ORIGINAL: LoBaron
You are right that the air combat model favors Sweep > CAP > Escorts.
Okay I'll expose my ignorance ... could someone explain what this Sweep > CAP > Escort is?
Thanks
Air coordination
Moderators: wdolson, MOD_War-in-the-Pacific-Admirals-Edition
RE: Air coordination
Okay I'll expose my ignorance ... could someone explain what this Sweep > CAP > Escort is?
Thanks
PO2 US Navy (1980-1986);
USS Midway CV-41 (1981-1984)
Whidbey Island, WA (1984-1986)
Naval Reserve (1986-1992)
USS Midway CV-41 (1981-1984)
Whidbey Island, WA (1984-1986)
Naval Reserve (1986-1992)
-
bradfordkay
- Posts: 8589
- Joined: Sun Mar 24, 2002 8:39 am
- Location: Olympia, WA
RE: Air coordination
What he means is that in aerial combat it appears that fighters on CAP tend to get the upperhand over fighters on escort, and fighters on sweep tend to get the upperhand over fighters on CAP. This won't happen every combat, but the tendency is so strong as to make this a long term given through the course of a game.
fair winds,
Brad
Brad
RE: Air coordination
ORIGINAL: LoBaron
(The Germans made this experience very often in BoB. Either the close escort fighters took heavy losses against the RAF because their mission profile put them at a heavy disadvantage, or with more loose fighter cover the German medium bombers payed the price while the escorts were more dangerous to the CAP)
Thank you LoBaron for again explaining that air combat model!
To me it was really important to accept that seperate smaller fights should be seen as a single 'larger' attack. I already figured it could be seen that way. Just didn't see the need for it untill I realized it offered a better way to model a 'realistic' outcome!
By the way, in that first example you showed us that coordinated (?) sweep by two Hurricane groups, saying that those two groups were only 2 minutes apart. Actually they were detected from different ranges (20 NM / 18 NM; NM = Nautical Mile) which doesn't say a thing about timing. Those two groups could have been two hours apart. So how to figure it was one coordinated sweep if there's not a clue about time differences between both fights? The roundabout answer is in the combat report details telling us it took the same CAP much longer to intercept the second Hurricane group (reach interception). Presumably because they were involved somewhere else before. But . . . it takes putting those details and the combat video together, only to get a still incomplete answer. Because in the details you also find your Chutai were scrambling in that second fight. Which is kind of strange when they were already in the air to fight a single coordinated sweep of two Hurricane groups. A possible interpretation from me would be saying it were two Hurricane groups sweeping which lost cohesion and arrived seperately over the target area. Which resulted in the defenders having a hard time fighting both of them across a very large sky. Put in other words, those Hurricane groups without cohesion were actually uncoordinated! [:)]
I promised you earlier to send some results showing coordination failed a lot even when meeting all possible beneficient factors. But it so happened that I succeeded more often just when I tended to give up on it completely. I now stick to seperate air commands (HQ's) sharing bombers + fighters on single bases to do shared raids. Of course that's not always an available situation but it helps when possible.
As an aside, I think when playing the AI there's some 'assistance' with the AI (as another factor) but I'm happy with that.
I'm afraid the balance of forces (fighters/bombers ratio in 1 strike) you mentioned is a little bit awkward. Yes, you're right about saying that little fighter groups can't cover a (very) large bomber force. Resulting in some fighter CAPs having it easy because they're away from the escorting fighters. However I'd also expect my escorting fighters to fight as a full single group when they actually do get into the fight. The offered examples by 1EyedJacks were kind of odd that way, although circumstances in any fight might be very chaotic (the weather was very bad!). And . . . yes, we can imagine smallish fighter groups covering for huge bomber fleets. That's just what the allies were doing over Europe '44-'45. Two to three fighter squadrons escorting two/three full bomber boxes. That's a 1:3 or 1:4 fighter/bomber ratio! And like you said, those often failed to ward off incoming fighters. But if they were able to intercept it was normally not splintered.
