Tactical vs strategic bombing of ports

[Etude]

Both Ground attack directives and Strategic bombing directives allow you to attack ports. From what I understand from the manual ground attack on ports seems to cause disruption , interdiction and damage to freight, while strategic bombing basically causes structural damage to the port. But which one to choose? I'm currently about 20 turns into the full 1943-1945 and as I'm playing the Allies ports in Italy are a big focus for me. I want to stop Axis supplies coming into the ports. Yet both ground attack on ports and strategic bombing on ports seem potentially effective. I'm confused.

[hadjimj]

The easiest way to shut down a port is to do naval interdiction missions on the water hexes adjacent to the port/s you want to shut down. If all water routes have enemy interdiction levels two higher than friendly interdiction levels the port can't import/export anything no matter how little damage the port has.

This is easier than directly target the port because it is very hard to do 100% damage to factories partly because of fog of war and partly because of repairs (ports size 1-3 repair 9% per turn, ports 4-6 6%).

An alternative to doing naval interdiction missions is to move amphibious hq's so that they are adjacent to or in all water hexes next to a port which will block all cargoship and troopship movement.

There is still some utility in directly bombing ports because damaged ports produce less friendly interdiction and ports with 5% or more damage only operate at 1/2 of tonnage capacity.

The difference between tactical vs strategic bombing is the size of raids and their frequency. Generally ordering tactical bombing of ports/railyards will result in more damge but higher losses/fatigue.