RAF Bomber command.....how to not suck..?

[ratprince]

Can someone please explain how the RAF bomber command can actually hit something? I have tried an exhaustive pattern of altitude, targets, loads...etc.. They seem to always either miss completely or do maybe one percent..or so.. While the eighth airforce smashes the crap out of pretty much everything...

Some guidance please?

[Jajusha]

I have a similiar problem as Axis. My Night fighters can't find your Night Bombers (from RAF bomber)
Sometimes they find eachother, and do massive 0 casualty battles.

Have you tried switching them to day bombing Manpower with incend loadouts?

[Smirfy]

Where is range to target calculated form the HQ's or the actual runways?

[ratprince]

Umm..smirf, are you asking me? or asking about my plotting? Dunno...I presume it is from their air base as they dont land at the staging base.

[Smirfy]

Was hoping one of the Air Gurus could help I cant get my Strategic bombers to bomb any city.

[ratprince]

Any?

I dont have a problem with them bombing, they just suck.... The US 8th does a bang up job and wrecks pretty much everything it hits. But the RAF bombers literally miss 90 percent of the time.... bizarre.

[Helpless]

There were reports that night bombing is too accurate for the non-manpower targets.

In general, night bombing accuracy is greatly reduced above Oboe range in 1943. It improves once navigation (H2S) get into play.

As with blind bombing, it is always hard to comment without more intel (details) , i.e. saves, screenshots.

[Smirfy]

I was finding it hard just to get it to accept night missions. Just an aside does Oboe move forward when you land in France?

[Helpless]

Just an aside does Oboe move forward when you land in France?

No. By that time you should have good enough H2S air navigation in place.

[marion61]

You have two other Air Forces that can conduct Strategic Recon over your targets most of the way to Hamburg, because if your only using 8th AF recon to check bomb damage, that isn't enough recon for night bombing. If you recon the hex some, you will see a huge shift in results. Sometimes they just miss, but so does the 8th, but recon checks your bomb damage, and helps with your hits.

[Belphegor]

bomber command surprised the heck out of me here... a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy outlook for me.
edit: but is this the too high accuracy thing? or did I just get really lucky and find a crowded airbase.

[Fallschirmjager]

Has anyone had any luck setting bomber command to bomb day targets and giving them 'easy' targets in France, Belgium, Norway, Denmark and Holland?

Do you miss a lot of vital VPs by ignoring city bombing? It had dubious historical value and I wonder if you could better use the massive bomber force to target troop concentrations, rail and road networks and industrial targets not in Germany itself.

[Peltonx]

ORIGINAL: Belphegor

bomber command surprised the heck out of me here... a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy outlook for me.
edit: but is this the too high accuracy thing? or did I just get really lucky and find a crowded airbase.

Its so easy to spam bomb airfields still aka WitE.

This does need to be fixed at some point or LW will simply spam bomb from 1939 - 45 and never lose control of the air.

Carlkey was able to spam bomb airfields with 3 AA regiments so AA seems usless vs those attacks. They work defending industry, but attacks at low levels never get intercepted and AA cant hit it.

Cheese.

I hope we don't have to have house rules like WitE?

[marion61]

Bomber Command can be used in daylight, but normally I use them when the V-Weapon Launch sites come active. There's no reason not to use them in France and less defended places and not still get vp's. I wouldn't fly over the Reich in the daytime with them.

[Carterjon]

Sorry to be dumb, but what is spam bombing?

[Baelfiin]

13k at nite vs airfield? seems OP

[marion61]

I honestly think your air is better used vp wise sticking to the program and not just hunting down the other players air assets. If you waste your heavy bombers doing that your going to lose strategic bombing vps. I do use my tactical air to do fighter sweeps, and if they are with in strike range of tactical air and are a threat to my lines, I'm going to bomb that field till it doesn't operate. Hunting someone's air assets down, just to hunt them down would be just poor gamesmanship.

[JocMeister]

Highest MAN damage I´ve seen from Bomber command at night was 2% damage. So I stopped bombing by night and started doing day time raids. Losses have been manageable but I´m changing targets like crazy trying to keep my opponent guessing.

[carlkay58]

Presenting my side of 'spam bombing' airfields is this - doing so causes a lot of aircraft losses. I can lose over 100 aircraft in a turn with an air command doing Ground Attack vs an airbase. I may destroy (to my knowledge through FOW) maybe 50-60 aircraft doing so. I do not kill pilots. The Luftwaffe is able to replace aircraft fairly quickly (Pelton's LW is increasing 150-200 aircraft/turn) but they have a problem with pilots (at least trained ones). So the efficiency of the airbase attacks are questionable from the Allied point of view. The first turn the Allies can bomb the airbases down around Paris and pick up a lot of destroyed aircraft, but then the Axis player can pull them back out of range and danger. If you look at the report above the RAF Bomber Command is sending almost 200 bombers on each sortie. Those are bombers that are not hitting the Ruhr Valley targets which can generate VPs while destroying non-fighters and losing 20+ bombers. Overall pretty much of a wash in the Allies side of things.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: meklore61

I honestly think your air is better used vp wise sticking to the program and not just hunting down the other players air assets. If you waste your heavy bombers doing that your going to lose strategic bombing vps. I do use my tactical air to do fighter sweeps, and if they are with in strike range of tactical air and are a threat to my lines, I'm going to bomb that field till it doesn't operate. Hunting someone's air assets down, just to hunt them down would be just poor gamesmanship.

I'd tend to agree. I'm doing a campaign (first go) vs AI on challenging and the attached are the air vps I've managed. I'm sure a human opponent would have caused me more grief and made me mix up targets more, but this is based around;

a) Bomber Command into 2 groups, both with Manpower (high) and HI targets, one group tends to hit the Ruhr, one group tours Germany
b) US 8th Airforce again 2 groups, one has had a target priority of U-Boat and Fuel, the other of HI and Fuel, quite a lot of swapping targets and some big disasters till I got better at setting up escorts
c) Med, started out hitting Italian ports and train stations, from about T17 been hitting Ploesti (and seeing the impact on German fuel reserves) and from T19 southern Germany and Austria (HI and fuel, with some manpower), I think this is feeding into the increase in per turn VPs despite the recent bad weather

I'm sure a human opponent would make me pay more, not least there are no fighters at Ploesti so that is more or less a free hit every turn.



A lot of RAF raids yield nothing, even with air recon over the Ruhr on a regular basis, but it does slowly add up.