A20 Bomber.

[Georgio]

What a plane, if it was like this IRL then it's no wonder the Soviets loved it. Flies like a fighter and yet can carry a decent bomb load for ground targets.

It has the best VR cockpit so far as well, looks fantastic.

[Field-Ops]

Have you bought Havok over Kuban campaign? If not thats going to be a fun experience for you. The A20 is my favorite bomber / attack aircraft in the game where it used to be the Ju88.

[Georgio]

17 hours ago, Field-Ops said:

Have you bought Havok over Kuban campaign? If not thats going to be a fun experience for you. The A20 is my favorite bomber / attack aircraft in the game where it used to be the Ju88.

 

I must try that thank you.

My favourite exercise so far in Kuban is to go quick mission and take out the enemy flak ships with bombs. They're tough but half a dozen 100kg or 4x 250kg sorts them out.

[Ribbon]

On 1/28/2019 at 2:04 PM, Georgio said:

 

I must try that thank you.

My favourite exercise so far in Kuban is to go quick mission and take out the enemy flak ships with bombs. They're tough but half a dozen 100kg or 4x 250kg sorts them out.

Than you'll love "Havoc over Kuban" campaign......imo best SP experience i had!

[[DBS]Browning]

What does the A-20 have that the Pe-2 doesn't?

[Luftschiff]

7 minutes ago, [DBS]Browning said:

What does the A-20 have that the Pe-2 doesn't?

 

A really extra name

 

a working damage model

 

enough fuel to kill all maritime life in the south china sea

 

fuel consumption to match

 

'MURICA

Edited January 29, 2019 by Luftschiff

[Georgio]

19 minutes ago, [DBS]Browning said:

What does the A-20 have that the Pe-2 doesn't?

 

I've tried both and personally the A20 'feels' better.

[Gambit21]

21 minutes ago, [DBS]Browning said:

What does the A-20 have that the Pe-2 doesn't?

 

The Russians called it "overpowered" whatever that means...you can never have too much power for that job.

 

 

18 minutes ago, Luftschiff said:

 

A really extra name

 

a working damage model

 

enough fuel to kill all maritime life in the south china sea

 

fuel consumption to match

 

'MURICA

 

WTF is a " really extra name" ?

[Luftschiff]

6 minutes ago, Gambit21 said:

 

The Russians called it "overpowered" whatever that means...you can never have too much power for that job.

 

 

 

WTF is a " really extra name" ?

 

A nicer way to say really pretentious cool.

[[PFR]Sarpalaxan]

27 minutes ago, [DBS]Browning said:

What does the A-20 have that the Pe-2 doesn't?

Power, Sadly. The Pe-2 May have better defensive armament, for my taste a better Payload and Airbreakes, and is just allaround a Beautiful Plane. But The A-20 autclimbs 109's. Can't we just take those A-20 Engines and strap them to the Pe-2? Those Filthy capitalist Pigs don't deserve them anyway.

[Gambit21]

1 minute ago, Luftschiff said:

 

A nicer way to say really pretentious cool.

 

Ahh...

Not sure I agree with the sentiment, but horses for courses.

 

 

[Bremspropeller]

40 minutes ago, [DBS]Browning said:

What does the A-20 have that the Pe-2 doesn't?

 

Designed by Ed Heinemann.

[Luftschiff]

1 minute ago, Gambit21 said:

 

Ahh...

Not sure I agree with the sentiment, but horses for courses.

 

 

 

It is entirely in jest, as with the rest of my post - I'm just making light of the fact that compared to most contemporary countries, one cannot fail to notice a penchant for the...shall we say evocative. Camel? Stork? Owl? Dolphin? Rata? NO! SUPERFORTRESS! HAVOC! CORSAIR! WILDCAT! THUNDERBOLT! NOT-LOOKING-AT-EXPLOSIONS! 

I find it endearing, much like the A20 itself.

[Guest deleted@134347]

1 hour ago, [DBS]Browning said:

What does the A-20 have that the Pe-2 doesn't?

 

you can come home on a single engine at 200mph any day without a sweat.

[Gambit21]

32 minutes ago, Luftschiff said:

 

It is entirely in jest, as with the rest of my post - I'm just making light of the fact that compared to most contemporary countries, one cannot fail to notice a penchant for the...shall we say evocative. Camel? Stork? Owl? Dolphin? Rata? NO! SUPERFORTRESS! HAVOC! CORSAIR! WILDCAT! THUNDERBOLT! NOT-LOOKING-AT-EXPLOSIONS! 

