Matrix Games Forums

Hi

I am playing the D-Day campaign as the allies. In turn 1 aircraft loses were over 600 and in turn 2 over 1,200

This seems very high. Any ideas about what i could be doing wrong

THANK YOU

Don't make them fly in bad weather.

Don't make them fly really long distances if you can help it. Always try to move planes forward, as long as the supply situation in Europe permits it.

Don't send them over heavy flak unless they are at high altitudes.

Don't work them to exhaustion. You can set the missions per day setting to 99 per day every day of the week with 100% of aircraft going on the mission if you want to.... But a more reasonably choice might be 1 mission a day on 3 days of the week (with Recon missions flown to the target hex on the other 4 days of the week, perhaps). Setting the requested aircraft for a mission to much less than 100% is a good idea too. For example, if I have 200 Fighter Bombers and want to do interdiction, I might make a directive which has 2 missions per day, each with 50 aircraft. The game automatically uses the least tired/highest morale squadrons to perform missions (I think it does anyway) so setting your directives to use less than 100% of available aircraft means that squadrons which rack up too much fatigue can be left on the bench.

Always use fighter escort, even if you think the Luftwaffe is dead. It will never die entirely. Never.

Try to keep concentration of force, especially when you are sending missions into the Reich. You might be able to get away with missions if only 20 planes near the front, but sending missions like that into Germany can be suicidal. Don't allow the Luftwaffe to fight you in penny packets.

Finally, you need to accept that you will lose mountains of equipment and men. Air warfare in WW2 was far, far more bloody than most people assume. Tens of thousands of aircraft were lost in Europe. In my game it is August 1944 and the Luftwaffe has lost 17,000 aircraft. I have lost 21,000. All of this in just 60 weeks.