Strafing and Bombing Airbases (Full Version)

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Howard Mitchell -> Strafing and Bombing Airbases (3/5/2003 4:32:46 AM)

Just finishing reading the second volume of ‘Bloody Shambles’ by Shores, Cull and Izawa covering the air war in SE Asia up to May 1942. (Excellent books, fantastic amount of detail and well recommended). What struck me reading them was the effectiveness of attacking airfields, especially strafing by fighters.

In UV attacking an airfield often results in damage to the runway but few if any kills of aircraft on the ground. Bloody Shambles is full of incidents of numerous aircraft being destroyed or rendered unserviceable from attacks, especially by strafing. If an airfield lacked defences it was often well and truly worked over by strafing fighters. For example, when Broome was attacked on the 3rd March 1942 by 9 A6M2s led by a C5M of the 3rd Kokutai they destroyed 15 flying boats, 7 aircraft on the ground and 2 in the air in a 15 minute long rampage.

(As an aside, flying boats seemed particularly vulnerable. By their very nature they tended to be big aircraft which could not be hidden or camouflaged in any way. Additionally float planes could of course sink at their moorings from a few holes which in a land plane would just be patched up).

UV covers a different theatre at a different date, and more radars are available to give advanced notice of incoming attacks, but I have had airfields reduced to rubble by massed flights of B-26s with the aircraft on them grounded not destroyed.

Any thoughts anyone? Should strafing be more effective, or do the differences in circumstances make the current game match history closely enough?



Drex -> (3/5/2003 5:40:03 AM)

I have had plenty of planes damaged on the ground by both level bombers and by naval bombardment so its not as if the game doesn't model plane damage but strafing on a small size base with no AA should be represented. Now if the base has any AA at all this should be reflected in damage to the strafing plane which because of its low altitude is more exposed.



Hard Sarge -> (3/5/2003 2:37:01 PM)

Well...
depends on what is at the base and what you are doing to that base

at times I put 5 squadrons of P-39's on Rebaul (well, add in the 4 squadrons from the next base too :))

and I can "kill" 30 Jap planes on the ground with up to and more damaged

other days, I get nothing

so think it depends on damage to the field, suppy level of field, and if there is anything on the field

(AA is all but dead, either totally out of supply, or all the guns are broken)

I am sure if the AI would pull all the planes it got hoarded up in Truk down to Rebaul, the numbers would be much higher, and if it would stop trying to reinforce it, a bit at a time, I would be getting nothing

so over all, I would say Strafen bases will score lots of kills on the ground, but you need to have the targets there

HARD_Sarge



Mr.Frag -> (3/5/2003 9:15:39 PM)

If you bomb the base into submission, the AA units will no longer fire at you, then you can crank your planes down and have a single fighter wing strafe the place and keep it suppressed while your bombers move on to another target.

Those 100 foot attacks from Lae to PM do a wonderful job and remember the rules, the group troops that get shot up this way are all tasty base forces and engineers. Well worth killing and disrupting!



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