Ju 88 Tutorials

[MajorBorris]

Welcome to the ATAG server's Ju88 resource page.

The thread has evolved to incorporate many of the Ju88's abilities and with input from some the communities most esteemed Ju88 pilots our knowledge of the Ju88 is growing every day.

Below is a Ju88 quick tutorial.


LOADOUT: Take about 20% fuel and a full bomb load, 18 50kg bay1, 10 50kg bay2, 4 250kg external pylons.

For bombing operations under 1km take the type j bombs/low level (selected bay must be open and bombs armed before dive run).

BOMBS: You must select bay# or all, mode(series/salvo/single), string amount(1-24 or infinite), and distance between bombs(1/5/10 meters depending on target saturation for series) speed(set to 500/600kph for dive, you will need a last second adjustment for speed) your elevation above sea level minus elevation of target above sea level , climb to desired height(3.5km and above to use superchargers but reduce throttle before engage, you have a WEP as well)

Full accuracy needs the use of the IAS TAS conversion chart but not needed on a dive run.

ENGINE START:


1) fuel cock 1 left tank

2) fuel cock 2 right tank

3) throttle idle

4) prop pitch full

5) water/oil rads closed

6) deselect eng 2

7) eng start (sometimes they misfire, if so eng start again)

8 ) deselect eng 1

9) select eng 2

10) eng start

11) select eng 1

12) warm to 40c water temp

13) elevator trim counter clockwise 1 revolution to 12 o'clock (take off position)

14) FLAPS: There are four indents for the flap lever. Set flaps one step up from bottom lever position (Landekl) you will hear them activate, then move the lever one more step up to 0 position when the indicator under the airbrake for flaps reads .6 with the cursor or the second dot down(take off position 25 degrees deflection) The top and bottom positions stow flaps.

TAKE OFF: from a full length concrete runway like tramecourt in the ATAG server. Open water rads and oil rads 30% on taxi, open 100% on takeoff and climb. Spool engines up to 100% throttle/rpm and full pitch with toe breaks deployed, release breaks and focus on a nice straight run with no back or forward yoke pressure(tail will lift on its own) apply slight back pressure(rotate) to the yoke at 180/185 kph (any slower you will stall, faster and you will overspeed tires), gear up on positive rate, throttle back to the yellow mark on manifold ATA pressure indicator/rpm (30 mins in yellow at climb), level out and gain enough speed till you can stow the flaps(200kph or so).

CLIMB: Adjust throttle (about 2km), prop pitch and trim throughout the climb phase to keep manifold pressure 1.25 and rpm2350 and the speed at 250kph for max climb rate (about 30 mins before damage will occur) (remove front gun for better visibility in cockpit)

DIVE: Reduce throttle to 0% prop pitch to 30-50%(rpm under yellow during dive) and water rad 0% and use elevator trim for a nice dive angle or you can use the dive break but it uses a bomb drop mechanism that deploys automatically(it sets trim auto for dive) and pulls you out of dive as well(it's the same system as Ju87 Stuka), angle is steeper but speed is reduced.


That's what it takes to get the 88 started and up in the air on a full real server.

Any additional input, thoughts, opinions, etc is appreciated!


Enjoy!

[ChiefRedCloud]

Thank you very, very much ....... IF we all contribute things such as this, we'll have a deversified AF in no time. Again, thanks.

[Marmus]

Does anybody know if the following items work in the Ju-88?

1. fuel mixture - I set the keyboard commands, but they do not appear to do anything.

2. fuel cocks #3 to #8 - these are located on a panel on the left wall, next to the undercarriage lever. Each one will switch on and off. Do they work? I know that in the real ju-88, they were used for transferring fuel from tank to tank during long trips. Is this feature modeled?

3. carburetor heater commands - do they do anything? are they needed? future use, maybe?

4. pitot tube heater - do they do anything? are they needed? future use, maybe? or just needed at higher altitudes?

