Life is a Beach

[LiquidSky]

Once again I find myself embroiled in a titanic struggle for Galactic Dominance where the winner gets the Cookie of Power.

Oh wait...its War in the West, not another day at home with the wife.

Well....playing the Germans, NO icky EF box to gum things up...just raw WiTW action.

I had a couple of plans in the works. Some of which worked, some of which didn't.

I had the plan to ship every able bodied Italian from Italy over to Sardina along with the entire Italian Airforce.

Alas, my erstwhile opponent did a half invasion of Sicily, and a couple turns later invaded Sardinia before I could prepare. I did manage to get the airforce in place.

After holding the allies back and even isolating their beach by sea once....things started to go awry. Sicily fell quickly and because of plan number 2, Italy surrendered in August.

Yup...I had the clever plan of increasing garrison size in France then running into Northern Italy when the time came....of course that meant no Germans propping up El Duck. It also had the unfortunate side effect of leaving Taranto wide open to partisans, and a contingent of British/French brigades landed in the city.

I evicted them with 3 divisions of FJ troops.


I gave the German Luftwaffe some thought. I am building/built airfields on all the major industrial centers and have a good 1000 fighters sitting on the Ruhr cities alone. The flak in the cities prevents/discourages airfield bombing, and the large clump of fighters fight as a unit, so they take surprisingly low casualties.
I also set the German Fighters on Trained Pilots Only, and Restricted all the bombers. I left the Night Fighters and axis allies on Normal.

The result is I am near max in fighters in my squadrons...experience is all in the mid 70's and morale remains high. My pilot pool is usually around -30 to -100 pilots and that was during the summer. With winter approaching I will probably start getting a positive pool of trained pilots.


In fact the air war has become quite interesting as my opponent is trying to find weakness' to hit. He seems to be concentrating quite highly on my fuel/oil factories, and I did surprise him one turn with a large fighter force around Ploesti. I lost a dozen fighters to bring down over 100 bombers. With the new support on air transfer rules, there is little delay in transferring air.

Most of my admin points are being spent on priority repairs first, and remainder on transferring flak guns to key industrial centers. The cost to build the airfields was fairly cheap...probably on around a dozen spent on that.

[LiquidSky]

Here is the Turn 23 Air Losses window.

Half of my losses are Italian aircraft.

[LiquidSky]

And here is what my pilot pool looks like:


I should add that my opponent is usually getting a few vps a turn from the bombing/uboat differential..so my plan isn't stopping the allied bombing.

Just conserving my fighter force.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky



And here is what my pilot pool looks like:


I should add that my opponent is usually getting a few vps a turn from the bombing/uboat differential..so my plan isn't stopping the allied bombing.

Just conserving my fighter force.

interesting approach, in my current game with smokindave my instinct was he did a great job preserving the luftwaffe up to my invasion of France. Then in early autumn his operational losses went through the roof as he had to throw inexperienced pilots into action as I really started to inflict regular and heavy losses.

[LiquidSky]

Nearing the end of 1943. Christmas was kind to the Luftwaffe, and Uncle Rudolf wasn't getting to play in any Luftwaffe games:

OKL commander Rudolf Meister is dismissed
Martin Fiebig takes command of OKL

Hitler hates success. If the Luftwaffe is doing well, it must be punished!...or rewarded in the case of firing Goering.

Here is a chart of the air losses so far (now that it works on my computer).





EDIT: My 13 year old daughter came up to me while I was typing this, looked at my lego avatar and asked: "Is that Hitler?"

[LiquidSky]

Another day at the Beach:

Typical bombing turn by the allies.

[Joel Billings]

I'm impressed with your 13-year old.

[LiquidSky]

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

I'm impressed with your 13-year old.

I was somewhat flabbergasted from her comment. It made me think about where she might have picked that up from, certainly not Grade 7 education.

The only thing I could come up with is I probably was watching a movie and she picked it up from that. Like Inglorious Basterds or something like that.

