My apologies

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by IceFire

There are problems with changing it now... namely backwards compatibility gets seriously damaged in the IL-2 engine when you change the armament options. It'll be very messy and we may have to live with it. But I would advocate to add (adding is easy - subtraction is hard) the more accurate loadouts with the heavy centerline options plus the smaller wing loadouts.

I'm not that worried about a few inaccurate loadouts being included in the mix, as long as all the historically accurate loadouts are present.

Just consider the inaccurate loadouts to be "what if" or "field mod" loads.

[Marabekm]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

I'm not that worried about a few inaccurate loadouts being included in the mix, as long as all the historically accurate loadouts are present.

Just consider the inaccurate loadouts to be "what if" or "field mod" loads.

Well its also up to mission builder. You could easily just go in under plane limitations in mission builder and remove wrong loadouts. Now for SBD-5 I noticed another thread talking about depth charges and anti submarine warfare. Believe the Americans would have used mk 17 and later mk 41 depth bombs. Here: http://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/D/e/Depth_Charge.htm
Another interesting fact: The early SBDs could carry a smoke tank, but cool as it would be, would be next to useless in game.

Good book on the subject: Naval Weapons of World War Two by John Campbell

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Marabekm

Now for SBD-5 I noticed another thread talking about depth charges and anti submarine warfare. Believe the Americans would have used mk 17 and later mk 41 depth bombs.

There is a mod which includes a number of depth charges, and it appears to be very well done.

In fact, the only problem with ASW operations in the game is that submarines don't work like they should - they don't submerge or surface properly, and they lack AI to make tactical decisions that a real submarine commander would make.

Originally Posted by Marabekm

The early SBDs could carry a smoke tank, but cool as it would be, would be next to useless in game.

It doesn't appear that the smoke tank was ever used in combat, although allegedly during one early battle SBDs were supposed to lay a smokescreen to cover the approach of TBD torpedo bombers. I can't imagine that working out very well.

The smoke tank was supposed to lay a relatively heavy smokescreen to screen ship movements. I don't know what the tactical doctrine on using it was, though.

In any case, I think that the smoke tank got removed as part of attempts to reduce the SBD-3's weight after armor and self-sealing fuel tanks were added.