Just to explain why I included that quote of the BoB example, is that it wasn't actually harder on the German fighters to fly close escort and survive! I believe numbers prove that Me109's flying close escort were more effective in defending their bomber host, without loosing more of their own numbers compared to high escort flying. But it did take away their chances to engage the incoming CAP on equal turns (not good mentally), resulting mainly in less kills. The Brits were targeting the bombers primarily which could of course also explain why the Me109's survived close escort flying. This is all 'generally speaking' because in the air it was as much pure chance as calculation as the deciding factor. I liked reading 'The Hardest Day' by Alfred Price which does a very complete 'sweep' of affairs on the biggest BoB day (August 18th, 1940 - counting sorties).
Enjoy,
Jaroen.
RE: Air coordination
Thank you Jaroen, for your input and the oddities you noticed.
I will try to adress them in detail:
First, you are correct on the error I made regarding the detection time (2 minutes apart).
It was a typo though, I meant 2 miles apart.
I think of it a bit as the airbase commander who receives a message that a flight of bandits is approaching and vectors his fighters on this
target only to get another report that a second group is detected.
Let me try to explain why I interprete it this way:
You are also correct that this does not tell us anything about the cohesion of the strike.
The game engine is quite specific on this though: If a flight, previousely coordinated, loses cohesion you receive a message that tells you so.
(e.g. "6 Zeros get separated from strike, continuing to target")
Another indication that the strike is coordinated is, as you say, from the combat report, which tells you that there is a certain ammount of fighters already
involved in another fight and cannot join the currently displayed engagement. This is noticable from the different combat animations, not from the numbers
below the aircraft which tend to display all aircraft in the remote area and not specify which take part in the current action.
The third indicator that separate actions in fact belong to the same strike is that they happen one after another. True, in many instances they still could happen hours apart,
but this would mean that a lot of other action could happen over the map (more specific: other air battles limited to the AM/PM phase) while the lost squad is still trying to
arrive on target.
I agree about some questions left open by the combat reports 1EyedJacks posted.
The problem is always that a combat report only is a small part of the information you need to get a clear picture, so if you did not witness the action yourself
this leaves much open to speculation.
What is obvious is that there was not a complete flight of escorts participating but only a fraction (this may have happened because of the weather)
We don´t know if there were any separation messages displayed.
I must admit that on a tactical scale I know more about the BoB than about the late war bombing raids.
Still, a 1:3 or 1:4 ratio is much better than 1EyedJacks example, and there is a major difference between those situations:
The Germans in ´44 were only on rare occasions able to saturate the escorts.
This has a larger impact than is obvious: If the CAP is outnumbered the task for the escorts is much easier because it limits the tactics available to the CAP.
If the CAP is too weak the escorts are able to engage all bandits even if they, for example, split into parts, some drawing the escorts into dogfights and some heading for the bombers.
If this is not the case we have a situation that well could resemble 1EyedJacks example: The escorts got saturated with fighters and at once had two tasks: protect the bombers
and fight for their own survivals. The initiative is at the side of the CAP because they are able to keep the escorts occupied and still divert some planes directly to head for the
bombers. This could well lead to two different combat animations containing CAP: one group in battle with the escorts which they engaged directly, the other attacking the
bombers and drawing immediate attention from the few escorts who are still able to help.
At least thats the way I see it, part of it is an opinion, but I think it explains the situation quite well.
I´d just like to go into detail here because I see why my comment on "heavy losses" for the German escorts could be misleading:
The BF109 outclassed the Hurricane in performance on all aspects except (not sustained) turnrate and had the immense advantage of better climbrate, better dive,
general better acceleration and higher rollrate. The early models in addition did not use fuel injection, so were limited in their maneuvres to positive G,
sustained negative G killed the engine (a common tactic by a BF109 pilot under attack was simply to put the throttle to the stops and push the stick forward,
which, while easy to perform, was something the early Hurricanes were not able to copy).
