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This is a 1943 Long Campaign played as the Germans defending the Reich against perfidious Albion and the might of American industry.

I am quite new to the whole world of BTR and thought it might be useful for a relative Noob to post their experiences with the game so others could see the learning curve and learn from the huge number of Noob mistakes I am sure to make. I'm also rather hoping that the more experienced players will read this AAR, take pity on me and give me some tips on just what I'm doing wrong.

It is also my intention to post data I glean from elsewhere and find useful to this AAR so that this can act as a one-stop shop for relative Noobs.


So, with that said here's a list of things I still don't have a clue about:
1. People talk about Italy falling. I have no idea when this occurs and which bases I will lose or when I will lose them.

2. What moon light level is associated with Bomber Command raids? So far the light level has been above 18. It seems that the night bombers would want to attack only on very dark nights to reduce the risk of visual spotting but just what is this level?

3. Just what the hell is wrong with my Bf-109s? If they are even in the vicinity of a plane with bullets they seem to go down. No, seriously, they just appear astonishingly fragile versus pretty much anything. Often I find bomber boxes are shooting down more Bf-109s than they are losing bombers.



Overall Strategy:
Basically I'm a "Big Wing" kind of guy. I like to hit a single raid with overwhelming numbers of fighters and if that requires leaving other raids unmolested then so be it.

I don't believe that tactical raids into France and Belgium/The Netherlands can severely hurt me and so, as much as possible, I will try to avoid them. The only exception is that from time to time if nothing much else is going on I may hit the tactical raids AFTER they have attacked and are returning home with lots of cripples I can easily pick off.

Whenever possible I put the night fighters up during the daytime to inflict losses on enemy heavy bombers.


Production Strategy:
Well, I left things alone for the first 3 days but on the 4th day massively changed my production. I decided to basically stop producing Bf-109G6s as they just die in droves to little effect and to concentrate on the Fw-190s, twin-engined Zerstorers and Night Fighters as well as putting a lot of effort into researching the Ta-152C which people seem to feel rather positive about.

By turn 5 my production has stabilised as follows:
4 x Bf-109G-5
42 x Fw-190A6
3 x Mc.205
4 x Re2005
= 53 single-engined day fighters.

8 x Bf-110G-2
2 x Ju-88C06a
9 x Me-410A
9 x FW-190F
= 19 twin-engined and 9 single-engined Zerstorers

4 x Bf-110G-4
8 x Do-217N-2
6 x He-219A-2
2 x Ju-88G
= 20 night-fighters

R&D
40 Ta-152C. If I've figured things right and with this production due to come on-stream in about 20 days and the Ta-152C due in 15 months I should move availability of the Ta-152C up at a rate of 1 month every 2.5 days of R&D. So, in about 60 days I could have Ta-152Cs.

Over the next 60 days I have to keep losses down under 90 planes per day or my forces will shatter. One part of this is switching from hyper-vulnerable Bf-109s to FW-190s and the other part will be titrating my actual engagements.



So, what happened today on the 5th day?
Well, the Allies put in a deep raid against Bremen with some 350 B-17Fs. I managed to down just over 100 B-17Fs but lost about 40 planes in doing so ( half of them Bf-109s which I allowed to intercept the bombers only after they had bombed and had had their formations ravaged.... BIG mistake).

I managed to bounce a TacAir raid on a radar site over Northern Holland preceding the B-17F raid and managed to down about 40 fighters and fighter-bombers there.

The rest of the Allied losses really occurred over Italy where out of 7 major raids spotted 4 were fighter-bomber raids which turned back when intercepted over the Med.

Interestingly, since so many of my fighters managed to scramble for 2nd interceptions today I actually have more sorties than the Allies.


WEIRD point of the day: I lost 9 fighters to my own FlAK. Sure I understand that FlAK could misidentify fighters etc and mistake them for Americans but, really, NINE? That seems excessive. FlAK in Germany actually killed more of my own fighters than it did B-17s.


Why "Betraying The Reich?" Because I expect to make so many mistakes that in real life I'd have been put up against a wall as a traitor [:D]

This will make an interesting read Nemo, looking forward to your AAR.

