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Again, no source from the Japanese side saying what the real effects of the strikes were.

I read stories of the Germans during the Battle of Britan laying waste to fighter command bases that turned out to be decoy fields by the Brits. But the pilots swore they wiped out the target. Unless you have a Japanese source reporting their results, none of that which you post is anything more than propaganda.

I will say that I find it (very) difficult to believe the allies achieved against the Japanese, with no assistance from the ground (such as Gee), what they couldnt achieve in Europe. And they couldnt. And the assist they got in Europe was to find and hit a CITY, not a rail yard or airfield.

So, again, unless you have a Japanese source..... (see above)

(Side note, I do remember a story from my Viet Nam days - a 15 man patrol goes out, they get into a firefight. Find 1 VC body. Come back to base and report they each got 1. Body count +15.)

All you have is stories. No strike photos to back them up, no confirmation from the other side. Just stories...

I DO know what the Japanese achieved bombing at night. Not much. Again, using Europe as a guide, there is NOTHING to suggest that any of these are any more than propaganda stories. Bomber Command had a hard enough time hitting cities in Europe, where the crews were far more experienced, and they had superior technology...

Night Air attack on Bangkok , at 56,62

Weather in hex: Light cloud

Raid detected at 16 NM, estimated altitude 10,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 3 minutes

Allied aircraft
Beaufighter TF.X x 1
A-20G Havoc x 3

Allied aircraft losses
A-20G Havoc: 1 damaged
A-20G Havoc: 1 destroyed by flak

Japanese Ships
CV Junyo, Bomb hits 2, heavy fires, heavy damage
CVE Chuyo, Bomb hits 1, heavy fires, heavy damage
CV Hiyo, Bomb hits 2, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAP Kasado Maru, Bomb hits 1

Port hits 2

Aircraft Attacking:
3 x A-20G Havoc bombing and strafing from low level
Port Attack: 4 x 500 lb GP Bomb

Ammo storage explosion on CV Hiyo

From aug 20 1944 FatR vs Bigred.. 0 moonlight night attack...at 100ft..note strafing effect. 3 planes...6 hits!!!! If u can get the ships to burn then you can really pile on the hits at night. FatR has reservations w/AI concerning auto port repair. His CVs are stuck in port and cant get out.

Concerning topic Night bombing unreality. I like night bombing w/ allies. Allows me to avoid FatR advanced jap fighter production. Hard to kill the n1k5 or the ki84r in mid 44.

ORIGINAL: bigred

Night Air attack on Bangkok , at 56,62

Weather in hex: Light cloud

Raid detected at 16 NM, estimated altitude 10,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 3 minutes

Allied aircraft
Beaufighter TF.X x 1
A-20G Havoc x 3

Allied aircraft losses
A-20G Havoc: 1 damaged
A-20G Havoc: 1 destroyed by flak

Japanese Ships
CV Junyo, Bomb hits 2, heavy fires, heavy damage
CVE Chuyo, Bomb hits 1, heavy fires, heavy damage
CV Hiyo, Bomb hits 2, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAP Kasado Maru, Bomb hits 1

Port hits 2

Aircraft Attacking:
3 x A-20G Havoc bombing and strafing from low level
Port Attack: 4 x 500 lb GP Bomb

Ammo storage explosion on CV Hiyo

From aug 20 1944 FatR vs Bigred.. 0 moonlight night attack...at 100ft..note strafing effect. 3 planes...6 hits!!!! If u can get the ships to burn then you can really pile on the hits at night. FatR has reservations w/AI concerning auto port repair. His CVs are stuck in port and cant get out.

Concerning topic Night bombing unreality. I like night bombing w/ allies. Allows me to avoid FatR advanced jap fighter production. Hard to kill the n1k5 or the ki84r in mid 44.

OMG those results are just awful .. If not FOW (especially because of night), I guess all three carriers sunk because of heavy damage and heavy fires unless the port saved them. Must have been direct hits into fully loaded ammo stores and so on, for 500lb bombs to sink CV's with two and even one hits.

ORIGINAL: bigred

Night Air attack on Bangkok , at 56,62

Weather in hex: Light cloud

Raid detected at 16 NM, estimated altitude 10,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 3 minutes

Allied aircraft
Beaufighter TF.X x 1
A-20G Havoc x 3

Allied aircraft losses
A-20G Havoc: 1 damaged
A-20G Havoc: 1 destroyed by flak

Japanese Ships
CV Junyo, Bomb hits 2, heavy fires, heavy damage
CVE Chuyo, Bomb hits 1, heavy fires, heavy damage
CV Hiyo, Bomb hits 2, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAP Kasado Maru, Bomb hits 1

Port hits 2

Aircraft Attacking:
3 x A-20G Havoc bombing and strafing from low level
Port Attack: 4 x 500 lb GP Bomb

Ammo storage explosion on CV Hiyo

From aug 20 1944 FatR vs Bigred.. 0 moonlight night attack...at 100ft..note strafing effect. 3 planes...6 hits!!!! If u can get the ships to burn then you can really pile on the hits at night. FatR has reservations w/AI concerning auto port repair. His CVs are stuck in port and cant get out.