This are immense advantages to a pilot who, initially, does not have the initiative.
When you look at the numbers of planes available to the RAF, at least as long as the outcome of BoB was still in doubt, the Hurricane was the mainstay of the RAF.
The Spitfires entered service much later, were not a fighter the pilots immediately were accustomed to (naturally, as everyone has to get accustomed to a plane to
fly a plane at its limit and optimal performance envelope), and only after a while were used in the role they were probably best suited: to attack the escorts.
The other factor which probably saved many Germans was experience, which was much higher compared to the RAF. The Germans had a "modern air combat lessons
learned" agenda from the the Spanish civil war, the conquest of Poland and the conquest of Netherlands, Belgium and France (the latter with a formidable if underperforming airforce)
which the RAF could not match.
Still, including all factors above, the German fighter pilots hated close escort duty, because it forced them to fight on the enemies terms. I´d have to check numbers but I believe the
percentage of losses in fighter planes were higher for them on close escort than on free hunt or high cover, even counting in all advantages on their side as listed above.
I will try to adress them in detail:
ORIGINAL: Jaroen
By the way, in that first example you showed us that coordinated (?) sweep by two Hurricane groups, saying that those two groups were only 2 minutes apart. Actually they were detected from different ranges (20 NM / 18 NM; NM = Nautical Mile) which doesn't say a thing about timing. Those two groups could have been two hours apart. So how to figure it was one coordinated sweep if there's not a clue about time differences between both fights? The roundabout answer is in the combat report details telling us it took the same CAP much longer to intercept the second Hurricane group (reach interception). Presumably because they were involved somewhere else before. But . . . it takes putting those details and the combat video together, only to get a still incomplete answer. Because in the details you also find your Chutai were scrambling in that second fight. Which is kind of strange when they were already in the air to fight a single coordinated sweep of two Hurricane groups. A possible interpretation from me would be saying it were two Hurricane groups sweeping which lost cohesion and arrived seperately over the target area. Which resulted in the defenders having a hard time fighting both of them across a very large sky. Put in other words, those Hurricane groups without cohesion were actually uncoordinated! [:)]
First, you are correct on the error I made regarding the detection time (2 minutes apart).
It was a typo though, I meant 2 miles apart.
I think of it a bit as the airbase commander who receives a message that a flight of bandits is approaching and vectors his fighters on this
target only to get another report that a second group is detected.
Let me try to explain why I interprete it this way:
You are also correct that this does not tell us anything about the cohesion of the strike.
The game engine is quite specific on this though: If a flight, previousely coordinated, loses cohesion you receive a message that tells you so.
(e.g. "6 Zeros get separated from strike, continuing to target")
Another indication that the strike is coordinated is, as you say, from the combat report, which tells you that there is a certain ammount of fighters already
involved in another fight and cannot join the currently displayed engagement. This is noticable from the different combat animations, not from the numbers
below the aircraft which tend to display all aircraft in the remote area and not specify which take part in the current action.
The third indicator that separate actions in fact belong to the same strike is that they happen one after another. True, in many instances they still could happen hours apart,
but this would mean that a lot of other action could happen over the map (more specific: other air battles limited to the AM/PM phase) while the lost squad is still trying to
arrive on target.
I'm afraid the balance of forces (fighters/bombers ratio in 1 strike) you mentioned is a little bit awkward. Yes, you're right about saying that little fighter groups can't cover a (very) large bomber force. Resulting in some fighter CAPs having it easy because they're away from the escorting fighters. However I'd also expect my escorting fighters to fight as a full single group when they actually do get into the fight. The offered examples by 1EyedJacks were kind of odd that way, although circumstances in any fight might be very chaotic (the weather was very bad!). And . . . yes, we can imagine smallish fighter groups covering for huge bomber fleets. That's just what the allies were doing over Europe '44-'45. Two to three fighter squadrons escorting two/three full bomber boxes. That's a 1:3 or 1:4 fighter/bomber ratio! And like you said, those often failed to ward off incoming fighters. But if they were able to intercept it was normally not splintered.
