Try substituting, as much as possible, one aircraft for another.
They are all different. An A-20 is a lot like a Pe-2, but a B-25 is not really like a Ju 88 or a Mosquito or a G4M. They all had different capabilities, different strengths and weaknesses, but I would definitely call them all medium bombers personally.
You can of course quibble over the definition of a "light bomber" vs. a "medium bomber" until the end of time, but as I pointed out previously, the same aircraft was often attributed both terms - the B-25 was classified as a "light bomber" by the Soviets. The definitions are not exact and are in fact to some extent subjective. At the risk of repetition, I explained my criteria for this thread in the OP (and by the list of aircraft that I included). It's true for example that the Blenheim carried a small bomb load by 1943 standards, but it was still being used in the role of a medium bomber in 1942 without a doubt, and when it was first deployed, a "light" bomber was something more like a Fairey Battle or a Stuka.
In reality, most twin-engined bombers in WW2 carried a fairly small bomb load if they were expected to operate at any kind of reasonable range.
Going back to the PE-2 it has a range in most sources of around 750-800 miles, at 80% of max speed ? According to one source the early ones had 287 US gallons of fuel and later ones got up to 392 gallons by enlarging the fuselage tank and adding extra tanks in the outer wings. The recon versions often carried drop tanks.
It suited Russian needs, especially as their fighters made lousy fighter bombers/close support aircraft.
I don't know what you would base that statement on - by 1942 all Russian fighters had 20mm cannons or better (and by 1943 some had 37 or 45mm cannon) and they were carrying rockets back to the I-153 biplanes. And of course they also carried bombs. They tended to be highly maneuverable and structurally solid. So I would say they were quite good fighter-bombers actually.
Whether you want to call it, the Pe-2 was clearly an effective twin engined bomber. And the Soviets found it more useful than the B-25, w
hich was too slow for the Russian front and took prohibitive losses, requiring them to shift it to using it mostly for night bombing.
However it was hardly a "medium" bomber being short of range, bombload and defensive armament.
Ok, lets compare some stats:
///------------------------------ A-20C /--------/ Pe -2 ///
Speed------------------------- 330 mph /// 340 mph
Cruise speed---------------- 256 mph /// 272 mph
Climb--------------------------
Range with bombs -------- 745 miles /// 721 miles
Ferry Range----------------- 2300 m ///
Bomb load at that range- 1,000 lbs /// 1,323 lbs (internal)
Max Bomb load ----------- 4,000 lbs /// 3,520 lbs
Rockets? ------------------- No /// Yes
Defensive guns ----------- 3 x .30 cal /// 1 x 12.7mm, 2 x 7.62 mm
Turrets ---------------------- No /// 1Turret, 2 manual mounts
Offensive guns ------------ 4 x .30 cal /// 1 x 12.7mm, 1x 7.62 mm
Stressed for Dive bomb-- No /// Yes
Acrobatic -------------------- No /// Yes
Torpedoes ------------------- Yes /// No
To me it looks like the only real difference is the Pe -2 can dive bomb while the A-20 can't, but the A-20 can carry torpedoes while the Pe-2 can't.
Whether you consider these light or medium, they are clearly near-equivalent, while performing somewhat different missions .
The "Mediums" could perform a variety of roles and if dive bombing tanks wasn't one of them, then so be it. They could still attack supply dumps, roads/truck convoys, railroads, ports, ships at sea, air fields and other targets in addition to some strategic targets. Even without gun ship noses the later B-25C & Ds had two fixed .50s in the nose and one flexible.
Can you refresh my memory what Strategic bombing missions did B-25's perform in 1942 or 1943?
Even in those years, the B-25 was an effective aircraft, but it did have flaws. Lacked a tail gun for one thing, even though it had a lot of guns. Axis pilots very quickly figured this out and it became (almost literally) an Achilles heel.
Level bombing of Operational targets is one way to use a medium (or light) bomber, but there are other ways.
The Hudson, Blenheim, Maryland and Beaufort just couldn't deliver the payloads the bigger bombers could. Weren't fast enough and didn't really have up to date defensive armament. The Big mediums were hardly invulnerable but a pair of .50s in a power turret beats whatever the others had.
The Ventura was speedy low down but the early ones had a rather restricted bomb load.
You seem to be assuming that the Anglo-American approach was the only valid one. Lets reassess that. I would describe the following criteria as being important:
Accuracy
A lot of people here seem to think bomb load is the only thing that matters, but I disagree. The Germans got more tactical and operational benefit from their Stuka than they did any of their medium bombers, because the Stuka was so accurate. That is why they were still using it to drop bombs on tanks all the way through 1943. The allies basically switched over to fighter-bombers for most Tactical and Operational roles. Accurate bombing from altitude turned out to largely be a wartime myth - accurate bombing tended to be done at low altitude by aircraft with good agility and / or high speed. Prerferably both - like a Mosquito.
Survivability
The loss rate of a bomber was also of huge importance. Even in naval combat, attrition mattered, and even if your bombers were able to hit their target, you needed most of them to be able to make it back to base. There were of course, three schools of thought on this, the firepower school and the speed school and the high altitude school. Since high altitude bombing turned out to not really work very well in real world conditions, it came down to firepower vs. speed. Firepower had some merits, but against planes like a Fw 190 with four 20mm cannon,.let alone a heavy fighter armed with high caliber cannons or rockets, it basically proved to be useless. Ultimately (and this was becoming apparent by 1943) speed is life, and that is certainly something the Pe-2 had.
Versatility
Another key value was versatiltiy. This is something that most of the best American and Russian bombers had in their favor. It was certainly the saving grace of the B-25. But Russian aircraft tended to get a lot of field modifications and add-ons as well, though perhaps not as much - one key thing they did though was adding rockets to almost all of their fighters and fast bombers very early on. Versatility could be the key to survival, such as by adding guns (up-gunning the Pe-2 to the 12.7mm turret helped a lot, as did adding multiple extra .50 cals to the nose of the B-25 to make it into a strafer) or by developing new attack methods (like skip-bombing for B-25s in the Pacific).
I think what made an aircraft effective was it's ability to accomplish it's mission. Getting into semantic debates about what qualifies as a light or medium bomber is kind of pointless, the real issue is which aircraft could perform it's mission best.
S