When do you cease air operations?

[dtravel]

Okay, I'm curious as to how hard people are pushing their digital pilots. When you assign an air unit to some mission, at what point do you stand them down to rest? When do you send them out again? When their morale drops below ?? When their fatigue reaches ?? When half?/one-third? the planes are down as damaged? When you finish your drink?

[rockmedic109]

My long range bombers usually end up with a fatigue of over 20 after a run. I stand them down till they are fully rested...or less than 5 if the weather is clear {very rare in Burma}.

I almost never stand down my transport, recon or search planes.

Fighters usually get stood down if fatigue is over 10, but that is void if I need to protect a high value unit {carriers}. The listed fatigue is average. If you are set to 30% CAP and have more than 30% of your pilots rested, it shouldn't matter what the fatigue level is.

If morale drops below 50 and shows no indication of raising after beeing stood down a day or three, I'll pull them off the front line for rest.

But, this is all against the AI and I would not recommend anything PBEM. The above will keep Ops losses down to very acceptable levels. The C-47 crews are the ones that take more Ops losses than anyone and I get enough of them {and pilots} to not worry too much {though the C-47 pilots don't like me much}.

[mc3744]

My personal indicator for F, FB, LB, TB and DB is the amount of repaired/disabled planes.
If morale is low they won't fly anyway.
If they have lots of damaged planes usually fatigue is high, but I'll keep them down anyway because of the disabled planes.

My rule of the thumb is: at 50%+ damaged planes for LB I'll ground the squadron. For F and FB 30-40% of damaged planes is enough for me to decide to rest them till recovery.

Carriers planes are never stood down, only when at harbor.

When I really need them to keep going (with the Japs usually), I rest a squadron each turn on rotation. Always grounding the one with the most disabled planes.

[MarcA]

For general operations 50 moral and 10-12 fatigue. Obviuously, if there is a good reason to fly beyond these limits then up they go. I find by sticking to the above limits means that when those times come when all planes are needed, then the group should be in some condition to fight.

[wdolson]

In an emergency, I will push the pilots to the limit.  Under normal operations, I try to keep morale above 50 and fatigue under 20.  If a squadron is consistently running low morale when other squadrons flying the same mission are not, I change the leader out for someone better.  Often the lower morale units have poorer leaders.

If a unit gets a lot of planes damaged, I'll stand them down to deal with their maintenance issues, even if their morale and fatigue are OK.  I also stand down a unit when I upgrade.

Bill

[Halsey]

I cease air operations when...

Losses far exceed the gains.

Simple.[;)][:D]

[Vetamur]

For fighters I stand down at fatigue 12ish.. like others have said, if there is a priority mission then I send'em up up to 25...with apologies and letters pre-written to digital mothers.  Even with this rule of thumb I seem to get a lot of op losses for my Zeros..
 
Bombers and transports I try to keep under 15..
 
Like has been noted..if I am using a low percentage for something though, I ignore this. For example if I have fighters on 40% CAP and the rest escort, knowing there is nothing to escort (ie 60% of pilots will stay home) then I somewhat ignore the fatigue if some pilots have low fatigue.
 
For morale.. I pull units off the front lines when they hit 60 morale or less. For fighters I find myself pulling them out if they get below 75 if I can.

[AmiralLaurent]

I never ground fighters near the frontline, but will rather put them on 90% CAP. Fatigue is mainly depending the range, and as CAP is flown as range 0 fatigue will be reduced even if you do that.

If an unit has morale below 50 I fly it to a big rear with an Air HQ... even in case of emergency, as anyway they won't hit anyway and will just raise my losses...

I don't fly offensive operation with air units having FAT above 15.

I never care about transports. Japanese transports seem to be damaged before the crew became too tired to fly... When the transport unit is reduced to some available AC it is grounded.

[RUPD3658]

Until they die...they fly. [8D]

[Jam_USMC]

This is great stuff guys. Lots of good opinions on one of those intermediate level questions. Probably print some of these responses. Pilot fatigue is one of those details, at least for me, that still gets lost in an ocean of detail. One of those questions I always wanted to ask but never remember. As I am sure more experts would surely chime in soon, I say nominate for "Must Read" thread.

[jwilkerson]

ORIGINAL: dtravel

Okay, I'm curious as to how hard people are pushing their digital pilots. When you assign an air unit to some mission, at what point do you stand them down to rest? When do you send them out again? When their morale drops below ?? When their fatigue reaches ?? When half?/one-third? the planes are down as damaged? When you finish your drink?

Depends! [:D]

In my current game with Moses (in AAR section of forum) ... I kept the at start Nells bombing Singapore daily for a month ... and they performed useful service doing this. Having the HQ will definitely help you fly. But with morale in the single digits you will RTB at the drop of an MG bullet - so the opposition had to be nil to let me get away with this.

On the other hand, if I think I can get away with it, I rest my fighters when their fatigue is more than single digits.

If I have general rules, I'd say 50 morale for the level bombers is the line. Below 50 (in general) and I'll definitely rest them.

But I'd probably say "It Depends" is the more overriding general rule. The more desperate I am the harder I push 'em.

[Mike Solli]

For me, it all depends on the level of desperation.&nbsp; Ideally, I rest any units with morale <70.&nbsp; If fatigue is above 15 or so, I rest them too, but I rarely have a problem with fatigue.&nbsp; I don't worry about the number of planes that are damaged.&nbsp; That just determines how I allocate my planes.&nbsp; If there's a nice juicy target, I'll push the pilots.&nbsp; Losing a few extra planes to kill an Allied CV is definitely worth the effort.

[KDonovan]

I rest my planes when one of the following occurs....

- Morale below 50
- Fatigue above 20
- 33% or more Damaged

of course in dire straits all bets are off.....

[Cpt Sherwood]

ORIGINAL: RUPD3658

Until they die...they fly. [8D]

Yep, that is about right.

[Dino]

Generally, my air groups fly with morale above 90 and fatigue below 10.

Troops love me [:D] (and perform quite well).