I agree about some questions left open by the combat reports 1EyedJacks posted.
The problem is always that a combat report only is a small part of the information you need to get a clear picture, so if you did not witness the action yourself
this leaves much open to speculation.
What is obvious is that there was not a complete flight of escorts participating but only a fraction (this may have happened because of the weather)
We don´t know if there were any separation messages displayed.
I must admit that on a tactical scale I know more about the BoB than about the late war bombing raids.
Still, a 1:3 or 1:4 ratio is much better than 1EyedJacks example, and there is a major difference between those situations:
The Germans in ´44 were only on rare occasions able to saturate the escorts.
This has a larger impact than is obvious: If the CAP is outnumbered the task for the escorts is much easier because it limits the tactics available to the CAP.
If the CAP is too weak the escorts are able to engage all bandits even if they, for example, split into parts, some drawing the escorts into dogfights and some heading for the bombers.
If this is not the case we have a situation that well could resemble 1EyedJacks example: The escorts got saturated with fighters and at once had two tasks: protect the bombers
and fight for their own survivals. The initiative is at the side of the CAP because they are able to keep the escorts occupied and still divert some planes directly to head for the
bombers. This could well lead to two different combat animations containing CAP: one group in battle with the escorts which they engaged directly, the other attacking the
bombers and drawing immediate attention from the few escorts who are still able to help.
At least thats the way I see it, part of it is an opinion, but I think it explains the situation quite well.
Just to explain why I included that quote of the BoB example, is that it wasn't actually harder on the German fighters to fly close escort and survive! I believe numbers prove that Me109's flying close escort were more effective in defending their bomber host, without loosing more of their own numbers compared to high escort flying. But it did take away their chances to engage the incoming CAP on equal turns (not good mentally), resulting mainly in less kills. The Brits were targeting the bombers primarily which could of course also explain why the Me109's survived close escort flying. This is all 'generally speaking' because in the air it was as much pure chance as calculation as the deciding factor. I liked reading 'The Hardest Day' by Alfred Price which does a very complete 'sweep' of affairs on the biggest BoB day (August 18th, 1940 - counting sorties).
I´d just like to go into detail here because I see why my comment on "heavy losses" for the German escorts could be misleading:
The BF109 outclassed the Hurricane in performance on all aspects except (not sustained) turnrate and had the immense advantage of better climbrate, better dive,
general better acceleration and higher rollrate. The early models in addition did not use fuel injection, so were limited in their maneuvres to positive G,
sustained negative G killed the engine (a common tactic by a BF109 pilot under attack was simply to put the throttle to the stops and push the stick forward,
which, while easy to perform, was something the early Hurricanes were not able to copy).
This are immense advantages to a pilot who, initially, does not have the initiative.
When you look at the numbers of planes available to the RAF, at least as long as the outcome of BoB was still in doubt, the Hurricane was the mainstay of the RAF.
The Spitfires entered service much later, were not a fighter the pilots immediately were accustomed to (naturally, as everyone has to get accustomed to a plane to
fly a plane at its limit and optimal performance envelope), and only after a while were used in the role they were probably best suited: to attack the escorts.
The other factor which probably saved many Germans was experience, which was much higher compared to the RAF. The Germans had a "modern air combat lessons
learned" agenda from the the Spanish civil war, the conquest of Poland and the conquest of Netherlands, Belgium and France (the latter with a formidable if underperforming airforce)
which the RAF could not match.
Still, including all factors above, the German fighter pilots hated close escort duty, because it forced them to fight on the enemies terms. I´d have to check numbers but I believe the
percentage of losses in fighter planes were higher for them on close escort than on free hunt or high cover, even counting in all advantages on their side as listed above.
