why bombers sweep?

[MrBlizzard]

Hi, playing Torch to Tunisia, last beta.
German Italian army attacked a FF motorized regiment and they were supported by 118 fighters and 72 bombers against 36 enemy fighters.
In the combat report general info I noticed that 72 bombers effect ON ENEMY TROOPS was just:
- 0 elements destroyed
- 0 elements damaged
- 2 elements disrupted
[:(]
What could be the reason?
In tha air combat detail you can see that most of bombers are doing a "sweep " mission, instead than the "bomber" mission they were ordered to.
I suspect this could be the problem.
CR.42 Falco biplanes were used only in bomber mission at this point of the war and the mission escort was 118 fighters so NO need to employ bombers in fighter role.
What do you think?
Thanks




(Edit in bold)

[Helpless]

In case of interception FB can drop their bomb loads and switch to fighter role, i.e. sweep.

[EddyBear81]

Interesting. So meaning that interceptions that are seemingly not very effective (low damage done) can have a positive effect.

I guess this is linked to the quality of the escort ? The more effective the escort is, the less FB will drop their loads ?

Also, what about Level Bombers ? Is this "Drop bombs when attacked" modeled as well ? I think it was a goal of the intercepting fighters to make the bombers drop their bombs in the countryside instead...

[MrBlizzard]

In my case escort was very effective: 31 attacking fighters downed of 36 !
I think it could be probably related to morale and experience of bombers.
Here there are only italian bombers with medium experience and low morale so they run away as they saw enemies even if their escorts were more than the triple of the attacking planes and also were better models... ... ...[8|] [:(]


EDIT:
I correct myself, I checked and italian bombers groups weren't so bad, they were average also for morale.
So I don't know why 71 bombers of 72 dropped their bombs.
i guess that escort number and quality is not accounted, especially in comparison with enemy numbers.
Maybe it should be [:)].

[MrBlizzard]

This was the escort(there are 7 more Veltro outside the frame of the pic), so a very good one
enemy had just:
10 hurricane IIC
16 spitfire VB
10 kittyhawk IA

bomber pilots could probably consider this before dropping their load and abort the mission [:)]

[Helpless]

As I see bomber flights suffered a few damage hits with losses, which means that intercepts manage to pass through the escorts and cause a disruption, which is taken as main criteria to switch to sweep.

The thing which makes me wonder why disruption is 0, which is looks like a display issue. I wish it would be possible to look at the save before air execution.

[MrBlizzard]

I send the save to 2by3 email Pavel,
you've just to order the attack.
Sometimes planes don't come, sometimes they come in less numbers but disruption is always zero.
Some groups don't have any damage and any loss (I guess any disruption too) but drop bombs away anyway
Thanks

[Helpless]

Finally got my hands on it. There is indeed an issue when very weak intercept can cause FB to switch to SWEEP. Fixed that to make it much less common when attacked by depleted intercepts.

As for flight disruption, value shown for the start of the battle. I may add deltas in the future.