What is the best way to kill bombers?

[Laurwin]

Originally Posted by bladeracer

If you're flying a bomber interception, you could adjust your convergence to suit the mission.

I suppose ur right, convergence at about 400m would help vs bombers a little bit.

I guess as a rule of thumb youd want to fire about +/- 50m within convergence range with wing guns.

You would get like a "box convergence" effect either slightly past convergence or slightly before it.

I have to say though that I have burned some wing tanks, with long .50cal burst, on Ju88 wing, even with heavily past of the convergence range (such as 300m conv, actual shooting done at 500m)

If you pepper the entire wing of the bomber, you're bound to hit the fuel tanks. Is all im gonna say!!!

[gaunt1]

Both German and Japanese bombers are very weak. Aim for the engines, very easy to ignite them. You can kill lots of them even with planes that have low ammo supply and fairly weak armament, like Yaks and MiG-3. Treat He-111 and Ju-88 as unarmed, their defensive machineguns cant harm you. Do-217 is more dangerous, but nothing special.
On the other hand, G4M can be deadly with its 20mm gun.

[JtD]

It is my experience that if you get hit or killed by bombers, you usually are too close to them. Their gunners will hit you pretty bad from close range, but from further out they are pretty much worthless. It is possible to stay out of their effective range and shoot them down from their 6 without bigger problems, as the usual player gunfire from a fighter aircraft is much more accurate than AI gunfire from a bomber. Likewise they won't hit you when you do frontal attacks, if you break early enough.

The downside is you will score less hits, but it is usually better to kill one bomber and get home to fly another day, than to shoot down three and die in the process. The second outcome will win you a battle, the first a war.

Also teamwork is a good thing, 4 fighters vs. 4 bombers is much worse for the bombers than 1 fighter vs. 1 bomber.

[Laurwin]

B-17s tend to be more durable bombers even vs fw190?

Do they have any weak spots as they say?

or just the standard knock out the engines or kill pilot?

[JtD]

The wing outside the outboard engine is very, very weak. You can easily chop it off with a couple of 20mm or you will set it on fire with even less hits.

[majorfailure]

Originally Posted by Laurwin

B-17s tend to be more durable bombers even vs fw190?

Do they have any weak spots as they say?

or just the standard knock out the engines or kill pilot?

Wing fuel tanks - few well placed rounds light them up good.
Though the usual frontal approach works very well, too and B-17s are slow so to set up the head-ons you don't need too much time - and in a Fw190 you can bring them down with even a not so well placed burst.
What I like to do - besides coming in from dead ahead, is getting well above and somewhat in front and to the right/left of the bomber, then dive down - my wings nearly parallel to the bombers direction of travel, and correct my approach with rudder. Shoot and exit safely behind bomber. Most of the time worth the effort - next to zilch chance to get hit by defensive fire. Additionally, the bomber flies through your bullet stream, and if you can get your aim lined up with targets cockpit/tanks (which by the way are bigger targets from above) you don't need to be spot on with timing.

[Untamo]

S!

I'm a mostly 109 pilot, but I think this tactic can be used in any fighter against bombers:

If possible, I will make an initial head-on attack targeting the cockpit. If the pilot isn't dead yet, I will proceed to climb over (and even a bit ahead of) the bomber from where I shall execute a 90 degree dive towards the bomber. When the bomber appears from under my nose, I start to lead him and open fire with MGs (which there are almost unlimited supply on the 109 ). When the MGs start to hit, I open with cannon. I get a good 3-5s of cannon time on the target with high deflection and exit the attack usually behind and under the target with high speed and pull up again infront of it. Rinse and repeat if necessary. Usually I don't get any hits at all on my plane, and usually the bomber ends up destroyed after the first overhead attack.

Originally Posted by JtD

The wing outside the outboard engine is very, very weak. You can easily chop it off with a couple of 20mm or you will set it on fire with even less hits.

Nice tip, I will try this.