Fighter sweep / attacking infantry?

[brent_2]

What's the best way (most effective) set up for reducing enemy ground units with a fighter or fighter bomber group?

[Drex]

Don't you set them on sweep with an altitude of 100' for strafing?Unless they have alot of AA of course.

[AmiralLaurent]

The best planes to use against ground troops are dive bombers. They really disrupt them.

You can use fighters flying sweep at 100 feet. They will strafe troops.

And you can use fighter-bombers the same way as fighters or you can use them as bombers with 'ground attack' orders at any alt.

Strafing is OK if there is no AA in the target hex. Even without AA morale will drop and fatigue will rise.

[brent_2]

ORIGINAL: Drex

Don't you set them on sweep with an altitude of 100' for strafing?Unless they have alot of AA of course.

I've had p40s f4fs and wirraways all doing this (100') with little success...0-20 casualties about 3 out of 5 times.

maybe a training or fatigue issue...

[AmiralLaurent]

More important than the casualties shown in reports (that are usually low) is the disruption of the attacked units. It will lose a part of its assault turn for the turn and that may change the issue of the land battle.

[john martino]

Guys how do you lower altitude below 1000 ft ? I can not seem to get my fighters set below 1000 ft?????????????????????????

[Clipper1968]

You just have to click on the lower altitude to 100 ft button located on the left extreme below the altitude set up.

[crsutton]

In this stage of the war 42-43, allied fighters were not the most effective when used as fighter bombers. (zeros as well. They relied mostly on machine guns and light bombs and ground to air coordination was very poor. It was really later in the war that the allies began to load fighters up with heavy bomb loads and fighters began to work with forward air controllers.

Don't expect fighters to do much damage on strafing attacks. Remember, they are generally attacking dispersed forces in jungle terrain with only machine guns. Not, really a big threat to dug in troops.

Best planes for low level work in my book are the B25 and beaufighters. Just rotate them to keep the morale high and suppress AA with high or medium altitude bombing first.

[CMDRMCTOAST]

The best way to reduce troops is to eliminate supply, the lower the supply levels the more diruption and casualties they will recieve and you will see reduced flak to no
flak, that is a sign that they are conserving supply essentially making thier fighting
capability null, this is when I send in fighter sweeps with the level bombers at ground level and you will see better results.
bombing the ports and airfields round the clock with the heavies and sending in a bombardment task force will destroy supply in two ways, the base will have to eat up supply rebuilding the airbases and ports as well as what is destroyed on the ground.
eventually the fatiuge, malaria and disruption will take its toll on the ground troops
and they will start to degrade over time.