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I thought that Nells and Betties attacked enemy shipping because they were Navy bombers. I will try to edit a game to see if they behave the same under Army control.

There are only two types of aircraft that (really) counts :
- SBD as they are able to destroy vessels
- fighters to intercept any aircraft sent against you
Bombers types are not that important. They are used to isolate forces, to avoid isolation for your trrops and to bomb enemy troops. You don't need good ones for this, as long as you get their readiness down, this is all that matters.

For SBD, no choice : Dauntless (I don't often change jap prod)
for aircraft, range is all that matters : so my best choice is Bleinheim IF. For close range, P40E, wildcat is useless (range of 2) and ony for CV's.
Jap : Zero + Betty (again, range).

Long range enables you to deploy and redeeploy your squadrons pretty fast and without help of cargos.

Best regards.

Definitely Japanese Nells don't attack under Army control unless NI orders given. This means that HQ matters in this issue.

Reply to Bernard:

Range is all that counts? Not in my book! The Blenheim IF is a pathetic dogfighter (Manuever of 11 and Cannon of 5). In fact, it's often better to send in the more manueverable bombers such as the A-20 and Beaufighter X without escort rather than serving up Blenheims to be slaughtered by Japanese CAP. The P-40E is as good at air-to-air as any Allied fighter in the game until October 1942, and it has only 20% less range. Set a squadron of experienced A-20 Havocs to Naval Interdiction, escort them with P-40E's, and you'll be surprised what you can do to Japanese ships that are completely beyond the reach of the SBD's.

Also, the range of the F4F Wildcat has been raised to 3 hexes in the latest version. (Note the full title of this thread.)

Originally posted by Bernard
For SBD, no choice : Dauntless (I don't often change jap prod)

Sorry. I don't get it.

SBD=Dauntless=US plane. What jap prod (I guess it means production).
Maybe you mean that you don't change SBD Dauntless into SB2C Helldiver when available

Apart from this, Blenheim's are not very good (actually they're crap) as fighters. P40E's are fighter-bombers, so they can attack alone, have a better maneuver-gun-durability ratings and has almost the same range as the Blenheim.

Originally posted by Bernard
Bomber types are not that important.

Have you checked how many of your ships are sunk by Betties, or A-20's, or Beauforts?. Quite a lot.

Reply to Harlock and Japlance

great to have company, thanks. Having fun.

I guess text was not clear with I don't change jap prod. I meant I don't change much the jap prod when playing jap.

Back to subjeect :
thanks for the F4F, I didn't notice (I got so many CV's mauled because of having to stand 2 hexes from target to give fighter covers to other planes that it is good news - I realy hated this aircraft for its range of 2).

So let me develop.
I never used late models of planes as I never went farther than july-september 1942. I don't play intermediate scenarios and after mid 1942 game is mostly over (I always played alone, maybe it is different with human players).

Therefore, first task when playing Allied in first weeks is to get fighters redeployed and preventing from being isolated. Long range fighters are so good at it. you can literally let them jump from island to island (you can start with a squadron in San Francisco and have it on Soerabaja on the same turn!). They then protect taskforces so that landings can occur at islands like Marcus, Bonin in january 42 and Iwo Jima next month. From then with a bit of luck you reinvade philipines before your troops surrendering at Bataan. Or you invade Japan (not really historical but fun to get sasebo in April-May, then evacuate). When P38 is available I switch nearly anything to this aircraft. From Iwo Jima you put Bleinheim and B17's and you bomb japanese industry. How can you do that with P40 ?

SBD's are to be ferried from Pearl to Indonesia where invariably Jap show with CV's and get themselves destroyed. I never saw anything worth it occur with Havocs but have been quite impressed at how much damage some understreght squad of SBD (to a extent Swordfish) can do. And when on an island, at no cost and no risk.

I have no doubt there are better planes but they simply are not available when it counts, that is first months. After you cannot suffer.

I agree on the Betties. And they get cover from Zeroes, with long range.

I'll recheck all these new additions on planes. Played a lot on old version and only into february first play on new version. Couldn't resist posting mails however.

Good night

Originally posted by Capt. Harlock



The subject of torpedo bombers brings up a bug which I haven't seen reported yet. The computer switches the American torpedo bomber factory to TBF Avengers immediately at the beginning of Campaign 41. Oh, if only it were so. The sad truth is that the factory "hangs fire" for months--the "*" next to production doesn't go away until the first squadrons start appearing, usually around the end of April. Set the American factory to Devastators. They aren't much good, but they're better than the nothing you get otherwise. The British factory in Calcutta has an interesting choice: it starts out producing Swordfish, but the Vildebeast is a slightly better airplane. The question is whether it's enough of an improvement to justify losing a month's production.

One easy fix is to use an editor to edit ONE Torp squad to in a turn or two appear as an TBF squad of say 4 planes.

The Appearance of that squad would turn on TBF prod, you however would still have to wait for sufficent numbers to use TBF's.

Otherwise set back to TBD making.

I only play with Allies and against the computer, i try to follow some rules......I set my factories to produce only aircraft of the same nationality and for the Brits, it is Hurricane 2b till the spit becomes available and finally changing over to P51D late in the game (not very accurate coz Britain dun have that many Mustangs in pacific. For bombers, i stick to Wellingtons and a couple of Beaufighters. The Blenheim IF is suppossed to be a night fighter i believe.....Beaufighter serves the same purpose? But there sem no way to model the night fighter ability (radar)
For the Americans, i use the typical US planes. Wildcats for carrier and USMC until the Cosair becomes available. Hellcats are reserved for CVEs.
in terms of quality, i guess most would agree that the Helldiver was the best when it comes online. For torpedo bombers, TBF has a higher payload but the TBM seems to fly farther....so i guess it would be a trade off.....for carrier ops, i stick to TBF as the range of 4 for the TBM would mean that at stand off range of 4, it would be illogical for the fighters to escort.
For medium bombers, i only use B25 for the US and Wellingtons for the brits plus some beaufighters and Beauforts for NI