B-29 and other allied Bombers: Bombloads too small?

[Odin]

Hi all,

while looking trough the aircraft details, i see that the heavy bombers had a relative small bombload..?

I mean, a B-24 can only carry 10 x 500 pounders?

And how about the B-29?

Odin

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: Odin

Hi all,

while looking trough the aircraft details, i see that the heavy bombers had a relative small bombload..?

I mean, a B-24 can only carry 10 x 500 pounders?

And how about the B-29?

Odin

the B-29 carries 20x500lb GP bombs. 20 of those bombs doesn´t sound small to me. IIRC the maximum load of a B-24 was somewhere around 8000lb in real life but the usual loadout wasn´t always maximum load, therefore the devs went with an "average" loadout I guess...

max bombload for the B-29 around 20.000 lbs, not sure she could carry 40x500 lb bombs though.

[topeverest]

B 29 and B32 are in classes all of their own. They will sweep all before them.

Not that the Liberator, 17's and other ALlied HB's are bad. Those are very very effective.

As for bomb loads, they varied considerably based on range and target. Bomb types also varied. The current game settings are more than adequate to bury the Japs.

What are you trying to get at?

[tocaff]

When looked at specs of a vehicle of any sort are always given by the manufacturer.  That in itself slants things a bit and are given under ideal circumstances.  The longer a flight the more fuel required and of course that means fewer bombs.  Real life conditions never are ideal.  A DD has a listed maximum speed of X knots, but the water must be like glass and we all know that the ocean isn't calm like a little pond.  The B-29 was huge next to a B-17 or 24 and carried a greater bombload over great distances, but this required more fuel.  On Tinian there were many crashes on takeoff due to the great weight involved and the A versions of the plane being underpowered.  The planes themselves suffered from heavy use and became tired, thus reducing their capabilities.  My dad's plane flew many missions with the 2 inboard engines having non functioning superchargers above a certain altitude (when needed the most).  Their cruise speed in reality never approached what it stated on paper and when flying at high altitude they hit the jet stream, a first.  A bomb load rarely approached the maximum capabilities due to many factors.

Still the B-29 carried a huge load compared to her predecessors and the game reflects this.

[xj900uk]

True.  Also the US planes had more armour plate & bigger better gun protection which cut down on the available bombload.  However it is astonishing that most B17's in the european theatre only carried 2,000lb of bombs (increased on some models to 4,000 by conflicts end),  the same as a de Havilland Mosquito.
It was the RAF who got massive bomb-loads off to a fine art.  The later mark Lancaster, with its cavernous bomb-bay,  could carry the ten-ton 'Grand Slam' which weighed in at 22,000 lbs and a lot of bombers regularly carried up to 17-18,000 lb of bombs on a single night mission.  However this was at the expense of removing every scrap of armour plate & protection from the planes in order to squeeze in more of a bomb-load (at Harris' insistance).  When an RAF plane was hit by a german night-fighter or flak,  the crew had a 1 in 7 chance of getting out (they also didn't wear their parachutes due to space limitations),  compared with a 4 in 7 chance for US planes...
Food for thought.  Was it worth it?

[Hard Sarge]

2000 pound bomb load for a B-17 ? must of been a very deep mission, 4-5000 was standard (and for shorter missions it could be much more)

and don't get too carried away with the English loads, until they started adding in flashbangs when the big bombs were dropped (to take a photo of the aim point) and it was found out that most of the bombers were dropping there big bombs over the north sea, too much weight to climb to Alt (and they had poor top Alt, to start with) (talking the 4000 pound cookie here)

also, don't forget that the planes that carried the Tallboys or the Grand slams, were not normal models, and not normal Squadrons

[Nikademus]

not a problem in WitP......city bombing made easy. [:D]

[Odin]

ORIGINAL: Hard Sarge

....talking the 4000 pound cookie here

2-3 Years ago they found one in my city...near a chemical factory, possibly this belongs to the fuel-producing ones in the war.[8D]