War Thunder Fw 190 F8 Guide

War Thunder Fw 190 F8 Guide by LiquidSnak3

General:

I’ll be honest: This plane flies like a brick when stock. In both AB and RB it’s sluggish and doesn’t climb well at all. The fun begins as soon as you have the engine injection module and the R3 Modification (2x Mk103 Gunpods). Don’t get me wrong, it’ll still maneuver like a brick (even more so with the Mk103), but you’ll be able to throw that brick down from an altitude and smash other planes in the face.

Other armaments are 2x 13mm machineguns (next to useless) and 2x MG151 20mm cannons (your main weapons)

The following two parts are written under the assumption that at least engine injection and 30mm pods + offensive 30mms have been researched.

AB:

In order to be successfull in AB you need to keep in mind a couple of things:

• Your comfort zone is a lot bigger. Due to your low maeuverability you need to be on your toes as soon as an enemy comes closer than about 3.5km. depending on your energy state you can do the following: run or dive. I’d avoid headons as the 2x 20mms don’t shine as bright anymore as they did in lower tiers. the 30mms are too inaccurate for the distances of a headon (1.2km to 0.5km). You need to choose your own battles with this plane
• Your climb rate is respectable with this plane but not the best. At the beginning of a match side-climb to at least 4.5km and then turn towards the battlefield. at this point, the first wave of enemy bombers is about in the middle of the map. Now you have two options, depending on whether the enemy bombers have fighter cover or not.

with cover: keep climbing and observe the situation, intervene where your teammates need you but try to avoid starting one on one dogfights as most planes are superior in climb rate and maneuverability. as soon as air superiority is established: go for the fatties (bombers)

without cover: approach bombers from below if possible. Ideally you should have about 1km of vertical distance and around 400km/h+. Pull up and anticipate the white reticle. shoot a little bit to the front and side of it. The 30mm with air target belts will make easy work of their wings (seriously it’s ridiculous). The point of attacking from below is to keep the bombers on their altitude. If you attack from above or the side, a lot of pilots will dive. This puts you in a lot of situations you don’t want to be in: you give up your altitude advantage, you’ll be on the bombers tail and they are difficult to hit.

• Your ammo count is low. 70 bullets per reload and 40 seconds of reload time. This has two consequences:

Try and get the expert crew qualification ASAP

Reload whenever possible.

• So the first wave of bombers is gone and most high altitude fighters are gone. One key factor of being successful in AB is to have high altitude air superiority. Your job is now to smack down any one who tries to get up to your altitude and the newly spawning bombers. Keep an altitude of about 5000m on most maps and fly circles halfway between the middle of the map and the enemy’s spawn. Don’t get me wrong: Don’t be the guy who spawn camps. Keep your distance to their spawn and be a gentleman. That being said here’s what you do:

Fighters coming from below: Most fighters come climbing at 20° and 250km/h to 300km/h. Position yourself over them and dive. If they don’t evade: wait for the leading indicator to appear bt don’t fire until you’re about 0.5km away. The 30mm are inaccurate and you’ll seldomly hit anything above 0.5km. If they evade: DON’T commit to their maneuver. In most oft he cases they will either dive or lose energy. Just pull away and use your speed to regain altitude and reposition yourself for another pass.

Bombers spawning: Don’t spawn camp them but try to attack them from below ASAP nonetheless. Most of these guys will dive after or even before your first pass. If they dive and there is enough fighter support on your altitude you can risk following them but I’d rather leave them to your teammates on the ground.

RB: In this section I will discuss the F8’s ground attack role. Most of this is also applicable to AB ground attack. You need to know the following things to be successful:

• You’ll be low and slow when performing ground attacks. A certain degree o fair superiority or fighter cover is necessary for your survival!

• You get airstarts on some maps. Use those to either get to the ground targets as soon as possible or gain even more height and club the first few fighters in their climb.

• When performing actual ground attack, don’t go faster than 400km/h. Any faster and your controlls will give you a hard time hitting anything. Use flaps to turn if necessary but don’t use them when zoomed in as the “retract flaps” warning will neatly place itself directly on your reticle (wtf gaijin…)

• Attack from shallow angles: Remember you need to pull up after an attack and you will get dangerously close to the ground! Advantages of shallow angles are your constant speed, ability to correct your flight path and low profile.

• Set your convergence between 400m and 600m. Maybe even lower. Your window of opportunity is pretty small. You will hardly hit anything above 600m and generally you’ll have to pull up at about 200m or 300m distance to your target.

• PRESERVE YOUR AMMO You have 70 shots. Each time you pull the trigger, you fire 2 shots, so you got 35 chances to hit something. Do NOT fire in bursts. Unbind the additional guns from your left mouse button and do single (well, double) shots. Generally you will find that you can’t fire more than two or three times per pass.

• Tanks: You can kill all tanks from all sides except heavy tanks from the front. Generally avoid attacking from the front as the target moves towards you and thus makes followup shots difficult as you need to pull your nose down. If you have the choice: attack from the side. You have a bigger target to hit and the tank’s speed is pretty neglible.

Tanks in forests. They are a pain in the ass as you can only attack them from behind or the front. The tree height means you have to fire from farther away or if you feel really risky: fly between the the trees directly in line with the road through the forest. But that’s probably just gonna get you killed.

• Aim: I have vertical convergence active and set to 400m. I aim like this:

attacking a tank from the side: I aim at the front part of the tracks, maybe even a bit into the ground.

attacking a tank from behind: aim at the middle to lower part of the hull.

Pillboxes: I don’t really know where to aim tob e honest, I just try to score hits. Generally I aim on the lower part though.

• Don’t waste your 30mm or 20mm on stationary AA and armored cars. Use your 13mms for that.

Final statements: The Fw 190 F8 is a very peculiar plane with its strengths and weaknesses. You’ll lose dogfights and your top speed at T4 is actually pretty bad. GET FIGHTER SUPPORT!

The Dakka dakka is strong with this one. The 30mm rips planes unlike anything else and it’s a lot of fun once you’ve died through the module grind.

I am by no means an expert pilot, so feel free to criticize and please leave comments!