5. level bombing/gyro - I have read in several forums that the gyro is not working in the Ju-88 and needs to be patched. Is this something that was confirmed by 1C? or is it that the system is too complicated and no one has figured it out? I prefer manual level bombing as opposed to the automated level bombing.....does this make a difference in getting level bombing working?

Also, looking for tips on an additional item:
6. trim - as part of 5 above, any hints on getting proper trimming? I was successful in getting nose trimming set, but the bird likes to roll and can't seem to get the aileron or rudder trim set successfully? They seem to fight each other....probably just need some more practice, but wondering if anybody has tips.

Thanks.

[Roblex]

Does anybody know if the following items work in the Ju-88?

<snip>

4. pitot tube heater - do they do anything? are they needed? future use, maybe? or just needed at higher altitudes?
<snip>

Thanks.

I am guessing it does. I did a search for 'Pitot' and found a Steam announcement from October 2012 that mentions

* Reworked the way altimeter reacts to pitot icing;

http://store.steampowered.com/news/?appids=63950

[MajorBorris]

You are awsesome Blackdog!

Marmus too!

I may be grounded due to technical difficulties for a little bit longer but I am glad to see another 88 pilot comming up, good luck Aus3620!

Question: Has anyone improved the level bombing acurracy yet?

See ya in the air!

[Blackdog_kt]

To be honest, i haven't fiddled much with level bombing lately. I think we need a custom-made mission in the FMB to test this accurately, like a bombing training range.

Airspawn 30-50 kms from the target so that we have some time to set everything up (we can always use time compression if we want to), lots of targets so we can pick and choose, targets stretching for a sufficient distance to make multiple runs in one mission playthrough, zero wind and clear weather, zero elevation of targets, that kind of thing.

I might get to grips with it if i have time during the weekend, but i was thinking that maybe we'd all be better off if i just tidied up the bomber bug reporting thread over on the official forums and made it a sticky for a while to get 1C's attention, i don't know.

In any case, what we'd need in such an FMB mission is targets at sea level and brightly colored ones, possibly arranged in circles to measure our accuracy and deduce results on how off the bombsights really are: if we know how many meters short or long they drop, given our altitude and airspeed we can then calculate the needed correction to use in the bombsights until they fix them.

The only way i see to satisfy all these conditions is fire up the FMB, lay a ton of bridges all over the channel so that they essentially cover a few square kms (so that it's mostly at sea level) and then start placing the most brightly colored objects i can find on those bridges, arranged in concentric circles. I'm thinking of the lighthouses here.

It's worth a try i think

[Marmus]

I only just started fiddling with level bombing this evening....think I got the basic jist of how the autopilot works....will take some practice. I would like to do an in-depth tutorial video explaining it all using the information compiled in this thread. But first need to figure it out for myself, LOL.

[aus3620]

Great idea re the bombing range with the known variables. An issue I found is the visability/spawning of the targets. I placed a large hanger on Ramsgate and approached at a height of 3000 metres. The target does not spawn/become visible until quite late in the sequence. This maybe just my choice of object, need to test some other target objects.

Nice idea re a tutorial video Marmus, if I can assist give me a yell. Mind you I'm still wrestling with the basics of level-bombing myself!

[MajorBorris]

Regarding %20 fuel:

In the begining it seemed to me more than %20 was not needed when taking off from Tramecourt.

However;

Lately I have been taking much more so that when my main feeder tanks have a leak I can start the fuel cock sequence with fuel to spare

[Blackdog_kt]

I seem to remember you saying at an earlier date that the sim automatically takes care of pumping fuel from the "reserve" tanks to the feeder tanks, by turning on the respective fuel switches as fuel is depleted. Did they change it or did it only work for normal consumption (ie, not in the event of fuel leaks)?

