Strategic Bombing For Dummies

[Harrybanana]

For turn 3 I had a few more Air groups I needed to Rest.

[Harrybanana]

I again just left Bomber Command's main directive to bomb within a 3 hex radius of Dusseldorf, the only change I made to this directive was to reduce the number of strikes to 24 per day as I had 3 bombing air groups resting. Rather than just doing this one main directive with a 3 hex radius I was tempted to do 5 separate directives of about 240 aircraft each targeting 5 specific Cities in the Ruhr (ie with a 0 radius), but I was too lazy. This is something you should consider from time to time though against a human opponent. As I was down to 87 Stirlings I changed the numbers for its Air Directive against Cologne from 2 strikes per day of 50 aircraft to 1 of strike per day of 75.

For 8th AF, an examination of the Target Selection Screen showed that Schweinfurt and Stuttgart both remained untouched, so they would be the primary targets for this week.

Oh yeah, Turin may look like a good target; but VPs for industry (except fuel and oil) only count if they are inside Germany.

[Harrybanana]

Choose Wuerzburg (hex 124,193) and set the radius for 8 hexes to include both Schweinfurt and Stuttgart. But this time also set individual air directives for Schweinfurt and Stuttgart of 225 to 250 aircraft flying 4 strikes each day of 50 aircraft. The reason to do this is because these are the most important targets so you want to ensure that they get the most attention. In retrospect I should perhaps have done this last turn with Leipzig, Berlin and some of the other targets. This left me with 1500 aircraft for the large zone attack so I ordered 29 raids per day of 50 aircraft. There is virtually no fuel or oil in this area so set your priorities to HI: High and Manpower: Low. Don't forget to move your Air Superiority Missions to cover your new flight path (as far as possible).

Since 8th AF was bombing SW Germany I think it is a good idea to have 15th AF bomb the same general area. But this time I suggest just bombing Munich and Steyr. Munich has lots of Manpower and little HI while Steyr has lots of HI but very little Manpower. So set your bombing priorities accordingly. Munich HI:Low, Manpower:High and Steyr HI:High and Manpower:Low. You should again rebase your fighters and lower range bombers to the Foggia airbases, while rebasing your B24s to the Brindisi area airbases.

[Harrybanana]

The Air Summary for Turn 3. 15th AF took a beating, but 8th escaped almost unscathed. Now all I need to do is advance to the start of Turn 4 to check my VPs.

[Harrybanana]

And here is the VP Screen. I've already won a Decisive Victory so no point in playing the final turn. Again the important statistic here isn't my Total VPs, it is the 2222 Bombing VPs I have gained. I suggest all Newbies keep playing this scenario until they have achieved at least 2000 Bombing VPs in 3 turns. Then you are ready to apply the lessons learned here to the Campaign Games.

[Harrybanana]

But one final DO that applies to the Campaign Game. DO bomb the UBoat Factories in 43 and the VWPN Factories and Launch sites in 44 and 45. It really doesn't take much to keep them suppressed, just a few bombing raids every 4 or 5 turns. You can even use your 2E bombers for the launch sites. If unbombed those sites will cost you far more negative VPs than you will lose in positive VPs by spending the resources to bomb them.

[FireDog]

I'm not sure I have a clear picture of how things works with air groups in the National Reserve, the Pool, and Replacements. Do you have to manually get replacements from the National Reserve?

[Harrybanana]

For Air Groups reinforcements yes you do. But it is easy to do. 1st find an empty airbase on the map that you want to attach the air group to. 2nd left click on the airbase on the map. 3rd click on the airbase icon in the upper right box of the game. 4th click on the Assigned Tab as shown below. 5th click on Assign from National Reserve also as shown below. then select the air groups you want to sign to the airbase. Note that once assigned they will have travelled 100% so can not be rebase or assigned missions. But you can change their HHQ.

[Harrybanana]

ORIGINAL: FireDog

I'm not sure I have a clear picture of how things works with air groups in the National Reserve, the Pool, and Replacements. Do you have to manually get replacements from the National Reserve?

Just to be clear there is a distinction between replacements and reinforcements. Reinforcements are new air groups that enter play in your national reserve from time to time. Your job is to assign them to air bases as explained above so that you can start using them. As well air groups that you retrain from fighter to bomber and vice versa will be taken away and return as a reinforcement to your national reserve in 8 turns.

