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bomccarthy -> RE: Possible to play air campaign only? (1/15/2018 9:35:06 PM)
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ORIGINAL: loki100
Across the game you get VPs for hitting HI and manpower production.
I tend not to go for fuel as the game doesn't really seem to model the German fuel shortages. Once you get S Italy, 15 AAF can hit some juicy targets in Austria and S Germany.
Clarification - unless something has changed in the updates, you get strategic bombing points for damaging Axis-controlled oil, fuel, and synthetic fuel sites. You only get points for damaging German nationality manpower and heavy industry sites. (Sec. 25.1.1)
quote:
ORIGINAL: loki100
Another interesting target is rail depots. Bit of a delayed reward but it will really cut German ability to resupply and refit their formations.
This is one area where the game shortchanges the Allied strategic bombing effort. The targeting of German railyards in the Autumn and Winter of 1944 caused the collapse of industrial production by the end of 1944 (many recall that aircraft production actually peaked in Sep 1944). The official USAAF history highlights that by January 1945 the Allied high Command was extremely frustrated by the apparent inability of the transportation bombing campaign to hinder the movement of German ground troops and frontline supply. It wasn't until the Allied armies crossed the Rhine in March and began interviews with captured German officials and business leaders that they realized the continuous bombing of railyards and river ports within Germany had halted the movement of resources (especially coal) and parts produced by subcontractors by December 1944. Allied ground troops came across large quantities of parts isolated from the assembly factories because of a lack of rolling stock and locomotives (which were trapped in wrecked railyards).
quote:
ORIGINAL: loki100
Nasty secondary tricks are to not use all your fighters for escorts. Some well chosen air superiority missions (esp once you go into 1944 and esp once you get the P-51s) will force the Luftwaffe to go and hide - and remove almost any air defences from the Ruhr etc.
Even in 1943, you can use air superiority directives on day 1 of a turn to weaken Luftwaffe defenses, prior to sending in daylight bombing raids on days 2-7. This gets more powerful in 1944, as you get larger drop tanks. With a load out of two 108 gal drop tanks, you can send a large formation of P-51s on a long-range air superiority mission, using waypoints to zigzag the formation by airfields with large concentrations of Luftwaffe fighters (air recon is critical for this). I found that setting the altitude at 30k-35k works best, since P-47s and P-51s outperform the most numerous Luftwaffe fighter models above 25k.
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