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Originally Posted by Pursuivant
I'm inclined to agree with you, but I don't have the data to prove what you're saying, other than somewhat generic stats on bomber casualties due to flak and fighters. We can trade anecdotes all day, but I'd love to see actual statistics to help back us up.
If anything, it seems like bomber gunners (at least rookie to average gunners) have been "nerfed," in 4.12, if only by unrealistic bomber formations and doctrine. But that's only by comparison with the laser-like precision with which gunners prior to 4.12 could shoot you down. It was if were were a generic Imperial TIE fighter pilot and the gunners were Han Solo and Luke Skywalker!
But, gunners must have had some usefulness, otherwise bombers would have dispensed with them earlier.
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It is often a mistake to attribute logic to the human decision-making process. The gunners had more of a morale effect than a practical one; of course, both of the USAAF’s primary heavy bombers were designed at a time when bombers had a big technological and performance lead over fighters, and of course, no one had any idea that radar would become as effective as it did (even those who understood that radar was even possible). When the first B-17 entered the Army Air Corps, the P-26 was America’s primary fighter defense (and the P-35 & P-36 were just undergoing trials), and the Hurricane, Spitfire and Bf 109B were just entering service; the Japanese air arms were still fielding biplanes, as was the US Navy.
The basic idea was that by entering enemy airspace at high altitudes and comparatively high speeds, it would be impossible to locate them, much less intercept them with any meaningful force before their bombs were dropped and they were on their way back to base. The fighters of the period were barely capable of the performance of the big bombers at high altitudes; at those comparative speeds, the bombers’ gunners might have been almost as effective as their predecessors in the First World War, especially if only a few at a time could make an interception.
Without the invention of radar, they would have been right. Since the USAAF was run by the ‘bomber barons’, men like Claire Chennault, who not only flew fighters, but openly tried to develop a meaningful doctrine for fighter defense, were run out of the service by hook or by crook. That conviction held on long after the early rounds of World War II made it clear that it was obsolete. There were careers to be made and profits to be taken by the big aircraft companies like Boeing and Convair (who had just coincidentally, been displaced by more innovative companies in the fighter business). You could make a lot more profit (and provide many more jobs) with a single bomber than you could with three or four fighters.
Hubert Zemke’s memoir written with Roger Freeman mentions a conference in London in the early summer of 1943, where an unnamed senior bomber officer told Zemke that they didn’t
need a fighter escort. I hope that SOB lived long enough to regret those words, but by mid-1943, the US had committed itself to those bombers and the idea that they needed all those guns and men to serve them, and that was the way it went for the next two years or so.
Senior military officers are politicians as much as they were ever anything else and it would not be politically wise to announce that they had been in error, so the obvious thing to do was to continue bloody-mindedly, and act as though they had simply underestimated how many big bombers would it take to bull their way into German airspace until the necessary long range fighters finally became available and then they pretended that that was what they had planned all along.
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I think that damage or kills due to heavy flak is about right - as long as you take into account the fact that each gun in the game can actually represents an entire battery. Low to medium altitude flak is downright lethal, but that might actually be realistic. Veteran ground attack pilots learned to come in fast and low, make one good pass and get the hell out.
I don't have a problem with gunners starting to shoot at 500 meters range, but that should mostly be "suppression fire" with very little chance of actually hitting. Shots at anything other than minimal deflection angles against a plane flying a relatively straight course should also have almost no chance of hitting. But, if you make an attack from 6 o'clock level against a heavy bomber, without approaching at a very high closing speed, you deserve every bullet that hits your plane.
Turning speeds for turrets seem to be about right. At least for the U.S. turrets, there's pretty good performance data, and actually possibly a few turrets that actually still work. In archival film, you can see that they turn pretty quickly - something like 120 degrees per second.
But, against that, something that isn't modeled in the game, at least for human gunners, are the effects of G forces, vibrations from the plane itself and wind buffeting of the turret and guns if the guns are angled into the plane's slipstream. All those things make bomber gunnery a bit too easy, at least for a human gunner. I don't know if the AI models those things, but it should.
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Agree with you here; however, in the case of flak/AAA, I would note that even the heavy guns seem to be able to shoot at you at relatively close range and with remarkable anticipation. I would like to see some sort of hesitation or delay built in when the first low-level attacks are made, because like a seasoned prostitute, they seem to know when you’re coming before you do.
As I recall, the turrets were generally spun by means of a foot or knee switch and they weren’t all that precise (but the speed was impressive, which would count for a lot in a newsreel). In any case, they were still dependent upon a human being’s estimations of angle and range. Their greatest contribution to accuracy was that the gunner was strapped in and could continue to shoot a multiple gun battery under maneuvering conditions, while the guy sitting on a bench or standing was just hanging on for dear life.
There is no reduction in accuracy for maneuvering aircraft that I have noticed. My tests against the Betties got me hit just as often (and from as far away) while the aircraft was in a steep turn as when they were flying straight and level (which was rarely the case if my cross-hairs were pointed in their immediate vicinity). As I’ve pointed out, the Bf 110 gunners (among others) are beyond ridiculous; put yourself in the in-game position yourself and you’ll see why. They have a tiny, tiny cone of fire, they are seated on a glorified (backless) lawn chair, and when the aircraft is flung about the way the AI pilots of these things routinely do when under attack, they will hit your engine or nosecone (and therefore your prop pitch control) with great regularity from angles that would seem impossible for a human gunner to achieve even with the silly-assed no-recoil mouse gunnery model.
I once suggested on the Ubi forums that anyone who thought that having an element of motion wouldn't affect their aim should try playing out a Sturmovik mission as a gunner on a laptop while riding in a moving car; no one took me up on it (or if they did, they were too embarrassed to share the results).
cheers
horseback