Pe2 Good Heavy Fighter?

[ESCOMM_FlyMaker]

Anyone use Pe2 as heavy fighter?
I'm fly online on TAW server and i be thinking about use Pe2 to be a bomber killer.
What do you think guys? Its a good plane for that?

[ShamrockOneFive]

The Pe-2 isn't really ideal... Although it has good speed and agility. The front canopy has no armor and the forward firepower is limited to a light machine gun and a heavy machine gun.

 

If we had the Pe-3, the heavy fighter version of the Pe-2, then it might work out ok.

 

You can still try...maybe it'll work

[ESCOMM_FlyMaker]

Do you have the speed chart of PE-2? I made a search but not found.

[Jade_Monkey]

The guns are not really up to the task.

 

The Bf110 and the Hs129 may be a better choice even in they were not always designed for that.

[216th_Lucas_From_Hell]

If you practice enough you can use the rockets against bombers, but it's a very masochistic deal. Realistically you only have two salvoes and if you miss that's it.

 

The armament is poor but if you look at it, the MiG-3 also has machine guns fitted to the nose so it's a MiG-3 missing a ShKAS. Bad, but not horrible, and it featured in the very first Pe-3s (pre-production series). On TAW though, your biggest problems will be fighters preying on you. Even if you shoot down a He-111, Ju-87 or whatever, there will be a Bf-109 chasing you to the grave.

[Y29.Layin_Scunion]

With all the weight from armor and the poor armament, I wouldn't call it a "good" heavy fighter.  It can be used as such but it's definitely not good at it.  Strip it down to minimal fuel and no bombs and I can see it handling bombers to standard.  But with it's poor armament, I wouldn't call it a great idea.  Mostly a bad idea because in order to bring a 110 or 111 down, it'll take too much time.  When I'm attacking a 110 or 111 I try to keep it to 1-2 passes and move on.  Hanging around a smoking target, shooting draws entirely too much attention IMO.

Which is why I was hoping for the Pe-3 eventually but I don't see it happening.  They stripped much of the armor, removed the dive brakes, removed two of the fuselage bomb racks, removed waist machine guns, and the main armament was loaded with one 20mm ShVAK along with two 12.7mm UBK machine guns.  The dorsal gun and tail gun were changed to 12.7mm UBK MGs as well.

It's basically an unarmored, more maneuverable, faster, better armed version of the Pe-2 and was used for a lot of recon yet saw significant losses.  Commanders thought this aircraft was going to be some sort of godsend for recon and it was often overextended and pushed into missions that were overly aggressive.  When put into the heavy fighter role, reading about it was reminiscent of Me-410s.  They handled poorly against single engines but handled bombers quite well and only after getting their own escort, were they truly successful.  The Pe-3 was mostly used for recon despite it being built to be a heavy fighter.  It saw a fair amount of ground attack.

[Gambit21]

If you practice enough you can use the rockets against bombers, but it's a very masochistic deal. Realistically you only have two salvoes and if you miss that's it.

 

The armament is poor but if you look at it, the MiG-3 also has machine guns fitted to the nose so it's a MiG-3 missing a ShKAS. Bad, but not horrible, and it featured in the very first Pe-3s (pre-production series). On TAW though, your biggest problems will be fighters preying on you. Even if you shoot down a He-111, Ju-87 or whatever, there will be a Bf-109 chasing you to the grave.

I got "screamed" at for "cheating" several times in the old sim for using rockets and getting air to air kills in CoOps. Hehe

 

Dude - I just managed to hit your 109 with rockets - how about a little credit?

[6./ZG26_Klaus_Mann]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc-gIs23PnY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBOwbd9G6q8

Edited September 15, 2016 by 6./ZG26_Klaus_Mann

[Danziger]

I always wondered why they didn't get rid of the bombs altogether, get rid of the glass nose, and pack the nose full of cannons and under belly gun gondola. With all those guns and rockets it would be a great ground attacker and bomber killer.