I also have something else to ask. A few days ago i was online and on the way home from the Ramsgate target i picked up a Spit. I had a human gunner and he did a pretty good job, i would wait for him to fire (and he did in beautiful, controlled bursts) in order not to spoil his aim and then i would weave, reverse direction, etc. The whole thing almost ended in a scissors fight (it's amazing how much you can throw the 88 around when it's not carrying a bomb load), the Spit was low on ammo from a previous engagement and i called Lolsav on TS who came by and chased him off.

However, we did get hit a bit and i lost the hydraulic pump. So, upon reaching Tramecourt i couldn't lower flaps or gear and i had to side-slip it in for a belly landing. All in all a great sortie, but i was left with two questions:

1) Does the 88 have a manual hand pump for situations like this?

2) Are gear and flaps supposed to be hydraulically powered? The reason i'm asking is that the luftwaffe had a preference for electric motors usually so i was kind of surprised to see them inoperative, especially the flaps.

Thanks in advance for any answers

Also, volunteers are needed for a bit of pressure application. Just pile into the Friday update thread at 1c forums, go to page 9, scroll down near the end of the page and you'll find my post. If you want to get our bombsights fixed then give it a read, quote it and add your own input about the matter. I suspect the amount of work required to fix the Lofte would be similar to the hotfix they did for the 100 octane Hurricane that wouldn't start. All our testing points to a mix-up between metric and imperial units, maybe all the have to do is a multiplication/division in the code to convert them. So, since we have another week until they give us a patch, maybe we'll get lucky, they will take notice and we'll have it ready next Friday.

No offence to the people who don't fly bombers, but i've been harping on about that gyrocompass on the 88 ever since the sim was released and it only got fixed in the previous beta, while fighters usually get priority in everything because they are more popular (they could have simply copy-pasted the working code from the 111 to the 88 all this time). Well, it seems that as the game is getting more playable and people are building more complex missions, we'll be needing those bombers pretty soon.

Technically we have bombers, but now that channel command is up and running i'm not going to go up to 7km in formation just so the other players have something interesting to shoot when i can't blow stuff up from altitude, and i'm getting tired of dive bombing and getting unfriendly "escorts" at the pull-up, not to mention the flak will be more realistic in this mission. So let's "zerg rush" the update thread a bit and who knows, maybe next week we'll be carpet bombing Wolf's targets

[MajorBorris]

Fixed the bomb sights?

Well that is fantastic

We are going to have some fun with the bombers now.

I cant wait to see a 20 bomber formation!

[MajorBorris]

Welcome Marmis, Ill try to help but I am learning as I go too : )


1) Auto mixture since ww1 on many German planes. I think its possible to manually do the mix. There is a fuel enricher for start up and such but not modeled as of yet.

2) 1-2 external. 8 rear tank. 6/5 wing tanks. 3 forward tank, use in that order. . the main feeders have no numbers. The Ju 88 will automatically pump for you but if the pump is damaged you have to manually pump the fuel/oil, I haven’t been able to confirm if the manual pump works. With shorter trips and small fuel loads, Im not sure they have fuel but I have noticed once that the No#8 cock auto engaged when I had a leak one time.


3) Fuel injected.

4) Not sure if modeled but I use it when ambient temp reaches 0, Pitot tube’s get air pressure from outside the plane to provide pressure to instruments that use rubber diaphragms for readings like altitude speed etc. If that tube gets clogged by ice the pilot may receive erroneous readings. Modern airliners have crashed from that tube being clogged from ice or even tape.

5) In the last patch it was said that the gyro subroutine was reworked for he111 and Ju88. I don’t know what that means but I think many of us have an idea on how to set up the auto pilot just very few can get it to work on the Ju88 (one time I did on the deck) I would think having the aircraft level will make a huge difference on accuracy. There is a TAS IAS chart in the IL2 manual in your hard drive that is critical as well as the altitude of the target above see level(that’s posted some where for all airfields).

6) Set elevator trim for the phase of flight desired (climb 250kph/cruise320hph), then rudder, then elevator again then aileron.

