The Brainless short Tutorial to High Altitude Bombing.

[+Brainless 1]

So you want to accurately bomb from high altitude..or maybe you’d rather not…but if you do here’s my guide. Now I hope I’ve included everything you need to know but if all this doesn’t work for you, leave a post and I’ll try to come up with an answer..even if it’s a Brainless one!

 

Actually it’s not that hard if you know how..well isn’t everything.

 

Basically there’s three elements involved:-

 

1. Constant altitude

2. Constant speed

3. Angle of depression

 

One of your best flight tools is the ‘wing leveller’ and you all know about this. Use the wing leveller to stay at your chosen altitude (16,000ft) .You must be at a constant height or it won’t work! Use the rudder to make small course corrections. You need to be lined up to the target. In my ‘Bombing Challenge’ mission file, if you’re using this, you will have plenty of distance between you and the target so plenty of time to line up. The target is set at 90 degrees so try to keep a few degrees round this (88 to 92 degrees)

 

 

You need to have installed the Lancaster with the ‘Norden’ bombsight and made the file amendments dfang advises. I won’t repeat these here to save time and space but he has amply explained everything you need to do and the file changes to make. I highly recommend you first take a copy of the entire file you’re going to mess with and then if you don’t like it or after you’ve done the bombing and want to go back to the original file settings (Kevin ) you can just add the original file back. It’s not hard even I can do it!

 

Now in dfang ‘s instructions he tells you that the position of the bombsight in relation to the target is not important and for bombing very large installations and runways with multiple ordnance loadouts he is absolutely right but for bombing especially with a single bomb on a small single target this doesn’t work. What you need to know is that there is a ‘sweet’ spot on the sight for dropping your ordinance accurately on the target and I’m going to tell you where this is!

 

On the mirror bezel to the left of the target (yellow ) cross marker there is a screw (rivet) it’s the third one up from the bottom to the left below the white knob. Now when you select your bomb and press ‘del’ (cockpit artwork removed) the ‘Norden’ sight will come into view when you angle down to it with your HOTAS control. Stay in default view and don’t zoom the sight. The sight will be slightly off at an angle so swing it round so that it is level with the bottom of the screen and sightly up from the very bottom. I made a clear plastic sight to overlay the ‘Norden’ instrument marked up for various bombing situations but you don’t need this to start with or to complete my ‘Challenge’

 

Now fly to the target at 90 degrees with the target lined up at 90 degrees to the rivet/screw I told you about. When you reach the target and you’re on the rivet drop the bomb and it will hit the ship. (target).

 

Don’t forget to open your bomb doors and select the ordnance.

 

Right you know how to stay at the right altitude and drop the bomb on target now all you need to do is to fly at the right speed. Now this is critical and varies with your angle of depression. I have this set out below with the changes I made to make the depression angle work at 160kts. You can mess with the depression angle and speed to bomb at different altitudes but I’ve got mine set at 160kts @ 16,000ft with the depression angle as set below based on dfang’s guidelines.

 

Dfang’s Viewlist changes

 

[ViewClass001]

ViewClassName=FreeViewClass

ViewType=FREE_VIEW

ViewGroupID=0

DefaultView=

AllowFromDiffGroup=TRUE

SnapView=FALSE

InsideView=FALSE

FOV=45.0

PitchControl=CAMERA_PITCH_AXIS

YawControl=CAMERA_YAW_AXIS

RollControl=

ZoomControl=CAMERA_ZOOM_CONTROL

RememberFOV=FALSE

LimitPitch=TRUE<------Change to this

LimitYaw=FALSE

LimitRoll=FALSE

ZoomFOV=FALSE

StepZoom=FALSE

ZoomScale=0.1

PanScale=0.00140

MinFOV=180.0<-----change to this

MaxFOV=180.0<-----change to this

OffsetDistance=0.0

 

[ViewClass002]

ViewClassName=CockpitViewClass

ViewType=FIXED_VIEW

ViewGroupID=1

DefaultView=CockpitFront

AllowFromDiffGroup=TRUE

SnapView=FALSE

InsideView=TRUE

FocusObjectOnly=TRUE

FOV=180.0<------------------------Change to this

PitchControl=CAMERA_PITCH_AXIS

YawControl=CAMERA_YAW_AXIS

RollControl=

ZoomControl=CAMERA_ZOOM_CONTROL

JumpToViewSameGroup=FALSE

JumpToViewDiffGroup=TRUE

SmoothAngleTransition=TRUE

SmoothPositionTransition=FALSE

SmoothFOVTransition=TRUE

RememberAngle=FALSE

RememberFOV=FALSE<-------Change to this

LimitPitch=FALSE<-------Change to this

LimitYaw=FALSE<-------Change to this

LimitRoll=FALSE

ZoomFOV=TRUE

ZoomScale=0.01

PanScale=0.00160

MinSpeed=100.0

MaxSpeed=10000.0

Acceleration=2000.0

AngleRates=480.0,360.0,360.0

FOVRate=60.0

MinAngles=-135.0,-20.0,0.0

MaxAngles=135.0,110.0,0.0

MinFOV=15.0

MaxFOV=90.0

OffsetDistance=0.06

TrackIRUseAbsolutePos=TRUE

 

Cockpit ini.File (changes)

 

[GunsightFront]

HasGunsight=TRUE

GunsightMilSize=650

GunsightName=Lancaster_sight.tga

LeadComputing=TRUE

MaxDepression=250 (what I changed)

DefaultDepression=1500 (what I changed)

 

The following is Dfang’s extract from his installation instructions.

 

‘you can play around with the altitude & speed..the key setting for making accuracy changes is the [DefaultDepression=950] entry in the Cockpit.ini file,changing the number has an effect on the accuracy of the bomb hits depending on speed & altitude...you will see after a few bomb runs how to adj this number to obtain different results.’

 

I’m probably forgetting something,,any questions,just ask.***REMEMBER>>BACK UP FILES BEFORE EDITING***

 

Now go pound em boys,,dfang’

 

And that’s all there’s to it. You will need to practice and don’t be put off if you don’t do it the first time. Practice makes perfect.