Shooting down B-17s

[Sheytan]

!!! I am playing IJ same scenario and my bettys are getting murdered by my opponent even though they are escorted. Are you playing PBEM or against the AI? I suspect these results may be related to this, the AI really appears to have advantages you wont see in a PBEM game. At least this is how it appears to me.

ORIGINAL: RevRick

ORIGINAL: mullk

What year are you in?  I'm in mar of 42 and I have less then 70 B-17E's in the pacific.  I have used my bombers only once or twice then have to wait a couple of weeks for replacements and repairs.  Even the A24's I received in Australia ware wiped out in 2-3 days of fighting, never received a single replacement and were withdrawn with 1-2 planes in each squadron.  I've had to abandon Port Moresby it's only got 50 fights at the base with no replacements in the pool while the Japanese are sending 70 Zeros everyday doing sweeps with 1000 fights in the pool.  Isn't hard to figure out how that one's going to end.  Can't get ships to the port as the betties sink every thing within range wither it has fighter cap or not (in my current game betties have a 50-80% hit rate, 10 get through your going to loose 3-5 ships, and they always attack with torpedoes)

I'm playing the Guadalcanal scenario, and I am have a 40% loss rate in supply and reinforcement shipping to Port Morseby and Milne Bay. The Betty's are chewing up the shipping with in harbor use of torpedoes, even against docked TFs, and the Zero's are eating up everything for CAP. I am barely able to keep two squadrons of fighters at 75% at PM by rotating them, and only building up one squadron at Townsville at a time. And this is the teleported Nikmod from what I understand.

I am having to fly supplies to Milne Bay because out of a three AK 14Kton TF, with ASW support, and LRCAP when within range and while in port, only 500 tons made it to the beach. Betty's are flying every day out of Kavieng with torpedoes loaded for bear, and getting unbelievable results, i.e., 10 Betty's unescorted against 50% each of a P-39D and a Kittyhawk 1A squadron get 6 torpedo hits when flying into a radar covered zone.

Gentlemen, something just seems a tad amiss in the results.

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: Puhis

I think german fighters had one disadvantage compared to japanese, and that is range. Both Bf-109 and FW-190 had a range about 1000 km or less. Zero's max range was 3000 km, and both Frank and George had a range over 2000 km.

True, but German pilots were rarely forced to intercept far from friendly bases, since they had them scattered all over the European countryside. The Japanese had to either intercept right on top of their bases, or out to sea, far from rescue or emergency landing strips.

[Puhis]

ORIGINAL: Shark7

ORIGINAL: Puhis

I think german fighters had one disadvantage compared to japanese, and that is range. Both Bf-109 and FW-190 had a range about 1000 km or less. Zero's max range was 3000 km, and both Frank and George had a range over 2000 km.

True, but German pilots were rarely forced to intercept far from friendly bases, since they had them scattered all over the European countryside. The Japanese had to either intercept right on top of their bases, or out to sea, far from rescue or emergency landing strips.

I agreed, when flying defensive mission over friendly area, range is not that important. But pilot flying plane with good range doesn't have to think how much fuel he has left, or where he can land. He can fully concentrate to the mission. I guess that means something.

[TheTomDude]

ORIGINAL: invernomuto

ORIGINAL: TheTomDude

Read my post again. The Ki-45 KAIa (a-version) is available from 05/42 BUT NO SQUADRONS upgrade to them when PDU is ON. Those sqdns. mentioned above (84th chutai, 4th and 5th and 13th sentai) are all upgrading to the Ki-45 KAIb,c or d version of that plane which are not available before the end of 42 and later. IF you play with PDU OFF I have been told those squadrons auto-upgrade to the a-version. But I was talking about PDU ON where there's no option to upgrade to the a-version. Why there's even a difference in PDU on and off, I don't know. And devs did not explain.

That is not correct. I am playing with PDU on and I can upgrade to Ki-45 KAIa
Scenario 1, patch 1.083c, agains AI, PDU ON

Screen attached.

