AA seems worthless

Gary Grigsby’s War in the West 1943-45 is the most ambitious and detailed computer wargame on the Western Front of World War II ever made. Starting with the Summer 1943 invasions of Sicily and Italy and proceeding through the invasions of France and the drive into Germany, War in the West brings you all the Allied campaigns in Western Europe and the capability to re-fight the Western Front according to your plan.

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wosung
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RE: AA seems worthless

Post by wosung »

Some data about German Flak

German Flak vs 8th Air Force
(Aug. 1942- End of 1943) day time:
239 planes shot down
4691 planes damaged

End of 1943 to mid 1944
665 planes shot down
15767 planes damaged

German fighters vs 8th Air Force
(Aug. 1942- End of 1943) day time:
702 planes shot down
2056 planes damaged

End of 1943 to mid 1944
980 planes shot down
1217 planes damaged

Germany on all fronts vs enemy planes (June 25th 1941 to Jan. 6th 1943)
10406 planes shot down by fighters
1430 planes shot down by Flak

Ammo consumption per kill
by fighters: some short busts
by light Flak: 5000 shots (to end of 1942), 6500 (Nov.- Dec. 1943),
by heavy Flak: 3500 shots (to end of 1942), 4000 ((Nov.- Dec. 1943)

All time low kills for heavy Flak: 50000 shots for 3 bombers (July 25th 1943, Operation Gomorrha, Bomber Command's night bombing of Hamburg) b/c of chaff/Düppel. In that night German night fighters, which were also handicapped by chaff shot down 9 British bombers.

According to Spaatz Flak was the main reason (61%) for inaccurate bombing: 2/3 of it b/c of stress and evasive movement, 1/3 of it b/c evasion by increasing the ceiling height, or creep back.

1943 229 German fighters were shot down by friendly Flak fire.

End of 1943 nearly 50% of the Flak personnel were auxiliaries (school boys, POWs)

Between 1941 and 1944 the Flak production was increased from 14575 to 58745 guns
Between 1939 and Aug 1944 Flak was increased from 7873 to 39253 guns (with the front units), from 2362 to 13260 guns (heavy Flak).

Production of Flak ammo:
1941 74,71 Mio shots, 1944: 190 Mio shots.
The Aluminum used for Flak ammo during the war would have been good for 40000 additional fighters.
In 1945 800.000 people worked in Flak produktion. 1/3 of all guns produced in 1944 were Flak. Flak service needed as much iron, and much more copper and aluminium than the Heer.

Das Deutsche Reich und der 2. Weltkrieg, Vol. 7, p. 198-204.
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KWG
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RE: AA seems worthless

Post by KWG »

Not able to look in manual right now.

Does flak over target have a influence on the accuracy of bombing?
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Joel Billings
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RE: AA seems worthless

Post by Joel Billings »

yes, flak disrupts accuracy
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RE: AA seems worthless

Post by Smirfy »

"The Aluminum used for Flak ammo during the war would have been good for 40000 additional fighters."

Germany did not have enough fuel for the fighters they produced nor the pilots hence the output of Flak ;)
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RE: AA seems worthless

Post by aspqrz02 »

The Aluminum used for Flak ammo during the war would have been good for 40000 additional fighters.
In 1945 800.000 people worked in Flak produktion. 1/3 of all guns produced in 1944 were Flak. Flak service needed as much iron, and much more copper and aluminium than the Heer.

Yet people have the hide to claim that the Strategic Bombing Campaign had little or no impact on Germany's defeat.

Unless, of course, the Germans were producing all those Flak guns just for the hell of it? [:D]

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LiquidSky
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RE: AA seems worthless

Post by LiquidSky »



Oh, I think those flak guns had some use on ground targets too.
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RE: AA seems worthless

Post by bairdlander2 »

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky



Oh, I think those flak guns had some use on ground targets too.
Do aa units attached to city have any effect on ground force attack?
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RE: AA seems worthless

Post by Erik Rutins »

ORIGINAL: aspqrz
Yet people have the hide to claim that the Strategic Bombing Campaign had little or no impact on Germany's defeat.

Little or no impact? I think you could easily argue it was not decisive, but it certainly had an impact at least based on what I've read.

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RE: AA seems worthless

Post by Great_Ajax »

Ultimately, it was the transportation network that was Germany's Achilles heel. It took years for the Allies to figure this out by trial and error. Once they smashed the railyards, locomotive production sites and river barges, the Germans could not get raw materials to their factories to make what they needed. It really was early 1945 when the German transportation network started to collapse.

Trey
ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

ORIGINAL: aspqrz
Yet people have the hide to claim that the Strategic Bombing Campaign had little or no impact on Germany's defeat.

Little or no impact? I think you could easily argue it was not decisive, but it certainly had an impact at least based on what I've read.

Regards,

- Erik
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KWG
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RE: AA seems worthless

Post by KWG »

In beta, I kept targeting railyards as high priority and rotated the others. Hitting railyards weakens all.
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wosung
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RE: AA seems worthless

Post by wosung »

Well, arguably, pre-digital industrialized societies were too complex for a shut down by ONE achilles heel. What made the downfall happen was the systemic overload of the Nazi system: The ground war on three fronts, the air war against the Luftwaffe (pilots fuel, planes) and against the industrial system (oil industry, transportation including mining the Rhine, weapons, power grid, etc.).

Transportation was important for resource allocation. It became so even more when parts of the war industry had to disperse b/c of the bombing. Segment building procedures for, say U-Boat building helped to avoid losses first but in the end all those parts had to be assembled at one location.

