In this episode on War Thunder I give a few basic hints and tips on how to shoot down enemy bombers, as well as some general hints on what sort of planes to use. Also footage of me using the "Schrage Musik" to shoot down enemy bombers.
Sorry for the short video, have been very busy lately and haven't had much chance to record or upload new content, will try to upload more content soon.
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Game: War Thunder ⬅️
Sorry for the short video, have been very busy lately and haven't had much chance to record or upload new content, will try to upload more content soon.
Social Media ⬇️
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/toreno.bsky.social
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/Toreno4
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/toreno170
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Game: War Thunder ⬅️
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GamingTranscript
00:00Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of War Thunder.
00:03As you know, or if you've watched my recent videos, I've finished the Future Tech Tree Analysis series.
00:09And I was just sort of stuck on what videos to make, and I decided to make a Bomber Interceptor guide.
00:15As some of you who are quite active in War Thunder may know, bombers have always been a bit controversial.
00:23Ranging from bombers being really ridiculously easy to destroy in earlier patches, to being able to end a match in minutes in more recent patches.
00:33It used to be people loading up UR-2s and just diving in to attack enemy bases in 5 at a time, which worked quite well.
00:43People have since got wise to that, and the new recent tactic is to just climb to a ridiculous height and just keep bombing from up high,
00:52even where fighters can't or are unwilling to intercept them.
00:55Now, obviously this guide, well not obviously, but this guide will be dealing with mainly how to take down the bombers.
01:02So I'll give some recommendations on what to use to take them down.
01:06For the tests I'll be using the P-38G, which has a good rate of climb, something you want, a rate of climb of 16.5 metres a second.
01:15Other good planes, got the Bf 109 G2, 19 metres a second, La-5, 18.4, British have got their Spitfires, 19.7.
01:27Japanese, I wouldn't use Japanese, but their planes, not all of them have that great, so good a rate of climb.
01:35Yotsu Ki-45 here has a rate of climb of 19.5 metres a second.
01:41B-7A2 is very good, a very bad rate of climb, but in Arcade it starts off at the same height as bombers, and it has good firepower, so that's also a good candidate.
01:51But for the tests I'll be using the P-38G.
01:55Obviously another thing you need to take into consideration is armourment.
01:59The Bf 109 G2, very good climbing aircraft, but it doesn't have much firepower.
02:06Only one 20mm cannon, and two 7.92mm machine guns.
02:12But you can get additional cannons, additional two 20mm cannons.
02:196 miles an hour speed loss, so lose a bit of 2 metres a second of climb rate, lose 1.5 seconds of turn time, so obviously that can come at a price.
02:31Some other good planes, both fighters for firepower, but obviously not very good rate of climb.
02:37Japanese, their Ki-45s are meant to be good at taking down bombers, you'd think, because of the 37mm cannon.
02:46In my experience this doesn't really work so well, although some of them have the upward firing guns, so they could come in handy.
02:54Germans have their, where are they, Me-410s, also got the Dornier 217N2 and N1.
03:02N2 has the upward firing guns again, so they can just sit underneath the enemy bombers and quickly destroy them.
03:09I might demonstrate that at the end of the video, but I'll leave that for the moment.
03:15And the Russians, they don't really have any dedicated bomber interceptors.
03:20The MiG-3 was good at flying high altitude from what I understand, but not very good firepower.
03:27From three machine guns to two 20mm cannons.
03:31Good Yosi R2s, but again not good rate of climb, only good firepower.
03:37Maybe the PE-3s, but again, not too good firepower and not very good rate of climb.
03:45And obviously the Americans, decent firepower, not too bad rate of climb, but not the best either.
03:53But anyway, let's get on to the testing. For this I'll be using the P-30HE.
03:58I'll be doing it on Mission Editor. We're going to go on the Battle of the Bulge, and it'll be an intercept bomber mission.
04:04Now the Germans don't have that great bombers.
04:10Some bombers like the Heinkels are meant to be quite fast, but...
