RAF defends itself against U.S. bombers!

[Stans]

It's 1948, the Soviets are a threat to Europe with their Tu-4 bomber (reverse engineered copy of the U.S. B-29). If you have 26 minutes to spare, watch this movie produced by the RAF as they practice using their jets to defend Britain against the B-29.

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=181...33091&hl=it

[The Dude]

I don't think I'd want to be a fighter pilot going after those B-29s (or Tu-4s). No, sir!

I'm sure it was difficult enough back in WWII against Allied bombers for German fighters, but those remote-controlled gun turrets would ruin your day since you can't really kill the gunner. And, even if you managed to shoot down the bomber you were aiming at, there'd by another 20 or so bombers shooting at you as you made your pass.

I'm just guessing here, but I think the air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles were invented by the pilots in that briefing room.

[Red]

I dont think i like the thought of doing head ons with the bomber group when you know as soon as you pass by every gun in the formations is locked on to you.....scary stuff

[Schatten]

Well since y'all were talking about this I set up a B-29 intercept mission in Il-2 '46...

...and let me say it was most un-fun. I did it 3 times with different results, all scary but in different ways.

The first one with a Ki-84. The problem with this one was that the B-sans just sucked up everything I threw at it, shrugged it off and kept flying. I smoked a couple engines, made a couple more ditch their bombs early but that was about it. The B-29 can take a shitton of damage and just keep flying. I was cooking at over 400 mph (TAS) the entire time and being as dodgy as possible, but still took a fair amount of damage from the gunners, they didn't damage anything major, lightly wounded me, and I got back to base and landed. But no B-29s shot down.

Second one was with a Ki-61, it took me forever to get up to altitude and set up above the B-29s for a slashing attack, I rolled in and attacked, got an engine on one of the B-29s to actually fire up, but the damn thing kept flying, so I decided to come back at the stream from the other side, but the B-29 is damn fast too, so without the big initial dive I was a sitting duck, the gunners lit me up like it wasn't anything at all. Shredded my plane, and got pilot killed in the process. No B-29s shot down.

For the last one I took a Me-262a with the rocket packs. Attacked the stream from a shallow dive above and from the side with the throttles wide open and used my rockets as soon as I was in range, managed to hit a B-29 which basically exploded in mid-air. Came back around in another shallow dive attack and lit another one up with those 30mm cannon, shredded a wing off another B-29 which cartwheeled down and on fire, so feeling cocky went in for a 3rd time...since I stupidly came in almost level figuring that I was in a jet so was moving fast enough to be safe I of course got killed. They lit me up like clay pigeon, killed me with a pilot kill and then took the jet apart bit by bit just to be sure. So 2 kills, but it was still a suicide mission.

Those B-29s are scary man, they're crazy fast, can suck up a metric asston of damage, and once the guns get the range on you you're a flying dead man. The Ki-81 had no problem keeping up with them and maneuvering for good attacks, but they shrugged off the gunfire from it, the Tony was too slow to make effective attacks, and the Me-262 has the speed and weapons to be effective but it barely has enough speed at that altitude to do more than 2 attacks and it's a big target for their accurate gunners.

So all in all...nope, wouldn't be a happy guy if someone told me to intercept a B-29 for real. Nosiree.

[The Dude]

Way to go on the testing of the theory. And a damn fine writeup too, Schat

I want to fly that mission! Let's try for a mid-weeker. Wednesday night, maybe?

[Schatten]

Hehe sure man, Wednesday night should be good.

One of the other things I did was do the mission again with icons off, thinking that the range countdown was spooking me some. But in that case, when I looked at the tracks it turns out I was making the same mistake with the B-29 that Luftwaffe pilots made against B-17s when they first started attacking them in '43, I was opening up waaaaay too soon because the planes are so huge that you figure that they have to be closer than they actually are.

I have a book about JG-27 where they talked about never hitting B-17s the first few times they engaged them because they looked much closer than they were. Pretty neat that that effect carried over to the game when I couldn't get an accurate lock on their range. When you do get in range on them they're so damn big it makes you worry about running into them because they look so massive in the gunsight.

[The Dude]

Heh...

Here's a little test I did in the Quick Mission Builder:

I used an F4U-1C for my first trials, but even with its cannon, I wasn't making much of a dent. So, I went with a Bf-109 with the under-wing gun pods ... yeah, lots o' damage with those babies. This video basically illustrates the head-on attack, which is effective, so long as you just get the hell out of Dodge after the initial pass. In every trial where I came back to hit the remaining three B-29s, from either a stern BnZ or a beam-on attack, I got p'wnd every time by the remote turret guns.

[Schatten]

Nifty.

The problem though is when you go back for seconds most definately.

Especially since in the one I did I used 36 B-29s, pain...lots of pain.

[The Dude]

Nifty.

The problem though is when you go back for seconds most definately.

Especially since in the one I did I used 36 B-29s, pain...lots of pain.

Yeah, I only used 4 B-29s. I'll have to try it with the full complement of 36. Eeek!

[Schatten]

Speaking of 36, imagine having to go after a few of these bad boys:

To the left, the dreaded B-29, to the right the superfrickinscary B-36.

It makes the B-29 look like a toy doesn't it?

Skeeeery!

[The Dude]

Yikes! That thing is ... well, I'm not going to say it because someone else will say, "That's what she said!".

So, I'm just back from going head-on with thirty-two B-29s set on Ace skill.

OH MI GAWD! It's full of bullets!

I set the time of day for zero-five-hundred so the tracers would show up better, and I gotta say, I felt like Luke Skywalker attacking the frickin' Death Star.

Consistent with my earlier tests, even going against two entire squadrons of B-29s, each with four flights of four aircraft, I managed to make my initial head-on pass without a scratch. The return pass, however, was suicide every time. The only sane thing to do would be to make the first pass, then spend 15 or so minutes to circle out in front again and make another head-on pass.

I setup the -29 squadrons one on top of the other with the four flights in each squadron in finger-four formation. The two squadrons were given a vertical separation of 200 meters. The bottom 16 planes were at 3,000 meters and the other squadron of 16 planes were above and a tich behind at 3,200 meters. It all looked very impressive and I'll be wanting to duplicate the effect in some upcoming coop missions.

Oh, and this time I went back to my F4U-1C as I can't stand the restricted field of view in that Bf-109. There's more ironwork in the Bf-109's canopy than in my granny's wrought iron bed she brought over from the old country!

[Schatten]

Yeah attacking whole messes of massed bombers is not very fun. I actually finally got around to watching the whole video up there, and the RAF agrees, the only way to attack them and maybe live to tell about it is the head on pass.

Thankfully Bettys don't have that sort of firepower or I'd be coming down with a case of the "my ears went pop, can't fly today" (all Blackadder-like) on a regular basis.

The biggest Japanese bomber made was the 4 engine Nakajima G8N Renzan (codename: Rita) which looked kind of like a B-17, but with 3 double 20mm batteries plus 2 double 13mm ones. That'd be nasty to try to fight too, luckily the Japanese only ever built 4 of them and they were way too late to see any service.

^ Rita video ^

(and no I have no clue what the guy is saying either )

[Red]

but with 3 double 20mm batteries plus 2 double 13mm ones.

Thats just plain crazy , thats some serious firepower