Bomber Crew

Bomber Crew

164 ratings
What Bomber Crew Doesnt Tell you!
By Pixel
This will be constantly updated as I progress in the game and discover new things

As is Bomber crew is a pretty solid game but its lacking in the survival tutorial area and some other helpful tips you would think it would share. I’m going to try and put these into categories and if you know something that should be there put it in the comments and I might add it.
   
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Game Stage
When I talk about game stage like early, mid and late I will be refering to this picture.

Bailing Out
When it comes to returning to base in bomber crew it can become quite tense when you a) only have one functioning landing or b) no landing gear and no bomb bay doors. It is possible for you to land with only one wheel and there won’t be any major problems, if however one of your crew is injured in the landing and I use that word loosely he will not die and be forever lost to the bomber in the sky and in the post mission screen it will say he survive.


Now if you have no landing gear and seven parachutes you’re going to have to jump, start with the gunners and bombardier, the radio operator, mechanic and finally the navigator (after setting a custom course) and pilot (make sure the plane is at medium altitude before jumping). You want to try and aim for a flat green area on the ground as the dark green forest that do the landscape will kill your crew on contact for some reason. Once the plane has crashed and your return to base objective has been failed you will return to the post mission screen where you will be greeted by a rng spin which will determine you crewman’s fate (at this point I will like to add that even if you bail out over England you will still get this) and it will role for you crewman’s survival rating leaving them dead or alive ready for the next mission.

I have not used the pigeon yet to see if this will change the results and I haven’t bailed out at sea yet, so if you have done one or both of these please leave a comment.
Armaments Vs Weight
In the early game you only have access to good ol Vickers 303. Machine guns and one B.S.A 50. Cal. The 50. Cal will be in that stage of the game pretty good for damage output and has low weight (for some reason which doesn’t make sense) but has a low magazine size and requires more reloading.

When you get access to quad Mk 3 & Mk 4 303.’s I would recommend putting them everywhere you can as they deal so much damage and have a high magazine capacity, but they come with a high weight.

In the late game you should start to switch back to 50. Cal’s dude to weight becoming more of a factor with heavier Radar, Electrics, etc. etc. The late game 50.’s actually start to put more damage in again like you would expect them to but also maintain a low weight even when you are running quad mounts and belt fed tail gun. These guns will make quick work of lone ace’s that come for you especially if you have a well-trained crew.

While in the early game stage and you don’t have accesses to belt fed tail guns you can place ammo packs on the equipment racks to save your tail gunner running so far back. I would recommend that you get one of your more light weight crew members to refill this rack to save even more time for you tail gunners.

Saving Weight
When it come to your weight limits your engines mean everything and in the early and mid game you can get away with standard engines as they give you the most weight, there is one exception for this and it is the armoured engine Mk 3, it has the same weight increase as the standard Mk 3 but has the benefit of being armoured.



When it comes to the late game with missions like D-Day and the berlin flack tower (for the love of god please reduce the amount of jet fighters after you bomb the tower dev’s thanks) your gonna need a lot of armour and your engines are gonna need it to, but I hear you say “I need all this ♥♥♥♥ on my plane do you really think I’m going to strip important components to do this” No I don’t because I didn’t either I went and found the right balance of engine to weight ratio and found that 2 Mk 3 lightweight engines and 2 Mk 5 armoured engines will provide 9500 weight limit to your bomber.

Now if you want everything on your plane like all the survival stuff but don’t care about your engines you can have 4 Mk 3 lightweight engines for 13000 weight limit.

And for an extra bit when it comes to repairing your engines make sure you do it sooner rather than later, whenever you get a break from enemy fighters and don’t run into flack or start climbing and descending altitude fix your dam engines. If you don’t feel safe with sending your crew onto the wing of a bomber at 20,000 ft. give them a parachute so if they fall off they won’t but will probably spend the rest of the war in a P.O.W camp.
High Altitude Bombing & Thermal Protection
Towards the start of the late game you will start getting high altitude bombing missions, but as I have seen on the forms here not many people know what the magic is when it comes to thermal protection, well it's 40 and how do you get thermal protection 40? Electric boots and gloves, it's really that simple.

As far as I know there is no other way to get thermal protection of 40 than the electric boots and gloves.

