43 Grand Campaign AAR - Allies

[TaggedYa]

Okay turn nine results:

The trip to Bremen got hosed. It took me a while to figure out, but the last outbound escorts and all of the inbound escorts didn't fly. Losses on that trip were over 100 to about 40. I never expected to have the fighters not fly given weather of 39.

They did the job. And that's about all I have to say on that subject.

Things since then will be covered in my post in the common area.

[TaggedYa]

Turn 10 weather over England in 50s and long range escorts in bad moral
weather over Italy in 90s.
No missions flown. Computer decides this is the perfect time to rearrange my fighter assignments. 6 or 7 units in the wrong planes. One Apache group goes to p38Hs which I have none of available and which I can't switch back because the Apache is a bomber and the p38 is a fighter. I therefor have one less FB Group and one more fighter group. Exactly the opposite of what I would want.

Turn 11. Due to a new understanding of reality and the comps unit rearrangements I wholesale rearranged my fighter assignments. All spit 8, P38, and mustang I and IA were reassigned to units in England. All spit V of both types went to units in Sicaly. The spit Vbs went to 12th AF along with the Spit HF9s. The HF9s will be 12AF's escort units. All other med units will be doing ground attack.

Not sure of how the comp decides on upgrades but a unit was assigned P38Js when there were none in the pool and 5 days till they start coming in. I figure that the time to get Js was less than to get Hs given it assigned units both types with none available of either.

With few fighters able to fly only night missions flew. Losses were 10 night bombers to 3 night fighter ops losses.

Turn 12 was another bad weather day. I sent it back to Nick without doing anything so he could run it and return it before he went to bed but I had warned him I had maintenence things to do so he crashed before I got it back to him

That brings us up to date. I just sent Nick turn 13. With 3 days off everyone is flyable.

[TaggedYa]

Turn 13 Planning:

Part of the new reality that we have to deal with is that there are few valid targets. I didn't want to go deep with 100% of the German Air Force ready to fly. I didn't know where his fighters are based, after three days they could be anywhere. He flew his night fighters on turn 11 and he hasn't been moving his night fighters around like he has his day fighters.

So, today's missions in the West are going to the cluster of three night fighter fields west of Bremen. All three airfields are the target of at least one fighter sweep. Then they each get hit by about 100 B-17s. Between fighters and bombers, the raid package is about 1800 sorties. I started to do the usual diversionary and side raids but canceled them. I will use the FBs on his airfields once I know where he is at.

I think that the lack of meaningful targets is going to make things a strait up slug-fest. No finesse, no diversions just mass your planes and head for a target that means something. I can do that.

[TaggedYa]

T 13 Italy and the England raid list

In Italy there is nothing really interesting. In prep for the invasion (and in hopes of getting it to come early. Can that happen?) I sent 30 or so bomber and fighter bomb attacks to 29 PZ Gren. To start softening it up I sent 20 or so to 26 PZR. Only other thing flying in Italy is a long recon to the Balkans just to have a unit in the air at all times to keep the clouds from resetting.

[Creeper]

ORIGINAL: TaggedYa

T 13 Italy and the England raid list

TaggedYa, could you please add a date to your turn numbers in the future?
Like "T13 (Aug, 29, 43)" or similar?
(I'm too lazy to do the math by myself.. [:D])

Thank you!
Creeper

[JeffroK]

When attacking targets on a line of Bremen or north I approach over the North Sea.

Somewhere back, someone claimed this increased Luftwaffe pilot losses and that you had some chance of affecting RADAR sites covering this approach.

This could also be limited by the range of your escorts.

[TaggedYa]

Duh

It's been 6 days since I have posted in here and I am 3 turns behind. I thought I had done turn 14 but I guess not. Hope I still have the screen shots.

[TaggedYa]

Okay

No post for turn 14 because nothing happened on turn 14. Whether in England was 89%, whether in Italy was in the 50s. The only missions flown were about six fighter bomber missions against 29th Panzer Grenadier that flew under the clouds. They did a fair amount of damage and kept the disruption up.

[TaggedYa]

Turn 15: (8/31/43) for Creeper

The long-range escorts not being ready for a long mission, I've devised an elaborate misdirection to slip a mosquito fighter bomber mission through to the Junkers engine factory at Strasberg. The B-17s are headed southeast. Hopefully far enough to get his Air Force to chase them. Then they head West towards Bordeaux, which should keep them out of range of the fighters chasing them. The other raids are sweeps and airfield bombing missions in multiple layers to tire out his Air Force and give the mosquitoes something to hide in.

[TaggedYa]

Turn 15: (9/1/43) Italy

Simple and straightforward about 50 individual squadron raids against the entire front lines of the German Army.

