Matrix Games Forums

Originally posted by Odin
I´m playing Operation Cartwheel, i captured all bases at New Gunea except Madang, but my ground forces are already marching toward it.

To soften up this base, i use B-25 from Port Moresby, first at 6000 feet. After awful results, i switched them to 100 feet...see what happens:eek: :


Air Attack Madang

Allied aircraft

78 x B25
4 x A-20 (Recon)



Japanese Ground losses

1478 Troops
5 Port hits
4 Vehicles

Bloody Hell.

The 5 following raids killed each time 400-700 Troops...not bad, but can it be true?

And it seems no longer repairs on airfield and port...the port has 100% damage,no change since the 3rd Raid...

I've never seen those kind of results. What am I doing wrong?

I think Mr Frag's thoughts contain a great deal of merit and mirror much of what i've been contemplating, particularily on the issue of "overbuilds" and how the ease of such methods pretty much throws out the worth of having "terrain values" in the game.

While this wont be 'as' big an issue in WitP (due to less "dot" bases) there are still enough to warrent attention.

For LBA proponents.....i wont say your 'wrong' as taken as a whole your arguments do have merit. What should be the issue however is two-fold

1) airpower was the dominent factor during the SoPac campaign, however recall the 'time scale' involved here. It took 2 years of hard fought attrition war for the Allies to achieve their goals, and this utilizing a two-front method, and in the end the Japanese still had the capability (albeit increasingly ineffective) to resist until such time that they chose to withdrawl and go totally into a siege mentality (troop wise)

This is in stark contrast to what one observes in UV.......small to moderate #'s of LBA bombers, particularily four engined, plastering bases, destroying mass troops, supplies (sometimes hitting ships....all at the same time) and knocking out airfields .....usually in less than a half dozen raids. Mass ENG units can counter this to a degree, but if your IJN/A those units can be hard to come by.

Yes, LBA was effective, but over time and in the end the factor that drove the Japanese airforces away was the attrition and decimation of the actual airpower itself that made it a lost cause for them (The Wewak raid is a prime example)

2) Cause and effect. Have felt this from almost day one. If player wants to use his heavy and medium bombers as cruise missles, thats fine but there should be consequences. Patch efforts have indirectly tried to address this, via the no-norden site acc bonus below 6000 feet and the morale hit, but they only scratch the surface.

For big lumbering B-17's and 24's in particular, i think if your rumbing in at 100 feet, then any and all flak guns within range should get a big fat bonus against such an inviting target. Coupled with the handling issues, even if the DUR saves them, op losses should be expensive for badly hit units

IIRC....common skip bombing tactics against defended targets was for flak suppressors to go in first and try to reduce the danger to the bombers before the main effort was made....obviously such a level of detail will probably not make it's way into the game, so the best thing that can be done is to increase disruption and to hit pentalities against bombers that attack this way.

Of course, AA defense will still be key.....another oft not mentioend factor in skip bombing success was that the Japanese did not adequately defend their supply ships with AA.....so even with rules such as the above implemented, if the TF does not have good flak ratings provided by surface escorts.....then the convoy player is still asking for a whupin.

Good idea btw on the supply usage suggestion.....i agree too that the 50x airbase size is very generous in the game......esp when wedded to the quick build feature......in a week you can have an instant airbase capable of supporting a generic 150 aircraft. Yet during the entire Lunga campaign, little was done to expand the airfield outside of the building of Fighter One....and it was rare for 100+ aircraft to base there (and they were all single engined)

Perhaps the answer there, is in addition to reigning in overbuilds that base construction needs to be massively slowed with an increased cost in supply to boot. Even more, making it scalable based on Terrain value would make it even more costly......there was after all a big difference in terms of difficulty in building a base out of favorable terrain vs unfavorable terrain.

I take a look at the japanese side into Madang. Here some units sitting there and their condition.


80th Inf Reg, 20thDiv, IJ Army

Ij Army Squad (90) x 24
81mm Mortar (24) x 4
90mm Mortar (3) x 1
37mm AT gun (7) x 0
70mm How (1) x 1
75mm Inf gun (8) x 2
75mm Field gun (2) x 0
105mm How (2) x 0
Support (112)x 35



79th Inf Reg, 20thDiv, IJ Army

Ij Army Squad (60) x 3
81mm Mortar (22) x 0
90mm Mortar (2) x 0
37mm AT gun (2) x 1
70mm How (2) x 1
75mm Inf gun (1) x 0
75mm Field gun (4) x 0
105mm How (3) x 0
Support (113)x 4


78th Inf Reg, 20thDiv, IJ Army

See units above.



18th Base force

Engineers (23) x 0
Aviation Support (68) x 4
Support (19) x 1


18th Coastal Gun Reg.

3in/Type88 Gun (14) x 0
Support (5) x 0


Some other units there, condition mostly (Somewhat) x 0.

The vehicles destroyed was 20th recon unit, with tankette and motorized support. Condition of this unit: (everything) x 0



Please tell me your opinion

all that from one raid?

That is exactly what I am talking about. 1 mega raid wipes out the whole island to such an extreme that you'd think the island sunk.

Last I checked, it took the grunts, fighting almost hand to hand levels to ferret out the defenders. This Air power makes INF units not even worth putting on ships. Why bother?

Airpower while having strategic value DOES NOT REPLACE INFANTRY, even today in IRAQ, the grunts still had to go in and we have the ability to drop a 2,000 pound shaped charge right through the door on a hardened bunker.

