43 Grand Campaign AAR - Allies

[TaggedYa]

Turn 19 (9/4/43):

Gee, had to look at the screenshot to remember what all happened.

It's the first clear weather turn after four days of horrible weather over Germany. Both sides have maximum aircraft available. I'm going to take the opportunity to go deep again. Specifically, to the six engine factories in the vicinity of Kassel. It is going to be a "big" day.

The main event is 700 B-17 F's going to the six aircraft factories around Kassel. They are heavily escorted (and need to be) to and from the target.

There are a lot of raids to various arms factories. I decided that with the ground combat being successful, I would start bombing arms production to assist. All of the Tiffy activity provides cover for three mosquito raids that meet over the Daimler-Benz factory in Stuttgart (I wish, can anyone say Junkers Jumo Jet).

[TaggedYa]

Turn 19 weather

I took this shot to show my thinking in the raid to Kassel. I wanted to fly a lot of diversion raids before going deep to take some of the pressure off the bombers and escorts. The problem is by 9 o'clock Kassel will be socked in solid. The red box is my target area, the light blue box represents that shifted relative to the clouds to 9 o'clock. This gives me a very small window for the raid. Basically, it has to be in the air by 6:20 or will be bombing through clouds.

I really want to get his engine production down in the 80s. So it's 6 AM or nothing.

[TaggedYa]

Turn 19 Italy:

12 Air Force B24s are hitting Herman Goring Panzer. A couple of squadrons of Med Air mediums are hitting 29th Panzer Grenadier. Between them they should get his Air Force in the air. Then, mixed in with the fighters bombing are three fighter sweeps to strafe his three main airfields.

I'll be happy when the airfields open up so I can move forward. Only the 12th Air Force escort fighters can even reach the battle area. Med Air can reach the southernmost units with the stuff based at the tip of Sicily, but everything else is out of range.

[TaggedYa]

Turn 20 (9/5/43) England

Watch the clouds. They were a bitch to work around.

[TaggedYa]

Looking back to turn 19 I didn't post anything about the results. I presume you have the basics from Nick's report but a couple of comments.

Code: Select all

                         His        Mine
 First line fighters     79          37
 Second rate fighters    19          15
 Twin engine fighters     9
 Single engine NFs       32
 Twin engine NF's        27
 Heavy bombers                       90
 Medium bombers                       2
 Fighter bombers                     12

This looks great except the 90 heavy bombers part. He is successfully stripping the escorts off of the bomber formations. Even his bomber destroyers are holding their own in the middle of the furball when everyone comes together. I am not sure how to fix this.

That said, I can live with this loss rate. He can't. I lost 2 days worth of airplanes. He lost about 12 engines per day and 2 days airplanes. Note I don't care at all about pilots. The only problem pilots present the allies is evening out losses. You don't want to take all your losses with the Brits. The replacements get behind a bit.

One last item. He has only 1100 ready aircraft. That is way low even after such a big day. This implies to me that he did a wholesale rearrange on his night fighters. I hit them hard by camping some overloaded fields. I don't think they are overloaded any more.

[TaggedYa]

Turn 20 Italy

The weather is horrible. However I think I can work with the cloud distribution. Herman Goring is not fortified and is holding the point. Everyone else has fallen back through Naples so HG is going to get hit by the land combat unless it is interrupted by the weather. I don't expect it to take weather into account but I could be pleasantly surprised. Thus, I am hitting HG hard. (they are still at about 700 combat while every other tank unit I have attacked is down to 250 to 300.

Behind HG is 15PZG which is still fortified. It hasn't moved from the start of the game so will be at 15 fort. There is no reason to hit them with anything except level bombers. I will need to do that next turn so as to dislodge them. God willing and the weather clears a bit.

I am also hitting his airfields again. I will not let him keep units close to the front. I don't want to have to waste sorties on escorts when he can chose not to engage them.

[TaggedYa]

Whew all caught up. At least till Nick gets home from work.

