DBS
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Joined: 4/29/2004
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This is, perhaps, pretty much a statement of the obvious. But it might be of help to newcomers, so here is a short description of how I would layer the escorts for an 8th AF raid in the first couple of months of the game. Thereafter, you start getting large numbers of escort fighters, so are almost spoilt for choice, and also you will have developed your own ideas.
At the start of the 1943 campaign, you have 4 US P-47 groups in 8th AF, plus 4 borrowed RAF squadrons with high-altitude Spitfire models. And you don't have to wait long before a fifth US group appears, with the first P-38Js. So how to use them?
Well, firstly I always send the B-17s out en masse as a single raid - you don't have enough fighters to properly escort more than one raid, and there are plenty of industrial targets and large railyards in the Low Countries and northern France, within P-47 range, which are deserving of a 300 bomber raid, especially if, like me, you forego some bombing accuracy by coming in at 28k feet to avoid all but the most powerful flak.
So having assembled the bomber force, I will normally assign two of the P-47 groups to close escort, with the third as a high escort 3k feet above and the fourth at 4k above. Once 20th FG arrives with P-38Js, they go in at 5k above. The Spitfire squadrons are then arrayed above - normally the squadron with HFVIIs at the top, say 7 or 8k above, and the others, with HFIXs, at 5 or 6k.
This will normally suffice to keep a German attack of about two Geschwaders (so six or so Gruppen, plus Stabs and extra staffels) off the backs of the B-17s with only the occasional attack getting through to the bombers and give plenty of opportunity for the fighters to score. You will probably find that the Spifires tend to take slightly disproportionate losses - they are that bit more fragile than the P-47s and furthermore any dogfight risks leaving the aircraft dispersed and at lower altitudes. The result is that single Spits quite often get jumped as the fight develops. (So do P-47s and P-38s, but they are more robust and so more likely to get away with just damage.) This is why I always put the HFVII at the top of the escort stack, since its manouevrability is not as good as the HFIX's.
Once the next batch of new fighter groups arrive, about five weeks in, I will increase the close escort to three groups, and use the others to thicken up the 2k-5k high escort bracket. Go easy with the 55th Group until you have had a chance to replace the P-38Hs with P-38Js, since the H is not very happy at high altitude.
Hope that is helpful - hardly rocket science, and equally there are, I am sure, many perfectly valid alternatives.
< Message edited by DBS -- 9/27/2009 11:00:50 AM >
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Early (1943) BTR escort tactics - 
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