I find it endearing, much like the A20 itself.

 

I get ya.

 

Your post reminds me that the Rata gets too little love. There’s nothing like that open cockpit. I discovered it very late in the old sim.

[Diggun]

23 minutes ago, Gambit21 said:

Rata gets too little love

Rata v 109e7 = one of my favourite match ups in the sim.

 

In fact, I reckon the e7 gets too little love in general too.

Edited January 29, 2019 by Diggun

[Gambit21]

Without a doubt.

[Royal_Flight]

1 hour ago, Luftschiff said:

 

It is entirely in jest, as with the rest of my post - I'm just making light of the fact that compared to most contemporary countries, one cannot fail to notice a penchant for the...shall we say evocative. Camel? Stork? Owl? Dolphin? Rata? NO! SUPERFORTRESS! HAVOC! CORSAIR! WILDCAT! THUNDERBOLT! NOT-LOOKING-AT-EXPLOSIONS! 

I find it endearing, much like the A20 itself.

 

All great names, but the Havoc and Corsair were named by the British...

 

Just an observation.

[Gambit21]

I thought it was exclusively the Boston to the Brits?

[Legioneod]

Really like the A-20 but I hate the 30 round box. Did they really only have 30 rounds before having to change boxes? Kinda crazy imo considering other American bombers had a much better system for the most part.

[Dogbert1953]

Not my quote boys.

 

In British Commonwealth air forces, bomber/attack variants of the DB-7 were usually known by the service name Boston, while night fighter and intruder variants were usually known as Havoc. An exception to this was the Royal Australian Air Force, which referred to all variants of the DB-7 by the name Boston.^[2] The USAAF referred to night fighter variants as P-70.

 

Mike.

[ShamrockOneFive]

5 hours ago, Legioneod said:

Really like the A-20 but I hate the 30 round box. Did they really only have 30 rounds before having to change boxes? Kinda crazy imo considering other American bombers had a much better system for the most part.

 

Yeah the A-20B's gun turret was not a great setup. The Russian retrofitted their own turret into a lot of A-20s and the later models got a powered dual .50cal with a feed mechanism (seen on the A-20G and J for example).

[LukeFF]

8 hours ago, Legioneod said:

Really like the A-20 but I hate the 30 round box. Did they really only have 30 rounds before having to change boxes? Kinda crazy imo considering other American bombers had a much better system for the most part.

 

Yes: https://www.ima-usa.com/products/original-u-s-wwii-b-17-aircraft-50-cal-30-round-ammunition-box?variant=25652778757

[Legioneod]

13 hours ago, ShamrockOneFive said:

 

Yeah the A-20B's gun turret was not a great setup. The Russian retrofitted their own turret into a lot of A-20s and the later models got a powered dual .50cal with a feed mechanism (seen on the A-20G and J for example).

 

10 hours ago, LukeFF said:

 

Yes: https://www.ima-usa.com/products/original-u-s-wwii-b-17-aircraft-50-cal-30-round-ammunition-box?variant=25652778757

 

Interesting. Wish they had a better feed system like in most other American Bombers with the box on the wall and a belt feeding the gun.

 

What did the russians use? Was it any better the the current system we have? I imagine it's something like what we have on the Pe-2

 

Edited January 30, 2019 by Legioneod

[CrazyDuck]

22 hours ago, [GG]Sarpalaxan said:

Power, Sadly. The Pe-2 May have better defensive armament, for my taste a better Payload and Airbreakes, and is just allaround a Beautiful Plane. But The A-20 autclimbs 109's. Can't we just take those A-20 Engines and strap them to the Pe-2?

 

That's precisely why Russians tried to replaced the VK-105s on Pe-2 with the Shvetsov M-82 (which is comparable to the R-2600).

 

In 1942 VK-105s were in high demand due to Yak and Lagg fighters using them, while M-82s were basically used only by Su-2 and could be easily produced in larger numbers. Together with the need for more power on Pe-2, solution seemed obvious. After polishing the desing up, this re-engined Pe-2 was compared to the Boston (out of all planes!), showing comparable performance.

 

However, due to shorter range than VK105 version and mainly because M-82s were by now (1943) needed for the La fighters, this combo never really sticked and appeared on the front only in small numbers.

[Georgio]

23 hours ago, moosya said:

 

you can come home on a single engine at 200mph any day without a sweat.

