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Leaving the European level bombers out of the arguement as I know less about thier armarments, It would seem to me that Japanese planes seem quite facile at attacking the heavy B-17 bombers in the early war. While I imagine latter in the war perhaps the better japanese fighters along with alot of experience during the attacks on teh homeland might have helped, early very lightly armored zeros seem quite able to beat the hell out of the b-17s.

I know about the fly over them trick at 35K. But early on, Japanese planes should have enormous difficultly at say 25K feet intercepting a box formation of B-17s. Japanese planes early in the war are given massive bonuses representing "shock" value against suprised Allied pilots while the Japanese apparently have Luftwaffe 1943 level experience fighting four engine heavy bombers.....

my large over 50 b17 formations have no problemo with those fragile jap planes

If you are going to say that, I think they destory way to many planes on the ground. Do the Japanese just set there planes on the runway and say here they are. As the Japanese I think the most I have destoried besides Pearl and such at the start is one or two.

I have the same complaint, though it's more with Nates, Claudes, and Oscars being
able to get close enough to severly damage or destroy a B-17 without taking severe
losses in return. The 17's defensive armament out ranges and out guns these light
fighters, and while I have no problem with the Japanese pilots being bold enough to
press home their attacks, I do have a problem with them NOT suffering high losses
in return. Especially when I see a flight of 6-10 B-17's being beat up on by 3 Claudes.

for what its worth Zeta16 is my current pbem oponent, and he has killed lots of planes on the ground, just not from the air, mostly they cannot move out on his way fast enough, and hios ground forces destroy them.

When my B 17s are in a larger formation say over 20 they do so much better than when attacking in smaller numbers. Also they ground hits, runway damage, while fow is on, seem much higher with over 30 than under 30 planes.. I am flying between 30 and 32000 feet, below the hard top for the game before the patch. I think its a question of tweeking the mechanics of how smaller plaes attack... much like the pt vs bb arguements...

Easy guys, I do not want the "uber" B17's from UV days to return. I have only shot down about 12 B17's in all my PBEM games (8).

I don't like the inability of damaged planes to head for the nearest base capable of handling them. Ops losses are massive because of this. However, this does balance the apparent ability to fly missions at thr breakneck pace we see in the game. Tit for tat, I suppose...

I don't want that either. But I also don't want a few lightly-built, lightly-armed
(2 30-cals) interceptors pounding my "Flying Fortresses". (Even the early models
had more than enough defensive firepower to deal with a Claude or a Nate). I'm
not asking that the B-17's actually hit the TF more than "once in a blue moon",
just that they aren't "beaten off" by Kites armed with BB-guns

In my game with freeboy he really has not killed to many on the ground, but I have a few others where british heavies in 1/42 are killing 20 at a time on the ground and I can only shoot a few down with 30 Zero's.

I had fantastic luck (under 1.0) with B-17s based at Rangoon pulverizing the airfield at Bangkok. 20-25 plane raids would destroy 30+ aircraft on the ground. I got air superiority in SE Asia in a few weeks. Buffaloes served fine as escorts against the Nates - Buffs have a *good* range.

As for Nates, put P-40s (B/E) against them. I had the 24th FG on CAP at Balikpapan;. Every time a Nate/Lily raid would come over from Tarakan, 10-15 fatigued P-40 pilots would shoot down a couple dozen Nates and a dozen Lilys. I had pilots getting 4 or 5 kills a day, 3 or 4 times a week for a month and a half before the AI gave it up as a bad job; the top ace had 51 victories before I was able to rotate them out and rest them. The slaughter was incredible. I thought the combat summaries were wildly exaggerating claimed kills, but I watched the animations and sure enough, dozens of IJA planes going down in flames in exchange for minimal Allied losses - about a 25:1 kill ratio.

I'm gonna miss those guys when I restart in 1.3.

I can only comment on a recent 80-plane attack on Rangoon at 31000 feet against about 30 fighters (zeros, nates, oscars) in Combat Air Patrol.

I lost 6 bomers in the attack, shot down 2 enemy airplanes, and had over 30 airplanes damaged. I like the fact that the game accurately depicts the ability of the B-17 take damage and keep on flying. The bombers destroyed 9 additional airplanes on the ground.

I was a bit disappointed in the results. I have been spending the past week patching my poor airplanes back together. Recent photo recon missions to Rangoon show a Japanese CAP of 50 fighters now. I do not want to fly into that until I have a decent number of bombers to fight with, so I have been going for other targets.

That is my report. It is just one data point.

My experience as the Japanese in a PBEM game has been quite different. Nates, Claudes and Oscars don't seem to have much luck against the B-17s. The only success I have had against them has come when using Zeros. Also, while the B-17 did have a large number of defensive guns, there were angles of attack that limited the number that could be brought to bear on an attacking fighter. Hence they depended on defensive fire from other B-17s in formation to drive off and shoot down interceptors. So a larger formation should be much more successful in defending itself against attack, which is what I have observed.

Just another "data point".[:)]

ooh look - a range of results, good and bad. Hmmmm could this be a function of this being a game and when you roll the dice you get bell curves?

(Warning; I may feel need to post this on other threads).

I would like to second the motions proposed by both 2ndACR and strawbuk.

It seems about right to me. Those are super-duper Zero pilots early on ...

ooh look - a range of results, good and bad. Hmmmm could this be a function of this being a game and when you roll the dice you get bell curves?

in adition to the above, take into account differing quality of pilots, range to target, altitude and this looks pretty good

ORIGINAL: 2ndACR

Easy guys, I do not want the "uber" B17's from UV days to return. I have only shot down about 12 B17's in all my PBEM games (8).

Really...let's not even think of that.[X(]

One other thing.....the early war B-17 "box" formation did not exist and was revised to the true "box" formation in 1943 in Europe after hideous losses there. Just like the British 3 plane V which was an outdated combat tactic against the pairs used by the Luftwaffe.

I haven't used B-17s enough against defended targets to have noticed any trends, but it occurs to me that there could possibly be a flaw in the combat model--maybe fighters get to use their maneuverablility advantage in combat with multi-engine bombers, and the Zeros are getting their early-war bonus. The only fighter factors modeled in the game that should affect fighter-versus-massed-bomber combat are firepower, top speed, durability, armor, and pilot skill. Any fighter is maneuverable enough to position itself wherever the pilot wants it in relation to the bombers. One could possibly make a case that more maneuverable fighters could press head-on attacks a little more closely without fear of colliding with the target, but this is a minor point, and in any case the Zero bonus should not apply.

Well, I'm actually holding my breath for the day that my B-17s can go back up to 37,000 feet and I don't have to worry about those bloody Zeros and Nates at all.

Yeah a couple points....

a) I don't think anyone wants uber deathstar b-17 groups back either

b) I think that early war japanese planes can too easily damage b-17s without suffering in return

c) I wonder if they are getting that manuver bonus against the bombers, that could well be it.