[JeffroK]

I think you are going very deep with your 4E at this stage. Its only 3 weeks since Schweinfurt.

But to work your plan you have to hit these targets[:(]

Its a balance, yiu have to take your lumps or let the JJJ production advance[8|]

[TaggedYa]

ORIGINAL: JeffK

I think you are going very deep with your 4E at this stage. Its only 3 weeks since Schweinfurt.

Yes I am going deep. However, I am taking reasonable losses. I am getting 3 for 4 even with the losses to AA attacking ground in Italy. My bomber force is intact. I only have 2 groups unflyable after the Kassel raid and his Air Force is in bad shape with 1100 flyable planes. And I am clearing the way for the deep run by 6 hours of sweeps and airfield raids. By the time the bombers fly the Germans are exhausted.

But to work your plan you have to hit these targets[:(]

Correct. To keep the German from dumping huge amounts of production into reserch you have to cut his production. It is better to kill a factory that makes 10 engines a turn than it is to have to shoot down 10 fighters a turn. They give the same result but one costs you one time every 50 days the other costs you every day.

Its a balance, yiu have to take your lumps or let the JJJ production advance[8|]

It is actually the advanced FockWolf line you need to stop. The jets cost to many engines to be a real threat.

[TaggedYa]

Turn 20 results.

You gotta love it when a plan comes together. By the time he saw the bombers coming he had flown his units in France to death. The Hody raid hit all his FWs on the ground and got a bunch. He didn't even try to intercept the heavies until after the target and then he used his bomber destroyers and 10 groups of night fighters. One group of night fighters got beat up so bad they failed moral and turned for home.

For some reason just as they left the target the P38J Squadrons separated from the heavies and spread out behind them. It looked like they were chasing them but couldn't catch them. As the night fighters and bomber destroyers broke off from the bomber groups they flew back through this cloud and many didn't come out the other side. I wish I knew what caused it so I could set it up again. It cost me a couple of B17s before the P38Hs got to the bombers but it gained a lot more than it cost.

One sour note. Six groups of the 10 tried to bomb JJJ instead of the Daimler plant. One of them bombed the RailYard adjacent. Four groups hit Daimler and did 38% damage. With that and the railyard out they should be well below half production but will have to be hit yet again.

[TaggedYa]

The campaign info

[TaggedYa]

Turn 21 (9/6/43): Italy (nothing in England today)

After going deep 2 days in a row everyone is tired and his high quality stuff got a day off so the England side is sleeping. Bomber command is hitting rail yards east of Kassel to get his night fighters up. My night fighters are camping everything I can reach.

[TaggedYa]

Turn 21 results

Oh what results. As part of my night raids to get his night fighters up so I could kill them I sent a few raids to Engine plants to far out for the B17s to reach. I have been getting the occasional hit and some damage. 2%, 8%, and such. While I was planing my night raids for Turn 22 I saw this.

Definitely a Kodak moment.

So I sent recon to see what was what. I have the results back. Both targets are completely destroyed. Nick usually has a little quip to say when he sends the turn and for this one he sent "Dark days for me". Then he said something about not being able to stop my recon. That was strange as most people I have played against just ignore recon and whine if it is flown at the same time as the raids because of the bug where lots of planes chase them when they can't catch them. Now I understand. I have his engine production at 81. That isn't real accurate as my recon on some of the damaged rail yards is stale but it is probably close. I am figuring 85. Dark days indeed.

[TaggedYa]

I need to get some sleep. I will put up Turn 22 when I get up

[TaggedYa]

Turn 22 Planing: England (9/7/43)

Weather is okay but my long range escorts are still resting. There just are no near targets left to hit and I don't want to get the mid range stuff shot up hitting his airfields in front of the Ruhr so not much happening here. As usual I am flying the raid out west to the static troop unit to make chatter so he will fly his morning recon. A small Tiffy raid to 12SS and a few recon (with escort) to his airfields.

