Curtis Lemay
Posts: 12969
Joined: 9/17/2004
From: Houston, TX
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quote:
ORIGINAL: ColinWright
Because where the bombers are, and where the ground units are, aren't necessarily the same place -- nor would the ideal deployment for engaging ground targets necessarily be the ideal deployment for engaging bombers.
It certainly is if the target of the bombers are the friendly ground units! That's by far the most common case. If the friendly forces are either attacking or defending, enemy bomber support is going to be directed at those friendly forces. They will then defend themselves with their AAA assets, including, but not limited to, Flak equipment.
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I already cited the fall of Tobruk in 1942, where there was plenty of Allied Flak -- just not where the ground combat was.
For doctrinal reasons. That's a different issue.
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Let's look at Sedan. On May 14, the French were mounting various attacks from what would be the next hex at most scales, while the Germans were attacking out of that hex to expand their bridgehead. At the same time, an immense concentration of German flak was protecting the bridges themselves against furious Allied air attacks, allowing reinforcements to move into 'the hex' and win the ground battle.
Those flak guns didn't engage the counterattacking French units. They guarded the bridge. Had they been used to engage the counterattacking French units, they couldn't have protected the bridge.
Let's see if I've got this straight: The French player sets up a ground attack against German forces in a bridge hex. He then assigns all his air assets to ... bomb the bridge!
Yeah, that happens a lot.
In reality, what happens is that the bombers support the ground attack when that takes place, and attack the bridge in a separate round. Or, and this might be the most common situation, the bridge is in another hex further in the rear - which solves all issues.
Regardless, Flak doesn't have to be located directly on the bridge to be effective. The bombers have to fly to the target. They can get flakked on the way to or back. If the hex is under ground attack, then, by definition, it is the front boundary - that would have to be crossed by the bombers at some point. City defenses usually put the Flak in a ring around the city, rather than in it, for good reason.
So the flak can be at the front line (which may be anywhere in the hex) and still fire at the bombers attacking the bridge (which also may be anywhere in the hex) in most cases. Those rare cases where the frontlines and the bridge are too far apart within the hex to do so are addressed by the random chance of the combat resolution.
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I think you'll find that over and over, a weapon can only do one thing at a time. Since attackers have a nasty habit of doing several things all at the same time, more often than not, the weapon can only be utilized against one of the incoming forms of attack.
But it's not happening "at one time" at the operational scale. As Karri said, you're thinking of a first-person-shooter. A ground assault in TOAW may represent hours of combat, while an air attack passes over in seconds. The bombers can be fired at for that interval without material diminishment of the ground attack/defense. In fact, enemy ground activity would usually halt while their bombers were in action lest they risk friendly-fire losses.
I don't think it's dual use that you are really objecting to. It's certain uses in particular.
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In Seelowe, the British have various 40 mm AA batteries. Given British doctrine at the time, and given German air superiority, the reasonable assumption is that those AA guns would have spent most of their time trying to fend off the Luftwaffe. It would have been rare for them to help support an attack, and it also would have been unusual for them to be pressed into service as AT guns.
So given OPART's limitations, I felt -- and still feel -- the most appropriate way to handle them was to give them zero AP and AT strength.
They can only be used as AA guns. That's what they mostly would have done. That may not be a perfect reflection of what would have happened, but it's a damned sight closer than letting them routinely do precisely what they rarely did in 1940 -- support ground attacks and beat back panzers. To treat them otherwise is to give the British a weapon they would not in fact have had.
This, I think, is your real objection, and I don't have any problem with this. In fact, I'd like more help from TOAW with this. I continue to believe that rear-area stuff needs to be modeled in some fashion for most situations. Modeling just the frontline stuff impacts the choices players make in unrealistic ways.
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