Lufwaffe tactics wanted for BTR

[PizzaDeOveja]

[font="Trebuchet MS"]Hi there mates!

Yesterday I started my first Axis campaign, The glorious 1 week oil campaign.
Modest objectives on my part are a must due to my total lack of ability and experience in the task at hand:

1- try to figure out how almost anything works due to the appalling manual's omissions as to explain almost anything that has to do with how the game works when playing the Axis, and also...

2-have someone still alive[:D] to blame for the destruction of the whole oil production[&o].

So far I haven't performed as badly as I expected, and while the allies DID manage to smash all the targets they DID want to smash (either the glorious fürher gives me a ton more planes or he can say buh-byes to the industries of the state) Im mosquito bleeding the hundreds of bombers with my ragtag romanian dudes and the scraps of the barrel of german pilots still alive by '44. Well at least I manage to intercept some raids which is an improvement over my latest "attempts".

Of course like all those tons of games about the battle of the bulge, there it not really any way to win if you play the enemies of the allies but still...

[:)]It would be nice of the guys[:)] that have years of experience with the game to contribute a few tips...do it for the pilots mothers if not for us newbies![;)][/font]

[Turner]

I'm in the middle of a PBEM '43 campaign so won't comment on the subject, much. [:o]

Historically speaking though, the Luftwaffe got screwed royally by above all the RLM and Göring, nevermind the allies. Just to name a few issues, the 262 could have been fielded a whole year earlier had Hitler personally not have insisted it must be able to carry bombs. RLM and the hitlerites grossly misjudged the industrial capacity of both the US and SU. RLM was fairly consistently betting on the wrong designs when it came to aircraft production priorities and the problem grew out of proportion with time. The 262 was never good at high altitudes and would not have been able to intercept the B29 in a continuation of the war.

The list is long but I'll stop here. You can't go to war with the wrong tools for the job. If you want to know which tools are needed, listen to your airmen. The most significant difference between Hitler and Stalin was perhaps that Stalin actually did listen to his generals, at least sometimes and most importantly at times it mattered the most. Hitler always held contempt for high ranking officers from his WW1 experience as a corporal.

[lastdingo]

The blaming of Hitler is a myth; the engines were the real problem. His Sturmvogel /Blitzbomber diversion was of minimal relevance in the end.

The 262 was never good at high altitudes and would not have been able to intercept the B29 in a continuation of the war.

This needs a source, to put it mildly.

[npsergio]

You can find some info here at The War Room. Try here: tm.asp?m=2254898 44 scenarios are hard for the defender: all your standard weapons (109G, 190, 410) are worse (IMHO) than the allies ones... so good luck!!

[Turner]

The 262 is a dog above 30k (I'd say 25k it starts to deteriorate). Later jets like the Ta183 and Go229 would have performed better but how well is uncertain. One must understand that the 262 was a incredibly difficult weapon to wield. The high speed of the aircraft coupled with the low velocity of the Mk108 made gunnery extremely difficult. It was not very maneuverable either and together these issues would have made attacks on B29 formations ~40k near impossible. Sure if the air-to-air rockets were used that's a bit different but that is also a fairly challenging type of weapon system.

[lastdingo]

Well, any fighter would have troubles intercepting a B-29 at 40k ft.

It's relevant that B-29's service ceiling was much lower (31-36k ft depending on service ceiling definition), though. Even more so with bombload.
40k ft service ceiling is a typo-based myth. The same wartime document that likely spawned this myth mentioned 33k ft service ceiling a few lines later.


Besides; the Me 262 was manoeuvrable despite high wing load. Its characteristics were very unusual and the pilots needed months to figure out how to make full use of it, for almost everything was different. Thus the early reports about it not being manoeuvrable. Its sustained turn (low loss of energy) and high climb rate at high altitude made is very powerful in fighter/fighter combat. One expert downed more than a dozen Mustangs with it.

[PizzaDeOveja]

[font="trebuchet ms"]Thx a lot guys...I'm getting a lot of input from that link (xTra Big Thx to npsergio[:)]) and from an undisclosed buddy that is currently in PBEM and Im not at the liberty to name[:D] nor of course his glorious tactics or I would get shot![X(]

I think part of my problem, probably a big part[:(], is that by historical '44 like you start in the oil short campaign the situation was already desperate many months ago so it is only logical that I'm so frustrated about having to watch as the glorious factories of the state get turned into parking lots and have to see all my fighters get hammered by the godless allied war machine...it probably would have been a good idea to have an scenario editor, an small campaign for '43 in which you don't need to guard the whole of Europe or even one after '41 in which you could produce, given the warm mantle of hindsight, only the planes that you already know would have a good bang for mark ratio.

