WW1 Skip Bombing

[WWDarkdiz]

Someone asked (Geezer?) if skip bombing was a "thing" for WW1 planes.  After about 2 hours of testing, I can say that it is NOT.

I tried different combinations of bombs and aircraft, and was not able to get the bomb to skip.

For the Entente, the 5-sec delay kills any chance of it going off anywhere close to a moving ship.  The bomb merely sinks, and by the time it detonates, the blast is too small to do any damage (that I could determine).  Even the DH4 with the 230lb-ers was ineffective when trying to skip-bomb.  The planes are just too slow to build up enough energy for the bombs to skip.  They just sink where they hit.  Same for the Central Halby, with the 4 50kg bombs.  Not enough energy to make it skip.

Below is Requiem's vid on the subject.

 

[WWCephas]

/mild rant on

I am kind of a curmudgeon when it comes to skip bombing in IL2.  For the most part it was only used in the Pacific after '42 and against transports.  With the AAA settings set to LOW as we normally play it makes taking out a ship pretty simplistic.

I know this is a just a game and when designing missions I want everyone to have fun doing what they want, but watching that video were he sinks three ships in 30 seconds without taking a hit pretty much exemplifies the problem I have with skip bombing in IL2 missions.

As Mission Builder if I put a ship into a mission I am hoping it is a challenge to take out the traditional way, not the easy way.  Now if they would release a Pacific Theater map, you better believe I would be making skip bombing missions.

Anyhoo, that is my opinion on the matter.  The most important thing is we have fun doing flying so it is not a big deal to me, I just thought I would share.

/mild rant off

[WWSandMan]

I was fairly confident the WW1 birds were not fast enough to skip bomb. I've tried a few times in both Entente and Central aircraft, and never had any luck (ripped my own wings off once trying to go faster by diving to wave top height to make a good skip). 

As for skip bombing in general... I think there's a lot involved that makes it an exercise in 'less than historic' ship attacks. The bombs themselves seem to have far more 'bang' versus ships, while the ships seem to have no armor at all. Maybe that's a result of the ships not being properly tweaked (? Can you adjust a ships 'hardness' so a single bomb doesn't kill it?) Seems that ships were designed to be very hard on their exposed sides to defeat incoming fire from other ships... While their top surfaces were lightly armored at best and vulnerable to attack from above. 

Add in also that my favorite skip bombing ship killer, the FW-190, likely never used that attack profile in real life. But in simulated attacks its a hoot. 

[WWBiker]

Can I ask a dumb question ..... is the game even designed for such an effect or are the bombs just acting as if they hit the ground. wouldn't the skip part have to be programed into the game?

 

[WWZed]

The game engine defines the physics of the world.   Game engines like Unreal and Unity are very heavily it physics and their interactions.  In my Unity game, I can skip a cannonball across the water to strike the other ship, it loses velocity however to to the physics interaction.

I believe the skip bombing is done by three factors of physics

1.  Speed, you need enough speed to overcome the velocity loss to skip to next location. Thus the WW1 aircraft do not have a great deal of velocity when dropping, thus the bomb succumbs to gravity.  
2. Angle.   High angle bleeds velocity when hits a surface (much like a famous unnamed WW pilot landing).  The WW1 aircraft with less velocity cannot drop at a flat velocity, if you have a high speed (relatively) WW1 aircraft, it still may not be enough, however pulling the nose up at release will lob the bomb instead.

3.  Water surface, skips work better on calm waters and in salt water (yes there is a density difference between the 2 in a game engine, my ships ride about a foot higher in salt than fresh thus requiring more ballast.

[WWDarkdiz]

4 hours ago, WWCephas said:

/mild rant on

I am kind of a curmudgeon when it comes to skip bombing in IL2.  For the most part it was only used in the Pacific after '42 and against transports.  With the AAA settings set to LOW as we normally play it makes taking out a ship pretty simplistic.

I know this is a just a game and when designing missions I want everyone to have fun doing what they want, but watching that video were he sinks three ships in 30 seconds without taking a hit pretty much exemplifies the problem I have with skip bombing in IL2 missions.

As Mission Builder if I put a ship into a mission I am hoping it is a challenge to take out the traditional way, not the easy way.  Now if they would release a Pacific Theater map, you better believe I would be making skip bombing missions.

Anyhoo, that is my opinion on the matter.  The most important thing is we have fun doing flying so it is not a big deal to me, I just thought I would share.

/mild rant off

I highly suspect that for the making of this vid, he had unlimited ammo and invulnerability on, and minimal AA fire.  When I tried with the WW1 ac, I HAD to use the unvulnerability setting ON, as I was shredded anytime I turned in towards the ships (as expected).  If I was making a vid like this, just demonstrating a technique, I would do the same.

[WWPlague]

I 'toss' bombed to sink the ships at the dock in the last mission. One 250 bomb each.