The Ju88 is a great plane to fly and a lot of fun, if you want to join our ts3 tonight I will be on around 6pm CST. The other folks on ts3 are very helpful as well so feel free to check out ATAG coms anytime :happy

[Marmus]

Thanks for clarifying, MajorBorris!!

1. auto, cool.....but I kinda liked making my B-17 smoke back in IL-2:1946, LOL.

2. OK. I saw the translated pilot notes that discuss the real world fuel tanks, etc.....we will have to see how close it matches!!

3. ahhh...OK.

4. Yup, it may be like a sugar pill, but I will start to use it.

5. I will continue to fiddle with it then......I prefer to use the "Bombsight Table v2" app that I used in IL-2:1946......easier than tables. I may write a similar app for my Droid phone.

6. Thanks for the trim tips.....I have been flying for over 3 years and never really got the hang of trim....I just have a tired hand after most flights.

I have yet to get online with CloD much yet.....just adds to the confusion at this point, LOL. I find navigation in this game ALOT harder than IL-2:1946....

[335th_GRAthos]

...many of us have an idea on how to set up the auto pilot just very few can get it to work on the Ju88

Yeah, I can put my name on this list, no problems setting the ME110 autocourse but no luck with the JU88...

If anybody manages to make it work, I would be grateful!


~S~

PS. If anyone reads German and is interested, I have the (german) explanations for the STUKA attack run in a JU88 (Alfred Price -The Bomber in World War II)

[Puppet]

Simply put, the course hold in the Ju88 does not work because the directional gyro does not work.

That said, some measure of stability has been found from carefully setting the course hold to the nonfunctional gyro. This however is a pain because the values on the course hold(bottom scale) and the values on the gyro(top scale) do not match up perfectly in any of the German aircraft. So, to fly a heading of 300(as read from the gyro)you must actually set the course hold to 290ish in all the German aircraft.

Normally this isn't a big deal as the aircraft will adjust itself for any small variation in heading(that's what the course hold does). However, because the gyro doesn't work, and its very tricky to decide exactly how much difference you need between gyro setting and course hold, the Ju88 will generally not fly straight and level on course hold. Instead it will forever make a small correction to the left or right.

This typically, if left unattended will result in excessive roll and eventually the dreaded "John F. Kennedy, Jr. special" death spiral. The results of which are generally disastrous.

[335th_GRAthos]

Simply put, the course hold in the Ju88 does not work because the directional gyro does not work.

Does not work!? Where is Collander??????

Pity, I had hoped they had fixed it

Thanks for the explanations

~S~

[335th_GRAthos]

PS. If anyone reads German and is interested, I have the (german) explanations for the STUKA attack run in a JU88 (Alfred Price -The Bomber in World War II)

I realised that you do not understand German from your other post at 1c

Too much work to translate a whole manual but you probably need only parts like the explanation of the sturzflugangriff as shown in the diagram

JU88 stuka bomb angriff extract2.zip


~S~

[MajorBorris]

You would be suprised how much you can learn from some of the folks on coms and there generaly fun too:eek:

The satisfaction of defeating live targets is hard to explain but some people's teeth tingle or there heart rates go way up others gyrate there legs at high speed when there all pumped up but in general the competitive nature in many of the pilots fuels half the fun.

Also there are all skill types represented on the coms and all are respected equaly and its a rather casual group so dont feel like you have to gain a certain level of skill before jumping on coms.

As for Navigation I can help you there.

1) Open up the Map and make it as big as you can and pick a starting point and ending point.

2) R click the map.

3) Choose tools.

4) Choose the Protractor symbol and make it highlighted.

5) Click and hold the L mouse over starting point and drag the line to the end point, release L mouse.

6) Click L mouse over the starting point again and drag line due north a little bit and release.

7) The number that is revealed is subtracted from 360 giving the bearing to target.

8) The Ruler gives distance which used with speed can give times, there's a clock on the yoke in the Ju 88.