As for moral bombing: If anything it brought the population and the regime even closer together, not that those were vastly ( or please _________ insert your preferred adverb) different entities. But it also disrupted city and production life for a short time (more so with the oil and electronic industry, less so with heavy industry and weapon production) and handicapped transportation.
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RE: AA seems worthless

Post by Grotius »

So does the "manpower" target selection correspond to Harris's bombing policy? I'd like to experiment with focusing on something else, like Oil and Fuel, even if that costs me some VPs.

Back to the original topic: here are some numbers from my completed 12-turn "Breakout and Pursuit" scenario vs the German AI. Flak losses were my worst losses! But I didn't use the Shift-O key to avoid flak until the very end, when (ironically) my flak losses were the worst! I'm not sure these figures address the OP's main point, as this was not the grand campaign, but they might be useful to the devs as they fine-tune things. They don't seem far out of whack to me:

Flak losses: 811
Operational: 757
Air to air: 489
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KWG
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RE: AA seems worthless

Post by KWG »

AA is good to put along rail supply, depots.
Great used with infantry in ground defensive role, as in WitE.
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RE: AA seems worthless

Post by aspqrz02 »

Also, something I suspect that WitW does not, and probably cannot represent is the effect of cumulative damage.

The various oil targets, synthetic oil plants and refineries had to be run at close to full capacity 24/7 365 starting in 1939 ... there was no spare capacity (and additional capacity couldn't really be built unless the Germans built, for example, fewer AA guns ... which would have been ... counterproductive ... considering) ... so the ongoing allied bombing raids, while they never destroyed or shut down these plants completely, did cause cumulative damage that made them more and more vulnerable.

At the beginning, for example, a near miss within, say, 50 meters or so would spring welds etc. that would then have to be repaired ... a trivial delay in relative terms. But, as the years passed, and damage piled on damage, ever further away 'near misses' could cause the same sort of damage. Since allied bombing accuracy was never enough to actually hit the target directly with enough bombs to destroy it, this increasing vulnerability to ever more distant near misses made the reduction of capacity and temporary shutdowns or all or part of the plant's capacity ever more easy to achieve.

Yes, the 'big' or 'key' target strategy was a failure in a sense, but the cumulative damage and the forced diversion of resources from potentially more productive defensive or offensive production had a huge unseen impact that is only starting to be understood in the last 20-30 years.

YMMV.

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jzardos
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RE: AA seems worthless

Post by jzardos »

So I guess no axis flak can hit over 27k ft? Seems like allies have a 'win' button for bombing. Just set alt > 25k and you'll never get loses? looks like still can do decent damage too .. <sigh>

This is silly :(



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jzardos
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RE: AA seems worthless

Post by jzardos »

Well think I need to wait for a patch, just saw some more WA bombing and it's really disappointing this wasn't found and fixed in play testing. How could this be missed? At alt 27k ft is how WA player can get 'gamey' easy win in bomb war. Sorry to expose this for other axis players for which it will be used on, but you can wait for patch now too.


WA just knock out 40 hvy industry for no loses .. hmm that seems odd [:(].



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jzardos
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RE: AA seems worthless

Post by jzardos »

Here's the view that shows the +100% damage .. for those that missed it.



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carlkay58
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RE: AA seems worthless

Post by carlkay58 »

I fly 8th USAAF City Bombing missions at 28,000 ft and have flak losses. Do you have FOW on? If so, then you are getting 'fogged' results. The Allied player, for example, typically gets reports of "100% Damage" inflicted on almost every mission - but I know that is not so. I have had several games where the Allies are getting -4 VP/turn for UBoat targets and yet every form of report accessible to the Allies say that every UBoat factory has 100% damage.
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RE: AA seems worthless

Post by jzardos »

ORIGINAL: carlkay58

I fly 8th USAAF City Bombing missions at 28,000 ft and have flak losses. Do you have FOW on? If so, then you are getting 'fogged' results. The Allied player, for example, typically gets reports of "100% Damage" inflicted on almost every mission - but I know that is not so. I have had several games where the Allies are getting -4 VP/turn for UBoat targets and yet every form of report accessible to the Allies say that every UBoat factory has 100% damage.

Umm, what you just said makes absolutely no sense and possibly contradicts your theory at it's core.

Here's the facts for those that are slower to understand what is going on here:

- I'm playing as axis (if the screen shot didn't already make it obvious)
- FoW would NOT tell me 100% damage to my factories if not 100%, once again I'm axis
- FoW also would not tell me 0 western allied planes shot down if it was 10. My guess is it might inflate # and tell me 10 shot down when only maybe 5 were. Once again I'm axis and only allies would know true #'s shot down.

Either way it's crap and something is wrong here. My thought that it's gone dark with WitW peeps is they know it's an issue and are trying to fix it before they have to talk about it again. Which is fine by me. Fix it please!
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RE: AA seems worthless

Post by Gorforlin »

ORIGINAL: carlkay58

I fly 8th USAAF City Bombing missions at 28,000 ft and have flak losses. Do you have FOW on? If so, then you are getting 'fogged' results. The Allied player, for example, typically gets reports of "100% Damage" inflicted on almost every mission - but I know that is not so. I have had several games where the Allies are getting -4 VP/turn for UBoat targets and yet every form of report accessible to the Allies say that every UBoat factory has 100% damage.

This is the same in WitE.

You have to write down the totals on say turn 11, then when you get turn 12 take turn 12 and minus turn 11 and that's the "real" total of that ever you are tracking.

If I add up the mission report it is always why more then the turn by turn totals aka WitE FOW.

This is the same system basicly ( but much improved over all)so you need to track the results same way or turn off FOW. Kinda why it has that silly name fog of war.

Is the AA system perfect? noper, but its dam good and I am 100% sure it will get tweaked and improved as 2by3 always does.
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