How to maintain a SUSTAINED air offensive?

[joey]

I was letting the computer do the air war while a concentrated on learning the ground war and amphib ops.
I got to point were I noticed my losses in the air war were horrible. After a examination of the results, I noticed a large number of unescorted raids deep into Germany.
These were causing most of the losses. I will give Meklore61's advice a try and do my raids in manual.
I wonder if it would be easier if we could put a range limit on the computer to limit these deep unescorted raids.

[marion61]

There are times you will want to strike deep into Axis held cities, even without escorts. There are some juicy targets, but the escorts cannot reach that far, yet. When you plan a raid, any raid, make sure the Follow Path option is on. This way you can fly your air groups around heavy concentrations of flak and fighter bases. Do recon thru areas your bombers will travel so you can ID which airbases have planes and which don't. You can cut a lot of casualties out by plotting your own paths and avoiding flak and fighters. Sometimes you just have to fly thru them, but it's best to avoid them if possible.

[joey]

I have taken your advice. I now create my ADs and then delete all the raids and create ones that actually make sense.
This takes a bit more time, but the results are worth it.
Thanks for the advice! j

[carlkay58]

joey, check your escort squadrons and make sure they upgrade from P-47s to P-38s and P-51s. The 38s & 51s have the range to escort the B-17s and B-24s deep into Germany while the 47s do not.

[FroBodine]

ORIGINAL: Helpless

Don't do this. This is unnecessary if you don't want to micromanage. Pilots are added each maintenance phase (7 times per air exec)

What use is the "Add Pilots" mechanic in the Commander's Report then, if you are telling us not to use it because pilots are added automatically?

[KWG]

"What use is the "Add Pilots" mechanic in the Commander's Report then, if you are telling us not to use it because pilots are added automatically?"

You can micromanage for example ... adding all available replacement pilots to 3 air groups where as the AI might spread the replacements over all the units. Or vice versa.

[HMSWarspite]

ORIGINAL: joey

I was letting the computer do the air war while a concentrated on learning the ground war and amphib ops.
I got to point were I noticed my losses in the air war were horrible. After a examination of the results, I noticed a large number of unescorted raids deep into Germany.
These were causing most of the losses. I will give Meklore61's advice a try and do my raids in manual.
I wonder if it would be easier if we could put a range limit on the computer to limit these deep unescorted raids.

You dont need to do the air system completely in manual. What I am doing is autogenerating missions from the Directive screen, then looking at all missions, and moving ones I think are too deep. The rest I leave to the AI. One trick is (when the auto directives want to bomb deep) is to swap that target to RAF BC (who don't mind a lack of escorts so much)

Usually you only need to adjust 8AF, and even that goes once you have P51 in all 8th FG.

[Remmes]

ORIGINAL: carlkay58

joey, check your escort squadrons and make sure they upgrade from P-47s to P-38s and P-51s. The 38s & 51s have the range to escort the B-17s and B-24s deep into Germany while the 47s do not.

Can you do this manually or do you have to wait for this to happen?

[marion61]

You can set your air groups manually or on auto. The air groups I do manually are the ones I don't want the system to change, which are the deep escorts. You set any air group to manual or auto.

[Remmes]

Thanks a bunch Meklore. So much to learn. [:)]

[Devonport]

Is there a way to set all air groups to auto, or do you have to go through them one at a time?

[marion61]

Commanders report. Very important tool.

[joey]

Thanks, what a difference that made! j