Do fighters intercept nuclear bombers yet?

[TPQ]

Hi,

This is a little pet peeve of mine. The nuclear bombers have 50% evasion (therefore implying they can be intercepted) as shown in the Civilopedia, but pre-G&Ks I never saw a fighter/jet fighter intercept even one nuclear bomber in over 1700 hours of gameplay.

Can anybody confirm that they have seen nuclear bombers be intercepted and shot down by any variety of fighter in G&Ks? This can either be your own nuclear bombers getting shot down by AI fighters, or your fighters shooting down AI nuclear bombers.

I haven't read all the changes and I've yet to see any nuclear bomber interceptions in G&Ks yet, but as I type this post, I've only finished one G&Ks game, so I still don't know if nuclear bomber interception is working.

Thanks!

 

[Adjuvant]

Someone correct me if I'm totally off-base, but in the most classic real-world example, the enola gay dropped "the bomb" at an alititude of 30,ooo feet, almost 6 miles. Zeroes didn't have the operational capacity to even climb that high, and "if" they did, they wouldn't be able to prioritize a 6-mile high plane while they froze and passed out, or think at the time of damage potential it had.

Modernly, "stealthless" planes (namely B-52) have a "service ceiling" of around 50k. Modern jet interceptors (non-recon model) have a published (reported? touted?) ceiling about the same altitude (I went and read) so for the purpose of realism, jet fighters in game "should" be able to intercept non-stealth atomic bombers...

 

[Machiavelli24]

I believe nukes can be intercepted, but unless that interception full kills the nuke (which it won't) the nuke will still make its attack.

 

[buchengshi]

Someone correct me if I'm totally off-base, but in the most classic real-world example, the enola gay dropped "the bomb" at an alititude of 30,ooo feet, almost 6 miles. Zeroes didn't have the operational capacity to even climb that high, and "if" they did, they wouldn't be able to prioritize a 6-mile high plane while they froze and passed out, or think at the time of damage potential it had.

Well, since you asked...
The Zero had a service ceiling of 33,000 feet. It could have been used to intercept, but at the edge of it's ability. But that's just the Zero. There were plenty of other aircraft in WW2 that were more than capable of intercepting at that altitude. A P-51 or P-38 could fly a good 10,000 feet higher. If we'd been targeting Germany, the BF-109 and FW-190 had ceilings in the high 30's. But we were talking about Japan. While Mitsubishi's A6M "Zero" was the most famous (to Americans) Japanese plane of WW2, the Mitsubishi J2M "Nobody's ever heard of me" was known to occasionally shoot down a B-29. So there's that.

As an aside: The story I've most often heard/read is that the Japanese purposely let it go. Three planes, no escort fighters. It was assumed to just another recon flight, nothing to get worked up about.

 

[The_Quasar]

I believe nukes can be intercepted, but unless that interception full kills the nuke (which it won't) the nuke will still make its attack.

That depends, in real life, whether the nuke has been armed, something that is done at the last minute to prevent accidents. If the interception is made early enough, say at least 2 or 3 tiles from the target city, then a clean kill should be the result... if it's made late, say 1 or 2 tiles from the city, then the bomb should go off. Realistically, the later is more unlikely, as interception would be attempted as soon as possible.

 

[TPQ]

Thanks for all the replies, but I wasn't intending to start a debate on the realism (or not) of fighters/jet fighters shooting down nuclear bombers, I just want to know if anybody has actually seen the in-game nuclear bomber (yours, or the AIs) get shot down by fighters/jet fights?

Can anybody confirm? Is the 50% evasion listed in the Civilopedia still meaningless, or can nuclear bombers be shot down?

It's been many, many patches and now one expansion and I'm still yet to see a nuclear bomber be shot down in Civ5. Has anybody seen one be shot down, or are nuclear bombers still unstoppable?

 

[Louis8k8]

Never seen nukes be shot down. I haven't been nuked enough, and while I'm a nuke-happy maniac, the AI's probably too dumb to intercept.

No experience with nukes in multiplayer. They end before they become available.

 

[Himmurabi]

As an aside: The story I've most often heard/read is that the Japanese purposely let it go. Three planes, no escort fighters. It was assumed to just another recon flight, nothing to get worked up about.

Knowing that just makes it even more horrifying. Then again, I've seen in documentaries that the Japanese were so crippled by incendiary raids and loss of infrastructure that they were barely stopping any enemy bombers by that point. Most of Japan was rubble with a few stone chimneys sticking out.

Either way, there were definitely aircraft capable of intercepting the Enola Gay, though that's not to say it wasn't the top-of-the-line plane when it was made. I think an evasive bonus is fair... to a point, definitely should be nullified by jet fighters.

 

[PhilBowles]

Never seen nukes be shot down. I haven't been nuked enough, and while I'm a nuke-happy maniac, the AI's probably too dumb to intercept.

No experience with nukes in multiplayer. They end before they become available.

The AI used to have trouble intercepting - I haven't been involved in a war that late in the game in G&K, but late in vanilla I noticed the AI could use fighters effectively as interceptors (rather than as attackers), and it would stack quite large numbers of them in cities. I wonder if stealth upgrades to the AI were made in DLCs or whether it genuinely does have some ability to learn, since I noticed considerable improvements in performance over time on the same difficulty level. In one of my last pre-G&K full games it even launched coordinated air attacks with Ottoman bombers and Songhai fighters, in support of a naval invasion no less, and complete with rebasing bombers to captured cities on the front line.

 

[AriochIV]

I don't think it's possible to intercept Atomic Bombs. It's frustrating and perhaps unrealistic, but I think it's because the Atomic Bomb is a very expensive unit that they don't want to allow to be shot down without doing its thing. I think it would be better if it operated like a normal bomber.

The story I've most often heard/read is that the Japanese purposely let it go. Three planes, no escort fighters. It was assumed to just another recon flight, nothing to get worked up about.

Yes, that's what I understand. The Americans had deliberately been sending small high-altitude flights of two or three B-29's that didn't drop bombs for some months, to train the Japanese to ignore them... the regular bombing missions were at lower altitudes and had a lot of bombers with escorts. The Japanese had fighters that were capable of intercepting high-altitude bombers, but they probably had much better things to do with their dwindling resources at that point than chasing what they thought were recon missions.