Currently I'm developing a glorious furher syndrome and each turn I get more and more into AA and less and less into the fighters...I don't think AA ever shots to planes unless they pass directly over them, but at the objectives Im getting more damage bombers than almost in all my sorties combined for the day (and those guys still have to fly over Ploetsi where I have the biggest concentration of Ach-Ach the world has seen...Hoooooo ho ho ho ho).Of course the trade in is that the factory gets smashed, so it is a suicide tactic, but if I manage to properly intercept stragglers, so far I suck a lot on that (please HELP!) I think at least I will have many bomber carcases to help steel production after the war...

Well, they should have given me greater means if they expected better results![/font][:D]

[Turner]

All good points lastdingo, and what I wrote is just the information off the top of my head I did not pay close attention to references as you obviously do here. The true high-altitude interceptor in the LW inventory (hypothetically speaking) is/was the Ta152H. That would be the fighter of choice to intercept at extreme altitudes however the vertical speed potential of the 262 (and any jet for that matter) at extreme altitudes is a important factor. Still, to maneuver effectively (get guns on target) at those altitudes with such vertical speed separation is a challenge of its own kind and require a special kind of pilot training and/or experience, I'd argue.

There are so many variables, this really can be argued indefinitely and we still wouldn't come to any sort of conclusion.

[PizzaDeOveja]

[font="trebuchet ms"]...And as for the thrilling historical discussion just my two cents...

I totally concur that the problem was that the engines were never ready for mass production until very late in the war but IMHO the real problem was not even that..Im currently in the middle of Adolf Galand's book and according to him, and I again totally concur, the Luftwaffe never had in the critical early years of the war the idea that fighters were critical for Air superiority, they didn't even considered fighting in the defense. They believed in bombers to destroy enemy fighters on the ground and thus bf109 for example production was insanely low until the allies already could roam over Europe almost at will. Instead they believed in producing tactical bombers(and bimotor fighters) that after the blitzkrieg were no longer useful in any significant way for the war, and or keep switching priorities from the kriegmarine to the luft to the army...

Even with that, the RAF was totally defeated over Europe and was forced to operate in the night and even devise new "tactics" to bomb the only thing they could find on those conditions, cities full of civilians, making of virtue of the need as we say here. 

This was especially critical because by then the Americans and the brits have already decided, after watching France loose the war in a month(with brit support that got smashed also), that they would never again conduct ops against an enemy without having total air superiority, if so many of the considerable resources had been used in useful fighter models...

With the air over Europe still contended and the insane resources that got into AA (more than 20-30% ammo produced if I remember correctly went to AA, that would have been whole communist tank armies destroyed) being used to produce AT guns and ammo and sent to the Eastern Front the commies would have had even a harder, a much harder time to defeat them.

As it did happen to the Spanish Empire, you can hardly fight against all the world with the anglos determined to destroy and bankrupt you at all costs, "supported" only by failing, traitorous and incompetent allies...but they could certainly have done some critical things a lot better.

Of course that is the benefit of hindsight and also the war was only winnable if achieved in 1 or 2 years and after that it was only postponing the inevitable...[/font]
[font="trebuchet ms"]Writers always have and easy time selling books to men talking about how some technical marvel could have changed what happened...we men are wired to instantly dig into that![:D][/font]

[lastdingo]

The Wehrmacht was basically doomed in late 1941 when the Soviet Union did not break.
Its operational brilliance depended on the motorised mobility of 10-15% of its army divisions,
but the vehicle losses were great (many civilian trucks and cars as well as light motorcycles
broke down permanently), man vehicles proved to be unsuitable for the Eastern Front and
supply of new vehicles was too small for even only replacement of losses because much of
the automotive sector was engaged in aviation production and other metal works.
There was thus little hope that the Wehrmacht could defeat the Red Army in new major
pocket battles if the Red Army exploited its own mediocre mobility for suitable reaction moves.