Concerning topic Night bombing unreality. I like night bombing w/ allies. Allows me to avoid FatR advanced jap fighter production. Hard to kill the n1k5 or the ki84r in mid 44.

What version of software?

ORIGINAL: Sieppo

ORIGINAL: bigred

Night Air attack on Bangkok , at 56,62

Weather in hex: Light cloud

Raid detected at 16 NM, estimated altitude 10,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 3 minutes

Allied aircraft
Beaufighter TF.X x 1
A-20G Havoc x 3

Allied aircraft losses
A-20G Havoc: 1 damaged
A-20G Havoc: 1 destroyed by flak

Japanese Ships
CV Junyo, Bomb hits 2, heavy fires, heavy damage
CVE Chuyo, Bomb hits 1, heavy fires, heavy damage
CV Hiyo, Bomb hits 2, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAP Kasado Maru, Bomb hits 1

Port hits 2

Aircraft Attacking:
3 x A-20G Havoc bombing and strafing from low level
Port Attack: 4 x 500 lb GP Bomb

Ammo storage explosion on CV Hiyo

From aug 20 1944 FatR vs Bigred.. 0 moonlight night attack...at 100ft..note strafing effect. 3 planes...6 hits!!!! If u can get the ships to burn then you can really pile on the hits at night. FatR has reservations w/AI concerning auto port repair. His CVs are stuck in port and cant get out.

Concerning topic Night bombing unreality. I like night bombing w/ allies. Allows me to avoid FatR advanced jap fighter production. Hard to kill the n1k5 or the ki84r in mid 44.

OMG those results are just awful .. If not FOW (especially because of night), I guess all three carriers sunk because of heavy damage and heavy fires unless the port saved them. Must have been direct hits into fully loaded ammo stores and so on, for 500lb bombs to sink CV's with two and even one hits.

I think this is wonderful... RA70 version 1123h.. also got radar FBs on LRCAP at 1000 feet plus all the brit radar bombers on night search over hex w/ all radar night bombers hitting the port every night. I am taking heavy AA dmage ut worth the exchange to get the CVs nailed in port by the AI every turn.

ORIGINAL: obvert

You don't give info as to location, your CAP posture, etc. But 300 multi-engines can be seen by recon. Did you not see them? Also, you have 100 fighters in range of at least 300 multi-engine. Did you have ANY CAP up? Any would have done a lot to disrupt this attack. I suspect you didn't as most players never run night CAP, figuring they're "safe." It's like a chess player assuming the opposing queen will never move on the black squares. Part of this is I think a desire to have max forces available to use in better daylight conditions. But that works in both directions.

The assumption that if I can see them I can destroy them is bit far-reaching. Firstly 4E range is better than my bombers. Secondly I don't have the infrastructure in place to mass bombers and fighters in these bases, and if I did he could have simply raided those bases with more devastating results. It's tricky getting night raids to fly, and if I sat there trying to get mine to go his from level 9 Calcutta would get me first. Day raids had been attempted and achieved but effected little during the previous months, and his fighter strength had improved by this point. Only Oscars or zeros could sweep that far, and that would be dumb.

Should be noted that IJ recon has 14 hex max range in '42. To go further, you have to re-purpose Nettie or Emily units to recon, but that also requires you to have trained those pilots in recon and you still suffer the non-recon plane penalty to your results. The range improves once the Dinah III is available.

net result is that you can't see 4E's with recon .... and of course IJ has no intel.

A lot of material Moose, thank you.

I see JFBs accused of claiming "night attacks were impossible" and asking to ban such attacks entirely - but I cannot find any post which is supporting this accusation. They are asking for limits, not for a ban.

Of course, night attacks on ports, airfields, industrial targets and even ships at sea did happen. Evidence suggests that many were "intruder" nuisance raids by individual or a handful of planes, others were raids up to several dozen aircraft. Evidence also suggests that many raids failed to find the target while on some other occasions they were hit effectively - depending on circumstances, weather, training and experience, plain dumb luck or whatever. To add a story, after one US island invasion in the Pacific the Japanese sent ONE single night bomber to retaliate - which managed to blow up the main supply depot on the landing beach. But more often than not damage would be slight.

