quote:

ORIGINAL: CV 2
Why would you use P-38s for CAP? You use your short range fighters for that and use long range planes for escort. As for using Japanese carrier strike aircraft for searching, thats kind of a waste also when your cruisers carry so many Jakes. Dont take up writing advice columns for a living [:D]

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ORIGINAL: Sredni

Just to clear some things up here... Each field can support 50 engines (not 50 aircraft), and until you reach level 9 airfields you're stuck with this as HQ's don't effect how many engines you can stack on an airfield. HQ's only effect administrative stacking (number of groups).

A level 8 field can support 400 engines, which = 8 12 plane bomber groups. Each 12 plane group is pretty much 1 field all by itself (48 engines, more if you do 12+4). 2 25 plane fighter groups is one fields worth of engines (and again you'll go over if you have 25+4). 1 25 plane group of p-38's is one field (which is what renders p-38's less then worthwhile imho). Float planes don't count against this at all and only use up AV (1 plane = 1 AV up to the max of 250).

Also... townsville to rabaul is 24 hexes, beyond the range of b-17e's in both the guadalcanal scenario and the campaign (they have different stats in the different scenario's I guess), is there a scenario where they have the range? b-17f's can reach from townseville to rabaul in the guad. scenario but not in the campaign. Ditto the b-24d's. But the campaign lets you build up port moresby to level 9 AF whereas guadalcanal doesn't.

And to provide an example of 4e bombers bombing unescorted at long range vs heavy cap I conducted a port strike at 9000 feet by 2x12 b-17e's out of port moresby, 2x12 b17f's out of townsville and 3x12 b-24d's out of townsville. The cap was pretty heavy, around 3 times the fighters then bombers attacking. PM and townsville both have excess supply and 250+ AV.

Losses for the days adventure include:
A6M2 Zero: 6
A6M3 Zero: 4
Ki-43-IC Oscar: 3
B17e:11
B17f:9
B24d:16

Most of these losses were air to air, with only 1 flak loss and 1 or 2 ops loss per plane type. The bomber groups all have at least 3 planes repairing the next day, and they're all heavily understrength now. They're also all short pilots since most of those losses end up being KIA's over rabaul. Looking at the groups planes their fatigue levels (the planes not the pilots) have also all shot up to 20 or more from the 10ish they were all at to begin with. Using the bombers a second day would see their fatigue levels go to 30+.

84 bombers left their AF's, 48 came back. 43% bomber losses arn't sustainable with the production numbers the allies get.

Apologies to the OP for helping to derail this thread.