Interception of Naval patrol

[tyronec]

Results from my current game with K62.

The first pic shows 27 intercepts by Axis of Soviet bombers. The kill rate (bombers lost/fighters intercepting) is 32/281 = 11%. Yes, it could have been a bit higher because a few times all 3 bombers were shot down, but not by much.

The next two results are Soviets intercepting Axis bombers. The kill rate is 59/82 = 72%.

What is going one here, Soviet fighters 6 times as good as German at the beginning of Barbarossa ?

Firstly, I would have expected the Axis fighters on escort to do better job, but that may just have been a couple of unlucky combats. But why are the 109's not shooting down more Soviet bombers ? Do they shoot less effectively with 12 against 3 than with 120 against 30 - because something of that sort seems to be happening.

Also, are fighters less effective if they are escorting Naval Patrol than escorting GS ? Or were those two combats just unlucky ?

[Joel Billings]

I don't think it can be answered without running it with saves. I take it these are during the same turn in the same area? Otherwise weather could be different. I'm surprised the Migs are doing as well as they are showing. Were more of the losses to the BVs? What were the Soviet bombers? If you look into the Soviet interception, you should see them broken into 12 plane attack groups and up to 12 plane bomber and escort groups. Perhaps having more than 3 is allowing for a big run against a group of 12. Are those Miggs especially experienced. I don't think I've ever seen Soviet fighters do that well in any battle that involved lots of escorts.

[K62_]

The MiGs were well experienced and got a bounce bonus. I also suspect the Bfs may have had drop tanks since IIRC the combat happened near Ochakov with low operational losses.

This is also not a representative fight, the overall Soviet fighter losses are very heavy in other air-to-air combat e.g. Gulf of Riga. As long as there's a random factor and you look at enough fights you're IMO bound to find one where the Soviets actually have good rolls.

[tyronec]

I don't think it can be answered without running it with saves. I take it these are during the same turn in the same area? Otherwise weather could be different. I'm surprised the Migs are doing as well as they are showing. Were more of the losses to the BVs? What were the Soviet bombers? If you look into the Soviet interception, you should see them broken into 12 plane attack groups and up to 12 plane bomber and escort groups. Perhaps having more than 3 is allowing for a big run against a group of 12. Are those Miggs especially experienced. I don't think I've ever seen Soviet fighters do that well in any battle that involved lots of escorts.

It is from the last turn, so saves are there and you could run again to see if it repeats.
The Migs were experienced, but below the 109s. Note that they did well in both combats even without the height advantage in the second one.
The Axis intercepts are for the Baltic, so that is a different area. Mix of Soviet bombers, some SB2s and some modern. Here is one typical result, 109s have height and are unable to score a hit. It looks like if the numbers engaged are low then you get less hits...

[Gam3r]

bounce bonus

what is that?

[Rosencrantus]

ORIGINAL: Gam3r

bounce bonus

what is that?

If I had to guess, K62 used AS and made his fighters fly with an altitude advantage, though I can't be sure.

[tyronec]

quote:

bounce bonus


what is that?

The combat report, I don't know if the extra height was random or not, of it it was an auto-intercept or an AS.

[K62_]

ORIGINAL: Rosencrantus

ORIGINAL: Gam3r

bounce bonus

what is that?

If I had to guess, K62 used AS and made his fighters fly with an altitude advantage, though I can't be sure.

It was an auto-intercept and it used the AS doctrine setting for altitude (which was set high).

[Joel Billings]

I see the Baltic has rain. I don't know if this impacts the actual final combat once the forces engage, but it might.

[DeletedUser1769703214]

Almost like the Soviets have the Axis CRT and the Axis the Soviet CRT

[Joel Billings]

When I downloaded the saves, I could only get Axis turn 6 start and Soviet turn 6 start. I could see on turn 5 the battle with the 50 Migs. They were above average pilots, especially for Soviets. I saw that on the next turn the air unit's surviving 28 Migs intercepted and lost 25, taking out 12 Germans. When I ran the German turn 6 air phase as is, I didn't get any intercepts, so not sure what I have to set up to get intercepts. I'd expect the losses for all sides to be lower in the latest version we have in test, but I can't say for sure. I think this is just a rare case of good Soviet pilots in decent aircraft with bounce bonus getting the better of the Germans in one battle but going down in the next. Since I can't repeat it, I can't say for sure. I'll have to ask Gary if some of the German intercepts that come up empty could be explained by the weather. Certainly the Soviet interdiction that was created was unimpressive.