 

I was going to say that being able to get home on one engine is a massive bonus.

I've only touched on the Pe2 and while it's nice every mission where I lose an engine means I'm going down....

[[DBS]Browning]

The Pe2 does just fine on one engine for me!

[Royal_Flight]

22 hours ago, Gambit21 said:

I thought it was exclusively the Boston to the Brits?

 

21 hours ago, Dogbert1953 said:

Not my quote boys.

 

In British Commonwealth air forces, bomber/attack variants of the DB-7 were usually known by the service name Boston, while night fighter and intruder variants were usually known as Havoc. An exception to this was the Royal Australian Air Force, which referred to all variants of the DB-7 by the name Boston.^[2] The USAAF referred to night fighter variants as P-70.

 

Mike.

 

The Air Ministry had quite prescriptive guidance for aircraft in the inter-war years. These stopped being hard ruled by the late 30s but influenced a lot of names until at least mid-war. 

 

Alliteration was hugely common, mainly in pre-war designs (Hawker Hart, Hind, Hurricane; Supermarine Spitfire; Bristol Blenheim, Beaufort, Beaufighter; Gloster Gladiator; Vickers Vildebeest, Armstrong-Whitworth Whitley, Handley-Page Hampden, Westland Whirlwind, Avro Anson). 

 

Bombers were named after towns (Avro Manchester, Lancaster, York; Short Sterling) and flying-boats were named after coastal towns (Short Sunderland; Saunders-Roe London; Supermarine Stranraer). 

 

Fleet Air Arm fighters were named after sea birds (Blackburn Skua, Roc; Fairey Fulmar; Grumman Martlet) and torpedo bombers were named after fish (Fairey Swordfish, Albermarle, Barracuda; the Grumman Avenger was initially called ‘Tarpon’ in FAA service but fortunately this didn’t stick as it’s nowhere near as good). 

 

US aircraft usually got American-themed names (Curtiss Tomahawk, Kittyhawk; Douglas Boston, Dakota; Martin Maryland).

 

Trainers got ‘educational’ sounding names (Airspeed Oxford; Miles Magister, Master; North American Harvard. 

 

In some of the names you can see where a few of these pointers start stacking up as well (ie Sunderland - alliterative and coastal town, or Maryland with a triple score for alliterative, town and US theme). 

 

Following about 1942 this pattern was mostly dropped although Hawker kept up the ‘storm’ theme they’d established with the Hurricane, for the Typhoon and Tempest. 

 

Its quite interesting stuff, and feels very British. 

Also the UK seems to be alone in giving aircraft names rather than using a system of numbers and letters to denote designers (like the Soviets, Germans, French, Romanians, Italians did), roles (like the USAAF and IJAAF did) or a mix of both (like the IJN and USN/USMC did). 

[ShamrockOneFive]

11 hours ago, Legioneod said:

 

 

Interesting. Wish they had a better feed system like in most other American Bombers with the box on the wall and a belt feeding the gun.

 

What did the russians use? Was it any better the the current system we have? I imagine it's something like what we have on the Pe-2

 

 

I don't know a ton about the turret. It's a UTK-1 turret, I believe its a powered unit, and it had a Berezin UB 12.7mm machine gun. I suspect it had a feed mechanism and so was quite a bit better than what was there normally.

 

 

 

11 hours ago, CrazyDuck said:

 

That's precisely why Russians tried to replaced the VK-105s on Pe-2 with the Shvetsov M-82 (which is comparable to the R-2600).

 

In 1942 VK-105s were in high demand due to Yak and Lagg fighters using them, while M-82s were basically used only by Su-2 and could be easily produced in larger numbers. Together with the need for more power on Pe-2, solution seemed obvious. After polishing the desing up, this re-engined Pe-2 was compared to the Boston (out of all planes!), showing comparable performance.

 

However, due to shorter range than VK105 version and mainly because M-82s were by now (1943) needed for the La fighters, this combo never really sticked and appeared on the front only in small numbers.

 

Wow, I have to say that the Pe-2 with the M-82 engine looks really good. I wasn't expecting that. Kind of ironic that they went looking to re-engine the Pe-2 and ended up with the same problem of availability because a fighter needed it more.

 

[DD_fruitbat]

On 1/30/2019 at 5:51 PM, Royal_Flight said:

 

 

The Air Ministry had quite prescriptive guidance for aircraft in the inter-war years. These stopped being hard ruled by the late 30s but influenced a lot of names until at least mid-war. 

