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Longtime allied pbm player who is playing the japs for the first time in pbm. Using the last official patch.

When I was the allies I always had a lot of trouble facing Tojo's. Now as the japs Tojo does not seem to be king of the air on offensive sweeps or defending against sweeps. It is march 1943 so the allies have some early corsairs, spit v's and P-38E/F/G as well as loads of P40's etc. My opponent zeta16 is good and I suspect he has trained all his pilots up to max. He puts all the allied planes on max height for cap which in some cases eg p-38 is 39000ft ie higher than Tojo max of 36740 ft. My pilots are mostly 55-60 exp 70 air ie not bad. I am losing planes 2 or 3:1 ratio which is not good at all. The p-38,corsair and spitfire are killing me. When I defend against sweeps I put Tojo on max height and even hurricanes do well against them. Questions :

Offensive sweeps - what height recommended for Tojo ? Max ie 36740 or say 20000 which is max maneuver rating.
Defending against sweeps - again what height recommended for Tojo ? Max or something less. I have been trying 20000 and that does seem to work better than 36740.

Have to say I am a bit disappointed with the Tojo air kills stats. I suspect it might be down to player error so any hints on what I should be doing attacking and defending with this plane would be appreciated.

As an aside I am not really building any Tonys as the stats apart from armour seem worse than Tojo. Good decision or not ? Also when early Jack and George appear in summer 43 is there any reason to build Jack at all ?

1st: height advantage is the king
2nd: speed delta decrease opponents mvr ratings
3rd: superior pilots

That said
- if he is that high - go in very low and only low number of his planes would be able to intervene or go in even higher
- if he has much faster planes - get height advantage or don't fight at all
- if he has superior pilots - you are doomed unless you get height and/or speed on your side

as to defence: use layered CAP - as enemy moves down the ladder through your CAP, those up that survived can get at him.
also combining different aircrafts with different capabilities, speeds, climb ratio and mvr at different layers and for different purposes is a good option(high speed, high climb for top CAP, medium climb for the middle and best mvr for the low CAP)...

Use for example 2-3 layers of cap. One are at 12000 alt others 15000 and 20000. Do not try to fly at maximum alt.

ORIGINAL: asdicus

As an aside I am not really building any Tonys as the stats apart from armour seem worse than Tojo. Good decision or not ? Also when early Jack and George appear in summer 43 is there any reason to build Jack at all ?

When I played the Japanese side, I built Tony's as found that it is a good point defense fighter. When you layer your CAP, which is a must, you have to have fighters of different attributes. Some for speed (making passes), some for high altitude performance, and some for maneuverability performance (low altitude).

Thank-you for the comments so far.

For sweeping an allied airbase with Tojo what altitude should I be using ? Should I use the max ie 36740 or a lower figure in a higher manuever band ?