I see more people reporting problems with the 109 (high losses) but you have to remember that you have loads of them out there! I am in turn 14 in a '43 GC playing the axis and I manage to kill more then I loose, also on the G6!

21st August 1943.

Today was an extremely active day with major B-17 raids into Germany and around Rome, hordes of fighter-bomber raids and the first successful wiping out of a bombing raid. I'll only discuss the notable raids:

1. A Major 300 x B-17F raid went in against the FW190 Assembly and Parts plants at Bremen. I managed to wait out the escorts and then hit the main bomber boxes with 4 sequences of Luftwaffe fighters/bomber destroyers. 1st wave: FW-190A6/R1s, 2nd wave: Zerstorer Units (including FW-190F), 3rd wave: Twin-engined night-fighters, 4th wave: FW-190A-5s and Bf-109G6s.

The effect wasn't nearly as good as expected but, still, 70 B-17s went down. The majority of my losses came in two areas:
a) the Bf-109s who lost about 14 Bf-109G6s in return for 4 B-17Fs --- and this when they were sent in AFTER every other plane type had hit the B-17Fs.
b) about 10 night-fighters got killed when their route of retreat from the B-17 stream ran into a Spitfire fighter sweep.


2. In Italy the Allies tried a number of deep-ish raids. At one point a B-17 raid went in against targets around Rome and got in and out just before my fighters could really get to grips with it. As a result I only downed about 10 x B-17s there. Unfortunately for the Allies another slow raid appeared on radar as the B-17s disappeared. I assumed this was another B-17 raid and sent literally everything I had against it, figuring that since I'd sortied most of my fighters already and they hadn't shot at anything I might as well get some use for them. Well, this raid turned out to be a B-25 raid. Given the B-25s lesser firepower and durability the raid ended with the B-25 raid aborting and having every single bomber shot down before it could escape out to sea again. 32 B-25s down [:D]. Crazily enough these B-25s managed to down 25 fighters, including 12 Bf-109s. *sigh* I really find it difficult to believe that 32 B-25s would really account for 25 Axis fighters... even if many of these fighters were being flown by poorly-experienced Italian pilots.


3. Things were pretty quiet until eveningtime apart from a few more tactical raids which I bounced after they had hit their targets so that I could get some easy kills on damaged planes.

4. The evening saw the British launch what seemed to be close to 1,000 bombers at Bremen. These were accompanied by Wellington RCM planes ( which kept transmitting info on my radars back to base ---- I presume this must speed up the entry into service of radar countermeasures or something ) and Mosquito Night Fighters which shot down two of my night-fighters at the cost of 1 of their own.

I scrambled all my night-fighters and managed to kill 31 enemy bombers in the air with FlAK accounting for another 29.
Bf-109Us accounted for 1 British bomber
Bf-110G4s accounted for 23 British bombers.
Ju-88C6s accounted for 2 bombers
Do-217s accounted for 5 bombers + 1 Mosquito

All in all I downed 32 planes in return for only 2 losses and FlAK got another 29. Pretty sweet, especially considering that the raid didn't seem to do much damage to Bremen... It caused something like 40 Urban Damage but the terror score hasn't gone up.

Interestingly it seems most of my attacks were visually-directed as the number of "Plane x spotted on radar" messages was very low.



At day's end I had far exceeded my loss level of 90 planes per day but:
a) I'd really hurt the Allies, having downed 252 Allied planes in the day and
b) a lot of my losses were accounted for by crappy Bf-109s and poor ( non-Re-2005, Mc205, G55 or SAI planes ) Italian planes - 47 planes.

I still have a problem with night fighter losses as I lost 31 night fighters today which is just too much. I am still learning exactly when to pull them back before Allied fighter sweeps and escorts on the "return leg" catch them so, hopefully I'll get better at this and be able to reduce these losses to a more manageable level.


