Night Bombing of Airfields

[jolly_pillager]

So before I make a fuss about this to my opponent I need to ask...is night bombing of airfields by Allied bombers well modelled?

My gut feeling is that 100 bombers based in Calcutta really sis not have the ability to destroy 150+ aircraft on the ground in two nights wrth of raids across Burma. I routinely see 5 bombers destroying or damaging 10 aircraft per pass on these, and they rarely miss entirely.

So...do I need to work a new strategy (of ceding air superiority I guess? bringing in the entire Empire's worth of AA?) or is asking for a house rule reasonable?

[pompack]

Well, put it this way: In 1941, the Butt Report on the accuracy of Bomber Command concluded as follows:

Any examination of night photographs taken during night bombing in June and July points to the following conclusions:

1.Of those aircraft recorded as attacking their target, only one in three got within 5 miles [(8 kilometres)].
2.Over the French ports, the proportion was two in three; over Germany as a whole, the proportion was one in four; over the Ruhr it was only one in ten.
3.In the full moon, the proportion was two in five; in the new moon it was only one in fifteen. ...

All these figures relate only to aircraft recorded as attacking the target; the proportion of the total sorties which reached within 5 miles is less than one-third. ...
The conclusion seems to follow that only about one-third of aircraft claiming to reach their target actually reached it.


Now this was based upon crewman extensively trained for night operations. So how likely is it that a day bomber force choosing to attack at night can even find, much less hit, an airfield in the jungle?

Now it you ask about how well the system models night attacks by B29s bombing cities with a really good radar (for the time), the answer seems to be it models it pretty well. If you ask about any other a/c (especailly Japanese a/c) attacking LAND targets at night, IMHO the answer is the model sucks big time. Note that the model does pretty well reflecting the performance of trained JNAF crews attacking ships at night

[Puhis]

ORIGINAL: jolly_pillager

is night bombing of airfields by Allied bombers well modelled?

Tactical night bombing in general is not well modeled, it got nothing to do with side you're playing.

Night bombing results are from realms of fantasy. Many players use HRs to restrict night bombing. In my PBEM games, night bombing can only harassment missions, about 30 planes per theater. Works fine IMO.

[koniu]

Second post about that in short time.
Suggest to read that.

tm.asp?m=3247138

[wneumann]

Note: Pillager notified me he had started this thread.

We're currently in the process of working out an HR on night bombing - my initial proposal using Koniu's set of rules he wrote in post #9 of the thread linked above. I have some questions on altitude as well as the 1945 B-29 raids on Japan (which were mostly if not entirely low level).

I think night bombings are not borked but it need some balance. Maybe reducing bomb and defensive gun fire accuracy at night will help. Sometimes i have feeling that only with night bombings allies can win any campaign.

PS. Situation is better when Moon is in low %

Koniu made an interesting observation in the quote above from the other thread. In my night bombing actions, moon was at 96% (full moon?) with heavy cloud cover over one target, light cloud over the other. AE may or may not treat cloud cover as significant in night bombing (particularly low level), but moon percentage certainly might be a factor. That being true... night bombing in 96% moonlight was likely hitting the jackpot (at least in terms of moon conditions). I brought up moon percentage as it could be relevant in a general discussion on AE's handling of night bombing (not just specific to here).

[Bullwinkle58]

One other question to ask your opponent, before imposing lots of HRs, was what the stacking level was of the AFs you bombed.

[AW1Steve]

Obviously from the amount of comments on this thread and the one proceeding it, this game is totally fubar. Wouldn't you all simply enjoy Monoply? [:D]

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: AW1Steve

Obviously from the amount of comments on this thread and the one proceeding it, this game is totally fubar. Wouldn't you all simply enjoy Monoply? [:D]

I was trying to be nice. [:)] My rep as a Really Nice Guy has suffered of late.

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: jolly_pillager

So before I make a fuss about this to my opponent I need to ask...is night bombing of airfields by Allied bombers well modelled?

For most of the war, the answer is no.

Starting early-mid 1945, things change with the ability of the Allies to bomb through overcast with radar. Towards June 1945, they were hitting some pretty small tactical targets at night.

I'd agree with the observations of the others in this thread that suggest a HR regarding size, scope and scale of nightime tactical (e.g., airfields) bombing.

[jolly_pillager]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

One other question to ask your opponent, before imposing lots of HRs, was what the stacking level was of the AFs you bombed.

Not overstacked.

Mandalay in particular was hard hit on one raid (27 B24's and Wellingtons). The airfield is size 3 or 4 and had one unit of 42 Nicks on Day CAP and one unit of 12 Tojos on night CAP. after the raid 22 of the Nicks were destroyed (needed to pull replacements from the pool) and the rest were damaged, while 6 of the Tojos were destroyed (all of the aircraft not involved in the air battle).

By all means...if it is historically accurate then not a problem. I can deal with it (maybe...).

But my impression is that the UK could not really destroy the Japanese air presense in Burma in a week using nothing but night time bombing using a handful of bomber squadrons.

