How to destroy airfield in base with many engineer

[zergling]

Okay I have one tough base on an island with large airfield and garrisoned by many engineer infantry. I need to eliminate land based air threat in the area.. How do you take out its airfield?? Since I dont have the big guns to start a naval bombardment, I tried to bomb the airfield but everytime I attack it (with 9 g4m, 21 g3m, 20 val and 20 judy escorted with 40 zero, level bomber set to 20k feet), the engineers stationed in that base immediately repair it so in the next turn, the airfield was again brand new ,no scratch.. I'm stumped.. any ideas?

2nd question, do weather (partial cloudy, very cloudy) effect bombing and flak accuracy?

3rd, how do i know the current weather condition? (not the forecast)

[2ndACR]

Japanese a/c suck at trying to shut down a airfield. They carry too small a bombload. Either use your BB's or invade it. Since they are allied engineers there, you can pretty much chalk up shutting it down. At least until they run out of supplies.

[zergling]

That raises a new question, how much supply and time is needed to repair one point of damage from say, a size-5 airfield?

I never knew that there were difference in base facility repair speed between allied and jap engineers.. I thought the difference was only in ship damage repair speed (with the allies damage control option turned on)

[Captain Cruft]

There is no difference in repair speed between the sides, it's just that the US/Allies usually have more engineers available.

You can shut down any Allied air base with Japanese air. It will take a while though.

1) Use as many level bombers as you can find. Don't use dive bombers if you can help it.
2) Cut off supply to the base, this is vital.
3) Bomb it via Airfield Attack - this damages engineer units and AA
4) Once the flak has been attrited a bit, gradually reduce the altitude of the bombers so that they become more effective. 20,000 ft is way too high to do anything.
5) Naval bombardment by anything (even DDs) is much more effective than using a few bombers.

[ADavidB]

Bomb the air base every day - you will use up enemy supplies. Alternate your bomber groups (fly one, rest two, etc.). Add in a regular night attack. (Night bombers don't get as fatigued as day bombers.) Don't let any supplies in. If you have extra bombers do the same thing with port attacks. Do this for 3 or 4 weeks. (Hope that your opponent hasn't put 100K supplies into that base.)

Patience is the key in this game as long as you are playing daily turns.

Dave Baranyi

[castor troy]

I´m bombing Daca from Mandalay with about 200 Sallies with really good results. About 25 airfield damage every run and many ac of all kind destroyed on the field.

[BartM]

Recon.. ground attack, airfield, sweep, escort... they all have to work together to take them out

if you have the resources (since it costs alot to sustain a bombing mission over days)

1 recon unit at 7-10,000 feet 50% searching
1 fighter at sweep, 100', 1 fighter at escort from around 10,000 to 15,000
1 bomber at +/- 8000' for airfield (flak is rough but too high and you miss the target)
1 bomber at 12,000-15,000 (nothing really higher with Japan as they simply do not have "heavy bombers") again airfield
1 bomber or fighter/bomber for ground attacks (will suppress the engineers).

expect to feed your airforce ALOT during this, but works everytime. The main thing is to suppress the engineers (damage them), so it takes time for them to regroup.

what I found so far... until the patch I never go over 20,000' with any a/c on either side, but altitude is HUGE and I think alot of people overlook it vs flak fear.

[Mr.Frag]

Large attacks are key ... small ones are just a complete waste of supply and aircraft.

You need to generally one shot it into next week, doing lots of damage and disabling lots of support troops and damaging lots of aircraft, causing service damage to slow repairs, etc.

Small attacks are unlikely to get these key critical hits and they do very little troop damage.

One key note: If the base is in a non-malaria location, it is *much* harder to knock out due to the speed troops recover.

[Feinder]

At least in UV, bombardment TFs vs. AFs were golden. Were far more effective at clobbering an AF, than bombers. Once the big guns had cratered the place, -then- you coud send in the bombers to keep it that way.

But I've also seen that, it seems that in WitP, that bombardment TFs are -not- as effective as they were in UV (altho they still trump bombers in this role).

-F-