 

Alliteration was hugely common, mainly in pre-war designs (Hawker Hart, Hind, Hurricane; Supermarine Spitfire; Bristol Blenheim, Beaufort, Beaufighter; Gloster Gladiator; Vickers Vildebeest, Armstrong-Whitworth Whitley, Handley-Page Hampden, Westland Whirlwind, Avro Anson). 

 

Bombers were named after towns (Avro Manchester, Lancaster, York; Short Sterling) and flying-boats were named after coastal towns (Short Sunderland; Saunders-Roe London; Supermarine Stranraer). 

 

Fleet Air Arm fighters were named after sea birds (Blackburn Skua, Roc; Fairey Fulmar; Grumman Martlet) and torpedo bombers were named after fish (Fairey Swordfish, Albermarle, Barracuda; the Grumman Avenger was initially called ‘Tarpon’ in FAA service but fortunately this didn’t stick as it’s nowhere near as good). 

 

US aircraft usually got American-themed names (Curtiss Tomahawk, Kittyhawk; Douglas Boston, Dakota; Martin Maryland).

 

Trainers got ‘educational’ sounding names (Airspeed Oxford; Miles Magister, Master; North American Harvard. 

 

In some of the names you can see where a few of these pointers start stacking up as well (ie Sunderland - alliterative and coastal town, or Maryland with a triple score for alliterative, town and US theme). 

 

Following about 1942 this pattern was mostly dropped although Hawker kept up the ‘storm’ theme they’d established with the Hurricane, for the Typhoon and Tempest. 

 

Its quite interesting stuff, and feels very British. 

Also the UK seems to be alone in giving aircraft names rather than using a system of numbers and letters to denote designers (like the Soviets, Germans, French, Romanians, Italians did), roles (like the USAAF and IJAAF did) or a mix of both (like the IJN and USN/USMC did). 

 

Great post. Never put together the Fleet arm naming system of planes before.

 

Re the Spitfire, Thank god Mitchell didn't get his way with the name! 

 

Great a designing planes, awful at choosing names imo. He hated the name Spitfire to start with, wanting it to be called the Shrew or Scarab, but was overruled.

 

Hawker had the best names during the war for British planes though, again imo, which considering their interwar plane names, came out of nowhere! 

Edited February 3, 2019 by DD_fruitbat

[Voyager]

On 1/30/2019 at 11:51 AM, Royal_Flight said:

[...]

Also the UK seems to be alone in giving aircraft names rather than using a system of numbers and letters to denote designers (like the Soviets, Germans, French, Romanians, Italians did), roles (like the USAAF and IJAAF did) or a mix of both (like the IJN and USN/USMC did). 

 

Wasn't there a story going around the Churchill had trouble keeping numbers straight, and insisted that gear had names too, so he could help keep them straight?

 

That could be apocryphal. I did notice that during WWI that Sopwith also tended to name their planes after things, so that might have stuck in later years.

[blitze]

Naming is easier for public consumption and motivation.  Helps with the propaganda and keeping the public enthused when they are feeling miserable. 

 

Pity the Pe2 with those upgraded engines didn't get much love.  She would have been up there with other twin engined greats with those upgraded engines.  Even in stock form though, the Pe2 is a treat to fly.

 

Did I mention I love this sim?

Not any bird in particular but a multitude of them.  They are so much fun.  Ok, there is an issue with the engine of the 109 being very precious if hit by a stray bullet. ?

[Talon_]

 

 

One of the best interceptors in the game with the best short-term climb of any VVS plane. What's not to love? ?

[Royal_Flight]

11 hours ago, Voyager said:

 

Wasn't there a story going around the Churchill had trouble keeping numbers straight, and insisted that gear had names too, so he could help keep them straight?

 

That could be apocryphal. I did notice that during WWI that Sopwith also tended to name their planes after things, so that might have stuck in later years.

 

About the only British aircraft not to have names came from the state-run Royal Aircraft Factory in WWI, who used a system where aircraft were given designations based off the original designer of aircraft using a given engine configuration: BE (Bleriot Experimental = tractor engine), FE (Farman Experimental = pusher engine). 

 

When most designs ended up being tractor biplanes they were further divided by role: RE (Reconnaissance Experimental = two-seat), SE (Scout Experimental single seat). 

 

Which is is how the pusher FE.2b or the two-seat tractor RE.8 got their slightly unwieldy names. 

[Voyager]

As I recall, the De Havilland aircraft were usually DH.# designated too