Would Sir like extra bombs with that?

[loki100]

T42

No action in Italy this turn – I want to rebuild the MP of my mobile units before thinking of attacking again.

Air strategy was partly influenced by an annoying increase in lost VP due to v-weapons



So I split 8 AAF into two groups. The main raid was around Leipzig, lots of fuel and HI VP and I've not bombed that region.



Second group had a trip up the Baltic with the single focus on v-weapon production. That should close them down for a while.



The P-51s continue to dismantle what is left of the Luftwaffe. I've also sent two P51 formations to Italy as there are some high experience Italian fighter formations causing me heavy losses. Would quite like to damage them as I think they will struggle to replace any losses.



BC did its usual 2 centre raids. Main attack was on the region to the south of the Ruhr.



The Halifaxes continued to concentrate on one port at a time – this time Den Haag. Hopefully that removes the v-weapon site there as well.



The Italian rail net shows as badly damaged so shifted 15 Air back in S Germany. This was designed primarily to hit the Pzr IV production.



9 AAF continues to attack the French rail net – this time the Americans can deal with De Gaulle's complaints.



Tactical Air continues to bomb NW France

[Chuske]

How many days of the week do you generally fly recon? Do you also fly to the altitude limit of their cameras (ie 36k for high recon etc)?

What is the date now? I'm guessing turn 42 is spring 44, around April?

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: Chuske

How many days of the week do you generally fly recon? Do you also fly to the altitude limit of their cameras (ie 36k for high recon etc)?

What is the date now? I'm guessing turn 42 is spring 44, around April?

I usually run it for 6-7 days .. tend to rest on D7, so they do build up a lot of fatigue as a result. In the main I find the auto assign routine does a good job of matching camera to altitude. Key is not to mix planes with only a low level camera in the same AD as those with only a high altitude camera.

I control this in the UK by placing the low altitude only planes into the US transport HQ. In Italy, low level are spread between Malta and Tac Air and all the high level cameras go to Strat/15 Air.

Next turn (43) is 22 April, so I guess we are about 4 weeks off the invasion of France. Its all ready so simply need to make sure the planes are resting, double check the command structure and SU allocation and ...

[loki100]

T43

I'll shorten the bombing info for a few turns. In particular I'll ignore 9 Air and 2 Tac Air as their level bombers are basically moving across N France and Belgium trying to dismantle the rail net and wreck the ports. The Halifaxes of BC carry on supporting this by taking out a major port each turn with a dedicated raid.

Over the next few turns. I'll take BC off night bombing in the Reich and use the Lancasters for hitting the transport network. At that stage 9 Air and 2 Tac Air will simply have a nice long rest till the big day arrives.

Specific to BC went for Hamburg. I have no idea why I persist in thinking this is a good idea as outside the recon bonus over the Ruhr its all hit and miss ... with far more miss. This is part of the reason why I pull BC back into France while still using 8 AAF for strategic bombing.



8 AAF went to Berlin again. Those rail yards are the core of the axis logistical effort.



15 AAF going for the medium tanks at Steyr.



And lots of fun in Italy. All the motorised formations were in the 45-50 MP range and there were some weak spots in the German front line. So broke out, almost took Florence and a paradrop hopefully has secured a bridgehead over the Arno.

Destroyed the few German units I'd bypassed in the last offensive.

Depending on the AI response that either gives me the breakout I've been seeking or they will manage to stall everything along the Arno.

[loki100]

T44-45

T44 was heavy rain in the UK so rested all the UK based airforces.

15 AAF did a mix of railyard bombing in Italy and was explictly told to only hit the tank production at Steyr. Seems they listened ...



Busy on the ground. The AI is determined to maintain its offensive on the Adriatic. I actually need to reach that invasion site or will need to evacuate (the TF is at 60% damage).

One of the few turns where the tactical bombers had a GA-unit mission. All of Malta Air hit the defenders of Florence and Tactical Air those next to Pisa. The result was that both defending units collapsed when attacked (lots of disrupted elements so very little real combat power), giving me Florence and meaning I can take Pisa and Lucca.