When bombing from high altitude make sure to take your time and don’t rush it, take some time to observe gaps in the clouds and plan a route to use the holes in the cloud layer to your advantage for the final bomb run.
41 Comments
Pixel  [author] 19 Dec, 2024 @ 9:27am 
Hi mate, as far as I'm aware adding armour to the plane increases its overall health and section health.

As for crew armour you want to equip them with body armour as that does buff their health a little and is important for late game encounters.
Flightless 18 Dec, 2024 @ 2:55pm 
does the aircrafts armor protect the crew or just increases health of the aircraft?
Hankith 3 Jan, 2023 @ 7:54pm 
ok so if dont have landing gear or have sumthing wierd if you have armord fusalge 3 or up (for the whole plane) your plane will be intact and you wont lose progress and do note you have to have your crew at decent health for them to surrvuive and drop all bombs before trying
Titan Methos 24 Dec, 2021 @ 3:32pm 
If your landing gear are shot out, drop your left over bombs before trying to land. You can land on the air-strip even with no landing-gear, and save both your bomber and your crew, so long as you finish on the run-way. But if your belly hits with bombs in the bay (doors or not) you're screwed as the bombs will detonate.

If your bomber is shot to pieces, but your crew still alive and in decent health, Emergency Landings can be your best friend, especially if you can get back over friendly territory where the "Speed Up" button appears and you can avoid forests, cities, or water. (Trust me, open plains are not hard.) Lose the bomber but save the crew (Guaranteed if you land on the British Isle and non-critical, Survival Stats if in Europe,) without needing all the parachutes to bail out. So long as you lose your bombs before hitting the ground, even your moderately injured crew will often survive.
corkyduke101 26 Nov, 2021 @ 1:32am 
Thermal suits mk 3, Electric Gloves but I use Plimsolls for the boots, it increases their speed.
Bored_Kerbonaut 12 May, 2021 @ 12:05pm 
to get thermal 40 you can buy secret weapons and get thermal suits
Faded 9 Jun, 2020 @ 1:10pm 
lol my plane got the big boi 20MM cannons and air to air rockets
BlitzzBob 7 Jun, 2020 @ 8:35am 
I managed to land with my landing gear blown off by approaching the runway as normal and then when it starts to descend I click lean and then click emergency landing. It went down pretty rough and injured most of the crew but at mission end screen it said my plane was recovered and repaired and all my crew lived.
amyante 2 Jun, 2020 @ 4:08am 
Crew: Your bomber and engineer can grab Gunner as secondary. Since your bomber is fairly well armored and has a good set of guns on it, crew speed isn't much of a factor so go full armor and protection on them. All my crew was kitted out in Thermal Flightsuit 3, Flak Helmet 2, Advanced O2 bottle, Toughened Survival Vest Mk. 1, Leather gloves and Thermal boots.

^ The above gave all crew around 60 armor, 32 thermal, and another +46/+34 survival stats on gear alone, with the tradeoff being 50% speed, but with everyone having essentially fixed stations speed doesn't matter anyway. I could optimize it a bit more, but the above should be WELL capable of getting you past the final mission no matter how many fighters the AI throws your way. All Aces were shot down, AP and HE Ammo skills are godsends in how fast they can murderf**k entire clusters of fighters, especially on the best turrets when you have four of them.

Anyway, hope this helps :)

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amyante 2 Jun, 2020 @ 4:08am 
I had the following setup on my aircraft:

Engines:
- Inner slots: Armored Mk. 5
- Outer slots: Lightweight Mk. 3

^ The idea there was that the outer ones will most likely get damaged, but the inner ones are much harder to disable and the easiest to reach if you need to send a mechanic out.

Turrets: All .50X4 Mk. 3 + Ammo Feed. Because nazis can't shoot you when they're dead.

Systems: Mk. 5 Radar, max everything else so your mechanic can keep manning turrets.

Equipment: 3-slot racks, total of 7 parachutes, one First Aid kit in every rack and a fire extinguisher at the front where the important stuff is.

Fuselage: Lightweight Mk. 5 on Nose and Front, Armored Mk. 7 everywhere else

^ Pretty much every enemy is going to try and get behind you, so front armor isn't really that useful.

Survival: Max.

Total aircraft stats: 9455/9500 weight, and 45/45 survival.

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