And here's my screenshot. There is no such thing as a Ki-45 KAIa in the list of upgrades. Don't know why our games are different. All I did was halting the upgrades at the beginning because I'd like to upgrade my squadrons when and to what I wish. Later I upgraded to the Oscar. So it seems after halting the scenario defined upgrade you cannot go back to it. [&:] But shouldn't there be no restrictions since I'm playing with PDU on?

I don't know why this is.

[Gobstopper]

your problem is you upgraded to the Oscar which changed the list of things you can upgrade to.  If you'd left it nate, you'd have been able to go to the Nick.
 
There are also a couple of Babs squads that can change to nick.  you'd have to train them up after doing so of course.

[invernomuto]

ORIGINAL: Gobstopper

your problem is you upgraded to the Oscar which changed the list of things you can upgrade to.  If you'd left it nate, you'd have been able to go to the Nick.

There are also a couple of Babs squads that can change to nick.  you'd have to train them up after doing so of course.

I think it's a bug. I've just tried. If I upgrade the nates to Oscar, the Ki-45 KAIa Nick disappears from the upgrade list (it's like the TheTomDude screenshot). If I "downgrade" to the Nates again, there are no nicks to upgrade to. Strange behaviour.

[Gobstopper]

if you look at the db, it makes sense (sort of).  there are at least 2 different upgrade paths for the nate squads.  so if it starts as nate, goes to oscar, then back to nate, you can end up with a different set of upgrades than you started with.  personally, i'd prefer you be able to upgrade all fighters to all fighters and fighter-bombers (and vice verca), but maybe that would impact PDU off people.

[Fallschirmjager]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

ORIGINAL: Peter Fisla

ORIGINAL: TheTomDude

Is it possible for the Jap player to shoot down B-17? I'm 9 months in the game and my fighters (Oscars and Zeros) seem to be unable to shoot down B-17s. Although it seems the AI has some damaged bombers on let's say every 2nd raid I only managed to shoot down maybe 5 of them until now in 9 months. Is that accurate? The best I can get is having the bombers turn back without unloading their bomb load over my bases. But as I said it seems almost impossible for a CAP to down B-17s even if its 3:1. And B-17s are never escorted by allied fighters. Just curious if that's intended.

The zero is going to have hard time with B-17 (especially the early models) due to not enough ammo for cannon and B-17 being very strong build bomber. Oscar I is even worse than Zero in terms weapon loadout.

but ammo isn´t calcualted in the game

Yes it is. I have planes pull back all the time due to low ammo and they are usualy ones who do a lot of firing passes. I don't think they have an actual # but planes involved in heavy AtA combat do pull back due to low ammo and fuel.

[Fallschirmjager]

I also do not know if this has been mentioned before or not. But in the ETO bombers shot down more German fighters than Allied fighters did. All those .50s deployed in box formation did terrible damage to the LW when they made their attacking runs.

[RevRick]

ORIGINAL: Sheytan

!!! I am playing IJ same scenario and my bettys are getting murdered by my opponent even though they are escorted. Are you playing PBEM or against the AI? I suspect these results may be related to this, the AI really appears to have advantages you wont see in a PBEM game. At least this is how it appears to me.

ORIGINAL: RevRick

ORIGINAL: mullk

What year are you in?  I'm in mar of 42 and I have less then 70 B-17E's in the pacific.  I have used my bombers only once or twice then have to wait a couple of weeks for replacements and repairs.  Even the A24's I received in Australia ware wiped out in 2-3 days of fighting, never received a single replacement and were withdrawn with 1-2 planes in each squadron.  I've had to abandon Port Moresby it's only got 50 fights at the base with no replacements in the pool while the Japanese are sending 70 Zeros everyday doing sweeps with 1000 fights in the pool.  Isn't hard to figure out how that one's going to end.  Can't get ships to the port as the betties sink every thing within range wither it has fighter cap or not (in my current game betties have a 50-80% hit rate, 10 get through your going to loose 3-5 ships, and they always attack with torpedoes)