Since I seem to be stalled on the Adriatic, coming to the stage where I may suspend active operations in Italy.



T45, kept 2 Tac and 9 Air on resting. Pulled BC off the Reich and it did daylight raids on ports and rail yards across France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

8 Air split into two raids. Main one was at Braunschweig (ideally this should have hit the v-weapons).



Secondary raid to take out the larger v-weapon factory in the Baltic region.



15 AAF swapped target to Ulm, again some damage to the v-weapons. Reason for this is after the invasion of France you have to suspend the strategic air war. Every bomber is needed to ensure you break out as easily as possible.



Situation in Italy. Note the AI is still causing me misery on the Adriatic. I committed the 3 Armoured divisions I had in reserve and it took them 3 attacks to break through – and I couldn't exploit as a result.

On the Arno, took Siena (Pisa was abandoned) and managed to push up to the mountains. Again the bombing was 'unit' so my tactical airforces in Italy are now in a complete mess.



Gives some idea of the amount of fighting.



And the extent it is costing me VP. My hope is the city VP will increase to compensate.



Now, I have a big decision. Next turn the weather in France is clear and the ground is dry. The tactical airforces are well rested.

I've not done the final pre-invasion allocations of SU and commanders but if I do that before running T46 it will not have any adverse effect.

I do have a lot of FB due to return over the next couple of turns (those I have been converting to FB from FB-F).

There is a risk that this is a one turn weather window which means I could get caught out (limited air support, reduced attack values and higher naval attrition). But a landing in France in mid-May offers some real advantages.

The Strategic Air War is in a good place. Most of the bigger v-weapon sites are well bombed and I'm running at +4 per turn. 3 or 4 turns concentrating on France will worsen this but I have a lot of damage stacked up in my favour.

[Chuske]

ORIGINAL: loki100

ORIGINAL: Chuske

How many days of the week do you generally fly recon? Do you also fly to the altitude limit of their cameras (ie 36k for high recon etc)?

What is the date now? I'm guessing turn 42 is spring 44, around April?

I usually run it for 6-7 days .. tend to rest on D7, so they do build up a lot of fatigue as a result. In the main I find the auto assign routine does a good job of matching camera to altitude. Key is not to mix planes with only a low level camera in the same AD as those with only a high altitude camera.

I control this in the UK by placing the low altitude only planes into the US transport HQ. In Italy, low level are spread between Malta and Tac Air and all the high level cameras go to Strat/15 Air.

Next turn (43) is 22 April, so I guess we are about 4 weeks off the invasion of France. Its all ready so simply need to make sure the planes are resting, double check the command structure and SU allocation and ...

I've been experimenting and for strat recon I found that setting the required aircraft to 1 seems to help a lot and I still got a lot of recon coming in.

Obviously if you worry about getting intercepted or ops losses then you might try a higher number of planes to make sure you get a camera over the target but I think the key here is the AI sends too many recon planes (often a whole squadron of 12) to strat recon just one hex. This is a massive waste of resources.

It also helps if you are using big box ADs, as often, with auto panes per raid, you'll find that only the AD top of the list gets any sorties flown unless you specify squadrons to specific ADs.

So for example I had RAF flying 3 recon ADs to match bombing mission ADs I was flying, over 4 days of the week.

With AI allocation I found I flew recon on only 1 AD with 40 hexes photographed, 469 sorties and 8 losses.

If I specified 1 plane per raid I found I flew recon on all 3 ADs (altho first AD got more raids at 40 compared to 8 for the other 2) with 56 hexes photographed and 56 sorties and 1 loss.

Fatigue also went from 20-50 range to 0-20.

Question is it is hard to tell if 1 plane was getting good quality strat recon with only 1 camera/plane flown per raid. I guess only way I can do this is to load up the game as the German side and compare actual damage to reported from recon.

[Chuske]

Getting v.interesting in your campaign. I would halt in Italy, N.France is where you can win this one I think, you've done well in Italy, but I can't see what else you can achieve there now?

One thing puzzles me is why you switched to unit bombing?

[cfulbright]

I disagree with Chuske about shutting down the Italian campaign. You're so close to breaking into the Po Valley, which will cause many good things to happen. Axis will retire about ten hexes from the current line.

