Acceptable Daily Casulties?

[Jakerson]

I started my first 43 full campaign and I play as Allied. I have little bit hard time figure out what kind of daily casualties are acceptable for allied?

Or what kind of German casualties are acceptable?

[JeffroK]

It would be interesting to know.

But as an average over time as you have bad/good/rained out days.

I wanted to average 50 Luftwaffe kills and keep Allied losses below 100 (Below 2:1)

My current rate is closer to 30 Luftwaffe to 55 Allied, not out of 1943 yet and I have had days with single figure losses
and others with well over 100 on both sides. i am also a newbie at this and am learning slowly the best aircraft and
best tactics. my VP are at 2/3/8, they have been a bit better but General mud is keeping me out of the skies and when I do,
stopping mybombaimers from seeing the ground (Nothing worse than routing in a perfect raid only to find the bombaimers
scaring the cows!)

[Lanconic]

ORIGINAL: Jakerson

I started my first 43 full campaign and I play as Allied. I have little bit hard time figure out what kind of daily casualties are acceptable for allied?

Or what kind of German casualties are acceptable?

17% of the committed force(whatever the makeup)
That is the absolute max, anything higher will destroy your units.

[sprior]

17% on an occasional basis only, if you do that everyday everyone will be gone in 6 days, thats if they don't turn back. 4 or 5% is a more normal loss rate for the allies and even then you should be aiming to get no more than a 2:1 loss rate against the LW.

[wernerpruckner]

ORIGINAL: Jakerson

I started my first 43 full campaign and I play as Allied. I have little bit hard time figure out what kind of daily casualties are acceptable for allied?

Or what kind of German casualties are acceptable?

It depends on your play-style. As Allied player you can live with much higher losses than the Axis player for a longer period of Offensive.
In the start of the game you do not yet have the air power for an heavy around the clock offensiv.....so you have to be more careful.
Standdown units that have not all their required A/C and pilots.
Pilots are a much lesser problem than the A/C you get per turn....


As Axis player.......in the old BtR you could go with 40 KIA Axis pilots per day without any problems........but if these losses got much higher the German cannot longer fill up their units with fresh pilots....

[wernerpruckner]

Here the losses of Bomber Command:
 
Out of 100 airmen:

• 55 killed on operations or died as result of wounds
• three injured (in varying levels of severity) on operations or active service
• 12 taken prisoner of war (some injured)
• two shot down and evaded capture
• 27 survived a tour of operations

In total 364,514 operational sorties were flown, 1,030,500 tons of bombs were dropped and 8,325 aircraft lost in action.

[Hard Sarge]

is that based on there first tour, or completing the full set of tours ?

[wernerpruckner]

that are the overall losses...
only the German Uboat´s hat higher losses
 
 
 
Bomber Command crews also suffered an extremely high casualty rate: 55,573 killed out of a total of 125,000 aircrew (a 44.4% death rate), a further 8,403 were wounded in action and 9,838 became prisoners of war.

[Jeldren]

Allied losses < Axis losses on an average day preferable with a 3:1 kill/death ratio or better. On a big raid day(good weather and many rested units) higher losses are acceptable unless to many units get crippeled with bad morale.

[Jakerson]

Reason I'm asking because I need to balance between tactics, choosing targets and acceptable casualty rates. Sometime I have taken pretty high casualties but on the other hand I have been able to knock out some of very big and important steel or rubber factories up to 99% damage.

Sometimes I choose easy targets near the coast and avoid targets with heavy AA guns to lesser casualties but sometimes I want go after some important factories deeper inside the Germany.

Generally I feel that you could play in the way that you lose max 20-30 planes even if you commit all your bombers by choosing easy targets only but I got the feeling that you can’t score points that way.

[Nicholas Bell]

In may be worth heavy losses in the short run if you can knock a specific industry under the critical level. I would recommend watching your replacement pool - if a specific type is always zeroed out that's a good indication your losses are not acceptable. With rest days for weather or milk runs, this usually is not a problem. As noted by others, paying attention to number of pilots/crews and their experience & morale is probably of more importance as long as you are not running out of planes first.

Daily replacement rates for the heavy bombers in v1.02:
B-17F: 1943=14 thru Sept, 1944=0
B-17G: Sept 1943=14, 1944/45=18
B-24D: 1943=9 thru Sept, 1944=0
B-24J: Sept 1943=10, 1944=16 1945=15

IIRC, sustained loss rates exceeding 5% (losses/sorties) were considered unacceptable by the Allies during the war because of the human impact (loss of experienced crews & morale). That kind of long term loss rate will destroy the organization. I don't think that type of calculus was important to the leaders of Nazi Germany. Galland and the actual RLV commanders like Schmid pushed for unit rest/rotation/rebuilding but were constantly overruled.

[K.Pooley]

ORIGINAL: swift

...Bomber Command:
.
.

In total 364,514 operational sorties were flown, 1,030,500 tons of bombs were dropped and 8,325 aircraft lost in action.

Interesting, that's about 2.3% overall, so if we assume that a maximum acceptable loss rate (in the short term) to be about 5%, there have to be some ops when no losses are taken. As a general rule of thumb this could be quite manageable in the game, so maybe the simulation is better balanced than we sometimes think it is.

[Lanconic]

Well the 'loss' rate of the Oct 14th raid was 29% in JUST shot down
138 damaged pushes it past 80%

Granted this is exceptional.

In my own games as the German I go after the escorts not the bombers.
Because he wont bomb unescorted.

[artuitus_slith]

in my current campaign (allies 43) losses stand at 3028 german losses vs 1642 allies. I have destroyed over 500 ac on the ground. heaviest losses on the german side are 109g6 and 410s of various models, heaviest allied losses are p47s and b17s

[Hard Sarge]

ORIGINAL: Lanconic

Well the 'loss' rate of the Oct 14th raid was 29% in JUST shot down
138 damaged pushes it past 80%

Granted this is exceptional.

In my own games as the German I go after the escorts not the bombers.
Because he wont bomb unescorted.

yea, that was a bad raid, from the beginning, it should of been called off and returned to base (one part of the planned raids, decided to be become a decoy raid, total furbar all the way around)

[Farfarer61]

In the old forum someone posted a quote by Galland that the overall losses were 1:1, except that was fighters ( 1 or 2 KIA) vs Bombers ( 2 - 13 KIA). I wish I could select "Bombers abort if fighter escorts abort" so I could at least try for missions in iffy weather, without having Gregory Peck push through without "little friends" and get hammered.

[Hard Sarge]

well, remember, Gregory Peck was doing what they did during the war, not what Hollywood thought would make a good movie

the first raid on Berlin, was a raid that got messed up and broken up, and most turned back

the weather was so bad, that it surprised the Germans when they heard the bombers overhead