How to win Air Assault

A guide that aims to improve the average player's win rate in the air assault gamemode (at top tier).

Introduction

The air assault mode is a PvE mission in which you fight along with ~9 players against 15 waves consisting of attackers and bombers. Depending on the map your base, which you have to defend against the bombers has a certain healthpool. On most maps a single bomber that was not shot down is enough to destroy the base.
During 2 out of the 15 waves artillery spawns. Those ~20 howitzers reduce the bases life by 1 every ~1,2 seconds.

There are 5 maps:
Stalingrad: He-177 A-5 and Do 217 M-1

Zhengzhou: G8N1 and Kikka

Norway: Lincoln B Mk II and Canberra B Mk 2

Ruhr: B-29A-BN and F3D-1

Berlin: Tu-4 and Su-6 (M-71F)

This mode is usually used for grinding newly researched vehicles or to get the 300 % booster if you win. You are ill advised to play this mode for grinding silver lions (SL). The SL rewards are pretty low and are somewhere between 20.000 and 30.000 SL without premium. For some vehicles the repair cost is astronomically high, which means that you won't make any money even if you win.

Therefore it is more important to win in assault than it is in your average PvP match. You still get a lot of RP and SL if you do well in a lost battle, but in assault you will only get a few hundred RP and are very likely to lose money. Hence it should be in everyones interest to win (and not go afk or play passively although it happens quite frequently in air assault battles).

More details such as the amount of aircraft per wave, which aircraft spawn in which wave as well as the spawn hight of bombers and attackers can be found in the official War Thunder Wiki: https://wiki.warthunder.com/Assault_Mode#Air_Assault

Before you queue

If you want to grind an aircraft's modifications there is not much to do before queueing. However, if you have it, take a fast attack aircraft with you. You can spawn it during an artillery wave and easily destroy half of the howitzers in one attack run.

If you have enough SL saved up then upgrade your crews to 'expert' level. That way you will have a higher reload rate and other boni that will help you deal with multiple targets.

If you are looking for the best aircraft to destroy the bombers, there are quite a few candidates:

Tier I:
F-4 Phantoms with gunpods and SARH missiles

MiG-27M and K with Kh-29T (TV guided missiles with 150kg of TNT; enough to kill multiple bombers with one missile)

F-14 with Phoenix missiles (as long as you know how to individually select targets (on your radar) for the Phoenix missiles you will be able to get six kills for six missiles)

Tier II:
Pretty much every Mach 2 capable jet with gunpods and/or a lot of missiles (MiG-23, Su-17 and 22, F-104 etc.)

You can make more than those mentioned work, but I wouldn't count them as 'the best' for air assault. Just having one of those doesn't mean that you know how to play the gamemode or that you'll have an easy time. I regularly see lots of F-14's with barely more than 10 kills, but I'll get to that later.

What to do

At the beginning of the match, after you have spawned in you can already look for the first bomber wave. They don't have their markers yet, but you will be able to see them in the distance.



In general the priority list is the following:

1. Bombers
2. Howitzers
3. Attackers

There are, however, maps where your base doesn't have much hitpoints. On Norway you definitely need to focus the howitzers quickly. Therefore you either should bail out of your current aircraft and get in an attacker OR closely watch the killfeed and the scoreboard whether one or two of your team members are bailing out or have bombs equipped.

Most matches are lost because of two things: Too many people go for the howitzers and the bombers make it to the base OR people abandon one wave for the sake of attacking the next wave that has already spwaned in.

If a situation ever looks like this, then help your team and finish off that last wave. You never know; the aircraft of your team members might be damaged or out of ammo and therefore they might not be able to destroy the bombers in time. Remember: a single bomber is enough to end the whole game.

The biggest mistake in this mode is thinking: My team will kill them and if they are unable to, I can blame them for being incompetent. That way you will lose more than necessarry and miss the opportunity for lots of RP and the 300 % booster.

The best way to avoid these things is to communicate with your team. If you have an attacker, then tell your team that you are going for the howitzers. 2-3 people are more than enough for that task. If there are 5 or more people going for the artillery the game is lost in 90 % of the cases because there are not enough people to fend off the bombers. It's a different story for attacker waves, since they are slow and some of them don't even have defensive armament.

What not to do

For some reason lots of people think of air assault as an 'easy win'. That is true, if everyone does their job, but going afk or chilling on the airfield is obviously counter-productive.

Don't be that guy ...

The same goes for people that uptier their low-tier friends into the top bracket. They can't do anything and are just a hinderance for the team, especially if it's a full squad with a single bracket-appropriate aircraft and the rest having a BR of e.g. 2.3.

... or these guys.

