Pointing the nose

Absolute beginners look around by turning around. Later on, they discover the key for looking around with the mouse while flying straight (it's "c" for me).

Nevertheless, players usually dive towards a target 3 km ahead and 1 km low instead of staying high right till they really engage, 1-1.5 km away from the target. It's subconscious and you really shouldn't do it. Losing energy is one disadvantage, going to a less favourable position in case the target is killed early is another reason. You also become more vulnerable and a more likely target for other reds below. Finally, you announce your intention, warn your prey. If you stay high, he might conclude you don't want to engage him and might engage some blue plane. If you dive, he'll likely be aware and attempt to survive your attack.

This thing about not announcing your intentions is important on domination maps as well; you can capture airfields much easier if you don't announce your intent early. Never approach a defended airfield by flying straight, low or maybe even slow with lowered landing gear, parallel to the runway. Instead, pretend to be in air combat and approach the runway from an atypical direction. Shoot a bit if you have tracers. Lower the landing gear as late as possible, slow down with landing flaps, retract landing flaps before touchdown to avoid most of the ground effect and then touch down, only seconds after beginning to announce your intention. These few seconds are often the difference between airfield neutralization or not, airfield capture or mere neutralization or survival after capture or no survival.

Dive bombers with a suitable landing gear (no A-36 or B7A2) and dive bomber-typical dive brakes are particularly well-suited for this; simply dive, then capture. Hardly anyone expects someone flying at 2 km altitude to capture the airfield within 10 seconds.

Value of ground targets and victory conditions

Bomber players most often attempt to bomb the minibases (or "depots"), for these are the easiest to hit and they're convinced they yield the most reward.

A good player intent to win wouldn't waste time like that, but go after ground targets instead.

Both teams begin a match with a certain" ticket count". This may be 2,800 tickets, for example.

The teams usually have quantity of ground units (including boats and ships) that's equal to tickets divided by 100.

2,800 tickets ~ 28 ground targets. You win on such maps (NOT on the domination maps) either by annihilation of the other team, by destroying all ground forces, by destroying the minibases and airfield or by destroying a mix of ground targets and minibases.

The quickest and thus safest path to victory up to approx. BR 4.7 maps is to go after the ground targets only.

28 ground targets could be killed by 16 players within 3-4 minutes without anyone reloading, but hardly anybody plays the objectives. Instead, the wish their team "gl" as if winning was about luck, not about actually doing it yourself.

You can look at the "N" screen to see the current ticket count, and there you can observe the value of destroyed targets. The values are as follows:

• Heavy cruiser: 200 tickets
• A minibase: Depending on BR about 180-200 tickets
• Any other ship: 100 tickets
• Patrol boat: 100 tickets
• Tanks: 100 tickets
• Artillery: 100 tickets
• Armoured cars when they are mission critical ("blinking"): 100 tickets
• AAA when they are objectives ("blinking", but not airfield defences): 100 tickets
• non-objective ground forces: zero tickets
• aircraft kills: zero tickets 
• damaged, not yet destroyed airfields: zero tickets
• destroyed airfield: All tickets, reduced over time

All three minibases are worth at most as much as six tanks. But tanks kill each other on many maps, so you can save a blue tank worth 100 tickets if you kill an opposing tank before they kill each other in ground combat. That tank kill is then worth 200 tickets advantage to your team usually.

In short, to destroy a minibase takes multiple passes by a bomber up to about BR 4.x, and destroys at most as many tickets as a single mediocre pass over a group of tanks or destroyers. That's why it's a waste of time almost every time.

This changes in some matches BR 4.7 or higher. That's when Do 217 bombers appear in groups, and they can drop 4x 1000 kg bombs when upgraded. They are furthermore fast and somewhat agile - more able to reach rear red targets than Yer-2, Wellington and most other earlier bombers with 4,000 lbs or more.

There was an event a couple months ago where players suddenly wanted to win - almost all of them. Some incentive was given. The result was that many rushed to victory with the old bomber rush tactic that led to the addition of minibases in order to make 'victory by airfield kill' slower. Back then the best way to win was to have a couple quick-climbing bomber destroyers, a squad of Do217E or more of them, a handful B7A2 Ryusei as escort fighters and additional base bombers and a handful of players who actually killed a few ground targets. The usual ground strike match in those days saw both airfields killed. The winner was the team which had the airfield earlier or compensated for being slower by having killed more ground forces. Those few days made visible how to win Era IV "Ground strike" maps the quickest.

On lower-level "Ground strike" maps you better focus on killing ground targets ASAP - mass destruction! You may have a squad member or two who prefer air combat; they should pay attention to the "N" screen and prioritize those red pilots who've killed 5+ ground forces already or fly the best planes for the job (Su-2, A-20G, B-25J and the like).

The fundamental tactical philosophy on Ground strike and Assault maps

The match is usually a race in deleting the other team's tickets. Victory by annihilation ("The other team has lost all vehicles") is rather rare, particularly in Era III-IV.

(I)

The planes with a quick bomb reload, a very large bomb (bombers, most attackers) and rocket load (P-47D) and the few well-known planes with good enough armour-piercing shells or bullets to kill tanks are the ones who cause almost all of this ticket destruction. The exception to this are the Era I-II maps with armoured cars and other rather soft targets as objectives.

