Night intruders

[mssm45]

Is this type of AD effective?
If yes, what's the best way to set it up?

"The Air Superiority
AD can now fly at night as a Night Intruder Mission. This
AD represents NFs trying to locate landing enemy planes
and attack them.
The AD is allowed to use one squadron per AD (i.e. 12
planes). Detection and successful attack depends on many
factors including:
- Airfield detection
- Air navigation device bonuses
- Weather and moonlight etc
Intruders can get intercepted and are attacked by flak.
Once interception is made then the Intruders have strong
bonuses in their attacks on the landing planes."

[loki100]

it can be, best is a one hex AD over an airbase you have good recon over.

its one of those missions that usually yields nothing but can really pay off, as the Axis player a few stuck over BC's main bases can flip damaged planes to destroyed and encourage an allied player to keep some of their NF on defensive duties.

[bomccarthy]

As the Allied player, I almost always set up one or two large night intruder boxes over northern France, Holland, Germany, and these usually yield 1-2 kills every turn, sometimes more. I set the altitude to 10k.

It's too bad the intruder missions in the game aren't as flexible as IRL - the Mosquitos on these missions usually carried bombs and rockets, strafing airfields as well as hunting Luftwaffe NFs. Mosquito FBVIs also flew intruder missions in daylight, again ambushing any Luftwaffe a/c they found and otherwise bombing and strafing airfields.

[mssm45]

So one AD with one squadron covering a large geographical area?

Is it worth just to kill one or 2 planes per turn?

[bomccarthy]

Honestly, I didn't assign squadrons to the AD; I let them be selected automatically (I do this for most ADs, since it provides flexibility - if you assign a unit to a specific AD, it is not available for any other ADs that week).

A few planes destroyed per week is not much, but it can have some affect on the enemy unit's morale. By the fall of 1944, the intruder mission becomes superfluous, as the RAF usually has enough Mustangs to escort Bomber Command on daylight missions, with some help from 8th AF fighters flying AS directives over the target area (assuming you don't assign Mustangs to RAF units in Italy, which they did IRL, for some reason).

[Laits]

Is this mission more efficient than bombing the air base?
I'm not sure these two directives have great impact on the operations.

[loki100]

depends on the airbase. If it is in the middle of the Ruhr, then don't bomb as the flak will shred your attackers. If its isolated them bombing can work better than the intruder mission.

I think the intruder mission only really pays off if you aim it at allied bombers coming back to base, even then the results are under-whelming.

[Laits]

I agree.
It is also hard to find unprotected airbase (as a WA player) and it's risky for a German one (since you have to manage carefully your scarce resources...).

[cfulbright]

Two things:

1. You can assign two air groups to a night intruder mission. You just can't assign more than 12 planes to the Requested AC.
2. In the 1943-45 Additional Air HQ, where you have lots of available AD's to play with, I've destroyed as many as 65-75 German NF's per turn. I start out in turn 1 setting up big area (size 6 hex) night intruder AD's over a large area. After turn 1 I check and see where I got hits, and then I change the intruder AD's to be just over those air bases hex size=0. I have as many as 10-12 intruder AD's running per turn. The AI seldom moves air groups around. Maybe a little gamey.

Don't forget to set your Intruder AD's to Friendly turn only.

Cary