Dive-bombing question

[Juri_JS]

At the moment I am building some dive-bombing missions in FMB for the Ju-87 and Pe-2. I've noticed, that the AI will only drop one bomb per dive, so I have two questions:

 

1. Is it possible in reality to pull out of a dive with bombs still attached?

 

2. Was it a common practice to drop only one bomb per dive and use the other bombs in additional attack runs?

Edited August 17, 2015 by Juri_JS

[-TBC-AeroAce]

It would be possible to pull out of a dive with bombs still attached as long as you don't overstress the aircraft but as to whether they did in real life I think that most of the time all bombs were probably droped for Manny reasons

[Finkeren]

Dive bombing is something you only do once per mission. It takes far too long to get back to altitude and will leave you terribly exposed to AAA fire, if you were to slowly climb to a not-quite-as-high altitude and come in a second time, as I see people try time and again in MP.

 

Low level attacks such as fighter-bombers usually do is different. There it is technically plausible to do several attacks with bombs, provided there is little or no AAA firing back at you, and provided you don't screw up your aircrafts stability by dropping one bomb at a time (If you've got 1 semi-heavy bomb under each wing hanging out into the airflow halfway out on the wing, you really don't want to drop one and keep the other for an extended amount of time, as it will do horrible things to your stability and should essentially force you into a sideslip) For planes with bombs placed close to their centerline or in an internal bay however (such as the German 4x50kg bomb rack or the IL-2s enclosed bomb bays) you could very well do multiple bomb attacks. The very fact that there is a historically accurate order in which the bombs are released from the 4x50kg JaBo rack shows, that this was at least posible.

 

Historically however, I don't think this was very common. With your life on the line, you really wanna get in, lay your 'eggs' and get out as fast as you can (or alternatively follow up with guns and cannons in your now considerably ligher plane) We know for certain, that Soviet IL-2s were known for coming in directly at the target, quickly release all their bombs and/or rockets in one salvo (usually with very low accuracy) and then form a circle around the target and take turns to attack with their (much more effective) cannons. I suspect, that the reason for the release order on the German bomb racks was not so much to allow pilots to deliver one bomb at a time with deadly precision and keep the rest for later (low level fighter bombing were notoriously inaccurate in all air forces, they idn't really expect to kill multiple targets in one mission, just getting one hit was a big success) but simply to allow them to drop bombs in a salvo over 1 - 2 seconds to maximize the chance of a direct hit to compensate for the small blast radius of the 50kg bomb. While low level bombing is quite accurate sideways (there is no drift to speak of) it is extremely hard to judge without a proper bomb sight when to release, so that bombs don't fall short or far off the target. Some of us sim pilots have over the years become really good at judging the exact moment of release relative to speed, altitude and angle, but that's only because we have experience from dropping litterally thousands of bombs in this fashion. Even the most experienced Luftwaffe JaBo pilot would have nowhere near that kind of experience.

 

Long story short: I'm convinced that pilots almost universally dropped all their bombs in one (initial) attack (and fired all their rockets in one salvo too, often in the same attack where they dropped their bombs)

Edited August 17, 2015 by Finkeren

[Gunsmith86]

Following the German manuale for Ju87 D it is possible to drop the bombs on the wings individual as long as they are not heavier than 250 kg.

In combat most times both bombs on the wings were droped at the same time. If the resistance was not to strong repeated attacks with low-flying strafing attacks were common practice.

[Juri_JS]

At the moment the problem for us mission builders is, that we can make AI bombers drop all their bombs in level flight by using the "Attack Ground" option in the Command:AttackArea MCU, but not when doing a dive bombing or fighter-bomber attack, because this only works with the "Attack Ground Targets" option, which only allows dropping a single bomb per attack.  The consequence is that you often have AI planes returning to their home airfield with half their bombs still attached. I think the ideal solution would be a FMB option to set the number of bombs/rockets used per attack.

[TP_Jacko]

Just brainstorming can you make multiple attack commands to trick the AI to drop more than one

[Juri_JS]

Just brainstorming can you make multiple attack commands to trick the AI to drop more than one

I've tried it, but it doesn't work.