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I am having low success getting fighter escorts to fly with bomber missions. For instance F4Fs in Port Morseby going with bomber attack to Salamaua 3 hexes away. I set the CAP to zero when I have the units on Escort missions. Escort target is same as bombers target. Range is set to equal or exceed target range and in this case within normal range. Lots of aviation support and supplies at base. High experience & morale, low fatigue. Good air group leader. Tried with army bombers and marine SBDs. both cased bombers end up going alone taking losses. P39s seem rarely to successfully fly escort missions.

Opponent suggested setting cap to 10% to check is there is some coding bug where 0% is interpreted as stand down. It does me no good to eventually have better fighters if they will not fly escort. i have been trying to figure this riddle out all game.

Are the bombers flying out of the same base as the fighters? Are the fighters set to an altitude slightly more than the bombers?

It seems like you are doing everything right. I've seen that type of problem in two circumstances before:

1) If I had an escort set with zero range it seems to block all the escorts.
2) If I had bomber missions aimed at two different targets, the fighters seem to escort the mission to the closer, less well defended target. (Squadron Leader Brave Brave Sir Robin!).

Sometimes if things are a little flaky I reset the planes to training and start over with orders.

Fighters at the same base typically default to escort the bombers on the base. Targeting the fighters at a hostile base is what I use to get planes from a different base to escort the bombers from the first base.

One other idea you might try is to run a fighter sweep from Port Moresby at Salamua. It will engage any Japanese CAP. If you run sweeps and bombing missions from the same base, They usually arrive separately, and often the fighters arrive first so the CAP will be weaker when the bombers arrive.

Hi,

If you have a target set try without any target. In general I don't have any problems with this but I never set a target for the escorting fighters, just zero CAP. You get escorts witha CAP percentage set too but less of course.

/BPRE

I agree with this. I've had trouble with fighters not escorting bombers when I've had a target set for the fighters.