air mission altitudes

[whoofe]

ok I understand how altitudes on air missions will be affected by large & small AAA. and it makes sense to me that level bombers will be less accurate at higher altitudes

leaving out the effect of AAA, how do altitudes affect missions such as tactical air interdiction, air superiority, and railroad tactical bombing?

for example:

-is having a 1000 alt advantage on opposing air going to help determine the outcome?

-if I set my dive bombers to 25000 feet cruise alt, will they still be effective at destroying ground targets?

-if I have air superiority at 25000 and a ground attack in the same area at 10000 will the air superiority help keep the ground attack protected?

thanks in advance for advice / tips

[carlkay58]

Some answers as I see them (not necessarily correct):

1) Height advantage in opposing air: I believe it is supposed to matter. I really don't think it comes through that way though. I do know in play testing the game I tried to manually set up situations for both sides and if the altitude difference was > 5,000 the odds of intercepting went way down.

2) 25,000 feet cruise dive bombers: As I understand it, all dive bombers that fly over 11,000 will dive to 1,000 to hit the target. This opens them up to large flak damage but increases their accuracy.

3) See #1 above. It depends on the altitude of the interceptors. I would keep them within 5,000 for best results.

[Helpless]

-is having a 1000 alt advantage on opposing air going to help determine the outcome?

Yes, but some flights are can react to change altitude. Also good detection within long range can provide benefits for the intercepts to have altitude advantage.

-if I set my dive bombers to 25000 feet cruise alt, will they still be effective at destroying ground targets?

Yes, they will dive in and attack on much lower alt.

-if I have air superiority at 25000 and a ground attack in the same area at 10000 will the air superiority help keep the ground attack protected?

yes, AS flights can join in to protect incoming friendly strikes when attacked.

[Helpless]

how do altitudes affect missions such as tactical air interdiction, air superiority, and railroad tactical bombing?

Tac bombers and FB when flying high enough >5000 will try to dive in and attack on lower alt. Otherwise glide bombing accuracy strongly depends on altitude.

[whoofe]

so is there advantages (other than trying to avoid concentrated high alt AAA if the low alt AAA is sparse) to flying at very low altitude?

[Helpless]

so is there advantages (other than trying to avoid concentrated high alt AAA if the low alt AAA is sparse) to flying at very low altitude?

Flying very low has various advantage.
- You are not suffering from neighboring hexes flak (<10K)
- Medium/high flak is very ineffective or even inactive
- Speed evade plays major role.

Last one very important, because flying B-17s very low will attract lots of small flak fire w/o ability to evade it due to low speed.

[Denniss]

B-17 down low is a nice big target for 20mm quad flaks.