Escorts

[Heshetan]

I'm fairly new to the game, and I'm having some trouble when it comes to escorting my bomber raids. Sometimes it goes well and they do their jobs, and my fighters shoot down all sorts of enemy interceptors. Sometimes though, it goes very poorly, and my bomber formations will be torn to shreds despite having twice their number in fighters flying with and above them. What I'm not sure of is if this is some sort of mechanic I'm not fully understanding (low morale affecting escort aggressiveness, maybe?) or if it's a problem on the game's end.

Usually I'll be sending raids up with ~50% of the fighters on close escort and most of the rest at 5,000 feet above the bombers, with a few high-altitude fighters at 7,000 above the formation in order to bounce enemy interceptors. Not sure if that's relevant information, but figured it probably wouldn't hurt to add it.

[mark dolby]

Hi.
I'm mostly replying from the other side of the coin here as I generally play LW.
It seems that what you are seeing is absolutely normal. Every mission, even if sent to the same target with the same units day after day will be different. Cloud could be a big factor hampering visuals for both sides. Different pilots will be chosen from your rosta, leaders may change with some being more aggressive than others.
Your tactics are valid, when bombing in BoB I have close escort and then layered defence up to @5k with some even higher up to @8-10k above the bombers. Note that units with @10k difference will probably not interfere with each other.
Once your missions are airborne, no two will play out the exact same.
Mark.

[ScrubLord93]

There's an element of luck of course, but what you're doing now is pretty much what you should be doing. Escorts only get once "bounce" before they're at a lower altitude and after that they'll probably be bounced themselves from enemy fighters that haven't dropped altitude yet. I also prefer to keep my escorts a lot closer than you to the bombers as I believe that factors into whether they are able to stop enemies from reaching the bomber formation. I'd recommend trying out layering most of your escorts at 2k and 4k and maybe some at 5k above your bomber formations and it should improve your intercept rate.

Also worth noting that the enemies will always have an advantage defending if you are flying into radar coverage. If your bombers are at 20k, escorts at 27k, the enemy will simply come in at 28k or 29k altitude. Escort aircraft are inherently fighting at a disadvantage since they're restricted to being close to the bomber formation, so they'll generally take more losses than the defending aircraft until you get better escort aircraft like the P-51.

I've also noticed that the more complex my raid is, the worse the enemy fighters are at dealing with individual formations. Even escorted with hundreds of fighters, if you send in a single massive 600x B-17 formation, it'll probably experience way more losses than if you were to send two 300x B-17 raids and split the escorts between them. I'm not sure exactly how the game models it, but the general trend seems to be that the AI is pretty good at organizing its intercepts the fewer raids there are happening at once. This is cool and imo makes sense as it mimics the breakdown in organization the defending force would have if all of a sudden, 4 bomber formations attacked at once.

If you try all of this and are still having issues I can try to put forward other ideas based on what I know. Hopefully this helps.

[Heshetan]

Thanks very much, I appreciate the tips. Gonna play through a few days and see if staggering the escorts a bit more makes a notable difference, and report back once I have enough data to form a notable conclusion.

[simovitch]

Another tip that is sometimes missed by newer players is the need to 'delay' your escorts launch to extend their time with the bomber groups. And don't forget the return leg protection. delays are best set by right clicking along the bomber path to set the join up point going out and coming back.

Also, plan your raids to bomb a cluster of targets after following the previous raid path. This allows you to share the escort screen. Watch out for diminishing returns on >100 bomber raids. Smoke will start to obscure the target after the first few groups have dropped their loads.

[RedBunny]

Also, plan your raids to bomb a cluster of targets after following the previous raid path. This allows you to share the escort screen. Watch out for diminishing returns on >100 bomber raids. Smoke will start to obscure the target after the first few groups have dropped their loads.

Any idea how long it takes for the detrimental affects of larger raids to wear off for successive raids?

[simovitch]

Good question and I had to look at the code for an answer: smoke effects on targeting accuracy (for bombing and recon) diminish over the target by 5% per minute.

[ScrubLord93]

Another tip that is sometimes missed by newer players is the need to 'delay' your escorts launch to extend their time with the bomber groups. And don't forget the return leg protection. delays are best set by right clicking along the bomber path to set the join up point going out and coming back.

Is there a trick to ensuring that your "extraction" escort aircraft actually reach the bomber formations? I've noticed that often when I delay escorts to cover the return leg, they turn back long before they reach the bomber formation even though I know they still have fuel in the tank. For example, I often use P-47-D6 for the return leg since their endurance isn't great, and they almost never actually link up with the returning bomber formation and turn back almost as soon as they cross the English Channel. I could understand if they reached the form up point and if the bombers were late they'd simply turn back, but they're turning back way before the form up point seen during mission planning.

[warshipbuilder]

Is there a trick to ensuring that your "extraction" escort aircraft actually reach the bomber formations? I've noticed that often when I delay escorts to cover the return leg, they turn back long before they reach the bomber formation even though I know they still have fuel in the tank. For example, I often use P-47-D6 for the return leg since their endurance isn't great, and they almost never actually link up with the returning bomber formation and turn back almost as soon as they cross the English Channel. I could understand if they reached the form up point and if the bombers were late they'd simply turn back, but they're turning back way before the form up point seen during mission planning.