I'm playing the Guadalcanal scenario, and I am have a 40% loss rate in supply and reinforcement shipping to Port Morseby and Milne Bay. The Betty's are chewing up the shipping with in harbor use of torpedoes, even against docked TFs, and the Zero's are eating up everything for CAP. I am barely able to keep two squadrons of fighters at 75% at PM by rotating them, and only building up one squadron at Townsville at a time. And this is the teleported Nikmod from what I understand.

I am having to fly supplies to Milne Bay because out of a three AK 14Kton TF, with ASW support, and LRCAP when within range and while in port, only 500 tons made it to the beach. Betty's are flying every day out of Kavieng with torpedoes loaded for bear, and getting unbelievable results, i.e., 10 Betty's unescorted against 50% each of a P-39D and a Kittyhawk 1A squadron get 6 torpedo hits when flying into a radar covered zone.

Gentlemen, something just seems a tad amiss in the results.

Its against the AI. That's really the only way I am able to play with the time constraints of my job and some other things going on. I have started the Campaign game about three weeks ago, and have only had time to work into the third day. When the gaming time only comes in maybe one-two hour slots, it's rough.

[BShaftoe]

ORIGINAL: Q-Ball

Rammed it? With a Pete? THAT is some major-league cajones![X(]

Errmmm. I hadn't seen this.

cajón = drawer, cajones = drawers

What you wanted to say is cojones = balls, guts

[wdolson]

ORIGINAL: stuman

I am assuming that it was mainly ME 109s and FW 190s in their many variations that shot down so many Allied 4E bombers over Europe. How were those fighters generally configured ? Didn't , generally speaking, the 109 have 1 20mm cannon and the FW 2 ( along with 2 machine guns ) ? Or something like that ?

Whenever they could, the Germans mounted a pair of 20mm cannons under the wings of Me-109s intercepting the bombers. That practice mostly stopped after the P-51 showed up. They were too vulnerable with the extra cannons.

The Fw-190 usually had 4X 20mm cannons in the wings, two at the wing roots and two outboard of the landing gear. Some versions had a pair of 30mm cannons in place of one pair of 20mms.

Even with all that firepower, bringing down B-17s was tough. The losses were huge and the scores were relatively low.

Bill

[wdolson]

ORIGINAL: RevRick
I'm playing the Guadalcanal scenario, and I am have a 40% loss rate in supply and reinforcement shipping to Port Morseby and Milne Bay. The Betty's are chewing up the shipping with in harbor use of torpedoes, even against docked TFs, and the Zero's are eating up everything for CAP. I am barely able to keep two squadrons of fighters at 75% at PM by rotating them, and only building up one squadron at Townsville at a time. And this is the teleported Nikmod from what I understand.

I am having to fly supplies to Milne Bay because out of a three AK 14Kton TF, with ASW support, and LRCAP when within range and while in port, only 500 tons made it to the beach. Betty's are flying every day out of Kavieng with torpedoes loaded for bear, and getting unbelievable results, i.e., 10 Betty's unescorted against 50% each of a P-39D and a Kittyhawk 1A squadron get 6 torpedo hits when flying into a radar covered zone.

Gentlemen, something just seems a tad amiss in the results.

What's the air to air experience level for your fighters? That makes a huge difference.

Bill

[wdolson]

ORIGINAL: Fallschirmjager

I also do not know if this has been mentioned before or not. But in the ETO bombers shot down more German fighters than Allied fighters did. All those .50s deployed in box formation did terrible damage to the LW when they made their attacking runs.

The bombers made a lot of claims, but after war analysis showed that most bomber claims were invalid. Fighter claims on the other hand showed to be pretty close to reality. Hub Zempke talked about this in his book.

