Bomber Crew: missions 12-15

Title Bomber Crew: missions 12-15
Author Bruce Geryk
Posted in Game diaries
When December 20, 2017

Mission 12: Operation Hydra (the second critical mission) is the second outright failure of the campaign. We knew something was up when Biggins walked into the briefing hut with a stern look on his face, even though we hadn’t done anything wrong recently..

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@RichVR is a hero and so dreamy. Poor @Eric_Majkut. That’s a sad fate for such a fine medic.

Woohoo! I’m immortalized now.

I use my engineer as the ventral turret gunner. I figure it’s a central location where he can quickly get to anything that needs to be fixed. You don’t actually need engineer skill to use the engine extinguishers, so I have my navigator do that.

I always wanted to be a wing walker. NOT. Great writing.

I haven’t finished the campaign but I found the ventral turret to be more trouble than its worth in cost and weight and management. Interestingly enough in IRL the British eventually ditched the ventral turret also.

I’ve finished the campaign and bombed Hitler’s bunker and in the later stages of the game you are flying at high altitude a lot and the ventral turret becomes crucial as a lot of planes come at you from below. Twin-engine Schrage Musik fighters fighters like to park down there and can rip you up.

As you point out, the ventral turret was phased out IRL very early - so early that a small fraction of planes ever had it, and it had been phased out before 1943 when the real Bomber Command offensive began. It was essentially not part of the operational Lanc, as I think was pointed out by @Jason_Levine in another thread that this impinged on the large bombload.

Possible correction:
“Mission 15: Mission [sic?]”