A good start I thought,
so I decided to shift to the offensive. I brought some Betty's and Nells into Lae and began a couple of weeks of strikes against the PM airfield. I suspected that by now, the Allied squadrons stationed there would be demoralized and composed almost entirely of green pilots. My initial strikes were met by rather effective CAP (roughly 1:1 losses of escorts to interceptors with a fair number of bombers shot down in each raid), but I figured this wouldn't last long. Afterall, I had enough zeros to rest each squadron of escorts for three days between raids and I knew the Allied CAP squadrons MUST be wearing thin by this point.
WRONG! After a little over two weeks of almost daily raids against PM, the Allied CAP actually became more effective (roughly 2:1 losses of escorts to interceptors and heavy bomber losses). I continued this for another frustrating week and could take it no more.
I had to figure out how this Allied CAP could be so effective after sustaining such brutal losses in the preceeding campaign over Lae. So, I resorted to a shameful tactic. I restarted my last save as the Allied player and took a look at the PM fighter squadrons. To my surprise, they were all at nearly full strength! But what was absolutely astounding was the fact that they all had over 100 pilots each!
How could this be possible? Over 500 pilots to operate about 80 aircraft? And this was after recently losing almost 500 pilots in a two month span! I felt like Hercules battling the Hydra!
Where were these pilots (and planes for that matter) coming from? And did any squadron during the war ever "overstaff" to this extent? Also, I thought I read in the manual that squadrons would max out at 3 pilots over the maximum number of aircraft the unit could field.What happened here?!
I don't want to sound like a complainer, because I do in fact LOVE this game. It is BY FAR the best computer game I have ever played. I suspect that since I enjoy playing this game so much, I want to understand why it produced such a bizarre situation as this.
Can anyone account for these "super squadrons" the AI created at PM? Any insight would be greatly appreciated. (And there's no need to haze me over the shady way I discovered the strengths of these Allied squadrons. I feel guilty enough as is!) :p