[Joel Billings]

Whenever I'm on vacation I take a book or two to read. Usually big thick historical books about WWII. Nowadays when I'm packing for vacation, my wife always manages to make a comment like "you're not bringing any big books with Swastika's or Hitler on the cover are you?". I don't know what she hates most, the fact that I'm weighing down our luggage with big books when I could read on the IPad, or that she's traveling with someone that could be mistaken for a Nazi sympathizer. [:)] Sorry to hijack your AAR.

[LiquidSky]

HiJack away....I think it is more of a desert then a beach..

New turn, Hitler throws another fit and switches OKL back to the other leader. He seems to be keeping Goering locked up though.

OKL commander Martin Fiebig is dismissed
Rudolf Meister takes command of OKL

[LiquidSky]

Well my strategy of putting the bulk of the German fighter bomber force in the Ruhr has been finally put to the test. The allies launched a B24 raid on my built up airfields in the cities.

The result: out of around a thousand planes, 10 planes were destroyed on the ground, and around 200 more damaged. (or still damaged after doing my beginning of turn logistic stuff)

The cost: unsure, but I suspect it was rather high for the Allies. One of the airfields was protected by almost 1000 88mm Flak guns. Although the best cost is those bombers weren't bombing industry.

If he decides to keep it up, I am not sure who would break first...him or me.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky

The cost: unsure, but I suspect it was rather high for the Allies. One of the airfields was protected by almost 1000 88mm Flak guns. Although the best cost is those bombers weren't bombing industry.

If he decides to keep it up, I am not sure who would break first...him or me.

I tried this in my current PBEM as that airfield in the middle of the Ruhr was full of night fighters. Every plane was damaged and the squadrons down to 15-20 morale, so out of the game for 3-5 turns (depending on your tolerance for using low morale formations).

from the allied point of view, I've filed that as 'not something to ever do again'

[Q-Ball]

Interesting post on managing the LW air.....

I noticed alot of air intercepts over the Dutch coast. One issue as LW, IMO, is that Spitfires can reach that area on AS missions. Because the RAF has plenty of Spits and pilots, is an easy way to bleed off the LW in dogfights; even 2:1 exchanges favor the Allies in the long run, because they have more pilots, and Germans don't.

What do you do about that? Allow it to happen, move air coverage back a bit? It's hard to do the latter, because that means moving it a few hexes back of the Ruhr

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: Q-Ball

Interesting post on managing the LW air.....

I noticed alot of air intercepts over the Dutch coast. One issue as LW, IMO, is that Spitfires can reach that area on AS missions. Because the RAF has plenty of Spits and pilots, is an easy way to bleed off the LW in dogfights; even 2:1 exchanges favor the Allies in the long run, because they have more pilots, and Germans don't.

What do you do about that? Allow it to happen, move air coverage back a bit? It's hard to do the latter, because that means moving it a few hexes back of the Ruhr

I like to try and set up Allied AS with Spitfires where the Luftwaffe may be. As you say this can get the Luftwaffe entangled not with fighters optimising for distance and bomber escort but with fighters designed for 1-1 air combat. I've been playing around with a lot of ideas about air redeploy for the allies on T1 and getting the Spitfires to where they can engage over the Low Countries is now one of my preferred deployments.

If the Germans pull back, that is less friction on my bombers, if they try and contest I may lose every round of combat but I'll win out in the longer term.

Its also why I've become quite keen on grabbing a small bridgehead in the Netherlands - either to the NE of Amsterdam or SW of Den Haag. Both are near impossible to dislodge (or break out of) but thats not the point. You can base Spitfires there and all of sudden the Luftwaffe is running into allied fighters up to the Ruhr.

[LiquidSky]

I've been running into those spits as well and it is only now, in April, 1944 that I am running out of pilots. But the main thing is my experience is high, morale is high because I leave the squadrons on TPI (tranined pilots only), so the net effect is my numbers get smaller. At the moment I am down about 200 fighters from max flying. I have plenty of machines in my pool.