9) The Flag makes way points that can be used with time and landmarks to reference trip progress or just waypoints:uhoh.

See ya in the air

[MajorBorris]

Keller found the work arround for the He111 in this fashion. Bombing in the FMB untill the bombs would hit.

The last patch invalidated his findings.

They must have tweaked the bombing model again.

We will have 20 human bombers in formation in the future with the work we are doing!

See ya in the air!

[MajorBorris]

"Reworked bombardier cockpits in aircraft so affected (He. 111 and Ju. 8 to accomodate new Lotfe gyro routines"

Thats from the last patch notes, at the time I thought a fix was in there, guess not.

[MajorBorris]

Thats cool 335th_GRAthos, so are you saying you could translate A-F? Is that from the flight manual?

Thanks for the info!

[Dutch]

Ich habe nur ein bisschen Deutsch, aber es ist von der schul und es ist uber dreissig jahren alt.

So how did I do then? :happy

[335th_GRAthos]

Genau wie du es gesagt hast, ьber dreiЯig Jahre alt...:Grin:

Translation: Yeah, you convinced me, I'll translate


@Major_Borris: The extract is from the book "Combat Development in World War Two: Bomber Aircraft"
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Combat-Devel...6966340&sr=1-2
Unfortunately I have the German version

~S~

[335th_GRAthos]

Tell me if you can read the English text I attached:

JU88 stuka bomb angriff explanations.zip

~S~

[Dutch]

'Genau wie du es gesagt hast, ьber dreiЯig Jahre alt...:Grin:'

:laugh1 :uhoh

Das Dokument ist immer noch auf Deutsch. :Grin:

[MajorBorris]

Ahh, I wondered if it was showing the performance of the plane as it wallows through the cloud.

I avoided the clouds there after not testing the Pitot

Are there other conditions that you have seen Blackdog where the pitot helps?

[Blackdog_kt]

Not really, it's just for your instruments to display correct data. That being said, the clouds are a bit excessive in their icing tendencies as they are currently modeled, so your performance does drop when flying through them every single time. I saw this flying an 88 the other day on ATAG, i was normally climbing to altitude and then decided to fly through a cloud. When the canopy was all fogged up i was dropping like a stone, i think the VSI was registering a descent of more than 5 m/sec.

In other bomber related news, wikipedia has some pretty good articles about wartime bombsights. The Lofte 7 is not explained in too much depth but the Norden is and it's very similar. Actually, a spy was working in the Norden factory and at some point passed on information to German agents, constructing plans from memory, and that's what the Lofte was based on. It actually is a simpler device than the Norden and requires less effort to calibrate.

The British ones are covered as well, especially the cranky old contraption that is used on the Blenheim (which is a WWI era design by the way). A lot of people reported that you need to input your indicated airspeed to that sight instead of your ground speed and it turns out that's the correct way to do it in the real thing as well. The way it worked was that they would input their IAS, altitude, wind direction, wind speed and the sight was essentially working like a slide-ruler/analog computer, transferring those inputs via gears, etc to move the two sighting markers around. So it automatically adjusted your aiming angle by correlating IAS with altitude (which is essentially a TAS calculation), then the wind data provided the actual ground speed and drift.

The sight required leveling each time the aircraft angle of attack changed (so that for example it doesn't point ahead when your nose is up), but this is done automatically since a few patches ago by flying relatively straight for a few seconds. We do have two liquid/bubble level indicators on the in-game sight to judge it and even with the absence of an autopilot or level stabilizer function, i find that the bubble usually rests between the two markers that denote level.

