Mitsubishi Stuka and Thunderbolt

[horseback]

All the other times I got bored/greedy and decided to do a 6'o clock approach and forgot to break at 300m. So I'd say that my own poor choice of tactics fried my there.

I would think that the game has conditioned your view of what the air war was like rather than having your knowledge of the air war framing your view of the game.

Breaking off at 300m when you are attacking with a 200kph speed advantage and are just shooting the hell out of your target would be considered premature against anything less than a formation of 16+ American heavies in real life, regardless of the angle of your attack. Under those conditions, accurate return fire from your target should be next to impossible, and the angles imposed for gunners in flanking aircraft would make it a matter of very poor chance that they would hit you at all, much less hit you anywhere important, like the 'head-sized' magneto that comprises less than 5% of the area you can aim at inside the cowling of a P-47, Hellcat or Corsair, or the considerably smaller reflector sight in your cockpit (and how do they do that without breaking the bulletproof glass in front of it?).

That they do so even as often as one in 20 passes at 'virtual' distances that would strain the abilities of world class match rifle shots on real-world static (i.e., not moving) targets just slips right past you people.

Theoretically, it's possible that a human being behind the flexible guns of any bomber or attack plane flown in WWII could have made those shots--in exactly the same way that it is theoretically possible that angels will fly out of my backside when I break wind.

Comparing the capability of a stepped formation of almost fifty B-17s to the capabilities of a couple of vics of Betties or He-111s just takes it into the realms of fantasy. My own experiments with the B-17 convinces me that that aircraft's gunners are much less effective than most of the earlier war medium and light twins with rear gunners featured in this game. With the exception of the (extremely clumsy and unwieldy) 20mm stinger in the tail of the Betty, most of these aircraft are defended by socket or rail mounted light machine guns and consistently make pinpoint hits at angles which would be impossible for the gunners to look down their guns' sights at the (distant) targeted empty spot in the air which will be occupied by my aircraft a half second and several aircraft lengths later. At 'Rookie' levels.

Worse yet, if you approach within a given distance for a given 'ranking' of AI gunner, even at the extreme edges of his 'firing cone' you will be hit, regardless of your speed and angle

I long ago learned to 'demote' any aircraft mounting a rear or side facing gun to Rookie before flying a mission--LCD monitors aren't cheap and throwing your TrackIR visor at them can be expensive. And of course, let's not forget that they still can hit you while the aircraft they are in is spinning out of control --which was what happened to me for the umpteenth time while I was testing the other night.

There are those of us who don't fly LW vs the USAAF or RAF, and while I understand the tendency of some people to romanticize the German side in that contest, I just can't sympathize with the tendency to 'baseline' your campaign experiences with the comparatively nerfed gunners of the in-game US heavies against my complaints with the gunners on He-111s, Stukas, Bf 110s, Pe-2s, Sturmoviks and more recently, Vals and Betties. All of these aircraft have Rookie gunners superior to any Terminator model James Cameron ever made a dime from, even the hot little blonde one.

Take your 'red' Fw 190A up against a flight of Betties and see what happens. It will shock you.

Only eight out of forty missions sounds like heaven to me; I've had several individual campaign missions where one specific gunner gets me every damned time from every angle and distance imaginable, even after being demoted (do you think that they might be bitter about it?). I hit the 'Refly' button four or five times in a couple of hours and then I just have to walk away for a few days (or months).

There must be many hundreds like me who simply never come back.

cheers

horseback