Night Bombing Accuracy

[Q-Ball]

I know this has been bandied about, but just curious what the consensus is on night bombing accuracy.

Is MANPOWER easier to hit at night than other items? I would understand if precision bombing is not efficient at night, but I would think MANPOWER would be, since a city is a pretty big target.

What are the ideal altitude settings and targets to get max results at night?

I am finding Night Bombing so far to be questionable; once enough escorts are available, I wonder if it's better to just assign some to RAF Bomber command and switch to day bombing

It would be a shame, because that's an aspect of the war that I would like to keep for realism reasons, but in game terms, it feels like Night bombing is a waste.

Thoughts?

[loki100]

My instinct is you are right in that manpower is easier to hit .. being cynical it means you have dropped a bomb on people rather than upset the cows in a neighbouring field?

But ... like most people (at least I assume so), I make sure Bomber Command uses incendiaries and that manpower is the top target. I've tried night bombing in France (going for rail yards) and it is pretty useless, but with the heavy bombers I seem to hit a fair bit of HI (even with a less than optimum bomb load), but never a named factory (say U-boats)

The only reason I've been unsure about day bombing with Bomber Command is if a raid goes very wrong you can lose a lot of VPs, and you still need to concentrate on manpower to gain the VPs?

[Q-Ball]

Good points, I have been using Icendiaries, but I didn't see a loadout for the Lancaster that included them. Did I miss something? I do have Stirlings and Halifax using Incendiaries.

[NotOneStepBack]

In my experience in the game, it's easier to bomb in day over night for any target, manpower included.

[JocMeister]

In my (limited) experience (mostly from my AI game) trying to do anything at night is waste of time. You will still loose 40-60 planes to NFs and flak and the HIGHEST damage I managed to cause was in single digit %. I was hitting MAN in the Ruhr (using incendiaries and lots of recon). More often then not I didn´t hit anything at all but still lost the planes.

Much better to lose 2-3x the planes but cause a lot of damage. To achieve the same amount of damage doing night attacks would take a year and suffer ten times the losses.

[wokelly]

ORIGINAL: Q-Ball

I know this has been bandied about, but just curious what the consensus is on night bombing accuracy.

Is MANPOWER easier to hit at night than other items? I would understand if precision bombing is not efficient at night, but I would think MANPOWER would be, since a city is a pretty big target.

What are the ideal altitude settings and targets to get max results at night?

I am finding Night Bombing so far to be questionable; once enough escorts are available, I wonder if it's better to just assign some to RAF Bomber command and switch to day bombing

It would be a shame, because that's an aspect of the war that I would like to keep for realism reasons, but in game terms, it feels like Night bombing is a waste.

Thoughts?

Its hardly ahistorical for bomber command to drop bombs by day. The RAF did try to go back to daylight in mid 1944 with escorts, but found that their losses and damages from Flak were much worse then at night, so they went back to night bombing.

The issue in my mind isn't if bomber command is a bit of a waste at night (historically the raids were very hit or miss in 1943 which seems accurately represented here), its whether they are as effective as they should be in 1944. By mid 1944 Bomber command's navigation aids, the moving of GEE closer to the front, and improved marking techniques meant Bomber command could hit accurately at night (at least as far as accurate could be used for WWII bombing) so it was not seen as a big deal to try to hit targets at night. For example during the oil campaign, at night bomber command was getting 16% of bombs within the factory boundaries. By comparison on clear days (which were not the norm in Europe), the USAAF managed 26%, on mixed cloudy days it was 12% and on cloudy days it was 6%.

I haven't gotten to that point in my game yet, but BC should be able to hit more then just cities by late war at night.

[Smirfy]

Against the Oil plants official report

8th airforce visual bombing 3993 tons dropped, 1069 tons hit target 26.8%
8th Airforce Part visual part instrument bombing 4553 tons, 566 tons hit target 12.4%
8th airforce Full instrument 11870 tons dropped 641 tons hit target 5.4%

Hit rate 11.14%

RAF night, 9540 tons of bombs dropped at night, 1505 tons hit target 15.8%

Average wieght of bomb dropped, RAF 660lb USAF 338lb

Figures speak for themselves RAF at night achieved a higher % hit rate

[HMSWarspite]

I find BC is effective. I have had what look like fire storms (manpower damage well in to double figures, although FOW is on) in 44. Also you will but factories even in 43. That annoying uboat fac in Danzig will get hit eventually (after say 4 weeks of raids). You don't want to use 8th AF that deep in 43! It is variable but you will get factories periodically. I use 8th on targets I can reach with escorts and bc deeper.

In RL BC was not trained for daylight opposed raids and should suffer more in day raids even with escorts. And as was said, by 44 they were pretty a chatte at night and the game seems to reflect that. Persist is my advice

[Q-Ball]

ORIGINAL: HMSWarspite

I find BC is effective. I have had what look like fire storms (manpower damage well in to double figures, although FOW is on) in 44. Also you will but factories even in 43. That annoying uboat fac in Danzig will get hit eventually (after say 4 weeks of raids). You don't want to use 8th AF that deep in 43! It is variable but you will get factories periodically. I use 8th on targets I can reach with escorts and bc deeper.

In RL BC was not trained for daylight opposed raids and should suffer more in day raids even with escorts. And as was said, by 44 they were pretty a chatte at night and the game seems to reflect that. Persist is my advice

Thanks, I'll keep going, and give it a shot

On the other side, it's tempting to convert some of the LW Night Fighters to Day........it's a struggle to keep numbers up for Day interceptors, meanwhile so many trained pilots in the NJG units....

[Belphegor]

I've had varied success with night bombing. But in the end I've stuck with it because I can do a lot of manpower damage as well as other damage. I've managed to do things like this more than once...

I really do believe in heavy recon for a few turns, high morale unit flying only and limited targets for night bombing. I'll spread my day bombers out over multiple targets but night bombing gets concentrated. If I am not happy with the recce I'll set to D4, D6, D7.

So key for me is having many targets recce'd in advance