Should Agrression Rating Count for Air Group Leaders?

[wwengr]

There has been a fair amount of discussion in the past as to whether or not aggression plays a role for Air Group Leaders. I did a meta-analysis of many of the posts in the Must Reads and it appears that it does not play a role. Hence, the question: Should an air group leader's aggression rating count for something?

My argument of why not: After WWI, pilot training became highly methodical and highly doctrinal. Aircraft flew in formations and fought using doctrinal methodologies. Even dog fighting became a doctrinal art.

Air combat is more a result of aircraft with assigned missions that would bring them into conflict coinciding in the same airspace. As a result, units would execute their missions in a doctrinal manner resulting in a fast and furious engagement that was usually over in less than 15 minutes.

Allied fighter units learned, early in the war, that "to dog fight is to die". As a result, in both Europe and the Pacific doctrinal methods developed that took advantage of the specific airframe's capabilities. The allies developed fighters so they could fly fast. The approach developed was to dive at the enemy fighters, shoot once, then fly away. The doctrinal approach to fighting if the enemy got the jump was to dive away and fly away.

The purpose of Fighter Sweeps became to get the enemy to drop their tanks and burn fuel so they would not be able to intercept the strike aircraft arriving later.

Strike Doctrine focused on flying in formation to the target, releasing ordnance, and then flying in formation to home.

None of this really allowed for Air Group commanders to make many decisions on the fly where a highly aggressive leader could change an outcome significantly as compared to one who was not aggressive. I think that the reality was that the intense focus on technology and doctrine in air combat tempered aggression in air combat.

[Feinder]

In WitP, I don't spend that much time worrying about specific leader qualities of squdrons.  However, I pretty much always want a high agressiong rating (altho frankly, I'm not willing to pay for it).  If I order an attack, I want my squadron to attack.  If you get shredded and only have 6 planes left, I -still- want you to attack, not turn back because the sqdn leader thought "discretion is better part of valor".  Bomber, fighter, torpedo bomber - if I order an attack, that's what I want.  If higher aggression delivers that, then high aggression is good everybody.
 
-F-

[Dora09]

Maybe you are thinking of "aggression" too literally. You could imagine that a leader might use a tactic or doctrine more agressively, know when to push the objective and be more likely to go for the jugular al the while still using the "zoom and boom" tactics that you spoke of.