Quote:
Originally Posted by Feuerfalke
Thor instead describes a "precision" attack, which of course uses different tactics and is usually flown by a line-formation and resulted in a much more concentrated impact-pattern.
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Flying in a line is equal to suicide if you're a bomber.
I didn't describe that.
In real life this tactic of observing when leader's bombs fall and then drop on your own works because there is no delay (measured by ping in milisec. in IL2) between the server and the server and the lead bomber and the planes following the leader. When automated bomb release is used in IL2, with server delay and human reaction delay - and when flying online on a public server, coop you name it - this tactic doesn't work - every bomber that isn't the leader, no matter how close they fly will miss the target, and not by a small margin.
Because of this we're forced to use manual bomb release in IL2 - details about this method you can find in my 70 page manual linked below.
With manual release I can tell others to drop a second before I drop to compensate for TS delay, server delay and human reaction delay. With this method not only formation bombing can be effectively used online but it has other benefits - formation does not depend on the lead bomber and his bombsight computer but instead plane designed as deputy can take over anytime as BS angle is calculated easily and fast (usually given over TS to every bomber in case something happens).
Now, back to WW2. Reason why 8th AF switched to this tactic was because not every bomber had a bombardier of a same skill.
And so bombs would land all over the place if some squadron had rookie bombardiers. Therefore, to insure tighter bomb patterns the best bombardier was selected to fly in a lead plane and few others to fly in the deputy planes which then used their bombsights but they didn't drop if the lead plane made it to target and was unobstructed on his bomb run.
For these reasons above Luftwaffe planes were regulary targeting the lead bombers. Flak gunners were instructed to do the same - they often even used lead plane as 'targeting point'.
Tail end charlie or lead - your choice.
Thats why formations looked the way they did. Their purpose was to stack different flights at different altitudes for two reasons - to make aiming harder for flak and to enable better defensive cover.
In most cases it looked like this - 4 squadrons came in over the target (squadron equals a dozen (12) planes and usually BG had four squadrons), each on different altitude and with elements inside it on different altitude. Getting the altitude correctly was the toughest part for AAA gunners. Fighters usually communicated with them to get the correct altitude. I could go on....
Please note this were 8th AF tactics. Let's get back to the subject - SoW.