IL-2 Series: Skip Bombing Page 3

By SimHQ on August 10, 2007 in _air10, hide

The goal is to get out of the range of any guns as quickly as one can while presenting as hard a target to hit as is humanly possible.

A word on the rudder: don’t use it! You want to fly straight at the ship with no slip to increase your sight picture, and you want the bomb to skip straight without being askew to its path. Similarly, one wants to have his climb clean without any more roll than the ailerons provide with the gentle turn to prevent bleeding airspeed.

Moving Ships

Simply adjust your aim point to the bow of the ship if it is moving slowly or a quarter of its length in front of the bow if it is a fast ship. You’re releasing a bomb traveling at 300 miles per hour from a distance of about a thousand yards; it won’t out run it.

Common Mistakes

Releasing too low or too soon: Best release is at 125-150 feet off of the water. This allows for a big skip that can travel the distance. A lower release means the skip will be shorter and the bomb will run out of energy before it reaches the target. If you release too early, it’ll peter out before it gets there.

Releasing too high or too late: Too much altitude and the skip will either be too large (and the bomb will sail right over the decks) or simply make a big plunk and sink to the bottom. Release too late and the bomb will either skip over the ship or, worse, strike it and explode right underneath you!

Remember, the bomb is traveling at the same speed as your aircraft. You do not want to fly formation with a thousand pounds of explosives!

Other Aircraft

While I’ve used the P-40 as my example, the same principles apply for all skip bombing; the only difference is the release point based on speed. If one is going faster than 300 MPH, release earlier; if slower, release later. Practice makes perfect.

Conclusion

Skip bombing is fun! It’s not terribly difficult to learn, looks cool, has high probabilities for both sinking ships and surviving the attack.

The training film that goes with this article (it’s the first video I ever made so the audio’s not perfect) is located here on my web site. It’s a 33MB download in zipped .wmv format.

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