[TaggedYa]

Sorry got the date wrong: turn 15 is (8/31/43)

On the England side of things the B-17 misdirection play worked. However, the B-17s missed. There should have been a hole in the clouds, actually, there shouldn't have been any clouds at all weather was very clear, but the first group had a bombing through clouds message and all other groups simply didn't bomb.

The Tiffys did their usual fine job knocking out the occupied airfields in the area. Unfortunately, the fighter sweeps strafed everything in sight except the targets they were supposed to. They did however do their primary job of getting the Germans up in the air and engaged.

The mosquitoes took out the engine plant doing 100% damage.

The raids in Italy did significant damage to his ground troops and we got another breakthrough advancing almost to Naples.

Code: Select all

 
 damage to ground for the last few turns
 
                     13          14           15
 Tanks               18           2           49
 Artillery            2           0            3
 Inf                  3           0            0
 AAMG                 1           3            3
 20MM                 8           1            4
 37MM                 1           1            3
 20MMQuad             2           4            2
 88MM                 5           0            1
 
 

[TaggedYa]

Turn 16 (9/1/43): England

Weather is okay in France but horrible in Germany. That's okay, the night guys need some rest and the long range escorts need some reorganization. New fighter groups are coming in for 8th AF and need reassigned AC and to be forward deployed. I don't want the guys in France who got a workout yesterday to have a day off so I sent a well escorted Tiffy raid to the CFacs behind Paris. To the west the FBs hit an infantry unit just to get his planes in the air.

[TaggedYa]

Turn 16 (9/1/43): Italy

More weather. Heavy clouds (in 50s) at 11600. No problem, I will just go in under them.

29th PZG is the red unit all the way at the top. I started the day with the baltimore 5s in a fairly well escorted raid to keep punishing them now that they are no longer fortified.

There is a heavy bomber raid against 26th PZ just south of Salerno bombing through a rare hole in the clouds.

Most of the rest is fighters bombing ground units with a couple of exceptions. One is a p47 sweep that is dodging around 16th PZ to strafe foggia#2 and the other is a group of kittyhawks that is turning out of the stream headed to Herman Goring (at Benevento) to Bomb the Airfield south of Battipaglia.

Range is starting to be an issue. If I push them back behind Salerno the fighters of 12AF will be out of a job until the new fields start to open up. As fast as they are falling back that could leave them out of action for several days.

[TaggedYa]

Got both avionics factories in the west and did major damage in Italy. 29th PZG is showing 100% damage 0 AA of any kind and less than 10 tanks. I thought I had done good. Seems they fell victim to a bug. I will put up a post about it in the common thread but the gist of it is a bug is dropping bombs from raids set up with the follow command on the target of the raid followed not where they were actually dropped. 29th PZG got hit with a bunch of stuff that should have hit 26th PZ. Herman Goring got hit with stuff that should have fallen on an airfield.

[TaggedYa]

Turn 17: (9/2/43) England

Germany is socking again. And there are just not a lot of targets in France. The bombers are starting to max out in morale. So we are going to have a little training exercise. Three groups each to Lemans and Châteaudun, and three groups each to the rail flak guarding them. The bombers really don't need the training, but all of the fighters are tagging along and some of them could definitely use it.

The Tiffy's will go, in two groups of five, to 12 SS Panzer just to knock out some tanks. They also have a few escorts.

[TaggedYa]

Turn 17: (9/2/43) Italy

Lots of bombing missions to the three tank units in range.

The three raids to the airfields north of Naples are going in at 100 feet to be under the 200 foot cloud level. There is no break in the clouds over that area all day. I've been wanting to see what a low-level attack would do to an airfield.

[TaggedYa]

Turn 17 results

The raids to the tanks in Italy did good damage. The low level airfield attacks were a disaster. All attacking aircraft were either damaged or destroyed and no attacks took place. Obviously low level attacks are not viable at all.

Most of the destroyed planes were killed at 100 ft by heavy AA. That is a broken mechanic if there ever was one. Heavy AA can't traverse fast enough to track low level planes let alone hit them.

The raids to the airfields and rail flak missed. One group got minimal damage to one airfield, all other bombs missed. Did I say something silly about my bombers not needing training??? As expected, he did not mess with the heavily escorted raid but one sqd of spits straggled and he jumped on them for four kills.

[TaggedYa]

Turn 18 (9/3/43):

Not much happening today. The weather is still horrible over greater Germany, moderate in Italy, and clear in France.

In Italy, still bombing the tank units.

In England, 11 group, having nothing better to do, is running P 47 fighter sweeps to an area adjacent to a couple of his occupied airfields. This should get some of his planes in the air

[Creeper]

TaggedYa, is there a chance that you continue this AAR?

[TaggedYa]

Yes I am going to continue. I didn't post the planing for 19 (oops). Turn 20 is in Nicks box and will probably be coming back at me soon.

I have the screen shots for 19 still in the folder, I don't know why I didn't post them.