ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez
ORIGINAL: el cid again
Would you mind breaking this posting down to its major points? Including non-WWII factors such as BVR air combat and such only clouds the issue.
I'll grant you that a single recon bomber flying a maximum speed on the deck may possibly avoid detection by fighters. But we aren't talking single bombers. The game doesn't send single bombers out on attack missions. And altitude doesn't matter... only altitude differential. If both are at similar altitudes, the chance of interception is great. If there is a large divergence in altitude, then the lower aircraft is at a disadvantage in most cases, assuming its spotted.
When I say that fighters have the initiative it is because it is their performance factors relative to the bombers that will allow the fighter to decide if and when to engage. The bomber can not avoid combat where both attacker and defender have been spotted.
In any case where the numbers are large, the targets are known, and both sides fully intend to engage, evasion is not really a factor. But these are the minority of instances of air operations.
Air operations, yes. When you include mail runs and every other type of flight ever conducted. But that's going pretty far afield, don't you think? The majority of combats involved at least one side shooting at the other and I believe that's how the game handles it. So evasion, or lack thereof, is a pretty important factor IN THE GAME.
As to my "final thesis", to say that the bombers have the initiative to not close the target and thus avoid combat is true but that would also constitute a mission failure which could hardly be called a victory.
And I would submit to you that bombers in a defensive arrangement are generally safer than a single bomber when there is significant opposition.
Chez
Actually, I said what I said because it is germane to the issue - and ignoring what I said won't help you come to terms with the fundamentals. That BVR combat is not a dog fight is only an example I know you can grasp: you have missed the fundamental truth that ALMOST ALL AIR COMBAT has NO DOGFIGHTING!!!!
Let me back up again to the fundamental statistical truth:
when a plane is shot down in air combat, the vast majority of the time, the pilot of that plane had no idea he was even in an air battle!
EVERYTHING ELSE is a minority case.
The truth is - performance matters not a whit when the target is not evading - is not aware of the battle - and is not shooting back. And that is the MAJORITY case. UNTIL you come to terms with that, you cannot understand (in the statistical norms sense) the actual nature of air combat.
OK - now for some basics:
1) A POTENTIAL air combat situation exists whenever two or more aircraft (of hostile services) are in positions such that air combat is theoretically possible, but none of the planes has been detected by either side; Because we cannot know that no one will detect, the possibility exists that it might happen, and until all the planes move to positions where detection is impossible, that potential remains;
2) An OPERATIONAL air combat situation exists whenever two or more aircraft (of hostile services) are in positions such that air combat is theoretically possible, and AT LEAST ONE of the aircraft has detected the other side. The vast majority - not a simple majority - but something significantly greater than one sigma in all air wars - of the time, ONLY one side is aware of the other. That side has the initiative. The initiative is expressed in the choice "engage or evade" - and it is that simple. WHICHEVER choice is made, the side with the initiative wins 9 times in 10, regardless of wether one considers offensive or defensive air combat. This remarkable statistic was true in the very first air war - and remains true today. WWII lies in the middle of that period - and it certainly was true then.
3) When there is an operational air combat situation, several possible outcomes exist:
a) One side (90% of the time the side with the initiative) may evade the other, and no shots are ever fired. The vast majority of the time, the other side never even noticed the presence of the enemy. But a minority of the time they do notice. A subset of that, they tried to engage. Yet even when they do detect and try to engage, they FAIL TO DO SO most of the time.
[Here a digression: Your comments seem not to grasp that recon planes usually fly high - not low. A distant target - particularly five miles or so in the sky - is very hard to intercept. The usual outcome of such an attempt is that the interceptors fail to do so, and for a variety of reasons, both including failing to gain the range/altitude before running out of fuel, and losing the target altogether in various meterological conditions, including clouds, fog, sun, and darkness.
Other cases are somewhat less extreme, but the basic principle remains: aircraft move fast - and moving fast in the right direction usually prevents enemy fighters from reaching firing range - and not a small majority of the time.]
b) One side (90% of the time the side with the initiative) may intercept the other, and achieve firing position against it.
