How good are naval bombers?

[coffeemm8]

Playing as the US and built a poop ton of them knowing that I'm going to fight Japan eventually. Good idea or no?

[DieMauer]

Let me rename your question to: "How effective are naval bombers" , to answer it properly.

They are effective if you consider that, unlike reallife, there is no "lucky hit" and sink a ship like it has been in reallife.

In hoi3 you have to persistently attack a fleet over a period of days to guarantee any damage. This is regardless of whether you're using land-based aircraft or CAGs.

That being said naval bombardments against vessels aren't automatic or immediately decisive. Also, you'll never be notified when your naval bombers sink a vessel - you'll have to look at the stats for that. If you keep doing damage they'll spend more time in port than they will attacking you.

Also, naval bombers are best against vessels in port, so port strike them when you can.

Edit: http://www.hoi3wiki.com/Naval_Bomber_statistics

See this link for more statistics.

[dhbaer]

They are also good at convoy raiding.

[GIJoe597]

At the later levels of Research/Tech, they are devastatating. But, I think CVs and CAGs are more important to have.

[Walta Gaming]

NAV's are good for coastal nations like Italy or the UK but for long range CAG's and CV's are a must since NAV's will get shot down without fighter support and have a limited range for locations like the Pacific.

[red66]

i use a mixture of 1 twin engine fighter and 2-3 nav bombers. or 1 twin engine fighter and 2-3 light bombers. always have fighter escorts!!!! Btw this is black ice.

[dhbaer]

In BICE, as Germany, once you take France, station three wings (6 each) of Naval bombers on the southwest French coast. Have them convoy raid off of the coast of Spain and Portugal. They will sink more convoys than your subs will. Nearly all the British supply/covoy routes to the Mediteranean, Africa and India go along that strech.