(II)  

The fighters' job is to buy time, to enable the offensive part of the team to do its job at whatever is its (usually embarrassingly slow) speed. They need to defend against the other team's offensive players first and foremost.

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Many bomber players - especially those who fly crap bombers like the mostly worthless Wellingtons or PBYs - believe that it's the fighter players' job to defend them. But to defend them usually is impossible, at least without neglecting the defence. Bomber players should thus focus on using capable bombers, since the success of their offensive actions depends on themselves more than on anything else. Offensive success isn't about luck, and not the responsibility of fighters. It's the responsibility of bomber players, and they fail by default if they make a crappy choice on the aircraft selection screen.

There are also a few bomber players who don't think that offensive is their job, and then proceed to seek air kills. B-25J, Pe-2, Ju 87D-5, B7A2 and since the last patch also SB2C players are especially prone to this (there are also a few Blenheim and SB2M pilots with a weird interest in turnfighting).

I have sympathy for the B7A2s in this regard, since their bomb load (800 kg) is less important than their BnZ capability. B7A2s are excellent escort fighters with a secondary capability to knock out a couple pillboxes from high altitude.

Nevertheless, almost every bomber player who's chasing red bombers over the blue half of the map wastes his bombing capability and should have played a fighter instead.

There's one tiny exception; red bombers may fly high above blue territory and be able to win the battle soon by an airfield kill. A respawning player will then want to intercept them ASAP, but the only way to do this in time might be some plane starting at the bomber spawn point. That's when Pe-2s loaded with rockets, B-25Js or B7A2s may be a fine, match saving choice.

Ship killing

Preferable loads in AB for ship and boat kills (forget about torpedoes!):

• Heavy cruiser: Two 1,000 lb or 500 kg bombs
• Light cruiser: One 1,000 lb or 500 kg bomb
• Destroyer: Two 127 mm rockets or one 500 lb bomb or one 250 kg bomb
• Cargo ships, Landing ships: One 127 mm rocket or one 100 kg bomb 
• Patrol boats: Use of autocannons or heavy machineguns, horizontally
• Landing craft: Use of autocannons or heavy machineguns

A fine bomb-dropping technique is simply to aim with the aiming circle in "F4" view and to drop in a shallow dive (20-40°) at the bow, on the ship's centreline. The ship is moving forward, and will often be hit dead centre by the time the bomb arrives.

My rocket attacks are typically the required amount of rockets + sometimes one additional one, fired from low altitude (rather horizontally).

In either case, watch out! Destroyers have masts that must not be rammed. The bomb explosions can hit your plane if you fly too low as well.

Groups of four or five destroyers (as on the "Crater" map) have great AAA firepower. Avoid flying in a straight line or flying slowly. Reload your bombs behind a nearby mountain (particularly on the "Crater" map). Three destroyers can be hit with reasonable accuracy in one pass, turn a few seconds after this pass for a second pass if you have enough bombs.

The best ship killer aside from bombers and attackers with their quick bomb reload is the P-47D series: A P-47D can have up to 2x 1,000 lb bombs, 1x 500 lb bomb and 10x 127 mm (5") rockets. This can kill an amazing up to eight destroyers without a reload. An AD-2 carries more, but it's slower. A F6F comes close (2x 1,000 lb + 6x 127 mm ~ five destroyers).

This is enough for any group of ships other than on the "Merchant Fleet" map.

The "Merchant Fleet" map is a challenging one for ship killing, since the stationary convoy is right below the reds' fighter spawn point. I advise to use the P-47D with a good load (3x 500 lb + 10x rockets), climb and avoid the main fighter clash. When spawning in the south, climb westward. When spawning in the North, climb to South-West. Pretend you're a fighter, and in case a fighter intercepts you, signal your attention and accept a head-on fight. Once close to the fleet, dive and drop one bomb on a destroyer each, then turn around to deliver each one rocket to a cargo ship.

Avoidable head-on / frontal encounters

The head-on or frontal fight seems to be the preferred tactic of most players. They simply fly straight to some red red dot, do not need to aim with lead and seek to kill.

Most of the time this seems to be wasteful, and newbies often even do it with inferior armament.

It's quite outrageous that players even do it too often in matches such as squadron battles, where individual performance shouldn't matter.

Here's what I observe all too-often.

A single red fighter approaches two blue fighters, which both seek a head-on fight - result: One red and one blue down. 

What should have been done: The blue one who has the red's attention dodges or evades entirely (away from the 2nd blue fighter) and the blue fighter that's got no red attention kills. Result: Blue kills 1, red kills 0.

Another outrageous example is that a smoking, even a burning red fighter will all-too often still get a head-on fight as a gift - even with one or multiple blue fighters on his tail. There's no need to engage it whatsoever, but most players will voluntarily accept a head-on with this dying plane even though the risk of severe damage to or total loss of the own aircraft is very high. There's even a substantial risk of fratricide (unintentional teamkill) in such a situation!

Players should switch some "tactics" lever to "on" in their brain. All too often their behaviour is the behaviour of a simplistic bot that's been only coded to turn straight towards the nearest red dot and shoot at it.

Sadly, I've seen stupid air combat tactics even among players who were the best of the best in ground attack tactics.