The vast majority of the time, the other side never even noticed the presence of the enemy (notice a pattern here), made no attempt to evade, and did not shoot back before the first firing pass. But a minority of the time, they do notice. A subset of that they tried to engage. IF the other side TRIES to engage, you get an opposed air combat situation, one in which both sides are actively maneuvering and (if they can) firing weapons. Another minority of the time, they do notice, but they try to evade. Depending on the distance, time, relative altitude, etc of the situation, the chances of evasion are far less than in case 1 above (where the enemy is unaware of them). Here performance matters a great deal. So also do visibility conditions. If there are enough clouds, or a fog bank, or approaching night in a certain direction, they may just pull it off even without vastly superior performance. But the sum total of ALL these possibilities is less than 10%.
c) Both sides may intercept the other (or one side may continue on a non-evading course toward its target/objective and the other is permitted a non-evaded intercept course of its choice). If both sides are trying to intercept each other OR IF one side is closing the base (task force) that the other side is coming from - this case virtually always results in a firing battle of the sort most air enthusiasts think in terms of. If one side is continuing towards its target or objective but that is NOT the base (or behind the base) of the other side, but rather the course is a crossing angle, this option often results in a firing battle. If the course of one side actually is significantly opening of the range from the other base, this option sometimes (but not a majority of the time) results in a firing battle.
The details of astrophysics make getting close enough to shoot - in particular with guns - that is - a few hundred yards (ineffectively) or 1-2 hundred yards (effectively) - something very hard to achieve EXCEPT when both sides are working on making it happen. It is difficult when one side is just opening the range but not actually evading as scuh. It is almost impossible when one side is deliberately evading - unless the distances are not great and/or the visibility is almost completely unobstructed. Things like cloud, fog, impending darkness, or the option to go upsun of the enemy mean you can very often lose em - even though they saw you.
Another basic principle is that, at great range, it is impossible to identify the aircraft you "see." Radar also does not identify its targets at all (although IFF may help - IFF did not at first exist at all - and it was never - and is not now - wholly effective). In good visibility an aircraft appears as a dot no brighter than a first order magnitude star is in daylight - and most observers will never see it at all (unless you give them a telescope on the right bearing - mainy if you are on the ground - as with NASA tracking cameras). This can occur at ranges on the order of 100 nautical miles. Jump back to the norms for most observers - it depends greatly on conditions - you will find in clear air that air targets are visible at ranges proportional to target size (thus a gigantic bomber stream is visible at tens of miles, but a single small aircraft might only be visible half as far, for observers not trained to focus on infinity - ie non JNAF observers). Even so - it is entirely different to say "I see something" and "I can identify what I see." A fighter CAP leader - or a ground control station listening to spotters - is likely NOT to engage every distant target detected. For lots of sound reasons, you wait and see, and IF the potential target closes, you get more information to work with. Any exceptional policy - 'always engage every speck you see' - is very unwise tactics. It could be exploited to draw off your CAP/interceptors prior to a major raid for one thing. It could also be exploited to draw some of your fighters into a trap. Just because you see it does not mean you know if it is friendly, neutral or enemy. And even if you know it is enemy, it does not mean you will or should attempt to engage. For one thing, attempting to intercept at tens of miles is a great way to wear out your planes, run down your fuel stocks, tire your pilots, and fail entirely to engage most of the time. Engaging closing targets is much more likely to pay off.
There are lots of reasons a plane in the sky is not going to want to participate in air combat. Most flights are not armed. Many flights have non-combat objectives - transfer - training - transport - name it. There is no justification for most flights to attempt to engage even if they spot and identify the enemy. There is great justification for most flights to attempt to evade if they spot and identify even possible enemy aircraft. Every time wheels (floats, skis, etc) leave the ground (or water or ice) we say it is a sortee. This is proper. But every time a sortee is in an air combat situation it is not proper to try to turn it into a shooting engagement. When an aircraft that should NOT be engaging enemy aircraft is in an air combat situation, we can properly say it is a "victory" if that aircraft survives at all, as surely as it is a "defeat" if it is shot down. I don't care what kind of plane it is - or what the reason is it should not try to fight - this remains true. Having good judgement about this is the sort of thing that wins not only engagements, but wars (if you can teach enough of your fellows to exercise similar judgement). The more lopsided an air combat situation is (that is, the more fighter like one side is, and the less fighter like or armed or well performing the other side is), the MORE it becomes true that it is a victory merely to survive. And the most critical factor to survival in an air combat situation is simply to be aware of the enemy. The sooner you become aware, the better. IF you are first, you almost always can evade. If you are not first, you still can usually evade - the worse the visibility obsticles - the greater usually becomes. Engagement is NOT primarily a matter of aircraft performance (speed, ROC) - although in SOME situations these become very critical - and in many situations they may be good enough that it won't be clear the evasion will succeed for a long time.
The statistical truth about air combat - in all ages - is that it is likely to reach a shooting engagement only when both sides want it to occur (there is more than one sense of want here - not being willing to evade being one flavor of it) - OR when one side wants it to occur and the other is unaware of the threat. Otherwise, it is NOT likely shots will ever be fired, no matter how ernestly the fighters on one side try to make it happen. It can happen - but without suprise or cooperation from the other side - it won't happen most of the time.