The Mediterranean diversion of forces (equivalent to one Luftflotte, a Panzerkorps and several
normal Corps), the diversion of steel, manpower, engines and rare raw materials to U-Boat
production as well as the various equipment design shortcomings (inferior artillery ordnance,
poor balance of tank designs, lack of an efficient 6wd medium truck, lack of a close air support
aircraft in production etc) and an underdeveloped logistical network in the East did add to the
inability to knock the Soviet Union out.

Too many foes at once. Well, it was kinda for the better even for most Germans. Playing Spartans
in most of East Europe would have sucked. West Germany exceeded its wealth of 1936 already
around 1952, after all. Success through hard work is much superior to success in battle.


Btw, in regard to Luftwaffe tactics I'd like to suggest to play the long 1943 campaign.
It's an easy mode in August-November (December has bad weather and little action).
After the Winter 43/44 you'll get the aircraft designs that you've developed towards and that is
much better than what you get in the '44 scenario.

[Turner]

I don't want to start a argument here, because all of what you brought up are very good points. However the SU recieved a not so insignificant portion of help from the west. Soviet factories focused on weapons and nothing but weapons, heavy equipment like tanks, arty and aircraft. By '44 50% of the aluminum used in aircraft factories came from the west, about 80% of rare compounds for explosives and all railroad carts and engines were from the west plus railroad tracks. Canned foods supplying the troops almost in abundance and the ~375 000 trucks delivered which had the Red Army motorized for Bagration. In '43 the arty production ratio between GE and SU was 1/10 or less, with the SU supplying their army with over 120 000 pieces. The Wehrmacht did not recieve over 12 000, this is from memory so numbers are not correct but the general proportion is. I can dig out references if you like want them. Undoubtedly as brought up earlier, the AAA production and overall defense effort in the west distracted production heavily from supplying the eastern front. But my point was, that the SU might very well have crumbled had they not recieved so much material aid. As Roosevelt pointed out, the russians have the manpower, we have the industry to supply them with weapons.

[otisabuser2]

ORIGINAL: PizzaDeOveja

[font="trebuchet ms"]
Even with that, the RAF was totally defeated over Europe and was forced to operate in the night............[:D][/font]

What ! Was this following on from the the German victory in the Battle of Britain ? Was the leaning forward into France the following year all a myth then ?

[lastdingo]

ORIGINAL: otisabuser2
What ! Was this following on from the the German victory in the Battle of Britain ? Was the leaning forward into France the following year all a myth then ?

The R.A.F. only dared to operate bombers over stretches of Europe that were poorly guarded during '41-'42.
This included coastal targets and Northern France (guarded only by two fighter wings total).

Many of their missions involved more Spitfires than JG2 and JG 26 could possibly throw against the attack (because they were stretched out, JG 26 dispersed over Northern France and JG 2 a bit more to south).

The results were slightly painful, but on the strategic level at most a minor diversion. Kill ratios were not promising for either side in '41, but the Fw 190A-2 changed that in '42.


Commonwealth strategic bombing switched to night bombing in '44 entirely and only came back to (partial) daylight bombing in late '44 when Luftwaffe fuel supply was down to 10% of normal and Luftwaffe wasn't able to train its replacement pilots properly any more.



By the way; Germany did daylight bombing against England after '41, too. See SKG 10 (that was also a mere diversion and a rather wasteful enterprise).

[PizzaDeOveja]

[font="Trebuchet MS"]Yep its true...though I understand its difficult to accept given all the war propaganda that still today gets published passing as history[&:].

The Battle of Britain was lost mainly because the Germans lacked of a proper fighter with the needed range, the Me109 only allowed 20 mins of operations which put only Southern England in range. With the RAF wisely refusing combat there, bomber casualty rates would have been intense, in a force that after all was specifically designed for tactical not strategic op's (the reverse did happen in Vietnam with Thunderchiefs conducting strategic war up in the north and B52's doing tactical bombin runs).

Even then it would have been doable if the effort had been kept, but as in Vietnam, it was more a way of communicating with the brits using the air force instead of a proper plan for air supremacy and invasion.

RAF tactical bombers were slaughtered and suffered critical casualties whenever they operated over Europe in the Early days (when they didn't have total air superiority due to the fact that the Americans were yet to get here). For heavy bombers to operate deep inside the Reich in daylight it was plain suicide. Even operating by night they ended up suffering a 50% casualty rate, and that with the diversion all the other fronts and attrition meant for the Luftwaffe.