The third point is a bit controversial. However, if you really want to win you shouldn't land on the airfield. The reason is simple: You are passive and can't help your team to defeat the waves - you are out for 1 or even 2 waves.
"But I want to save money" - well you don't. If you lose because too many people land you won't make any money in the first place. However, if you win and die around 4-6 times you will still get enough money to at least pay the repair costs. If you really want to make money then use the 300 % booster, that you get when you win.

There is another method to save a few SL, though. Land on the airfield and bail out as soon as the timer for 'repair and rearm' starts. You will be able to spawn in the air again and only pay for those parts that were damaged on your aircraft. I still recommend to just bail out if you are heavily damaged.

We lost that round because next to the F-4E and F-5 the other F-4E landed as well. Although there was a bomber wave and an artillery wave present.

Tips

To maximize your kill-count it is important to view air assault differently than the other arcade PvP modes. Players usually hold their fire until they see the lead-indicator pop up; that is too late, especially when flying very fast aircraft with guns that have excellent muzzle velocity.

If you are flying anything with modern guns such as the M62 Vulcan (F-4s, F-104s, F-14 etc.) or GSch-23 (MiG-21, MiG-23 etc.) then start firing at around 2 km - 1,5 km away from the waves. Aim at multiple targets while you fly head-on and you'll be surprised how many bombers you can down in one approach. It takes a bit of practice, but if you get a feeling for the guns you will be able to get 4-5 kills in one approach regularly.

Aircraft that can destroy howitzers and bombers efficiently at the same time are pretty nice to have as well. My personal favourite are the F-4s for air assault.

You might run out of ammo while trying to figure out the muzzle velocity, ranges and behavior of your targets, but if you have upgraded your crew to 'expert' you will probably have reloaded before you can engage a second time (if not then delay your approach for a few seconds while staying out of the bombers turrets range).

Get ready when you are around 5 km away and focus bombers that are flying in close formation. Find a good angle of approach and try to destroy as many as you can.

Conclusion

Sadly Gaijin hasn't updated this mode in a while. This is why the top bracket ranges from 6.7 - 11.3. Early jets and even some piston engine fighters (because of their BR) are somewhat redundant and sometimes don't even get a single kill. However, starting from 7.7 on you can make most aircraft work in this mode. They might not be the most effective such as the 12,7mm Sabres, but with a bit of practice and a well mixed team they can contribute to a team's win.

Playing air assault in the top bracket is technically a guaranteed win if you ...

... destroy bombers first and focus those that are closest to your base.

... destroy the howitzers as long as only 2 or 3 members of the team engage them. (If you can already see that there are more people than necessarry going for the artillery, then pull off and go for the bomber/attacker wave!)

... don't miss too many waves by being too slow (not bracket appropriate aircraft - I feel for you 6.7 - 7.3 aircraft) afk, or on the airfield.

Feel free to share your tips and tricks in the comments as well as your experience in that mode.

Other guides

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2840216593

[Mertimsi]

about attack stragedy should i attack bombers from bottom or top or front? for escape their turrets

[Eriksson VIII]

@Beau_guy Good advise. I think the lower brackets deserve their own guide tbh since the gameplay differs by quite a bit.

[Beau_guy]

Helpful but biased to Jet. what about us poor sods still grinding away on piston engines.
1) Dont chase bombers that have unloaded, you wont get to the next wave before it offloads, beating all waves more important than being first,
2) Attack Howitzers with p-e machines and it will take forever to get back to height ,missing waves, better to bail out and start again,
3) keep guns fully loaded (key "R" any time).
Observation: suspect Br rating calculated on all aircraft but Bombers are excluded, so if Bomber is BR4.0 and all others are BR1.0 you will end in the higher group with hopeless planes.Anyone confirm?

[Eriksson VIII]

@Sull Exactly. In my experience, though, there is another reason for many lost matches. Even teams that do well lose sometimes when a second bomber wave spawns, while the last one has not been finished. They just go for the next one thinking that the remaining team mates will kill the last bombers. Eventually one or two bombers make it to the base and it's game over.

On the other hand it might not happen as frequently, if all team mates were playing actively. Thanks for sharing the link.

[Sull]

If only more people read this, and Gaijin split up top bracket into two separate ones.. Assault would actually be worth playing once a day.

Losses come down to two things in my experince, first is AF landers/AFKers, the first grp is in practice AFK for huge chunks of the game since enemy gunners are insane so they'll likely need to repair after each wave. Second is basically just the same as in air RB, level 10 players in premium jets like the F-5C getting 2 kills in a match..

https://forum.warthunder.com/index.php?/topic/541952-limit-current-air-assault-level-for-br-67-to-br-67-80-and-add-a-new-level-for-br-8 vote here for increased chance of getting top tier split into two even though the game mode seems pretty ignored by Gaijin