04:16Well not fast, they're sort of their nearest thing to a good bomber in the early tiers, but they're not that great compared to some of the other aircraft.
04:24They have a lot of guns, but they're quite weak guns as well.
04:29We've also got the Italians, they have fairly fast bombers, fairly well armed, 12.7mm machine guns usually.
04:38Junkers, 88, quite fast, reasonably well armed, but not that great.
04:45And the Dornier 217s, which I think are meant to be quite fast, but not too well armed again.
04:51But they've got a few guns, but they're quite weak ones, and the field of fire is not that good.
04:58And we've got the Arado, fast and no armament.
05:02Now we'll try this against the HE-116, because this is quite a slow bomber.
05:08We'll try and get it down to 8, because obviously in arcade or realistic you won't be going against that many bombers in a formation.
05:17Add maximum bomb load, because that's what most people will be using online.
05:22Quickly load up the game.
05:25This guide will really be showing how to take down the bombers.
05:29Like where to attack them from, what armament, well not really what armament to use, because obviously you'll be using what armament you have.
05:38Depends what plane you've picked really.
05:40Now we've got a few machine guns, I think four, and one 20mm cannon.
05:47Now where are the enemy? They're in front of us.
05:49This is a fast aircraft, good rate of climb, so we should be able to quickly boom and zoom against the enemy.
05:57Now this is where you dive in from a great height, pick up lots of speed, strafe the enemy,
06:03then once you're below them, go upwards, attack them from below, then dive down on them again.
06:09You keep doing this for a while, although eventually you will lose your energy.
06:13You'll slow down, you'll become easy prey for the enemy's defensive armament, or enemy fighters if there are any nearby.
06:23Now we're diving in quite quick, we've got 400mph speed now.
06:30Now we've obviously got the lead indicator.
06:32If you're doing this in realistic or simulator, you won't have this.
06:36You'll also have more realistic flight models, which will make things a bit harder.
06:44Got a few more hits in there.
06:47Now quickly dive up again, and as you can see we're starting to lose height.
06:51We originally dived on them at 400mph, we're now doing it at barely 300mph.
06:58We could climb more to get some more height, but obviously that would take us a long time.
07:03Ah, that wasn't meant to happen, sorry about that people.
07:08That can sometimes happen, or it doesn't usually happen, but usually they're not in formation.
07:13So I wouldn't recommend brown bombers, not particularly a good thing to do.
07:18Now quickly do another boom and zoom, and then we'll show you the other ways of attacking.
07:23Or we could quickly do it now, attacking from the side.
07:26Not too effective, but enemy armament isn't too great here usually.
07:34We're sort of not really attacking from the side properly, so I'll do that again.
07:38We've got plenty of speed, so we can quickly get away from the bombers,
07:41get out of range of their defensive armament, which isn't too good on the HE-116s.
07:48They've got one 20mm cannon at the front, the rest is 13mm machine guns, 7.92mm machine guns.
07:57Quickly attack, get some cannon and machine gun fire into them.
08:02Again, we don't know how much damage we've done, although one of them's just gone down in flames.
08:06Though that could be from my own wingmen.
08:08But we've done some damage to them, some of them are trading smoke.
08:12Quickly do another side-on attack.
08:18Quickly put some more fire into them, dodge this one, don't want to ram him again.
08:22We're going to quickly go out in front and show you the next attack,
08:27which is the frontal attack, where you just attack the enemy from the front.
08:32Which has its advantages in that you can kill the pilot.
08:36Now this isn't always easy to do on some aircraft.
08:41B-17s, and I think some British ones, have two pilots.
08:44So you have to kill both of them.
08:47You might think it's quite easy to kill both of them in one pass,
08:50but I've seen people using such tactics,
08:55spraying the cockpit and still only managing to kill one of the pilots.
08:59Which can make your attack a bit of a waste,
09:01because it doesn't always do that much damage to the plane, at least in my experience.
09:06Now you're not always guaranteed to kill the pilot as well,
09:09and on the Heinkel it can actually be a bit worse.