I suspect that you can't actually grind the Luftwaffe down to nothing if the Germans don't put poor pilots in fighters. However the only way I feel you can combat this would be to use all your spits and try and cause as much air combat as possible around the Ruhr. As it stands though he isn't losing 2-1, it's closer to 4-1 in pilots.

I've lost 2783 pilots...probably around 800 (conservative guess) of those were Italian. He's lost 8490 pilots. I've been bombed practically everywhere except Berlin. But the most bombing vps he's gained was around 7-8 in 1943 and 2-4 in 1944.

I should add the point of this exercise is not to save the Luftwaffe, but rather to try and minimize the bombing vp's. The constant combat on his bombers, as well as the extra flak guns I have moved into the key industry centers, along with all the priority repairs is the best I can do.

Here is a chart of the actual air combat losses:

[LiquidSky]

I should add the Germans only get 35 trained pilots a turn. By Restricting all the other air types, and using Trained Pilots only for the fighters, all 35 can go into the fighters each turn. You only have to inflict more then 35 losses a turn to shrink the fighter force.

Of course there are a couple ways I could mitigate this. One is I could disband night fighters. The pilots will then go into regular fighters. In fact, I suspect that I will have to dismantle the entire NF to keep my fighters at full for the whole war, but that will allow BC to bomb freely.

I also might take two or three of the most beat up squadrons and give them crappy pilots and put them on train. But that would probably be too slow.

[LiquidSky]

April 22, 1944. Weather is raining, but I turned off the graphics for it so the map looks cleaner.

As you can see, I am fighting a few battles with the allies. My fighters are down to -391 pilots in the pool.

On the plus side, I have 20 pilots with 10 kills or more (the most has 17 kills). I have over 100 aces.

A couple of my squadrons have an average experience level in the 60's. The vast majority are in the 70's. One is even in the 80's

I have 1000 fighters in my production pool...



Bombing VPS: 4

[Seminole]

Are you trying to create any AS zones, or do you just rely on basing location and automatic interception?
Have you modified the mission percentage for AS to increase the number of aircraft that intercept?

I feel good with my utility of the LW for Attack, but I don't think I've handled the northern air war well. In my games that have made it the farthest inattention for several weeks while the ground war was rollicking in the Med left me with a burnt out fighter force. Too aggressive in my commitment of fighters, and not pulling units out of the line can snowball quickly, and I don't think they'll have much chance to recover.

Flip side is I don't care if I have an Air Force left by April of '45, so I'm still trying to balance using it most effectively at the most effective time. From a VP standpoint the over commitment in '43 May be good if it shaves enough bombing points each turn.

[LiquidSky]

I set no missions at all and allow the computer to do my interceptions for me...I did experiment with setting Air Superiority missions, but the auto interceptions seem to do a better job.

Here is the losses for the April 29th turn. Pilots down to -480.




VPs for bombing are still 4....and the Game VP total has reached 0 (its been slowly dropping)

[Seminole]

I set no missions at all and allow the computer to do my interceptions for me...I did experiment with setting Air Superiority missions, but the auto interceptions seem to do a better job.

So no changes to the AS doctrine setting? I was trying to understand if you were getting hundreds of planes aloft because of that, or how you had them based.

I have drawn similar conclusions on AS vs automatic intercept. I do use AS sometimes in the Med if I expect to get a shot at some bombers and mitigate the WA effort in a specific area.
My problem with basing fighters in the Ruhr is that my opponents can draw them into combat along the Channel at unacceptable losses. Has your opponent in this game not tried that, or is there a way to mitigate it from your end and keep them on a shorter leash, so to speak.
I tend to base them just a little farther east and southeast, but it definitely means less bites at the apple.

I've been so intent on the use of AP in the Med that I haven't experimented with relocating flak. I have a relatively new game ongoing that I'm going to try and manage that aspect more and build fortifications for forward defense less. I think some of the defense can wait, and you get the best bang for buck on flak early.