The picture below shows my Zerstorer units engaging - This loss picture was generated by 20+ Bf-110G2/R3s salvoing their rockets en masse. To the east you can see the first wave of night-fighters forming up ready to head in to intercept. To the west you can see my Fw-190A5s and Bf-109s forming up along the flight path ready to pick off cripples, any bomb groups which abort and to attack the main body once it has bombed and is further disrupted by FlAK. As you can see I'm really doing everything I can to save those Bf-109s but it doesn't seem to help much at all.

24th August 1943

Today features far smaller bomber raids than previously with a greater emphasis on fighter-bomber raids. The Allies are beginning to re-attack the radar sites they took down in the first week and I am responding by concentrating more and more light FlAK at these sites to protect them.

The main news today comprised a few shallow B-26 and Whirlwind raids into France and the Low Countries which I left largely uncontested and a single 100 bomber raid on the Bremen area. The raid came in as two bomber boxes of 50 bombers each escorted by over 100 fighters. I was expecting night raids and so elected to keep my night fighters on the ground but scrambled my Fw-190A5s, Fw-190A6R1s, Bf-190s and 109-Rs ( I've changed half of the 109G-6s to G-6Rs as I am trying my best to avoid fighters in any case ) and Zerstorer squadrons.

I waited the escorts out and as they turned for home I sent the fighters in. Over 200 day fighters converged on the bombers and over the course of the next 30 minutes fully 25 B-24 and 20 B-17s went down. I was surprised to see B-24s, I hadn't seen a single one before today. The B-24 box fragmented into two separate raids and one of those raids was fully eliminated as it made for the English coast. I don't know what this represents as I would have thought that 50 bombers was a single Bomber Group. Maybe I was facing two half-strength groups and that accounts for the splitting?

In Italy two major raids went after the Naples area. The first comprised B-17s and, despite the lack of fighter escort over the Naples area, rather staggeringly managed to down 15 fighters for the loss of 13 B-17s. Sure most of these fighters were Italian but that's still kinda crazy.

By the time the 2nd raid on the Naples area came in later in the day my forces were ready for some revenge and I scrambled everything I had to sit and wait just outside of the range of the escorts. As the escorts peeled off my forces went in and found themselves facing much weaker Baltimore bombers. There was a bit of a turkey shoot and almost half of the 75 Baltimores involved went down.

My FW-190Fs and other twin-engined day fighters again proved themselves to be the only planes able to venture into B-17 boxes with a reasonable risk of survival. Everything else which went in against B-17s and B-24s suffered heavily from defensive fire with the low point being the loss of 3 x Bf-109G6/R6 in a single firing pass early in the day.

At present 3 of my top 5 aces are in the Fw-190F squadron stationed just north of Naples. Every day they get to chew on unescorted B-17s and medium bombers and every day they rack up a good score. At present they have lost 8 Fw-190Fs in return for 53 kills and their top pilot ( my top ace so far ) has 10 kills to his name in just 6 days.

The other really stand-out planes are the Bf-110G2s on the German front 15 lost vs 127 kills and Me-410s 4 lost vs 17 kills ( I am slowly switching Stab units over to Me-410s and also the ISS units which, I think, are intended to represent flight schools or evaluation units based at factories, I'm not sure which ). Ju-88C6as saw action for the first time today and downed 3 Baltimores and 1 Spitfire in return for 1 of their own.

FW-190A5s are also doing surprisingly well. I've lost 50 but they've killed 157.

The Bf-109s continue to be depressingly bad with several of my Bf-109 units having lost more planes than they've shot down. Execrable.




Strategic situation:
I'm using most of my movement points to remove AAA from airfields in the south of France and Southern Italy as the ones in France aren't about to be attacked and the FlAK in southern Italy will only be lost in the next week unless I move it. I want to really load up on FlAK in some of thoese Dutch radar sites. I had 80 FlAK pieces ( half AAA MGs the other half 20mm and 37mm cannon ) yesterday at a radar station and downed 9 attacking fighter-bombers and damaged about 30 which my Fw-190A5s really chewed up afterward. In total the Allies lost about 30 fighter-bombers for almost no loss and that's something I'd like to do again.