Cary

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: Chuske

...

I've been experimenting and for strat recon I found that setting the required aircraft to 1 seems to help a lot and I still got a lot of recon coming in.

Obviously if you worry about getting intercepted or ops losses then you might try a higher number of planes to make sure you get a camera over the target but I think the key here is the AI sends too many recon planes (often a whole squadron of 12) to strat recon just one hex. This is a massive waste of resources.

It also helps if you are using big box ADs, as often, with auto panes per raid, you'll find that only the AD top of the list gets any sorties flown unless you specify squadrons to specific ADs.

So for example I had RAF flying 3 recon ADs to match bombing mission ADs I was flying, over 4 days of the week.

With AI allocation I found I flew recon on only 1 AD with 40 hexes photographed, 469 sorties and 8 losses.

If I specified 1 plane per raid I found I flew recon on all 3 ADs (altho first AD got more raids at 40 compared to 8 for the other 2) with 56 hexes photographed and 56 sorties and 1 loss.

Fatigue also went from 20-50 range to 0-20.

Question is it is hard to tell if 1 plane was getting good quality strat recon with only 1 camera/plane flown per raid. I guess only way I can do this is to load up the game as the German side and compare actual damage to reported from recon.

I tend to find that the best protection for the recon missions is an AS (if you can reach), but unescorted they are fairly safe. If you are running them at 30,000', then you are well above any German fighters.

I use two very different patterns. If I can, I like to keep one 9 hex wide mission going with a focus on my typical targets (manpower, HI, trucks, AFV, v-weapons). This gives me a very rough overview and some idea where things are repairing. But its very unreliable both for what you can see and for bombing. It tends to have Detection Levels of 1-3.

So the rest fly tightly defined recon missions in direct support of that weeks bombing raids. I guess this is more tactical in that the goal is to raise DL so as to improve the accuracy of bombing and of target selection.

I tend to find that just using the wide area missions is unreliable and the low DL affect bombing.

It is informative to flip sides to get a feel for the accuracy of your missions every now and then. Best done in turns when the weather closes everything down but it is one way to work out the various feedback loops in the game system.

Worth stressing here for anyone new. Even if you play with FoW off, you still need recon to improve DL - this will feed into both the ground combat model and the effect of bombing.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: Chuske
One thing puzzles me is why you switched to unit bombing?

I tend to regard it as inefficient, you take more flak/op losses for the damage you inflict, but the damage is immediate.

In this case, the AI has only managed to protect two key hexes with regiments, but I know that next turn it will stack substantial forces there. Grabbing Florence and Lucca more or less end the rewards to be gained from an offensive up the West coast of Italy.

So what I wanted is those two regiments with lots of damaged/disrupted elements now. Add in that regiments struggle to deal with multi-divisional attacks in any case and my hope (which paid off) was to take the 2 key hexes.

I have a lot of low morale air formations as a result and can't sustain it. So I agree that 90% of the time, stick to interdiction but there are times when you want your air power to deliver a direct blow.

ORIGINAL: Chuske

.... I would halt in Italy, N.France is where you can win this one I think, you've done well in Italy, but I can't see what else you can achieve there now?

ORIGINAL: cfulbright

I disagree with Chuske about shutting down the Italian campaign. You're so close to breaking into the Po Valley, which will cause many good things to happen. Axis will retire about ten hexes from the current line.

Cary

To me, the remaining prize in Italy is twofold.

I've often pushed across the Alps from S France and that tends to gain you Turin but then the AI stops you (its very hard to commit enough units to concentrate for even weak attacks). If I can complete my Adriatic adventure, a second option opens up. First I can cut the road back to Germany for any Axis units, second, I might be able to complete the liberation of N Italy. That is a lot of VPs.

Add on, if I can move the AI out of the mountains, even a low level campaign starts to work in my favour. I'm pretty sure the AI has not reinforced Italy for a while so the units I am facing are degrading under pressure (and claiming resources from the German pool). So my hope is that I can carry on using Italy as a source of pressure on German resources - but that depends on taking Ravenna and breaking out into the lower Po region.

