Hard Sarge
Posts: 22741
Joined: 10/1/2000
From: garfield hts ohio usa
Status: offline
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Hi Graymane, welcome in, and glad you are enjoying it so far :)
other then poking around the forum and looking at what is there, you can also always ask, most of us will be around the area, and can try and explain something (hassle is, we don't all agree, but at least then you get different ideas)
ahhhhhhh
most of your questions, tend to fall into that , well, depends
how many fighters ?
enough to protect the raid, so, that is a depends, is the first raid in, the last raid, in the middle, is it going deep, or is it hitting the coast and turning back, is it expected to run into a lot of the enemy, or will it be lightly attacked, or attacked at all (of course, most choices like that, you tend to be wrong in what you expect to happen)
if you do something like what I call a starburst raid (where a number of raids all fly along the same path, close to the same time, and break off into a starburst pattern once they get close to the targets) you can be a little fancy with the fighters, as all of the bombers should be close, the fighters for one raid, will have a chance to protect bombers from another raid (you hope)
early on, for the VIIIth Airforce, you only going to have a couple of FG's and a few English Squadrons for fighters, so the choice of how many, will be moot, later in the war, you will have lots and lots of fighters (if you still have enough bombers left)
ahhhh, again, depends, if the first BG/BS hits, you only need one !, but then the hassle is, the first unit doesn't always hit, or doesn't alway do a lot of damage, most times, it seems like, if you send 300 bombers to a target, the first one will nail it, if you send 90 bombers, they all will miss (not to mention, if the target has a cloud over it or not)
most times for me, I tend to go with a raid packet idea, the raid needs to be large enough to do the damage and to protect itself (30 bombers to Berlin, is not going to work too well, 500 bombers to Dunkirk, is going to be over kill)
for me, 150-180 Heavy bombers will nail most of the targets, if they get there and they hit it, now some of the bigger targets, you will want more (the Big BB sites, the Big Oil/Fuel sites) the big Area targets are going to a number of raids, and some, number of numbers of raids
Radar, one or two Squadrons, of FB's will normally do a good job (but they repair fast)
alts
again, depends, but FB's should be around 12-13 K or so, so they can peel off and dive on the target, light and med bombers, 8-12 K is a good alt, as long as the target is not defended by more then a few Heavy AA guns
going in low, gets you a much better chance to hit something, going in low, also lets the enemy hit you back (hassle there is, you never going to really get above the Heavy AA, and the higher you go, the less chance you have of getting a hit, US Heavies have the Norten bomb sight, so get a bonus at alt, give the English the B-17, and they don't get the bomb sight)
now the fighters are tricker, the 47 and 51 are very good up high, the early 38 is bad above 18 K, but the later models get better, most of the other US fighters, are poor at anything over med Alt (39-40-A-36)
the Spits, look at the name, LF means low level wing, engine gearing, HF means high level wing and gearing, F or nothing, means normal (hassle here is, a HF Spit, may still be better then a good low level LW plane, at low levels, and a LF Spit may still be better then a LW plane at Alt, go more with how you feel, or what you need, then what the plane may be able to do)
and again, ahhhh, depends, most times, on something like that, it depends on what you got going on, no mission, is in a vacum, other raids going on, will have some kind of effect on it, some times to the good, and sometimes to the bad, radar, do you need it shut down, to cover the raid coming in, or do you want the radar running, so it can see what is going on, is that the only base in the area with planes on it, can others come in to help defend, but for sweeps on the base itself, most times, the first sweep in (first unit in a sweep if more then one) may get off cheap and surprise the defenders, but large sweeps, or a lot of sweeps, the defender will be alert and ready for action, so...., 3 FG's may get slaughtered trying to hit a alert base, while one FG may get in and get out with only light damage
but, the way I think, I use my weak sisters, for sweeps over bases, my good units, are too important to me, to lose there pilots sweeping what may be a flak trap
but again, depends on how you feel or play
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