War Thunder Sim - Beginner's guide to CAS (Close Air Support) | How To Use Bombs, Rockets & Cannons!

In today's tutorial I will be showing you the basics on how to use bombs, rockets and cannons in War Thunder's simulator battle mode.

Unlike the other game modes, you are confined to your cockpit which makes accuracy an even harder challenge than usual. Thankfully there are a few simple tricks and methods that will make it much easier for you to get shells, bombs and rockets on your target.

This video will focus on glide bombing, dive bombing, the use of cannons in the CAS role, and unguided rockets (with and without a ballistic computer).

I've tried my best to not make the video too long winded. I pride myself on keeping my tutorials simple and easy to understand, adding no unnecessary jargon, which hopefully makes them easier to watch for you.

If you need anything explained further, please feel free to comment below and I will try to answer your questions :)

0:00 Intro & Game Setup
1:41 Bombing Guide
5:07 Machine Guns & Cannon Guide
10:18 Rocket Guide

---Equipment---
VR: Oculus Rift S
Head Tracker: TrackIR
Thrustmaster 16000M Flightpack
Thermaltake View 27 Mid Tower
i7-8700K (6-Core) 3.70GHz OC to 4.70GHz
MSI Z370 Pc Pro Motherboard
Cooler Master Hyper 212 CPU Cooling Unit
Corsair 32GB DDR4 3000MHz RAM
Corsair 850W CXM Power Supply
1xEVGA GeForce RTX 2080 8GB
2 X 1TB Samsung SSD 860 Evo
1 X 2TB Samsung SSD 870 Evo
1 X 1TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus NVME
1 X 3TB WD Elements HDD
Asus ROG Strix 32" Curved Monitor

[TeaRexChannel]

Pinned for Q&A - Please leave your questions here!

[DeadBaron]

How I figured out bombing without sights: Bombing is just imagining where your plane would go if the wings fell off. That's where the bomb will go

[ElGravy]

Other big-gun CAS that everyone forgets are the PBJ-1H, Ki-109, and XA-38. Great guide!

[Energy-Miner]

My man is so good that he doesn't have a single dislike :)

[prdicioslik]

The best strike aircraft for ec is il2 sturmovik with 23mm vja cannons. With prop tactic it literaly delete all ground targets from the map. I opened all my soviet airplanes with il2 in ec.
Most enjoyable i find ju87g, i use it even in ec4 for ground pounding and it works well if we are not overwhelmed by enemy air superiority

[ZunaZurugi]

Ah very nice, i personaly use Rockets (in WW2) only on Naval Targets. They are quite effective against Destroyers.... especialy thanks to the new Naval Damage model which is used in Sim EC.

[bigbreadtime]

i have been waiting for this for a while and it has been worth it

[wowmations]

Didn't think of the custom battles to practice. Pretty helpfull advice :)

[RiznNuke]

Excellent guide. It just so happened I was looking for one just when this video came out.

[spacemanclips]

I find the Bf 109 to be pretty good for ground pounding - I use it for quite a few of the Battle Pass challenges. It's so maneuverable and stable, you can achieve several kills in a single pass as well as defending yourself when necessary.

[peablasfemo]

I'm an experienced fighter pilot, but a total disaster when it comes to CAS. Thanks for these tips, pretty useful!

[Superblitzz]

great video, but you forgot one crucial thing: upgrading your crews weapon maintenance greatly increases the accuracy of bombs, rockets and guns

[electriccabbage]

I just started trying out sim battles and your channel is a godsend

[JoeSmith-zvic]

Excellent, Thankyou! I always seem to crash getting frustrated and too close
GuideOnMe

[reggiekoestoer]

Nice guide! I now feel confident enough to provide CAS with my Zero

[MrGinotonix]

Fantastic! So simple and clear to understand, so hard to arrive at this without your help!

[dragon]

Excellent guide. My biggest problem is actually making out GTs from the air, which due to my eyes is really hard. This definitely helped with my getting GTs when I actually DO see them

[r.c.a.f_lynx]

Ground attack takes constant practice or in battle. There was a time all I did was ground attack. Then I concentrated on going after bombers. Now I only fly fighters. Whenever I try to do ground attack now, I always end up crashing. Ground attack is something you have to stick with or become very rusty.

[Nytya]

I greatly appreciate this video for the bomb and rocket part. I've started playing Japan with no premium so I play a long time only Japan for rank 1-5 (like 2 years) and Japan dont have CAS, so no bomb/rocket apprentissage. Now that I've almost finished japan ground and air, I go for almost all ohter nations, its been incredibly hard to learn from scratch with no info on how to play bomb/rockets :o
Now I can rekt people with my Tiny Tim and some other bombs :D

[ccclll]

perfect and clean, great guide :) But recently the tanks model in wt sim have changed, now they are the same of RB in some maps (like sicily) and it even shows you the close up camera to see what the bullett did, so I think some things are different now