... whether I can actually do that is the gamble but as of next turn I am moving some units from 5A to 7A to reinforce a final attempt while pulling the rest of 5A back for an invasion of S France in July/August.

[loki100]

T46

So ...

Clear skies this turn and promised for next



I'm a bit unprepared as I have a lot of FB due to arrive over the next few turns. On the other hand they can be useful to allow me to keep up the tactical air war effort.

Bombing VP are not too bad so can leave the Reich alone for a few turns.



So its probably a good idea?

I'll describe my approach to setting up the air on the invasion turn in some detail. First no conventional strategic bombing by 8 AAF or BC. BC goes for the port/rail network. Take off all the long range fuel tanks and go for as high a conventional bomb load as you can manage. Some of 8 AAF joins in.

Basically that should flatten the remaining rail yards and take out Cherbourg (Le Havre is alread in ruins).

FC and the P-51s fly AS over the main invasion zones and – importantly – over the sea to prevent any loss of naval interdiction.

As a side note, if you face high interdiction, dropping an AS mission on the region will degrade enemy interdiction levels.

Allocate about 25% of the Tactical Air forces to GS for the 2 invasion corps.

So to the GA.

Basically I use the 2 engined bombers on a 'unit' mission (9 AAF and 2 Tactical Air) to hit the coastal hexes. I then use the FB to generate a conventional interdiction zone reaching back a few hexes.

Since I flew no recon last turn I am a bit blind but can use information I gathered the turn before (which was pretty good). The result is I suspect there are 3 Pzr divisions in the likely invasion zone, so each gets a GA-unit raid from 8 AAF. In the event, 2 of these hexes were empty but the final one caught an SS formation. In any case, each of these one hex raids also had the rail yard as a secondary target.



Italy is still active (sort of). On the Arno I'm now re-organising to defend. My tanks were driven back so I'll take what I have.

5 Army will start to reorganise to invade S France.

On the Adriatic, I still think there are opportunities. Lots of Axis attacks, and I failed again to reach the beach-head.

Basically this, plus a S France landing still gives the chance for a big pocket – or more likely just to secure all of N Italy.



Few charts, just to pick up some recent trends. VP have mostly been neutral. The one good turn was one where no action took place in Italy.



Shows how deadly the P-51s have been over Germany. Lost planes as such are no real issue for the Germans, the lost pilots are irreplaceable.



Here is the interdiction pattern during the German turn resolution. My paras dropped successfully protecting the landings to the east of Le Havre.

Overall its not as good as I like (the price of attacking early) but I think that any attempt to move through that will shred any German units.

[cfulbright]

I never use Auto to assign air groups to number of planes per mission. I always specify which groups and how many planes (and escorts), and have very few cases where missions don't occur. When that happens, it's either 1) weather, or 2) mismatch of target type (e.g., specifying U-Boat as the target in Berlin where there isn't a U-Boat factory).

Roger - I completely agree with you about only using 1-3 recon aircraft per target, certainly for strategic recon.

What level of challenge are you playing?

Cary

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: cfulbright

I never use Auto to assign air groups to number of planes per mission. I always specify which groups and how many planes (and escorts), and have very few cases where missions don't occur. When that happens, it's either 1) weather, or 2) mismatch of target type (e.g., specifying U-Boat as the target in Berlin where there isn't a U-Boat factory).

Roger - I completely agree with you about only using 1-3 recon aircraft per target, certainly for strategic recon.

What level of challenge are you playing?

Cary

Ah yes, forgetting to alter the priority target is my favourite mistake ... then wondering why nothing happened.

I tend to set an area, look at the targets and use a ratio of planes:targets to get the number of missions. So say I have 600 planes, 3 days and 4 viable targets, then I'll tell it to fly 3 missions a day - by the end of the bombing sequence each target should have been hit 2-3 times by around 200 bombers. Its good enough for say BC. Equally I'm sometimes very precise and pedantic about which planes go over which target.

Using challenging.

I find it gives a good vs AI game but at the same time you don't need to obsess over every detail (hence the use of auto-allocation for air missions etc).