As far as house rules go...I certainly see no problem allowing unlimited night air attacks on manpower at any altitude. I don't like the idea of altitude limits on tactical strikes because this would interfere with the Allied player's ability to do low level strikes to get in under the RADAR, do a high / low attack to get around the CAP altitude and so on. Arbitrarily limiting the number of squadrons involved seems somewhat off to me as well.

Maybe a rule that says for every squadron placed on night attack of a known airfield, you have to send a couple of squadrons on a night air attack against a mutually agreed, unCAPed and undeveloped dot base or the like to represent units getting lost and missing the target completely?

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: jolly_pillager

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

One other question to ask your opponent, before imposing lots of HRs, was what the stacking level was of the AFs you bombed.

Not overstacked.

Mandalay in particular was hard hit on one raid (27 B24's and Wellingtons). The airfield is size 3 or 4 and had one unit of 42 Nicks on Day CAP and one unit of 12 Tojos on night CAP. after the raid 22 of the Nicks were destroyed (needed to pull replacements from the pool) and the rest were damaged, while 6 of the Tojos were destroyed (all of the aircraft not involved in the air battle).

I want to know how your opponent does this if the numbers are true. In 3+ years of doing night bombing I've never gotten results like this. For sure not consistently.

[jolly_pillager]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

ORIGINAL: jolly_pillager

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

One other question to ask your opponent, before imposing lots of HRs, was what the stacking level was of the AFs you bombed.

Not overstacked.

Mandalay in particular was hard hit on one raid (27 B24's and Wellingtons). The airfield is size 3 or 4 and had one unit of 42 Nicks on Day CAP and one unit of 12 Tojos on night CAP. after the raid 22 of the Nicks were destroyed (needed to pull replacements from the pool) and the rest were damaged, while 6 of the Tojos were destroyed (all of the aircraft not involved in the air battle).

I want to know how your opponent does this if the numbers are true. In 3+ years of doing night bombing I've never gotten results like this. For sure not consistently.

He went in at 5,000 feet I think. Maybe it was a bad die roll.

There is also not a lot of flak present and most of what is there is concentrated on the strategic targets. I have been keeping my Army units deployed with their parent HQ's and spending PP's to move between commands even when both commands are unrestricted as a nod towards realism, so that might have something to do with it.

[DivePac88]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

ORIGINAL: AW1Steve

Obviously from the amount of comments on this thread and the one proceeding it, this game is totally fubar. Wouldn't you all simply enjoy Monoply? [:D]

I was trying to be nice. [:)] My rep as a Really Nice Guy has suffered of late.

I can't believe this, my heart always warms when I see one of your posts. [&o]

[DivePac88]

Most people know me as a great defender of this game, but I do have to admit that the night-bombing model in this game is a bit too optimistic.

I having been thinking of asking my opponent Chickenboy, for an HR of maybe restricting the altitude to 10,000 ft. With the exception of B-29s after February 1945, which can operate down to 5,000 feet.

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: DivePac88

Most people know me as a great defender of this game, but I do have to admit that the night-bombing model in this game is a bit too optimistic.

I having been thinking of asking my opponent Chickenboy, for an HR of maybe restricting the altitude to 10,000 ft. With the exception of B-29s after February 1945, which can operate down to 5,000 feet.

just leave out the altitude restriction because one will soon find out that bombing around 6000ft will result in so many losses to BALLOONS that you will soon change back to higher altitudes anyway. Don't know the exact numbers anymore but any medium sized base with some support units got them and last time I bombed Soerabaja at 6000ft (during the day) I had roughly 15-20 B-24D and B-24D1 damaged (120 attacking) due to hitting balloons resulting in 12 being lost to ops. None of these bombers was hit by flak or fighters and without hitting the balloons (going in at 10000ft as I usually do) I lose an average of 1 bomber to ops.

When flak and fighters may be useless, balloons certainly aren't when you come in below 10000ft, IIRC they reach up to 7 or 8k.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: DivePac88

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

ORIGINAL: AW1Steve

Obviously from the amount of comments on this thread and the one proceeding it, this game is totally fubar. Wouldn't you all simply enjoy Monoply? [:D]

I was trying to be nice. [:)] My rep as a Really Nice Guy has suffered of late.

I can't believe this, my heart always warms when I see one of your posts. [&o]

Aw, shucks! [:'(]

[JocMeister]

I have never had any luck using night bombings. Even when sending 300-400. Many of the "stray due to night" and never show up. And the ones that do show up seldom do much more then damage a few AC on the ground. They can hit the airfield its self though.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: JocMeister

I have never had any luck using night bombings. Even when sending 300-400. Many of the "stray due to night" and never show up. And the ones that do show up seldom do much more then damage a few AC on the ground. They can hit the airfield its self though.

