German Air Power in Stalingrad to Berlin Campaign

[Naughteous Maximus]

I playing the Germans in the Stalingrad to Berlin Campaign but I do not know how to properly use the German airpower. I have increased German fighters from four Jagdgeschwader's to five and pretty much play defensively. I've have everything set for ground support but when I do interdictions or bomb ground units, I take considerable losses from FlaK and operational losses. I do occasional recons but pretty much I don't use my Air Doctrine effectively if at all. Anyone have any suggestions for playing the German Luftwaffe in Russia from 1943 to '45? [&:]

[loki100]

anything but GS needs to be justified, so constantly ask yourself why do any other mission.

I think GA-unit is worth it if you want to shift a stack (as part of cutting off a spearhead), GA-railyard may be worth it if you think a Soviet sector must be relying on a given depot.

There are a few useful specialist planes, the Me-410s with their heavy machine gun loadout can do serious damage to Soviet armour (so I set up an AOG just with them and use it for GA-unit when it can be justified).

For 42-43, the LW still wins easily A2A, so I set up a chain of FB-F along the front, that'll intercept any Soviet raids (the AI likes variants of GA) and give your bombers good protection in a GS engagement.

1944 gets tricky as more and more of the LW goes west and the VVS gets better. At that stage I'd cluster my AOGs around key sectors and let the VVS roam elsewhere.

edit:

more esoteric bits. I personally replace the Ju-87 tac bombers with the Fw-190s, the latter may do a bit less damage but are far more robust (so will survive to deliver their mission).

watch out for stuff falling out of production, in the main you can wait till a formation is set to rest before upgrading

I personally set to rest anything with 10 or more fatigue. This really controls your losses overall.

[Naughteous Maximus]

@loki100, Thanks a lot for the response [&o]. It has given me ideas to play with. [:D] THANKS!!!!!!!!

[cameron88]

As i said in my post here - https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.a ... ey=� , ground attack is virtually useless, and does barely any damage at all to enemy ground units. Your planes die to absurdly high and unrealistic levels of ground flak, and if they somehow survive this, they will still die to operational losses. War in the East 1 actually had useful missions and aircraft, in this game your airforce feels worthless, you can ignore it and just leave it on ground support/occasional recon. And I've played 42 campaign 3 times now against players and taken a key interest in how to best utilize the German airforce, and i can assure you it's worthless.

[Rosencrantus]

Honestly, leaving the LW on GS is all you really should along with the naval patrols/recons when needed as GS can literally carry battles (the amount of elements they can disrupt in a single battle is actually quite impressive, especially with the right loadout). If you check out Tyronec's StB AAR you'll most likely see that Ground attack is also broken, as it basically guarantees that any pocket that I form will be opened. This is mostly though only for the Soviets as they can actually sustain the heavy bomber losses that GA entails. Due to the fact that for some reason GA almost never get intercepted, which seems to be getting fixed in the future but should be house ruled out for now. The air war for sure needs to be tweaked, but its main purpose in the game is to support units in combat and the aircraft both sides have do an excellent job at that.