ORIGINAL: castor troy
ORIGINAL: AW1Steve
ORIGINAL: castor troy
well, was reading until I came to the point when I was reading your helpful input as quoted above and I repeat myself, don't screw up strategic and tactical attacks. Hitting a level 2 or 3 airfield at night using radar guided bombing? Are you serious? If so, no further comment is needed. Glad you posted a serious of "helpful" statements though.
Sorry Castor. The answer is sometimes you can , some times you can't. I've discussed the mechanics of night bombing by RADAR else where in this thread. I can't fight your wealth of knowledge on this subject. All I can rest on is 23 years of experince in doing it.
It all depends on where the airfield is. Like most things in war, geography matters. [:)]
Of course sometimes you can and sometimes you can't. Sometimes daylight precision bombings even hit the target within a mile, many times not, overcast may ruin your whole formation's bombing run . So go figure how the hit rate looks like only relying on 44/45 radar guided bombing. Tactical attacks at night with a formation of B-29 doing radar guided bomb runs? Yes, sometimes they may even hit, depending on how many, how often. I can't offer reports that show tactical night attacks on airfields by B-29 formations because they didn't happen but common sense is enough to tell that if they most often weren't able to hit their target in strategic attacks then guess how it looks like hitting a far smaller target that doesn't blow up because you burn everything in a diameter of 20 miles around it and therefore also destroying their target.
I have no problem at all how the game handles strategic night attacks when manpower is targeted (creating fires), when it comes down to tactical night attacks, for me, the game isn't spot on. Others may have a different oppinion, nothing bad at all.
Well, lets take your points one by one. 1st of all , daylight bombing depended upon each planes INDIVIDUAL bombardier. RADAR bombing is a massed "drop on lead" technique. Instead of relying on a bunch of 1st and 2nd LT's , you relied on the most experinced and senior bomardier. Ironically , a couple of times weather forced a group of B-29's to bomb by RADAR and their results were MUCH better then when they hit the target based upon visual rules.
Now let's talk about targets. Night bombing is AREA bombing. Daylight bombing is generally PRECISION bombing. In precision bombing , you aim for a pinpoint target , like say a factory. Even though it might be a massive building (Like Williow Run in Michigan or the Massive Martin plant in Omaha...of which Japan had nothing approaching in size) its still ONE building (or a collection of buildings closely grouped).
Area bombing is just that. Instead of one building , you hit a neighborhood (or in the case of the RAF , anywhere in, on or near the city). You have admitted the possibility of hitting and severly damaging a city. How big is an air base? Having lived on several I can tell you that they are HUGE. Even a small WW2 size base is still a big area. So lets take my very 1st base , Naval Air Station South Weymouth MA. A world war two Blimp base, one of the smallest of US bases. It certainly was much bigger than a down town city center in actual area.
Let's take an actual WW2 Pacific base that both the USN and Japan used , and I'm really familar with as I lived near it. Orote Field , Apra Harbor Guam. It's been abandoned since the early 50's , has no buildings , facilities , it hasn't even had the grass cut in fourty years. Yet C-130 Aircrews regularly used to to practice night cargo sled drops. The C-130 doesn't have bombing RADAR. At at the time I used to watch them, night vision was fairly rare, very expensive and not all that good. Essentially they were finding a hole in the jungle. But I never witnessed a miss. Why? Well for one thing , an airfield, even a WW2 small fighter strip was comparatively huge. And if one highly skilled , pathfinder qualified RADAR bombardier can find it , and a formation drops on him, well I'm guessing what Henderson field under went by Battleship bombardment was probably considerably less. What is the weight of bombardment a BB puts down? And how much can 1-200 B-29s carry?
And big bomber raids didn't occur in a vaccum. along with pre raid reconnasiance , you had pre-raid weather flights , and just before the groups went in you had "Pathfinder" aircraft mark the way with flares and "markers". Plus if near the ocean , you had lifeguard subs that could contribute to the intell picture. It was possible to use surface ships doing picket duty to give bearings and contribute to the "intel pot".
And another question about why in Europe they had trouble hitting cities but can hit Pacific airfields. One answer is again geography. How many axis targets were on the ocean? Not many. They were generally a very long way inland. That tremedously complicates any navigation , especially RADAR navigation. You no longer have coast lines. You might have a river. LOTS and lots of rivers. And I'd imagine that a tired aircrew, having already fought it's way across hundreds of miles of hostile airspace defended by what was then the finest night air defense system in the world is probably going to start thing one river looks pretty much like another.
One thing about Japan that impressed me is that you really have to work hard to get a long way from the ocean. And the easiest thing to RADAR navigate on is a coast line.
You should have joined years earlier, perhaps it would have been even funnier to stay around. 
