My question is :why are the bombs on enemy targets when flying on the allied side turn out mostly as DUDS?

[JG1hkaddatz35]

en

[356thFS_Piranha]

Your dropping them too close to the ground.

If your close to the ground set your timer for 5 sec.

[Guest deleted@83466]

uh.

[[F.Circus]Gorn_Captain]

The bombs have safeties that prevent them from exploding if you drop them from too low. Setting the bomb timer to 5 seconds overrides this

[[CPT]Crunch]

If your flying fighter strike in an online environment set it for 15 seconds, you'll be long gone by the time anyone sees an explosion and have higher chances to flee the scene of the crime, if your first in, fast enough, and can catch the flak sleeping.  It's also possible to score fighter kills with delayed fuses if you attack in straight line and stay low with big enough bombs, been there, done that.  Get that unseen tail chaser.  Never even knew it till the post sortie results popped up.  

[RossMarBow]

On 12/31/2022 at 6:14 PM, 86th_Piranha said:

Your dropping them too close to the ground.

If your close to the ground set your timer for 5 sec.

This is the way.

Bombs have a fuse that burns when they are released.
And another that burns on impact.
5s is the best for all bombs to minimise both.

German fuse is longer than allied fuse also.

If you have bombs set to impact the post release fuse is longer so you have to drop them higher.

Edited January 20, 2023 by RossMarBow

[FeuerFliegen]

7 hours ago, RossMarBow said:

German fuse is longer than allied fuse also.

 

This isn't the experience I have;  I can set a 1 second timer on German planes and they pretty much always go off unless I drop extremely low.

 

Allied and all WW1 planes are the only ones I've had problems with not detonating due to low drops.

[RossMarBow]

1 hour ago, SCG_FeuerFliegen said:

 

This isn't the experience I have;  I can set a 1 second timer on German planes and they pretty much always go off unless I drop extremely low.

 

Allied and all WW1 planes are the only ones I've had problems with not detonating due to low drops.

 

I thought it was the other way around.
Pretty sure hvb on youtube covers the topic too.

[Robli]

There used to be a good website about WWII bombs and fuses, but can't find it now. Don't know how the fuses are modelled in GB, but in old IL-2 1946 historical fuse options were connected to appropriate bombs. For German fuses there were generally three options (not for all fuses): instant, short delay (0.05 to 0.15 sec) or long delay (usually 8 or 14 sec). Instant and short delay fuses usually took more than 5 seconds to arm, long delay fuses could be armed in half a second. These times varied between fuses.

Most common American general purpose bomb fuses had rotating vanes, which required at least 50 ft dropping altitude to be armed. A lot less common "instantly armed" fuses had 5 or 14 second delays.

[RossMarBow]

Happy to be proven wrong.

In my experience I was having issues with 88a4 50kg bombs going off, but not a20b 50kgs.
Asked around on discord and the consensus there backed up by experienced ground attackers, and youtube videos (like I believe HvB).

Was that 5s is best for all, but German bombs need to be dropped from a higher alt. 

 

I have never really bothered testing out different timers myself, and whenever someone had the same problem I just recommended that solution.

On 12/31/2022 at 6:33 PM, [F.Circus]Gorn_Captain said:

The bombs have safeties that prevent them from exploding if you drop them from too low. Setting the bomb timer to 5 seconds overrides this

but I trust gorn here

[Hartigan]

German bombs 3 sec is fine , allied 5 sec minimum. That should do it

 

[KevPBur]

I generally do not have issue with 2 second fuses on any "side" unless I drop from too low.

 

I see lots of videos of people dropping bombs from below tree top hieght. This is far too low, aim for a release at 500m. You will probably by much lower than you think but still high enough to get an armed bomb

[czech693]

 

See this research.  The bomb fuse arming times appear to be too long.  You can change them in the referenced files.  A 5 second detonation fuse setting is borked because it allows a lower drop altitude which means it must have a shorter arming time built in.  IRL you don't want a longer detonation fuse setting unless you intend to penetrate a bunker, cave,  building or ship.  Contact detonation is most often used for troops in the open, vehicles, etc., because you get a surface explosion.  A penetration explosion has less effect on surface targets, not to mention how hard it is to judge how far in front of a moving target to drop a delay detonation bomb.

 

[czech693]

Well, I just checked the WW2 bombs.  The reason the Allied bombs are duds at low level is because all of them have FuseArmDelay=-1, which Avimimus says sets them to the default arming time.  It appears that this may be default; HitDefaultDelay=2  All the German bombs have FuseArmDelay=1, which is 1 second arming time.  Change the Allied bomb setting to 1, and they will go off when dropped from lower altitudes (my test of the 112lb WW1 bomb was 200 ft AGL).

 

You have to have unpacked the gtp files into the (null) folder.

 

Located in:  data/(null)/luascripts/worldobjects/ballistics/bombs

Edited January 20, 2023 by czech693
new info

[Dragon1-1]

6 hours ago, czech693 said:

IRL you don't want a longer detonation fuse setting unless you intend to penetrate a bunker, cave,  building or ship.  Contact detonation is most often used for troops in the open, vehicles, etc., because you get a surface explosion.  A penetration explosion has less effect on surface targets, not to mention how hard it is to judge how far in front of a moving target to drop a delay detonation bomb.

Depends. A bomb dropped from a very low altitude, the way the Mossie often dropped, or how Il-2 operates, for example, is not going to penetrate much, because it won't fall very far, particularly if it's a small bomb. It's still not the same as with contact, but will make a crater and kill infantry quite nicely. With how big those explosions are (and IRL, they were even bigger), it's not particularly hard to guesstimate lead for the drop if you're dropping on tanks or something else that doesn't move fast (vehicles on a highway would pose a problem). Using delay for penetration is a thing with high altitude bombing, where the bomb picks up a lot of speed on its way down.

[czech693]

Yes, you are correct, however if they're dropped from a very low altitude with a delay fuse in a level pass they are probably going to skip and may not explode where you wanted it to explode.  But it would be a surface explosion.  Lots of videos out there with low and level bomb drops with delay fuses and the bomb skipping two or three times before coming to rest and exploding a few seconds later.  A setting less than 5 seconds would help prevent that, but a 1 second fuse would probably be too short.  That's the reason for finding a way around the 5 second delay fuse for low level drops. Something in between 1 second and 5 second would be a better choice.  And that's now possible.

 

Everyone has been using 5 seconds for low level drops so I'm curious if the sim models bomb fragment spray that could damage your aircraft.

[69th_chuter]

As an interesting aside:

 

One example concerning low altitude bombing, strafers in the South Pacific would wind-in the fuses (sometimes a lot) to shorten the safety delay on bombs they'd attached parachutes on.  Fuse manipulation by armorers was a thing. 

[357th_KW]

As it is right now, you can set all sorts of values, but you basically always want a long-ish delay (5 seconds or more), which will let you drop in any circumstance with optimal performance.  Why even have the fuse option?  Just default them to that.

 

This is definitely an area where some more research and historical detail would really improve the game.  Give attack and bomber pilots a reason to set their fuses for the target and delivery in question.  And while we're at it, start adding in more bomb types - frag clusters, napalm etc with their appropriate strengths and weaknesses.  All of this would add more detail (and thus interest and fun) to the ground attack aspect of the game.

Edited January 21, 2023 by 357th_KW