In light of the impossibility of operating in daylight, and with only the possibility of attacking the Germans by air (and of course with the tendency of any bureaucracy to see their branch as the key to wining the war, come up with all these crazy ideas theories and faked figures and thus demand much more money to expand it) they had to devise the concept of torching whole cities by night and came up with tactics like moral bombing which are "controversial". One seldom hears that word when they talk about the ideas the Germans had to come up to deal with their "war problems".

Of course in the case of the Anglos it was perfectly normal because the Germans "had done it first". The commies had concentration camps first, but that didn't do any good to the National socialists at Nuremberg. I'm guessing the excuse only works in favor of the glorious victors[:D].[/font]

[PizzaDeOveja]

I will be following the glorious advise and start as soon as possible my glorious '43 long campaign and see what happens. I expect to have a better aircraft mix than the one you have at the 44' short oil campaign which IMHO is pretty lame, but of course it is a definitive advantage to know which prototypes would turn into excelent planes and which ones would result in a total waste of money[:D] well its not that huge of a cheat I think..I expect you will still have it pretty hard given the insane number of bombers I had at my disposal in the long oil campaign playing with the USAF.

This weekend I bought Ano 2070 and MW3 so those glorious plans will have to wait thou...OH! Oh how I envy those guys from World of Warcraft and the like that apparently have 24 a day for playing games...I can barely keep up..so much to play and so little time![:(]

[Howard Mitchell]

ORIGINAL: lastdingo
The R.A.F. only dared to operate bombers over stretches of Europe that were poorly guarded during '41-'42.
This included coastal targets and Northern France (guarded only by two fighter wings total).

I think it would be more accurate to say that, during daylight, they normally operated within the range of escorting fighters rather than against poorly guarded targets. The German battlecruisers at Brest were bombed during daylight in 1941 for example.

Occasional unescorted raids, such as that by Lancasters to Augsburg in April 1942, were tried, and met with the expected results. Mosquito bombers conducted daylight raids from May 1942 but were later switched to support the main effort at night.

[lastdingo]

Mitchell; even the Reich was poorly guarded by '42 due to most Luftwaffe fighter wings being in the East and Med.
Scotland had a higher density of operational fighters in 1940 than the Reich in late 1941 till early 1943.

The only time the Luftwaffe came close to the force concentrations of the No 11 group area during the BoB once more was during the Battle of Kursk.

[otisabuser2]

......but to be fair, Scotland contained the second city of the Empire, the main ship-building area of Britain, some highly crucial arms and metal production areas and some of the most important naval bases.

It appears that indeed the RAF may have avoided deep penetration raids into the Reich, other than going in under the cover of darkness. Is this much different to the US raids of 1943, when deep penetration raids to targets like Schweinfurt were put on hold, until they could be given sufficiently long ranged escorts ?

Was the USAAF "totally defeated" over Europe until the arrival of the Mustang ?

The phrase totally defeated seems wholly inappropriate. The LW lost the Battle of Britain ( according to Pizza himself ), and in the following months the RAF stepped up it's night bombing campaign and at the same time began escorted daylight bombing raids within fighter escort range. They even mounted such raids in an attempt to draw the LW up into aerial battles. Some defeat ? [;)]

[lastdingo]

Look, a squadron of Wellington bombers reached the German coast sometime in 1940, the Germans were early warned by a Freya radar and intercepted with Bf 110 and Bf 109. The Wellingtons were shot up badly. The British conceded that they didn't have the tools for daylight bombing the Reich and gave the idea up till the Luftwaffe was reduced to less than 10% effectiveness.

It's really that simple; they did lack the right aircraft for the job.
In fact, all RAF Bomber Command daylight bombing over Europe during WW2 was unimportant, merely a nuisance. RAF anti-shipping attacks (especially from Malta) and fighter bomber attacks (Typhoons) were more important. I'd call reduction of daylight bombing of Bomber Command to a nuisance a defeat at the hands of German daylight fighters.


