P-51 Bombs - LOW LEVEL BOMBING work around.

Regrettably, low level bombing from the Mustang is impossible because there is no way to set a fuse delay. Bombing from lower than about 800 ft. is suicide from your own bomb blast. There is, however, a kind of solution for mission builders that gives you the virtual effect of level bombing from very low altitudes.

In Mission Ed. choose your target. It can be a map object or stationary placeable object.

Place your Mustang with waypoints tracking over the target and arm it with its 2 M-64 bombs. Name it, e.g. "Player Group". Set a trigger zone (I name mine " flag activation zone") of about 70 ft. diameter just beyond the target but not enclosing any part of the target.

Set another zone ("explosion zone") just big enough to fit over the target. The two zones must not overlap.

Open the Triggers window and under TYPE -1 ONCE set a trigger ("trigger flag1").

Under CONDITIONS set ALL OF GROUP IN ZONE - (i.e. your player group in the flag activation zone).

Under ACTION set FLAG ON (1).

Now go back to TYPE -1 ONCE column and set another trigger ("trigger delayed explosion").

Under CONDITIONS for that trigger set TIME SINCE FLAG 1 at the time (in seconds) you want to delay the explosion. (e.g. 3 seconds).

Under ACTION set EXPLOSION for your "explosion trigger zone" and set its intensity (e.g. 1500).

Save your mission and fly it at low altitude (e.g. 100ft.) BUT only select your bombs for release -DO NOT ARM THEM. This means that your bombs drop on target but don't detonate. As you clear the target and enter the "trigger flag 1" zone your time delay starts and the explosion is triggered on its expiry. By then you are well away and safe from the blast.

The reason for placing the flag activation zone BEYOND the target is that the trigger doesn't seem to work if bombs are released while in that zone.

I tried using the "Bomb in Zone" trigger, which would have been a simpler solution, but unarmed bombs do not activate that trigger.

Best regards,

Mich.

More on P-51 Low Level Bombing.

Referring to the last paragraph of my previous post, I have discovered that the "Bomb in zone" (B.I.Z.) trigger will work with unarmed bombs. It seems that while testing the workaround I had not entered the correct bomb type in the B.I.Z. trigger window. So now we can use the B.I.Z trigger to activate the flag rather than using a regular trigger. The advantage is that, if you make your B.I.Z. circle about the same size as your target, the result properly reflects your bomb-aiming accuracy. In addition it seems OK to place your smaller Explosion zone circle on the target within the B.I.Z. circle.

Another tip is to make your explosion volume quite large (say 2000) when placing the explosion zone in a map building, otherwise the blast may not show. When using placed objects, you can use ACTION - Explode Unit , avoiding an Explosion zone altogether.

The only problem now is that the triggers sometimes fail, even if the bombing is accurate - I tested this by making the B.I.Z. very large so I couldn't miss. In my experience triggers do glitch sometimes. I would be interested to hear if it is a common problem.

Regards,

Mich.

Brilliant! It will be very useful for a mission I'm working on. One question though: If you do this with an AI formation, it will look silly if they fly on with their bombs still attached. If I tell them to drop them, they will be killed by the blast. Any workarounds for this? I mean if the player is not part of the attacking formation. Thanks!

Hi Reflected, Thanks for your comments. You may have noticed that I erroneously posted this in the wrong forum - should have been P-51- Bugs and Problems etc. I have, as yet, not considered AI low level bombing. Off the cuff I can think of one (inferior) solution: You could have your AI pilots come over the target low without bombs, triggering a fuse delay of X seconds, on expiration of which triggering either the blast in an explosion zone over target, or (as mentioned in the earlier post) using the "explode unit" option in ACTIONS. I know this is not ideal for your purpose but it could look good from a distance.

Wouldn't it be so much better if DCS just fixed the problem by giving us a fuse delay option.

Regards,

Mich.