A fascinating layer of the bombing chart is its reliance on TNT equivalent—a real-world metric used to compare the yield of different explosives (e.g., RDX, Composition B) to the baseline of pure TNT. War Thunder simulates this with surprising granularity. A US AN-M64 500 lb general-purpose bomb might contain 65% Amatol, yielding roughly 135 kg of TNT equivalent, while a German SC 500 kg bomb might yield a different value.
The most striking feature of the bombing chart is that Gaijin Entertainment, the game’s developer, does not officially provide it. Instead, the chart is a constantly updated, crowdsourced artifact born from frustration. In War Thunder , a bomber pilot must fly a slow, lumbering aircraft across a massive map, evade fighters and anti-air fire, and line up a target—only to drop a bomb and see the target remain standing because the pilot chose a 500 kg bomb when a 550 kg threshold was required.
In conclusion, the War Thunder bombing chart is a remarkable artifact of modern gaming culture. It is a user-generated manual that compensates for the developer’s opacity, a physics textbook that teaches the principles of explosive yield, and a strategic guide that elevates bombing from a blind act of violence to a calculated exercise in resource management. For the uninitiated, it may look like a spreadsheet of arbitrary numbers. For the dedicated bomber pilot, it is the difference between a wasted fifteen-minute flight and a base destroyed, a match won, and the satisfying pop of a target melting into a crater. In the digital calculus of destruction, the bombing chart is the final variable, proving that in War Thunder , knowledge is not just power—it is TNT equivalent.