There was no sustained night bombing campaign against airfields, ports or industrial targets involving any significant numbers of aircraft or having lasting effects. Judging from the fact that night-bombing did not develop into standard doctrine and instead daylight "precision" and night area bombing were adopted indicates that night "precision" bombing was considered rather ineffective, too dangerous and mostly of harassment value (lucky hits were a bonus). To destroy air bases, ports or industrial targets, daylight attacks were necessary.

But - the game allows to switch the entire bomber force to night attacks - as if this had been standard doctrine - and with rather questionable results even for small-scale night attacks, hitting ships in port with uncanny precision or closing airfields for days. That is why there are voices calling for HRs or code solutions to limit night bombing ports and airfields - for both sides, not just for the Allies.


Btw, to quote from the offical Army Air Force history:


"The preoccupation of XXI Bomber Command with urban incendiary attacks and support of the Okinawa campaign during the spring of 1945 did not mean that LeMay had abandoned the concept of precision strikes against priority targets. After the March fire blitz had proved so successful, he had attempted to perfect a technique for night attacks against individual targets. "This experimentation," said a Washington spokesman for the Twentieth Air Force, "is primarily for the purpose of increasing our versatility, particularly during the bad weather periods that are fast approaching." Weather was, indeed, the determining factor. It may seem strange, after the monotony of complaints about weather during the early months, to speak of bad periods approaching, but this observation was on the authority of meteorological statistics: normally, the summer monsoon was even more productive of clouds than the winter monsoon, and LeMay's weather section had estimated that the main target areas in Honshu could be attacked visually on only three days in the months of April and May, once in June. The night precision technique was never perfected except for a special type of operations conducted by the 315th Wing, but the experimental mood continued and the command did achieve a versatility of attack that succeeded superbly in spite of Honshu's clouds.

The key to this success lay in the flexibility of target selection: on clear days multiple forces were sent out to bomb various targets visually; in cloudy weather radar attacks were conducted against urban areas. The development of this program was delayed by the Okinawa campaign, which, with the incendiary attacks on the principal cities, has already been described. Concurrently with those activities, and subsequently, XXI Bomber Command was engaged in other operations; the complex program may be described under the following rubrics: 1) attacks against individual industrial targets (24 March to 14 August); 2) incendiary attacks on secondary urban areas (17 June to 14 August); 3) the oil campaign (26 June to 14 August); and 4) VLR mining operations (27 March to 14 August). To treat these topics separately is to lose all sense of the growing intensity of the B-29 effort as it was split between these several tasks, but such an approach makes it easier to understand the command's general objectives.

Industrial Targets

The experiment with night precision attacks was short-lived. It was suggested by Arnold who had been greatly impressed by night operations during the March blitz. LeMay was willing to try the experiment: if successful, the tactics contemplated would go far toward making precision bombing independent of weather, and night bombing was more efficient than day in tonnage lifted and less costly in planes lost. His first trial was a large one, a 251-plane mission against Mitsubishi-Nagoya on 24 March. In four daylight attacks this priority target had received only minor damage. For the night attacks, operational plans were based on a variation of the RAF pathfinder technique: 10 minutes before bombing time 10 B-29's were to light the engine works area with M26 flares; 5 minutes later another 10 B-29's would drop M17 incendiary clusters to start marker fires; then the main force was to attack with 500-pound GP's. Unfortunately, the crews found Nagoya covered with a deep stratocumulus cloud. The several formations came over with excellent timing but thereafter the attack fell apart. Cloud complicated the bomb run and, combined with smoke from the incendiaries, obscured the lights from the flares; some of the incendiaries fell outside the factory complex and bombardiers sighting on them were off target. Thus, though the attack with its 1,533 tons was the heaviest ever sent by the command against a single aircraft industry target, the results were negligible: only 60 tons of bombs fell in the factory area, damaging a few minor buildings and causing no appreciable loss in production.

Still interested in the possibilities of night tactics, LeMay's operations officers realized that some more effective way of lighting the target would have to be devised. Because there was no agreement at the wing level as to the best procedure, LeMay decided to let O'Donnell and Storrie run single-wing missions, each trying his own technique. Storrie's attack on 30 March, obviously on an experimental scale, involved only 14 of the 314th Wing's planes--3 loaded with flares, 7 with 5 tons each of 500-pound GP's, and the last 4 with a mixed cargo of bombs and flares. In spite of the large ratio of flares carried, the twelve planes that got over Nagoya missed the Mitsubishi plant entirely. The 73d's effort was larger but hardly more successful. On 1 April, O'Donnell sent against Nakajima-Musashi 121 B-29's, each topping off its bomb load with 4 flares. Of 1,019 tons dropped, only 4 hit in the area.