[loki100]

T47

Position after the landings. Allocated the two Mulberries. Germans drove back my British paras but otherwise not many attacks. The units they sent into the high interdiction look battered.



VP situation is predictable after last turn -27, all the result of combat losses.

Focus is on maximising air effort, I'll sort out the mess later. So anything >45 morale and <20 fatigue flies.

In NW Europe, bulk of 8 AAF hits depots and ports in Brittany and Normany, BC goes for the Belgian-French border region.

Also divert a chunk of BC to help keep control of the sea lanes. One problem with Le Havre in the middle of my landing sites is it generates quite a lot of attrition – even when bombed out.



GA missions as last turn. Basically the larger groups are designed as interdiction, the single hex attacks are using 2 and 4 engined bombers for unit attacks.



Produced a decent interdiction spread. Given the levels around Argentan, I think I can risk pushing inland off the eastern beaches. The west has to stay on the defensive for now.



So, took Caen and hopefully gained some space on the beaches. The stack at sea is 2 British armoured divisions,



Italy, lot of thinking as to what to do but in the end decided on my last brigade landing. Basically all this is set up to protect what will be a very vulnerable landing.



Interdiction pattern is good, risk is that units pulled back from Rimini will be able to attack without passing through too much interdiction.



Situation in Italy.

Basically 8A is now set up as a defensive force. 5A is pulling out and preparing for S France. For now I've left a corps of mobile units attached to 5A behind the front just in case the AI weakens.

Dropped 2 para brigades. One to improve my chances of holding the bridgehead (I can do this using the 8 hex rule so its not in support of a naval landing). The other is a suicidal drop designed to slow any German units pulling back from Florence.



If the landing fails then I'll go over to the defensive in Italy and see what I can gain from the S France landings.

With hindsight I should have set this one up as a conventional divisional assault and allowed that the time to prepare. Hindsight is incredibly useful.

[loki100]

T48

Apols for slow posting, things keep on happening [8D].

Problem of course is you open the save file and have to try and remember what you were doing.

VP situation is dire – expected as this is one phase where ground losses escalate and strategic bombing is suspended.



France

All squardrons with 45 or more morale are flying, ignoring fatigue for now.

All bombers still supporting the landings. Elements of BC and 8 AAF have wrecked almost every rail yard in Northern France and Belgium. Other segments are doing ground attack-unit bombing on particularly juicy targets. This, plus the interdiction, is paying off as there are some Pzr divisions with 15 or less useable tanks (going by the combat results).

Am using FC over the naval zones, naval interdiction also being generated by Lancasters using the naval load out.

Tac Air and 9 AAF generating interdiction over the landing zones, especially to the west of the Seine that is still deadly, Tac Air is bit more battered so less effective.

Good thing was 8 fresh FB formations returned from retraining this week so that will help for next turn.



Anyway, managed to use that high interdiction to my benefit. Attacked to push back German units so they suffered even more losses on retreat. 2 British Army now has armour ashore, US tanks just arriving.



Italy.

Bombing aimed at port and rail net.

The brigade landing was a mistake – even if I got away with it. One Para regiment destroyed but that was designed as a sacrifice, the other scattered on landing and, fortunately, ended up in the chosen invasion hex. If this hadn't happened I suspect I would have lost both the Paras and the landing.

The high interdiction levels probably saved me – both Axis attacks ended at 1.8-1.

Landing site now reinforced with 2 divisions.

7A not making much progress so its all a bit of a mess.

5A pulled back now for S France. Keeping the armour north of Rome just in case of an emergency or an opportunity but it will move to the ports fairly soon.

[loki100]

T49

Trying to keep as much in the air as I can, so anything with 50+ morale is told to get on with it. Have rested those with 20+ fatigue (there comes a point here where its just creating operational losses).

The result was to weaken the interdiction generated by 2 Tactical Air but 9 AAF was more effective.

Since I have pretty much wrecked the rail nets in France and N Italy, decided to restart the attacks on the Reich.

I do, rather, need the VP;



Result was 3 effective raids. BC at night over the Ruhr.