09:11Oh, I think we killed the pilot because the plane went down quite easily.
09:16I think, you know, it's not damaged, it's got a bit of smoke.
09:19Oh, we've been shot down though.
09:21Had a bit of smoke, but the plane went down.
09:24Now, I was trying to...
09:25I don't think I quite managed to get it out in time,
09:28but it can be a bit of a disadvantage on the Heinkel,
09:31because it has a 20mm cannon at the front.
09:34Obviously that's not something you want to be dealing with.
09:40The last tactic is to just sort of sit in their tower and attack them.
09:43And this isn't something you always want to do,
09:47because most planes have a rear gunner.
09:51But if you kill this rear gunner, they're completely undefended.
09:55You can just sit behind their tower and at leisure take them down.
10:00Now you can, if you're quite good at aiming,
10:03and if you feel confident in doing it,
10:05you can easily shoot at the enemy gunners,
10:08aiming specifically at them,
10:10and you can kill them quite easily.
10:13I've done this myself sometimes.
10:17Like with B-17s.
10:18Just sit in their tower, aim at the gunner,
10:20quickly take him out,
10:23and then just sit on the tail of the B-17.
10:26I don't know what this film is.
10:29I think I should skip it really, because it seems to be replaying.
10:33So there's just some of the ways you can take down bombers.
10:37I'm not sure what's happening now.
10:38Mission accomplished.
10:40Wait for that to run out.
10:41Get ready for a landing.
10:43Obviously this was an arcade against not too well defended enemies.
10:48Also, the next bit I'll show you how to use the Scraig music.
10:52The upward firing guns.
10:55To demonstrate the Scraig music,
10:57we'll be using the Dornier 217 N2.
11:01We'll get rid of escort fighters.
11:05Get rid of the escort fighters.
11:06But we'll be going against the Wellington's.
11:09Now you might think, why are the Wellington's already quite easy to destroy?
11:13Well, it's just to demonstrate what planes that haven't got downward firing guns
11:21can be quite vulnerable.
11:24This mainly applies to British aircraft.
11:27The Americans have their ball turrets on the B-17 and B-24s.
11:33Other nations don't really have that good firing down guns.
11:36It's usually just a hole in the floor sort of thing,
11:39with a gun in it.
11:41The British don't have anything like that at all, I don't think.
11:44Only their early Blenheim's really have any downward firing guns.
11:49And even then, I think it's not that great.
11:52So this is just to demonstrate what sort of bombers you would use the Scraig music against.
11:56You can use it against American and other bombers,
11:59but it won't be as effective as against those with no underneath guns, like belly guns.
12:06So, if you're on arcade or realistic, you're probably going to be underneath the bombers to start with.
12:13So we're going to get underneath.
12:15We'll only take out one or two, because we'd be here all day if we wanted to take out all of them with the Scraig music.
12:21And because this is a mission editor, we have to, well, we are on a time limit, because they're trying to bomb a target.
12:30So I can't see it, but we'll probably show up on the map later.
12:33We could use our front firing guns, obviously, but we're just going to demonstrate the Scraig music.
12:39It can be a bit hard to set up the right angle, if there's anything like the Japanese ones.
12:47I think the angle's slightly better on here.
12:49We are being shot at, but it's their rear gunners who are just firing at a good angle.
12:54Oh, we're a little too close.
12:56A little too high, a little too fast.
12:58Pull out our gears and landing flaps, and let them catch up with us.
13:09We're still outrunning them, that's quite annoying.
13:13I know Wellington's aren't the best planes in the world, but they surely aren't that slow.
13:17Right, pull the gears and flaps up so we don't lose too much speed.
13:21Put the engines back on, 50%.
13:23Try and level ourselves out.
13:31Right, it's not working too well at the moment.
13:33I'm going to go in for another pass.
13:43Well, like I said, it's a lot harder than it looks trying to set this up.
13:47It's not really a problem.
13:49Well, like I said, it's a lot harder than it looks trying to set this up.
13:51It's not really a problem.