The U.S.A.A.F. believed in the high-flying, heavily armed 4-engine bomber, tested it in easy mode over France and then attempted to raid Germany. The worse than expected 8hoped for) damage done coupled with unacceptable losses forced them to reconsider and add LR escort fighters to their tactic.
They'd have used P-38s with two-stage supercharger Merlins if the very efficient P-51 hadn't been available.
The British had no real LR escort fighter since they neglected the RR Peregrine development in favour of the bigger RR Merlin and RR Griffon engines. Their new bomber generation (Lancaster, Halifax) was a mere bomb truck generation, not a bomber generation comparable to B-25, Pe-2 or Ju 188 in their tactical abilities. Those British bombers were meant to take off, cruise, aim, drop bombs, cruise, land - and use small calibre machine guns if attacked by aircraft. This repertoire was minimal.

[otisabuser2]

Sorry, not had time to reply until now.

ORIGINAL: lastdingo

Look, a squadron of Wellington bombers reached the German coast sometime in 1940, the Germans were early warned by a Freya radar and intercepted with Bf 110 and Bf 109. The Wellingtons were shot up badly. The British conceded that they didn't have the tools for daylight bombing the Reich and gave the idea up till the Luftwaffe was reduced to less than 10% effectiveness.

It's really that simple; they did lack the right aircraft for the job.
In fact, all RAF Bomber Command daylight bombing over Europe during WW2 was unimportant, merely a nuisance. RAF anti-shipping attacks (especially from Malta) and fighter bomber attacks (Typhoons) were more important. I'd call reduction of daylight bombing of Bomber Command to a nuisance a defeat at the hands of German daylight fighters.

Firstly, Pizza said the RAF was totally defeated over Europe. Looks to me like you guys are talking just about Bomber Command now, not the total RAF. In fact in discussing the daylight raids, the sights now seem lowered to the daylight portion of the Bomber Command portion of the RAF being defeated. Some way now already from the RAF being totally defeated, as first stated. [;)]

Second, British never "gave up the idea of daylight bombing", as suggested. RAF daylight bomber raids continued throughout the war. The 2nd Group of the RAF was there from start to finish doing the daylight stuff. It’s still there doing it’s daylight thing in the separate TAF on the OOB of our game in ’43 and ’44.

Bomber Command daylight raids were meant to be a nuisance. The main effort of Bomber Command was always planned as the night raids. Their daylight raids were not the main effort. Stating the daylight portion of BC raids were unimportant is wrong, though. The early Circuses of BC were meant to draw up the LW fighters into battle. These raids later targeted Ports, Power, Chem, Railroad and Airfield targets, within fighter escort range. This eventually produced the air superiority the Allies had over Normandy. These were pretty much the same tactics and targets used by the 8th and 9th USAAF, on arrival. Were the early efforts of the 9th USAAF unimportant and just a nuisance ? Note these early US raids used the daylight fighter escorts of the “defeated” RAF.

The 8th was sent to Scheweinfurt using their intended tactic of long range raids without the need for fighter escort. They were forced to reconsider this tactic as stated by LastDingo. His inconsistency comes when their reversal, and abandonment of deep raids for several months is passed off as a “change of tactic” by the mainforce of the USAAF. Bomber Command’s development of their night bombing strategy is somehow a “total defeat” even though it was their intended main tactic ? Hmmmm.

ORIGINAL: lastdingo

The British had no real LR escort fighter since they neglected the RR Peregrine development in favour of the bigger RR Merlin and RR Griffon engines. Their new bomber generation (Lancaster, Halifax) was a mere bomb truck generation, not a bomber generation comparable to B-25, Pe-2 or Ju 188 in their tactical abilities. Those British bombers were meant to take off, cruise, aim, drop bombs, cruise, land - and use small calibre machine guns if attacked by aircraft. This repertoire was minimal.

These Lancasters and Halifaxes that could bomb Berlin regularly at night without escort were not much good ? Meanwhile B17s and and B24s that were supposed to bomb the Reich without the need for fighter escort, but turned out to be not quite up to that job, were superior ? Your types listed ( B-25, Pe-2 or Ju 188 ) are medium types and are supposed to have better tactical abilities over the heavies. Are you including Dam-Busting Bouncing Bombs, Cookies, Tallboys and Grandslams in this minimal repertoire of the Lancaster

My prospective Father-in-Law was in the RAF during the war. He wishes someone had told his mob they were totally defeated as it would have saved them the bother of raiding deep into Europe on a nightly basis.