Ace count:
7 aces, 3 in Fw-190Fs accounting for 20 kills altogether, 2 in Bf-110G2/R3s accounting for 11 kills and a single Fw-190A6/R1 pilot accounting for 6 kiills who was killed in the attack on the B-17s over Bremen today.

Top non-German pilot is Fw Aiello in an Mc205 Veltro who has 4 kills.


Important question:
FW-190Fs. I am looking to ramp up their production at the expense of a few FW-190A6s BUT there's no point doing so if I am stuck with the 4 Schlachtgruppen I begin the game with. So, if I make lots of FW-190Fs will I get the option of switching some of my crappy Bf-109 units to Fw-190Fs?

Currently I know that if you get enough 109Gs you can begin switching non-German air units to them even if that isn't an option at scenario-start but I'm not sure what code is in the game about Fw-190Fs.

ISS - Industrie Schutzstaffeln. Basically factory defence flights formed from production test pilots who were often Luftwaffe pilots suposedly being rested from operations (recovering from wounds etc).

Bf 110G-2s are very effective against heavy bombers but make the most of them while you can, once they tangle with longer ranged escorts they will suffer badly.

I can't answer your question about being able to switch Jagdgruppen to FW 190Fs, I don't recall ever having enough in the pool to reach any threshold where by you can change them. I know you can equip Schlactgruppen with conventional day fighters when you have enough of them.

von Shagmeister

Well,  we're up to the 26th August....
 
I've decided that the key to attacking bomber attacks of 200 to 300 bombers over northern Germany is to :
 
a) phase my attacks so that the rocket-armed planes go in first, the cannon-armed FW-190A6s next and then the Bf-109G6/R6s only as a last resort
 
b) get as many Bf-109G6/R6s as possible --- hence my wholesale conversion of Bf-109s to the R6 variant.
 
c) to concentrate on a single bomber box at a time to the exclusion of the others. You get a far better return for the 109s if they hit a broken box.
 
 
In the south the Allies made their habitual two raids a day to the Rome area and multiple fighter raids on ground targets in the toe. I, as usual, waited with fighters until the fighter-bombers had made their attack and then pounced with superior numbers on the damaged planes. Around Rome I managed to get a large number of twin-engined fighters and Fw-190Fs into action and managed to down approximately half of each raid. Both raids hit their targets but this cumulative loss rate must be impacting on the enemy.
 

Over Germany some 250 B-17s and B-24s made their way towards Bremen in three huge bomber formations. I concentrated all my day fighters on the first two bomber groups and managed to down about 80% of the first group and a smaller portion of the second. The bombers still made it through to hit their targets but cloud cover saved them from especially heavy damage.
 
By day's end some 99 B-17s and 30 B-24s had been downed along with a smattering of B-25s, Mitchel IIIs etc. Very few enemy fighters or fighter-bombers were downed as I have been consciously trying to avoid them.
 
By day's end roughly 230 enemy planes had been downed in return for 120 of mine. Not bad, too costly but not bad. I had save my night fighters as the moonlight was very low tonight and I expected the RAF to fly again. Yesterday, when the RAF didn't fly, this cost me dear as I had to let bomber boxes go relatively unmolested and, overall, this meant I killed few Allied planes yesterday. Today the RAF flew and got quite massacred.
 
By night's end I'd downed over 50 enemy bombers with my night-fighters and another ten or so had fallen to my FlAK.
 
So by day's end the loss was approximately 123 German fighters vs 299 Allied planes and the overall loss rate for the campaign exceeded 2:1 for the first time.
 
 
Lessons learned:
1. Night-time combat is a great time to rack up a huge exchange rate.
 
2. It is as important to learn what raids you can allow through as it is to learn how to engage the raids you must engage.
 
3. Concentrating on a single bomber box yields far better results than spreading the same number of fighters against multiple bomber boxes. It seems elementary but in the heat of combat the desire to engage everything can easily take over.
 
 
production:
Hmm, I now have 75 Fw-190Fs in the pool and have only lost 25... If I can't swap Zerstorer groups to the 190F then I need to quickly cut production before my pool size gets crazy.