May 10, 1942 Operation Linebacker begins during the Pacific War. (oops, wrong war eh? not with those results! You'd swear it was 1972 and those were B-52's dropping 70,000 pounds each)

Originally posted by Mr.Frag
That is exactly what I am talking about. 1 mega raid wipes out the whole island to such an extreme that you'd think the island sunk.

Last I checked, it took the grunts, fighting almost hand to hand levels to ferret out the defenders. This Air power makes INF units not even worth putting on ships. Why bother?

Airpower while having strategic value DOES NOT REPLACE INFANTRY, even today in IRAQ, the grunts still had to go in and we have the ability to drop a 2,000 pound shaped charge right through the door on a hardened bunker.

May 10, 1942 Operation Linebacker begins during the Pacific War. (oops, wrong war eh? not with those results! You'd swear it was 1972 and those were B-52's dropping 70,000 pounds each)

Beer!

Prefer a nice Whiskey myself, the beer stuff just makes you get up too often due to all that water content. It always made more sense to sit down with one bottle and cut out all those extra trips

Originally posted by Mr.Frag
Prefer a nice Whiskey myself, the beer stuff just makes you get up too often due to all that water content. It always made more sense to sit down with one bottle and cut out all those extra trips

I kind of appreciate the extra trips, because if you sit there too long, you sometimes find that you're no longer capable of getting up at all.

Besides, unlike whisky, you can't buy beer, you can only rent it.

The key is a good chair that you can wake up in and not feel like the bottle came from the still out back

Being the devil's advocate here.Ploesti.....B24's...Tree top level on 1st raid...Some went in lower than near by smoke stacks,as I recall....Understandably they did it because NOBODY was supposed to expect it,and they wanted to avoid radar,but regardless of why...it was done.

Good example to pick for the discussion.

Ploesti Mission Results: Of seven target refineries, one was permanently destroyed; two were untouched; two were shut down completely for several months; and two had production greatly reduced for some time.

Mission Losses: 178 bombers took off from Benghazi. 16 aborted or crashed. 162 reached targets around Ploesti. 51 were shot down or interned in Turkey. 22 landed at various Allied bases in the Mediterranean. Of the 89 that returned to Benghazi that day, 58 were damaged beyond repair.

100+ out of 178 on one mission that was super coordinated down to the point that a practice target was built and half a month spent practicing the raid. These losses were so extreme that a follow up raid was never planned, even though the target was such a huge priority.

Now keep in mind, the B-24 was twice the payload as the B-17 or 4 times the payload of the B-25/26 and we are talking about an extremely well coordinated attack against a somewhat explosive target instead of nice soft jungle. I'm more then sure if we saw even a quarter of those losses being suffered, we'd be a lot happier. If you lost half your aircraft everytime you sent them in to attack a defended base at low altitude, there would be no issue.

Originally posted by Nikademus
all that from one raid?

No, it wasn´t only one raid, but 7 or 8....but isn´t the result very nice?:D


http://www.warbirdsresourcegroup.org/UR ... 25-004.jpg

Originally posted by Mr.Frag
Prefer a nice Whiskey myself, the beer stuff just makes you get up too often due to all that water content. It always made more sense to sit down with one bottle and cut out all those extra trips

exercise to burn off the carbs.


more BEER!

Originally posted by Odin
No, it wasn´t only one raid, but 7 or 8....but isn´t the result very nice?:D


http://www.warbirdsresourcegroup.org/UR ... 25-004.jpg

indeed. B-52's could not want for better results

(where's that beer??!)

Here´s some beer:


www.warsteiner.de


Be aware.....Beer and UV doesn´t really mix:D

Originally posted by Odin
Here´s some beer:


www.warsteiner.de


Be aware.....Beer and UV doesn´t really mix:D

Yummers.....the world's greatest Pilsner


UV and BEER were meant for each other....i find i can perfectly simulate the confused state of various high level commands at the start of the war when i'm drinking beer and playing turns.

(Yes.... i meant to send that Japanese replenishment TF to dock at Normura)

78 x B25
4 x A-20 (Recon)

Why the 4 A-20's for recon? Does it give you information you might not aquire from the flight itself?

Thanks for answering a very newbie question.

------------------------
CO daddog
332nd Flying Mongrels
Events!
Noses in the wind since 1997.

Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame. - Laurence Peter

I simply needed some recon in this edge....i used the A-20 because there wasn´t a single enemy airgroup around and this kind of aircraft is a bad choice for ground attack in my opinion...so i let them do recon in this edge of the map and used my long range F-5 over Rabaul.

Originally posted by Odin

To soften up this base, i use B-25 from Port Moresby, first at 6000 feet. After awful results, i switched them to 100 feet...see what happens:eek: :


Air Attack Madang

Allied aircraft

78 x B25
4 x A-20 (Recon)

Japanese Ground losses

1478 Troops
5 Port hits
4 Vehicles

My experience. I had Irau and Jap had Lunga. My marine Wildcats ( 24 planes ) make sweep, 200+ casualties. Squadron exp was 57. Next day sweep again. 1st sweep 544 killed and after second sweep 840 killed. Thats nothing. Third day and after a sweep incredible 1048 killed japs. Japs had no CAP or FLAK.

Japs must have been standing in row.

Great game but with low level air attacks are too deadly for ground forces.


Regards

Arto

Jup...but it seems this results showed up only if the target base is not defended by AA-units...with these units losses are far lower.