[Omat]

Hello

The Mig-3 performs well at 25.000 ft. It not performs not so good at 10k ft. So seems more luck - which can happen (random roll)

[tyronec]

I set up a test bed from the Barbarossa deployment, with a GA Interdiction to Riga and then on a separate run a similar Naval Patrol to the sea hex beside it.
The Interdiction lost 3 for 45 in air combat.
The Naval Patrol lost 49 for 30 in air combat including 13 fighters.
A couple of the air combats shown.
In the Interdiction the Migs were at 13,000 while in the Naval Patrol they were at 10,000 so you might have expected a worse result for them in that one instead of better.

So the Soviets are doing maybe 15 times better intercepting Naval Patrol compared to intercepting GA.
Something doesn't seem right...

[Joel Billings]

Do you have saves from the two tests? I can't say why intercepts on naval would be different from intercepts of a ground attack mission, but it's always possible they are using different interception routines for some reason.

From what you are saying the German fighters are crushing the Soviet bombers. The Soviets are hurting the Germans even worse but paying for it with much higher losses. Not sure how the battles compare, but the Soviet loss to kill rate is much worse in this case which is what is to be expected from Soviet a/c.

[tyronec]

Do you have saves from the two tests? I can't say why intercepts on naval would be different from intercepts of a ground attack mission, but it's always possible they are using different interception routines for some reason.

From what you are saying the German fighters are crushing the Soviet bombers. The Soviets are hurting the Germans even worse but paying for it with much higher losses. Not sure how the battles compare, but the Soviet loss to kill rate is much worse in this case which is what is to be expected from Soviet a/c.

Test bed emailed.
The usual kill ratio for Axis to Soviet fighters is something between 5:1 and 10:1 at this period of the war.
What am seeing for intercepted Naval Patrols is around 2:1 or worse.

I suspect there has been a recent change, in my game with Rosencrantus we had some Naval Patrol battles and as far as I can remember the combat results were much as expected. That would have been around September.

[gingerbread]

The top report states air-transported FREIGHT and shows 6 Axis 'Other' lost but ZERO participants.
Are result data from another report leaking into this one?

[tyronec]

The top report states air-transported FREIGHT and shows 6 Axis 'Other' lost but ZERO participants.
Are result data from another report leaking into this one?

It was a Naval Interdiction so that is a battle type reporting error.
Sometimes Patrol aircraft are reported as bombers and sometimes as others so that is where the inconsistency with numbers comes from.

[Joel Billings]

I ran your test bed and also advanced it to turn 2 just to make sure that the turn 1 rules somehow don't screw something. What I found was that what mattered was whether there were escorts at the battle, or not there and only covering part of the route to the target and weren't there when the intercept happened. Also, Migs did much better than I fighters. This was true in both naval patrol and in the ground attack missions. I can't be sure that there isn't an issue here, but the test bed didn't give me a clear comparison because the escorts were not able to reach in most cases. I tried to set up raids within fighter cover but couldn't get the intercepts. If you've got a situation where you can get intercepts and escorts, and you see the difference, let me know.

[tyronec]

Had a couple more unfortunate combats this turn in my game with K62.
I have not been able to reliably reproduce this so maybe it is just bad luck, or maybe not. Would be interesting to know if other players have been seeing the same.

[Hardradi]

I have been in a pretty air intense game since November. There has been lots of Air Naval Action but I haven't been seeing this. The Bf 109s fighters are generally ripping the Soviets apart in the air. Both of us have been using Air Superiority Air Directives over the Naval Patrol areas.

I can see that your battle above was over the Gulf of Odessa. What air bases are your fighters flying from, are they at the end of their range?

Also are you using Drop Tanks on your fighters?

EDIT: In post #6 above you have a fighter using SWEEP doesnt this mean it was loaded with bombs/fuel tanks and dropped them to take on the enemy fighters. If your entire fighter force is loaded up like that you are going to be at a disadvantage.

Fighter-bombers that are bombing may jettison their bombs
and drop tanks and switch to “sweep” which simply
means they are becoming fighters trying to fight in
A2A going after enemy fighters. This allows those
fighters and fighter bombers to engage enemy
interceptors at full effect.

Air groups are broken down into smaller “flights” to
resolve air missions, to include air to air combat and
bombing runs. Decision by fighters or fighter bombers
to drop their drop tanks/bombs is made by flight. These
flights can consist of 4-12 aircraft So one part of an air
group unit can switch to sweep while another keeps
their drop tanks and press on with their escort mission
or, for fighter bombers, to bomb the target.

Note how effective the fighters that switched to SWEEP were compared to the others.