I've had this happen twice and am unsure what the issue is with my understanding. I haCV escort hell

[DeletedUser1725461879]

I've had this happen twice and am unsure what the issue is with my understanding. I have 5 US CVs with escort ships and have met the Japanese Carriers twice. Had plenty of Wildcats ready status with pilots, no fatigue or moral problems, and have been completely bounced twice these two ways.

Sent all my dive and torpedo bombers on Naval Attack, my naval search has shown me the Japanese fleet, then I set all my F4Fs on escort with one squadron set to LCAP. This would mean about 50 F4Fs for escort, yet when my bombers hit the Japanese fleet, they only have 15 F4Fs and sometimes none. You can imagine we have a Battle of Midway scene of Torpedo 8 and I lose just about all my nombers.

Then the inevitable Japanese counterattack comes with 100+ planes and my cap is like 3 planes, forget my CVs.

This even happened once when my carrier planes went to hit Rabaul and same things happened. I even assigned the escort F4Fs which again were about 4 squadrons to Rabaul, my CVs were that close and still hardly any escorted.

LCAP is usually not the problem, I have seen 40+ F4Fs LCAP ok, but escort does not seem to work. What the heck am I missing and why bother attacking the enemy with carrier planes if I cannot get escort??!!

[dpstafford]

LRCAP is rarely a good idea. And is undoubtedly part of the problem.

[KDonovan]

theres a coordination penalty that the Allies CV's suffer thoughout 1942. Causes strike packages to sometimes be unescorted

best is to split your 5CV TF into two or three seperate TF's in order to avoid this penalty. There is some type of formula in the manual that indicates the percent chance of getting hit with a coordination penalty and states its directly related to the number of planes in your TF...the less planes..the less chance of a coordination penalty..and vice versa