Bombers and Naval artillary on island maps?

[Mangley]

I'm sure this has probably been thought of already. I'm not totally up on my Pacific theatre history but I believe conventional artillary was often not available on pacific islands and bombers or naval guns could be used for artillary instead.

Naval guns shouldn't be a hassle to implement since it's just audio and UI image for the radio.

Given that there are already recon planes in RO2, it shouldn't be too difficult to implement a kind of bomber squadron that can be called to fly over and bomb a specific area.

SBD Dauntless for the US and Aichi D3A for the Japanese, of course. Perhaps less tastefully even a Yokosuka D4Y4 Special Strike Bomber kamikaze attack?

Pretty please?

 

[Nestor Makhno]

Have you any idea how big the explosion from a, say, 500-lb bomb would be on a map?

srsly

 

[Mangley]

About twice the size of a single artillary shell in RO2?

I believe 500lb bombs were mainly used against ships, smaller payloads were often used for land targets.

Aichi D3A were usually equipped with 2x 132lb bombs.

 

[Redit]

Twice? No.. no..

If you implement these, and I hope you don't, make the payloads realistic and believable, e.g. 100lb - 200lb max

 

[Mangley]

Twice? No.. no..

If you implement these, and I hope you don't, make the payloads realistic and believable, e.g. 100lb - 200lb max

Note: twice the size of a single artillary shell, not twice the size of a full artillary strike. Just a single explosion.

 

[Redit]

One 500lb bomb's explosion is far larger than the explosion of one 105mm or 150mm howitzer shell.

A 150mm sFH 18 high explosive shell weighs 96 pounds.
There is the potential for over 4 times as much explosive charge (by weight) in a 500 pound bomb.

 

[Nikita]

Perhaps the puny sixty kilo wingtip bombs on A6M2 (Early model) Zeroes wouldn't be ridiculously overpowered, but 1000 lb bombs from F4U Corsairs? One of those babies would take out the entirety of Pavlov's House, or perhaps a third of the entire Apartments map. :IS2:

Even a Zero bomb, however, contains twenty times the raw explosive weight of one satchel charge in RO2 or 1.5 times the explosive power of a Katyusha rocket.

Then there's the issue of accuracy. Horizontal, low-altitude bombing wasn't a precise affair in the Pacific War... Either the bomb would have to land with unrealistic pinpoint accuracy, or it would be realistically inaccurate, risking perhaps a dozen teamkills.

As for naval artillery, that's perhaps a little more reasonable as long as we aren't talking about three volleys of nine 16-inchers and ten five-inchers. Destroyer-scale firepower would be most appropriate. There would also have to be considerations, though, about the horizontal trajectory of guns at sea--hills and ridges could mask the enemy from the full effect of the shellfire.

It would certainly be equivalent to RO2's rocket artillery--the top of the artillery tree, with its use limited to a single strike per map or so. There's also the issue that no map would see both sides using naval gunfire--its use would be limited to one side in history--say, the Japanese during Guadalcanal, and the Americans on Okinawa.

 

[Vyllis]

Then there's the issue of accuracy. Horizontal, low-altitude bombing wasn't a precise affair in the Pacific War... Either the bomb would have to land with unrealistic pinpoint accuracy, or it would be realistically inaccurate, risking perhaps a dozen teamkills.

That's why planes used the dive bombing method.
A SBD with a 250lb bomb, in optimal conditions, can be well accurate. Even from a 3000-4000ft dive.