I do them too, but they're not a cornerstone. They cost supplies even when the units fragment and half get lost. After one of the patches, maybe 6-8 months ago now, the percentages that got lost spiked up a lot. I figure half or less will even make the target now. But the ones that fly still use supply, still gain fatigue, still incur ops losses. You can fly lower at night, but then again you have to if you want hits. AA still works pretty well at night. I know the AI almost always flies CAP at night too, even if it's Nates. And they break up and disorganize the bombers even if they don't down many.

I'm still in show-me mode on how night bombing is some kind of back-breaker. It's a tactical option, same as day bombing. It has pros and cons.

[aphrochine]

The over stacking question is one that I think needs to be raised whenever someone complains about lost aircraft being lost on the ground, day or night. The game has over stacking rules, and while we might not notice the loss of sortied aircraft due to over stacking...we all damn sure notice with 1/2 our air force gets blown to hell because we failed to respect over stacking rules. While it's been noted here that the airfield was not over stacked, I've seen many complain of insane losses when the airfield is over stacked. I think this leads many to think the system might be borked, due to the volume of complaints when many of those complaints are probably poorly founded.

Also, sometimes an attacker gets good rolls. Criticals happen, double 00's happens...it's part of the game. Even the stats above indicate that bombers find their target 1 in 15, worse case scenario. So that means that 1 in 15 the airfield is gonna get hit hard. Allied bombers carry a lot of bombs and when those bombers find their mark, they do significant damage.

I personally do not 4E bomb below 6,000 ft, day or night regardless of HRs. Mostly, because of Ballons and the fact I dont want to train LowG for my 4E pilots; instead to focus on GrndB, Recon, Def and a splast of NavB for port bombing.

I'm in agreement with Bullwinkle, I'm not totally convinced the problem is as bad as it's sold. Out of all the PBEMs played and hundreds of combatreport.txt files generated daily/weekly, sure we're gonna get those rare reports where a nuke was dropped on an airfield. That's statistically unavoidable in a game of Random Number Generation.

[wneumann]

It has pros and cons.

The one "pro" being why the RAF changed from day to night bombing over Germany. Attrition, or more precisely minimizing it.

Unescorted daylight bombing is a relatively easy target for CAP, both in AE and real life. It's not a game defect, it's the way it is. Even with drop tanks (where available), ranges of bombing planes (especially 4E) exceed that of fighters making unescorted bombing raids a virtual necessity in many cases - especially in 1943 and before. I launched a daylight (oil) strategic bombing raid on Magwe with 68 bombers (all B-24D and Liberator II) - 19 bombers destroyed as well as the raid being broken up into three separate uncoordinated strikes (AE does this during daylight too, and not just with carriers). You're not going to conduct much of a bombing campaign with a 27% attrition rate excluding damaged planes. Again... this is how things work, not an AE game defect. Details on the Magwe raid are in my AAR thread (see 4/02/43).

Based on that experience, the decision was reached to fly at night.

Pillager did underestimate the number of Allied bombers in the Mandalay strike. The actual number (in the initial 5/11 strike) is 100+ including Liberators (B-24D and Liberator II), Wellingtons, B-25C Mitchells, even a Hudson IIIa squadron. Pillager didn't appear to factor in the existence of 10th USAAF. As I looked more at this, there were a series of conditions favorable to the Allied attack, >50% moonlight (likely considerably over 50%), low altitude (5000' as Pillager correctly reported), it was known Japanese aircraft were based in Mandalay (though not exactly how many or what planes were there), maybe throw in a good die roll (no way of knowing that). If this had been a poker hand, I may have drawn an inside straight. There were actually three night raids on Mandalay airfield - detail posted in my AAR thread for 5/11, 5/12 and 5/17/43. The 5/17 raid included only 2E bombers.

An additional night bombing raid not mentioned so far was a similar night airfield strike against Rangoon on 5/17/43 (posted in my AAR) involving 58 B-24 and Liberator II of which 41 planes actually reached Rangoon in a series of uncoordinated strikes. In this particular instance, the raid was originally planned as a strat bombing attack on light industry - I quickly re-targed this to hit the airfield based on reports from daily RAF recon flights over Rangoon. Daily recon reports on detected Japanese plane counts in Rangoon have averaged approx 100 planes (all types), the 5/16/43 recon reported 231 Jap planes total in Rangoon. Knowledge of a target being there, plus 96% moonlight, low-altitude (again 5000') certainly helped the end result. It does not appear that cloud cover (heavy over Rangoon) made much difference, but that could be due to low altitude. Pillager may or may not have had flak in Rangoon, my records indicating a Jap flak bn had been in Rangoon though the information is way too old to determine whether it was actually there.

How much of this was luck (there had to be some), skill (which I had been unaware of until after the fact), die roll (not that one can see the die roll and it's probably not worth seeing) is completely open to question.

Having seen discussion on a possible problem in the AE game engine, that possiblity cannot be excluded if a problem actually exists. Pillager and I have exchanged some info, opinions, thoughts, etc. In any event I indicated I would suspend night air strikes until we know what is going on and devise whatever is needed to resolve it. At this point there is no specific HR, no decision on whether or not to have one. That is a discussion still in progress.