There is also a fairly complicated process of measuring the wind (with three different methods available) by using the compass attached to the base of the bombsight, but this is somewhat simplified in the sim as well. In reality they would rotate that compass to set wind direction, then set the wind speed and this would tilt the protruding horizontal bars of the sight left/right. In the sim we can directly set the bombsight left/right offset. The trick is to pick an arbitrary point on the ground ahead of those parallel wires and watch it as you fly over it. If the sight is correctly calibrated for drift (either due to wind or due to sideslip, and many of use fly with sidelsip and incorrect rudder trim on purpose to counter the Blenheim's tendency to roll, so that we can actually fly somewhat hands-off and aim the bombs), that arbitrary point will be moving parallel to the wires. It's better to select a ground feature that will be moving between the wires to accurately judge this. If it starts moving between them but then "touches" one of the wires as it moves down your screen, your sight is off. If everything is set correctly, it should simply move through those wires.

So, getting that angle gives you the offset you need to fly at to arrive over the target. It's like crabbing in a crosswind landing, you just turn into the wind/against the sideslip as many degrees as the sight offset you used to calibrate the wires. I'm not sure if you need to recenter it to actually aim though once you are on course, i'll have to reread that section of the article. This is the so called CSBS (course stabilizing bomb sight i think it means) and the one we have in the Blen is either a Mk.IX or a Mk.VII model.

The most mind blowing thing however is the Mk.XIV they fitted to RAF bombers from 1942 onwards. It's not as accurate as the Norden and Lofte but get this, it takes only 10 seconds to settle and you can bomb at a slight climb or a shallow dive. The bombardier only inputs target elevation, wind direction and speed, as well as the terminal velocity of the bombs (this is done in all sights to calculate bomb trajectories according to altitude and airspeed at the time of dropping, but the sim does it automatically). The earlier models (MK.XII i think?) actually needed an extra crewman to fiddle with an analog computer and turn knobs and switches around to match what the aircraft instruments displayed, but the Mk.XIV made this automatic, reading altitude and airspeed directly from the instruments.

Its downside was that in order to measure wind you had to follow the most complicated method of the tree available for the Blenheim sight: fly for a few seconds at three different headings (preferably 120 degrees apart) and do some calculations.
The upside however was that once wind was known they could just point the bomber at the target and wait until it passed under the reticule. The sight was gyrostabilized and had a moving reflector sight, showing exactly where the bombs would fall if you pressed the button. Essentially it's like the CCIP mode (continuously calculated impact point) in a modern HUD!
This means they didn't have to be flying level (it worked from 20 degrees nose down to 5 degrees nose up) and incidentally, the best way to make flak miss was to alternate climbs and dives every few seconds. Plus, it was possible to execute a bomb release mere seconds after executing a turn. In other words, make a 180 to get out of the narrow radar cone of a following night-fighter, then turn around again and release within 10-15 seconds.
It also had modified variants for low altitude operations with anti-shipping Mosquitoes. Those read altitude directly off a radio altimeter because at low altitudes pressure changes are frequent and that changes the readouts on analog altimeters. These variants were also adjusted to operate at higher speeds and since those Mossies didn't have a glass nose, the sight was mounted in front of the pilot and used for bombing in a shallow dive.

Pretty awesome stuff i'm telling you, makes me wish we'd get some night fighters and night bombers at some point. Then we could have missions that run a full day/night cycle and blow up each other in the dark

[MajorBorris]

Hi Marmus!

I have yet to ever see my instruments difer from expected readings and have asked on the 1c forums if anyone else has verified the Pitot tube's funcionality to no avail; except for a correction regarding its operation.

I commented on the Pito tube in Blackdogs Bomber bugs thread too.

Maybe the weather on the ATAG server comes into play?

I still turn it on anyway.

If it is dark in the server the Pito tube light illuminates the compass, very handy since the secondary light does not work yet.

The manuals I have seen have light for the Pito tube on the left side of the panel in real life. In the sim it's on the right, where the auto pilot light is supposed to be.

[Blackdog_kt]

I've seen airspeed readings rapidly reducing when flying through cloud and the canopy is fogging up, which can be corrected by turning on the pitot tube heater. This was in since the very first release version by the way.

[MajorBorris]

Hey thanks GRAthos, yes I see your translation