Since none of the attempts had provided any positive evidence, LeMay ordered for the night of 3 April three one-wing attacks against Mitsubishi's Shizuoka engine plant, Nakajima's Koizumi assembly plant, and the Tachikawa aircraft engine plant. Command headquarters specified the mean point of impact, bombing altitude, and bomb load; each wing was allowed to choose its own method of lighting the target. Again, the results in each instance were negligible. The command just wasn't equipped for night precision bombing; specifically, it needed target marker bombs, such as the 1,000-pounders used by the RAF, and reflex optic bombsights. Lacking the proper equipment, LeMay abandoned the experiment."

And that was with B-29s in 1945, the state-of-the-art bomber technology.

I don't think most or many are arguing for night bombing to be virtually the same as day bombing. I think the key is how does the current Beta perform. Changes have been made during the Beta on several night bombing issues: finding the target, disruption by fighters, accuracy on target, and perhaps others. And in some of those areas multiple changes have been made.

ORIGINAL: bigred
I think this is wonderful...

I'm sure you do [:D]

I am not a fan of the current night bombing results...the bombers achieve a positive kill ratio over defending fighters of about 3-1, the bombers ALWAYS inflict damage to the airfield and destroy aircraft on the ground (oftentimes significant damage...especially when I have anything over half of the bases limit filled, or when I had bombers stationed there).

The bottom line is that I simply see no reason for the Allied player to ever not use night bombing against Japanese airfields in range to maintain a constant attrition, this tactic is far more effective and safe than daylight raiding. The only disadvantage is that it is somewhat slower than a single daylight hammer blow.

ORIGINAL: jolly_pillager

I am not a fan of the current night bombing results...the bombers achieve a positive kill ratio over defending fighters of about 3-1, the bombers ALWAYS inflict damage to the airfield and destroy aircraft on the ground (oftentimes significant damage...especially when I have anything over half of the bases limit filled, or when I had bombers stationed there).

The bottom line is that I simply see no reason for the Allied player to ever not use night bombing against Japanese airfields in range to maintain a constant attrition, this tactic is far more effective and safe than daylight raiding. The only disadvantage is that it is somewhat slower than a single daylight hammer blow.

Except for high OPS losses..........

ORIGINAL: Sieppo

ORIGINAL: bigred
I think this is wonderful...

I'm sure you do [:D]

well, i was taking too much damage and had to stop...if u really want to hurt your opponent set the bombers at 100 ft at night. You get alot of damage inflected but also will lose alot of planes. Note post 105. I took 33% killed and 33% damaged.. that as a fragmented attack. Seemed every fragment got a hit. On the next turn I got no hits....could have been the weather.

ORIGINAL: jolly_pillager

I am not a fan of the current night bombing results...the bombers achieve a positive kill ratio over defending fighters of about 3-1 . . .

Yeah it is just another huge issue with the game engine's night bombing routine. Not only do you get abnormal results, you get night fighters getting mauled by bomber formations.

In RL the night fighter vs 4E bomber loss ratio was brutal. You are looking at 1:5 for inexperienced units, all the way up to 1:10+ for something like NJG1 throughout the war. And that counts ops losses for the night fighters while just A2A kills for the bombers. You simply have no real defense against them. If they find you, they are like wolves. Those at the end of the formation will get eaten. This was totally acceptable to the British, when compared to daylight raids.

The problem is the game doesn't give you that. Incredibly you end up losing fighters to night bombers. The defensive guns on the bombers don't get adjusted for the visibility or the huge hit to SA the bomber crews took. To make it even worse the bomber crews get even more experience to make their future attacks even more abnormal within the game.

I've yet to really test it, but modders might want to try toying with the durability of night fighters. I'm at 1.5x normal with a 33% drop on their maneuverability. Just trying to stop them from falling victim to bomber defensive fire. I would think operation losses should remain pretty constant. It will force you to keep the night fighters limited to only night missions. Consequently you'll most likely be using them as LRCAP which was pretty much how the night fighter was used in Europe.

ORIGINAL: MDDgames

Again, no source from the Japanese side saying what the real effects of the strikes were.

Would those reports even be credible considering how fraudulent most Japanese AAR reports were? I can see it now. Japanese forces claim a great victory in the skies over Bangkok where 3 enemy CV's, a BB and numerous cruisers and destroyers were destroyed. [:D]