BC is also still helping out with naval interdiction and doing some unit bombing



8 AAF around Hamburg – I forgot to reset the pattern of days so I fear that is going to leave me needing to rest quite a lot next turn

Still bombing selected hexes as well



15 AAF around Vienna



Fighting in France. If anything I feel I am on the defensive but am slowly building up. The British sector has some depth – but also has less air support (tactical air).



Italy. Landings north of Ravenna just clinging on. 7A made some useful gains and ought to reach the outskirts of Rimini next turn.

[loki100]

T50

Last turn's small gains and return to strategic bombing at least slows the loss of VP



So keep some strategic bombing going. 8 AAF goes for the Braunschweig region – primary target was meant to be the V2 factory but they chose to ignore my instructions



15 AAF went for the medium tank production at Steyr. If this is right 3 out of the 4 Pzr IV factories are knocked out which must hinder the ability of the Panzer divisions to recover their losses



BC did two mission, hit the Netherlands – ports and railyards as these are mostly intact



And the Rhineland



Now I have a 4 division invasion of the Netherlands fully prepared. Recon suggests little resistance other than the fortress formations.

But – I can't risk it till Le Havre is in my hands ... it is costing me a lot of naval supply attrition. And I am running short of interdiction capacity. 2 Tactical Air is battered, 9 AAF still producing a lot of interdiction (on the east of the Seine in the US 1 Army sector). I've also just converted some resting P47s to the P47-25 ... which has a quite awesome load out for interdiction missions.

With Le Havre, I can spare some naval interdiction ... possibly the Lancasters I am using. I might be able to spare some portion of 9 AAF.

Or I am better focussed on the main landings.

1 US manages a breakout and the specialist US VIII Corps (lots of heavy artillery and engineers) storms Le Havre.



On the other hand the Germans shifted their attacks to 2 British Army. Am driven back and lose my safe area. Low interdiction means I am not well protected.

So to quote Uncle Joe (well actually it was Mick Jones) 'should I stay or should I go'?



So to Italy. 8A found a weak spot in the German defences and managed to juggle around to attack and take another city. 7A failed to reach Rimini in fighting more like WW1 than my troops would like. Situation north of Ravenna is grim but the naval artillery just about saves the day.

[Gunnulf]

They are really making you unwelcome outside Ravenna eh?

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: Gunnulf

They are really making you unwelcome outside Ravenna eh?

Aye that landing is a magnet for the AI and since I am only winning using the bridgehead rule my losses are substantial.

Need to think about abandoning it as it seems as if 7A has reached the end of its possible gains

[loki100]

T51

Think I am finding a few problems that come from my (over?) emphasis on Italy. Mainly a feeling of a lack of reserves in the UK. I often find the French front gets very strung out making it hard to concentrate but that is usually once I am close to Belgium.

Linked to this is the feeling that the Italian campaign is probably over.

So I might start to strip down 7A to send some formations to the UK. 5A I'll keep as it is as it needs a certain power to take Marseilles (a critical port), advance up the Rhone and move into northern Italy.

Started to generate naval interdiction off Den Haag etc.

US air forces held a re-union over Southern Germany. Both 8 and 15 Air struck a range of targets in the region.





Bomber Command's strategic effort was aimed at the northern edge of the Ruhr. Other elements continued to bomb the rail net in the Netherlands and NW Germany



France.

Situation for 2 British Army remains desperate. Its basically pinned along the coast. Fortunately 1 US Army has less opposition and managed a decent break out. Juggling formations to bring in as much as I can.

At the moment I am holding back the Free French mobile units (shifted from the Mediterranean) to see what happens in the Netherlands but they can be slotted into this sector if I need to.

The relative success of the two armies matches the relative success of the two airforces. 2 Tactical Air has less than 50% of its planes available, 9 AAF is still using 900 FB for interdiction and the 2 engined bombers for unit attacks.



Italy. At last, and bloodily, 7A reaches the outskirts of Rimini. I'm not sure it is going any further so will re-organise and rest.

Unexpectedly 8A carries on making small gains – its all targets of opportunity but the recent gains means that Empoli now functions as a proper depot (cleared of ZoC).