Bill

[TheTomDude]

ORIGINAL: invernomuto

ORIGINAL: Gobstopper

your problem is you upgraded to the Oscar which changed the list of things you can upgrade to.  If you'd left it nate, you'd have been able to go to the Nick.

There are also a couple of Babs squads that can change to nick.  you'd have to train them up after doing so of course.

I think it's a bug. I've just tried. If I upgrade the nates to Oscar, the Ki-45 KAIa Nick disappears from the upgrade list (it's like the TheTomDude screenshot). If I "downgrade" to the Nates again, there are no nicks to upgrade to. Strange behaviour.

A statement from the AIR team about this upgrade behaviour would be very nice.

[invernomuto]

ORIGINAL: TheTomDude
A statement from the AIR team about this upgrade behaviour would be very nice.

Hi,
they do, but unfortunately it's WAD.
tm.asp?m=2229101

(as your English is probabily better then mine, please post in that discussion, to me it does not make sense that it's WAD...)

[TheTomDude]

ORIGINAL: invernomuto

ORIGINAL: TheTomDude
A statement from the AIR team about this upgrade behaviour would be very nice.

Hi,
they do, but unfortunately it's WAD.
tm.asp?m=2229101

(as your English is probabily better then mine, please post in that discussion, to me it does not make sense that it's WAD...)

I see. Thanks m8.

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: wdolson
The bombers made a lot of claims, but after war analysis showed that most bomber claims were invalid. Fighter claims on the other hand showed to be pretty close to reality. Hub Zempke talked about this in his book.

Bill

Actually the claims were fairly accurate..., the problem was with a number of gunners on different Bombers in a "box" all shooting at an incoming fighter, everyone thought their's was the "final straw" and claimed it if it went down. They were right that it went down..., but 5 or 6 gunners firing at it all put in a claim on it..., inflating the count. Probably have been more reliable to have assigned "kills" to units rather than gunners. [:D]

[wdolson]

Many times gunners would see hits on a plane and see it dive away then claim it as a kill.  Other times they would mistake the exhaust plume from ramming the throttles to the firewall as smoke and claim they killed a plane.

The fighters had much more stringent rules to claiming a kill.  Someone else had to witness the plane going in, the pilot had to bail out and was witnessed, or later gun camera footage has to show the plane and unflyable like a wing coming off.

The rules for bomber gunners was much looser to keep morale up.  They made the bomber stream a dangerous and nerve wracking environment for fighter pilots, but with the slash attack fighter doctrine employed by the Germans hits from defensive fire were rarely fatal to the aircraft.  One or two .50 caliber hits would rarely be fatal to an aircraft.

Bill

[GB68]

ORIGINAL: wdolson

ORIGINAL: stuman

I am assuming that it was mainly ME 109s and FW 190s in their many variations that shot down so many Allied 4E bombers over Europe. How were those fighters generally configured ? Didn't , generally speaking, the 109 have 1 20mm cannon and the FW 2 ( along with 2 machine guns ) ? Or something like that ?

Whenever they could, the Germans mounted a pair of 20mm cannons under the wings of Me-109s intercepting the bombers. That practice mostly stopped after the P-51 showed up. They were too vulnerable with the extra cannons.

The Fw-190 usually had 4X 20mm cannons in the wings, two at the wing roots and two outboard of the landing gear. Some versions had a pair of 30mm cannons in place of one pair of 20mms.

Even with all that firepower, bringing down B-17s was tough. The losses were huge and the scores were relatively low.

Bill

One area the Japanese had a disadvantage in combating Bomber sorties was tactics. The Luftwaffe did develop quite advanced (and effective) tactics for fighters engaging Bomber raids.

So, not only, were the German fighters better equipped in terms of firepower, on average than the Japanese. The Germans did use better tactics, especially in the initial pass. The LW pilots more often than not tended to concentrate their first pass on the flight leader. Taking down the flight leader often lead to serious disruption of the whole flight.