Alfred
Posts: 6685
Joined: 9/28/2006 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: apbarog Just had the following combat in my game. It appears that the enemy was sweeping with 3 squadrons. I know from the replay that some came from Rabaul, and some came from the direction of Buna or Lae. There were no bombing missions occuring, so these fighters were not escorting anything. (Unless there is something I don't know about escorting other sweeps). Not necessarily so. Sometimes when the bombers scheduled to attack scrub their mission their coordinated escorting fighters continue on to the target anyway and conduct a sweeping mission instead. From what I've read, this is some type of lucky arrival at the same time? I've done many, many sweeps over the years, using same or different bases, same or different altitudes, and I've never gotten this type of big sweep. But it obviously can occur. There a huge difference in effectiveness getting 100 fighters to show up in a sweep at the same time, compared to 3 sweeps arriving separately and each in fewer numbers than the CAP. If there is a secret to making this work, I'd like to learn it. You need to read closely the link I provided in post #19 above and in turn read closely the trail of embedded links provided by LoBaron and myself. There is no overall trick involved. What is required is to align all the relevant variables (which are discussed in the various embedded links). That is quite a difficult task which is why I employ the term "cooperation". Any variation in the variables acts against getting cooperation. Players must understand that the entire air combat game design philosophy is meant to make it difficult to obtain mass. Morning Air attack on Milne Bay , at 101,133 Weather in hex: Heavy rain Raid detected at 108 NM, estimated altitude 23,000 feet. Estimated time to target is 35 minutes Japanese aircraft A6M2 Zero x 68 A6M3 Zero x 29 Allied aircraft Kittyhawk IA x 17 P-40E Warhawk x 22 Japanese aircraft losses A6M3 Zero: 1 destroyed Allied aircraft losses Kittyhawk IA: 7 destroyed P-40E Warhawk: 4 destroyed Aircraft Attacking: 29 x A6M2 Zero sweeping at 20000 feet * 31 x A6M2 Zero sweeping at 20000 feet 22 x A6M3 Zero sweeping at 20000 feet CAP engaged: No.75 Sqn RAAF with Kittyhawk IA (0 airborne, 7 on standby, 7 scrambling) 3 plane(s) not yet engaged, 0 being recalled, 0 out of immediate contact. Group patrol altitude is 15000 , scrambling fighters between 15000 and 21000. Time for all group planes to reach interception is 21 minutes 51st FG/25th FS with P-40E Warhawk (0 airborne, 9 on standby, 10 scrambling) 3 plane(s) not yet engaged, 0 being recalled, 0 out of immediate contact. Group patrol altitude is 20000 , scrambling fighters between 13000 and 25000. Time for all group planes to reach interception is 36 minutes (I do wonder what the * at the end of the line for the first group of Zeros sweeping means) That unit flew at it's extended range. In this example that would be the unit flying from Rabaul. Alfred
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