Gentlemen, my 352 cents. Jman and I made a sortie with 500 lbdrs in our Hellcats.
My experiences with fighter bomber results have gone from decent to appallingly bad over the last 4 months or so. As to the S3s, my bombs appeared to have been very close to the port side back end of a freighter. Sadly, no gun cam of it. There we're no noticeable results. I used 2x500 lbdrs and dropped fairly low. They did go off. Jman's attack (I was trying to watch and do have the results on gun Cam) looked spot on. The freighter blew up.
Just as a little background: I have always advocated for damage to be the same across all the arenas as a way of being able to ascertain just how well something is working without lag. Prior to the decreasing of bomb blast radius I could kill an M16X with a single 50kg bomb in the Main arena. Now, dropping 3x50kgs close to an M16X has no result at all.
With the addition of "arm time" I never bother dragging anything heavier than a 250kg bomb. Accuracy is better at lower altitude, obviously, and with the reduction of arm times it's the only way the average guy has a chance of blowing anything up.
So, at this juncture, between the lag, ack, arm time, bomb blast radius, poor/good bomb platform, it really is hit or miss. If a fighter squad is going to take bombs those pilots will need to practice dropping them otherwise it's a waste of time. You won't have enough fuel for a fight when you get there. You won't have altitude either. IF we decide as a group to take bombs, only half the squad should do so. The other half is high cover and can protect the lower, fuel critical, F6F dive bombers.
As for the bomber groups, the SBD is the better bet. If fuel allows, I'd suggest a right hook. Gain as much altitude and as they head south the should dive, pick up as much speed as possible, thereby making the zees chase and dive as well. They hit their targets and zip East and back to the CVs.
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