Replacements are replacement planes and pilots that are automatically assigned to your depleted air groups from time to time from the aircraft and pilot pools. You do not directly control these replacements as they are controlled by the program. But if you notice that a particular air group is not receiving replacements than you should check your pools. It may be that you have no aircraft in your pool of the required type. In this case you should change the aircraft type of some of your air groups.

[FireDog]

Thanks for the info. Now I have a clear picture of how they interact. I wasn't sure.

[Harrybanana]

You can control pilot replacements to some extent by setting air groups to receive only trained pilots, or to prevent/restrict them from receiving any pilots at all. As the Allies it generally isn't necessary to tinker with this too much, but as the Germans it is. Perhaps the subject of another Thread.

[bairdlander2]

good thread

[bairdlander2]

Another tip when choosing air groups manually for missions.I open the cr report,choose the air hq's I am using for the mission,click experiance,groups with highest are listed first,close the cr and those same groups are now sorted by experiance,highest to lowest on the available air groups screen

[jhdeerslayer]

Thanks for doing this!

[George Patton]

Thank youuuuu [&o][&o][&o][&o]

[Chuske]

HarryBanana, excellent guide. One question, how do you get Fighter Command Day Superiority over the Ruhr, I cannot find an RAF fighter that has enough range even playing with the loadouts. What am I missing? NFs can reach there easily for escort and intruder missions.

Also why are 2 of these ADs set to day and friendly air phase as no friendly bombers will be flying in the day? I seem to be intercepting something with them but not sure why as I thought friendly air phase AS AD was sweeps coordinated with a bomber raid, but I still seem to be getting sweeps and air to air with defending fighters.

EDIT: Realised after looking very closely that the Spit IXs have shorter range with drop tanks, so I have the wrong spit type in Kent. I need the VBs and VCs there to reach the Ruhr with drop tanks.

Still not sure though what friendly phase only Day AS means when no nearby day bombing ADs

[bomccarthy]

ORIGINAL: jonboym

HarryBanana, excellent guide. One question, how do you get Fighter Command Day Superiority over the Ruhr, I cannot find an RAF fighter that has enough range even playing with the loadouts. What am I missing? NFs can reach there easily for escort and intruder missions.

Also why are 2 of these ADs set to day and friendly air phase as no friendly bombers will be flying in the day? I seem to be intercepting something with them but not sure why as I thought friendly air phase AS AD was sweeps coordinated with a bomber raid, but I still seem to be getting sweeps and air to air with defending fighters.

EDIT: Realised after looking very closely that the Spit IXs have shorter range with drop tanks, so I have the wrong spit type in Kent. I need the VBs and VCs there to reach the Ruhr with drop tanks.

Still not sure though what friendly phase only Day AS means when no nearby day bombing ADs

AS directives operate independently of bombing missions - historically, they were used quite often on their own to destroy defending fighters. In fact, they would often approach enemy territory in a way that mimicked bomber formations in order to draw defending fighters into a trap (like the 8th TFW in Operation Bolo in 1967). In WITW, they are extremely useful in the days prior to a scheduled bombing mission, thinning out the fighter defenses a day or two before a bombing mission goes in.

[CaptCarnage]

Excellent Tutorial here!

I managed to get an 1135 Decisive Victory once I got my act together, and then I started Weakest Link.
That's a whole different ballgame. There are much more German birds up in the air and bombing without many losses seems to be quite hard. Especially the Ruhr is a fortress, as it should be of course.

Any advice on that one?

Some questions of my own:
1. Of course for every FW or Bf you shoot down, the German gets one back, so even though Heavy Industry has the highest multiplier, does it pay to kill off relevant Aircraft factories before hunting VPs? (the answer here seems yes, but how to go about this?)
2. Does it help to destroy Railyards, does that slow the supply flow enough to those Aircraft factories?
3. Do Ground Attacks on rail hexes disrupt supply flow enough?

[cato12]

Another question as well.

These are obviously the targets that generate vp's along with uboats and v weapons

German Nationality Manpower
§§ German Nationality Heavy Industry
§§ All Axis Controlled Oil
§§ All Axis Controlled Fuel
§§ All Axis Controlled Synthetic Fuel


Is there any point in bombing other strategic targets such as vehicles for example or is it best just sticking to the above?

[FireDog]

I don't know how successful it's been, but after I landed in France on the campaign game, I have also been hitting the railyards in and near the National Supply locations under the idea that I'm reducing supplies to the German units.