Night fighters

[Chris21wen]

What to do with them?

I'm currently playing the introductory scenario and it's taking me a looooong time to do the air war. I find it hard to get my head round and unfortunately, cumbersome. However I'm plodding on but I have no idea what to do with the various NF of which there are 7 spread across three commands, Malta, Tactical and Coastal with none in the Strategic.

I've only got one small night bombing mission being carried and that by the strat AF. All other commands except for the Malta are at full AD capacity with day missions.

Now I can transfer the NF to Strat for escort/intruder or to Malta and create Intruder missions. Ther appear completely useless in the other commands with the number of other AD requirements.

Anybody any thoughts, and more importantly am I missing something obvious because just leeting them sit there seems pointless.

[loki100]

the basic problem is the Allies feared something that really couldn't happen at this stage of the war - Axis night bombing of key ports.

So accepting that, NF are best seen as either an escort (for your bombers) or left to auto-intercept (enemy bombers). Ignore the night intruder mission for the moment. That is a very specialist attempt to put the NF over enemy airbases as their night planes return (ie are very vulnerable).

In the Sicily campaign, I'd simply leave well alone, just let them sit and auto-intercept if ever needed.

In the longer Italy or full campaign they are a bit more useful. The Mosquitos in particular are actually quite decent day escorts and you are very short of longer range escorts in Italy really up to 1944 (the UK has to be priority). In the GC, some could go to the UK (extra escorts for Bomber Command is never a bad idea)

just 'letting them sit there' is no bad strategy. They demand trained fighter pilots to replace their losses, if they only fly on limited occasions you don't deplete your pilot pool. If I recall the VP scoring, you lose VP for lost aircraft so why not let them sit it out - they did historically.

[Chris21wen]

Thanks.Reading this made realize what I'd forgotten, auto interception.