13:53It's not really a practical bomber destroying weapon most of the time, I'm guessing.
13:57I mean, like I said, with the Japanese, I never managed to use it properly.
14:01But I just wanted to put it in here just to show how it should be used, or could be used.
14:15Just some ranging shots, see if we can get any near.
14:17Right, we've managed to get some hits in.
14:21Obviously the lead indicator is well off, because we're firing directly at the aircraft.
14:29Pulling up a little too much.
14:31Lose the engine speed again, pull down.
14:33Cause we're going to be gaining speed, but...
14:35Cause we're going to be gaining speed, but...
14:37so we can gain a little less speed.
14:43Pull up again.
14:45Again some ranging shots just to see where we're aiming at roughly.
14:53We haven't managed to shoot them down yet, but they haven't managed to shoot at us either.
14:58And there we go, first plane noided down.
15:01Took a few shots, but we didn't even get into a position where they could shoot us.
15:06And all we have to do is reload.
15:09Their formation's gone a bit...
15:10Well this happens when you take out the lead aircraft.
15:13It doesn't matter why it's gone out of formation, they will follow the formation leader.
15:22You can see this on most maps with AI bombers.
15:28If you take down the lead one, but don't destroy it, they will follow it all the way down to
15:31the earth.
15:32They'll usually pull up before it hits the ground, but it obviously mucks up the formation
15:37a lot.
15:39Which is good for you if you're trying to shoot them down.
15:43Well these Wellingtons are going down quite fast.
15:48These are the higher tier Wellingtons as well.
15:50I mean, there isn't really much difference between the low tier and the higher tier other
15:54than bomb load and slightly better rear armament.
16:00There's only one bomber left, and I'm not sure where he is.
16:05There's two of them left below us.
16:10See if we can...
16:11Ah, nearly.
16:12One's lost an engine.
16:17This is also demonstrating how bomber hunter aircraft such as the Dornier 217 can quite
16:23literally shred enemy bombers to pieces.
16:26Not good at intercepting the bombers, but once you're like, you know, climbing up to
16:31attack them.
16:32But once you're near them, they will go down pretty quick, most of the time.
16:37There's a bit of hit detection problems with higher caliber guns for some reason.
16:44Right, um, only two left to kill.
16:49One's going down.
16:50Everyone's trying to...
16:51I don't know what he's doing.
16:52Is he trying to dogfight?
16:53I haven't got anything left to shoot him with other than my Scraig music, which isn't something
17:00you'd really use in this sort of situation with a low-flying aircraft.
17:03Yeah, I've completely missed him again.
17:07Wait for this to reload, finish him off.
17:09Or actually...
17:10It's also a shame it just ain't...
17:13If you get the Scraig music, it just aims straight up.
17:15It doesn't aim where you're actually aiming it properly.
17:18So if you're trying to shoot sideways, it doesn't seem to work too well.
17:26Should finish him off quickly.
17:29Really attack him from behind, but I think his gun has gone.
17:32I think he's going down now.
17:34Just aim for his engines to make sure.
17:40Kill the pilot, I think.
17:41Well, I don't think he was going down, I think he was following this one.
17:49So all the bombers dealt with.
17:52Skip this.
17:53So, um, that's the end of this episode.
17:56It may not have been the most useful guide in the world, but it's become such a problem
18:02with bombers ending games early, I just felt like I had to do something to help people
18:07out.
18:08I mean, like I said, these may not be the best tips and may not be the best, most optimum
18:13ways of doing it, but just showing people out the best ways of attacking bombers.
18:17So I hope it's helped some of you out there.
18:21If you've got any of your own tips on how to destroy bombers, please leave them in the
18:24comments section below.
18:27Leave feedback, like the video if you liked it, subscribe if you like these sort of videos.
18:34Apologies it wasn't the best video in the world compared to some of my other ones, but
18:38I've sort of been struggling and not thinking of what to do for videos.
18:44I'll try and get back with some more videos as soon as I can.
18:47Like I said, thank you for watching and I'll see you next time.