Set your delay really late and they should pick up the return leg. You may have to fiddle with a bit to get it exactly where you want it.

[ScrubLord93]

Set your delay really late and they should pick up the return leg. You may have to fiddle with a bit to get it exactly where you want it.

What I mean is that even when doing exactly this, it still often doesn't work. The extraction escorts with a heavy delay will get halfway to the meetup point and then turn back before locating the bombers. I'm not sure if there is some mechanic I'm missing or what but the result has been that escorts I assign for the return leg often do nothing but eat flak.

[simovitch]

If the escorts themselves engaged any enemy fighters enroute, they would have jettisoned their tanks, which might explain why they bingoed before joining the bombers. The other thing would be that bad weather delayed the bombers taking off, and they had not reached the spot that the later escorts thought they would be at.

Otherwise I tested this briefly with the P47 D6 and did not see an issue.

[ScrubLord93]

Interesting, it would make sense if they jettisoned when under air attack but that was also not the case. Are tanks dropped the moment escorts fly over a site with HAA? That could be it as it seemed they pulled back very quickly after crossing over the channel and flew over some German controlled sites.

[simovitch]

Only if a plane actually took damage>25% of it's durability, then it would break away for home but the rest of the group would continue on. Those D6's don't have much range but they should make it to the points you set during raid planning.

Keep an eye on it and report back if you can.

[ScrubLord93]

Here's a photo of what I was describing after a turn I processed today (apologies for phone photo, this game does not like to be screen captured).

https://imgur.com/a/tnnJwCD

Not one German group had taken flight yet and no combat at all, didn't fly over any HAA sites. Despite all that, four of my P-47 groups had already turned back despite having just met with the bombers. The two groups over England turned back almost as soon as they crossed the English Channel (I know their endurance isn't great but the mission planner shows them going much farther than that). The P-47D-15 group is also turning back, despite the mission planner showing they have the endurance to accompany the bombers the entire journey (assuming no combat occurred).

Not sure what's going on here. There seems to be a huge discrepancy between the green escort coverage shown during mission planning and how far the escorts actually go. I've only noticed it happening with P-47s so far.

[simovitch]

I can confirm what you are saying about the escort range set during planning falls short of the actual range during combat. My test show similar results however the P47's that seem to break away early are justified because by the time they reach England their tanks are mostly dry. The solution here maybe is to take those planning ranges with a grain of salt.

[JeffroK]

IMVHO, the range shown doesnt include forming up, climbing to altitude etc plus I feel that some types of fighters escort some types of bombers better, for example my B26B get slaughtered!

[fochinell]

I've seen this repeatedly, with P-47D-6's and Spitfires on escort missions. The claimed escort range in the planning phase has no relation to the actual escort coverage, which is usually significantly less. That may be a distinct problem from another aspect I've seen which is units repeatedly going bingo fuel and returning to base with no enemy or flak contact or even bad weather to justify dropping external tanks early, leading to zero escort coverage at all. I've replayed several turns over again and I can't identify a common factor - sometimes they successfully RV with the bombers and fly at least a proportion of planned escort, other times they return before the RV or shortly after.

Another factor might be the TOT in raid planning doesn't reflect the actual TOT of the raid. Most of my medium and heavy bomber units seem to be flying at higher cruising speeds than calculated in the planning phase, thus reaching the target earlier. I assume this might have some impact on the escort coverage display.

[simovitch]

I looked at the code and I think I see what is happening. The time it takes for the escorts to fly from their base to the FUP is calculated based on their escort speed (v-30mph) so the farther this distance is, the less overall escort range they will have compared to what you see when you set the rendezvous point.

So the escort range raid is slightly penalized for calling escorts from distant airfields. I'm not sure if this is WAD, but it is what it is. Take the opportunity during bad weather to rebase your fighters closer to the coast or where you think your most used FUP airbase will be.

[fochinell]

So the escort range raid is slightly penalized for calling escorts from distant airfields. I'm not sure if this is WAD, but it is what it is.

Well, I'd argue that it's more than a slight penalisation. It also seems to have changed since prior iterations of the game updates for whatever reason, and from what I've seen replaying turns it may not be consistent; i.e. units sometimes going further and sometimes less when replaying the same turn.

Take the opportunity during bad weather to rebase your fighters closer to the coast or where you think your most used FUP airbase will be.

I have being taking that opportunity for the past 20 years, though The issue for me is that Spitfires apparently equipped with 90 gallon drop tanks are now apparently behaving as if they are flying on internal fuel only when they weren't before (e.g. 9AF Spitfire VIIs with 40% more internal fuel than the V/IX plus 90 gallon drop tanks unable to cover B-26 missions to Le Havre from a FUP 60 miles from their base in Manston). Moving them closer to the FUP or setting the FUP closer to their base is only a marginal improvement, and I'm not sure why they would fly to the FUP in the first case when on delayed escort duty involving flying to or from an RV somewhere else on the bomber route directly from their base.

That may be an unavoidable part of the game programming, fair enough, but it seems to me that this is having an excessive impact on escort range, or there might be something else contributing to the same outcome.