I have been thinking about using recon to drag a fighter sweep around that doesn't go and strafe stooped stuff. This is a sort of test for that concept.

For the night I have a 2 wave attack on the rail at Bremen. First wave is just at dark, I am testing how well Gee works close in. He has all of his single engine night fighters at 2 bases just in front of Bremen. I did them a lot of damage a few days ago when I stacked several night fighters over the bases just before they landed. The problem is timing that.

My normal is just to cover everything I can reach for the whole night. I am thinking that this isn't necessarily working too well. If all his planes come home in the same hour then the first couple will get attacked then the camper will run out of bullets and go home and everyone else lands safe before the next shift arrives.

By attacking near the bases I can figure pretty close when he will take off and when he will be landing. I am covering that time with multiple planes and at close intervals.

There are also 2 raids to rail yards near Lipzig which I have attacked several times before and missed. They should get the rest of the NJG up and I am covering 7 or 8 of his fields through the night. Everyone is getting tired from the tempo but I hate to waist good weather.

[TaggedYa]

Turn 22 Italy:

weather is fairly bad. I need to attack 15PZ (Unit near Benevento rail) but there is no clear spot all day. So HG gets a visit from the heavies. I have med air p47s flying sweeps up the bomber track then going out to his airfields.

12AF fighters (5 groups) are moving up to Via Viterbo so will be in range next turn.

I am beginning to wonder if Nick understands the moral implications of flying out of a damaged airfield. He seems to stay on fields that are somewhat damaged and let them repair rather than move.

[TaggedYa]

Turn 22 results.

In Italy the B24s took few losses and hit the target but all the sweeps but one failed to fly so we didn't get many kills in the air and none on the ground.

In the west Nick got some FWs into the Tiffy stragglers and killed 8. The Tiffys finally took out that pesky ford plant reducing his truck production by 2/3rds. Now if I only knew if that actually does something.

The night raids went well with all bombs at least in the vicinity of the target and the night fighters got some of the bad guys. My plan to have more than one NF over the fields at the likely landing time was inconclusive. The movie crashed so I couldn't really tell who shot who. In any case, every night I can fly costs him 40 or 50 engines. Problem is the night crew is tired. Their moral is fine (65 - 99) but the fatigue numbers are approaching 3 digits.

[TaggedYa]

T22 losses and campaign info

[TaggedYa]

T 23 (9/8/43) Planning:

Italy is socked in still. Cloud over 80% and low. No holes to work with so the south gets the day off.

The night crew is to tired to fly so they get the day off to.

In the west its a return to Kassel. Raids 1-5 are hitting the engine factories we damaged last week but didn't knock out completely. They are going by the southern route to make his northern based fighters fly a long way to intercept thus limiting their combat time. This makes it too hard to hit the far eastern factory in this group and get everyone back together for the return trip so it is being left for next time. Once again I would have liked to do the main raid a little later after wearing him down a bit but the weather said before 9:00 or after 16:00 so the main raid goes first.

One hour after the main raid 9 AF is hitting St Marceau airfield. Mixed in with the escorts for that raid are 3 squadrons of Mossy FBs and 2 of p47s which will break off just before the target and head back to Stuttgart yet again. If he doesn't realize they are not escorts before they break off I don't think he can catch them before the target.

That's it. Two deep raids and a shallow cover raid plus a few recon to clear up the engine picture. Of course there are a lot of planes going to be in the air for a long time so losses will be high on both sides. I am hoping he flies his NFs again. That will mean bomber command will have the day off but his NF will not.

[TaggedYa]

T 24 (9/9/43) Planning:

I am back for a while but this turn will suck. It was half planned back 2 months ago before I had to go away and I haven't found my notes so I don't really remember why I was doing things. You can't start a turn over without the weather rerolling so that wasn't an option and if you cancel a bunch of raids it causes bugs so I just added escorts to the already planned raids and sent it to Nick.

I didn't do screens and I don't really remember why I did what I did so there is no Planing Report for this turn. I will pick up the planning reports next turn.