ORIGINAL: tarkalak
ORIGINAL: MBF
Curious you don't have any luck with it ... hmmm
From my most recent turn vs AI (26March1945):
Night Air attack on Hiroshima/Kure , at 106,58
Weather in hex: Heavy cloud
Raid detected at 34 NM, estimated altitude 9,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 11 minutes
Japanese aircraft
J1N1-Sa Irving x 7
Allied aircraft
F6F-5N Hellcat x 6
No Japanese losses
Allied aircraft losses
F6F-5N Hellcat: 2 damaged
Aircraft Attacking:
6 x F6F-5N Hellcat bombing from 6000 feet
Airfield Attack: 2 x 1000 lb GP Bomb
CAP engaged:
210 Ku S-3 with J1N1-Sa Irving (1 airborne, 2 on standby, 1 scrambling)
2 plane(s) intercepting now.
Group patrol altitude is 10000 , scrambling fighters between 10000 and 30610.
Time for all group planes to reach interception is 21 minutes
S-851 Hikotai with J1N1-Sa Irving (0 airborne, 0 on standby, 0 scrambling)
0 plane(s) not yet engaged, 3 being recalled, 0 out of immediate contact.
Group patrol altitude is 6000 , scrambling fighters between 0 and 6000.
Time for all group planes to reach interception is 3 minutes
Some CAP have air radar
Those are bombing not sweeping.
Yeah, there seems to be something that makes NF fighter sweep very elusive. Night airfield attacks are fine, but I'm not sure about naval or ground attack.
ORIGINAL: Canoerebel
We have a house rule that limits the number of night bombers to 50 per airfield (I don't know whether that means 50 coming from any particular friendly airfield or 50 targeting any particular enemy airfield).
I've tried a variety of night bombing missions against ports and airfields, basically with no success at all. I especially like using the British 4EB, of which I have 4 or 5 squadrons at Shikuka. They never do anything, so I only try it rarely.
Damaging enemy aircraft doesn't accomplish much either. Erik simply rail transports them to another base, and they're back online in a couple of days, even with high service ratings.
When the Bihoro campaign is completed, I'll have a good rail network that will allow me to use aircraft forward and rail the damaged ones to more remote fields. I'll also have proximity to his big bases from Tokyo north, allowing Allied fighters to sweep or escort. So I'll be trying a variety of strategies, hoping to find something that works and hoping to learn that Erik is suddenly (and unexpectedly, from my perspective) having some trouble maintaining good CAP over all the potential targets. Night bombing will be employed too.
IMO, the purpose of night airbase bombing isn't focused on destroying or damaging planes. It's a nice bonus, but the big win is the morale of air groups.
A serious night bombing raid on a large airbase sends the morale of the squadrons stationed at that base into the dirt. Sure, you might only destroy or damage ten or twenty planes, but if there's ten squadrons that have their morale knocked back less than fifty, that's a lot of combat effectiveness lost. It works very well in a one-two combo with daytime sweeps. Send in the night bombers to plaster the base, send in the sweepers to maul the demoralized leftovers.
This is a large part of why I strongly dislike house rules, especially regarding night bombing. There's a lot of tactical flexibility that's just waved away as "Oh, we don't do that here.". The arguments about night bombing being broken just don't stand up to close scrutiny.
The trick to good night bombing raids is mass. If you send five hundred bombers at a target at night, mabye half get lost, but even then you've still 250 bombers smashing the target.
; Julia Child
Targeting airfields on Hokkaido each night will eventually drive enemy air unit morale down.
