, almost always in the harbor. B-17s were the main transport killers, thanks to being practically invulnerable (a considerable number was crashed on the return trip, but losses over Japanese bases were maybe one per month). By the beginning of January my losses from Allied aviation are 18 xAKs and xAKls. All of this is Allied LBA's work. Very good results, I say, considering my complete carrier domination over AI and use of fast transports as the main method of hauling supply to the above-mentioned bases.

[jackyo123]

if the bombers do evntually improve by late august, then trhere is hope. I could live with that. But I 'fast forwarded' to mid september and didnt see much diff. Bombing accuracy on too many units is still 0%.

[Graymane]

There is known issue in the current game with pilot experience. Basically, your pilots don't really get better at specialized tasks (naval attack missions, for example). Hopefully this is addressed in the next patch. What that means is that allied level bombers are basically useless if they have low naval attack. You will have to use single engine bombers like dive bombers and torpedo bombers to hit shipping. If you want to try to get a level bomber squadron to do better at naval attacks, put them on 6k height and 60% training and put in extra pilots and planes on reserve and leave them for awhile. I'd not try to use 4 engine bombers at all for this.

Use your medium/heavy bombers on airfield and port attacks. They will hit ships in port. Start them at 20k or higher and gradually lower them to around 10k or so as the XP goes up. I like to have 3-5 extra pilots in each squadron. Put all the squadrons you are using on 20% training. That is currently the only good way to raise specialized experience. If they are still taking too much damage put them on night attack (unless you have houserules against it). Afer a month or so, you'll have some decent groups and pilots.

Also, make sure your air commanders always have high air skill (not naval or land).