Axis Night Fighter & TB Management

[AlbertN]

Greetings,

I just noticed the Night Fighter squadrons in the West Front are all frozen there. Bound and tied.

The Soviets are performing mass bombing of railyards and ports by night.
Bf109s & co are ... well let's just say I forgot to put them on Day Only missions and they pretty suffered more landing crashes due to darkness than shot down enemy bombers. (Actually they got shot down in nice amount by Soviet bombers too ontop of ops losses).

So Day Only missions for them there - and that is fine.
The Flak was deployed and damages a lot of Soviet planes (I do not know how many of those are repaired though - the logistic report seem to notify me the flak damaged few hundreds of Soviet bombers but shot down very few of them - and that is good because in general Flak does that. Inhibits more then destroys proper). The Soviets seem not to relent so I assume the Flak damage is not that impactful.

BUT I've no way to truly effectively protect my precious railyards - because despite the manifest necessity, I cannot transfer Night Fighters.

Is that intended that Night Fighters cannot appear in the East Front? Because I understand that 'must stop British bombing' is there, but the Soviets were not having hundreds of bombers raid in '41 by night! (Not even by day admittedly!)

[Joel Billings]

No, to my knowledge they weren't night bombing. It's not all that accurate. They were flying lots of night harassment missions with mostly U2s. The op losses flying at night are probably high, and the question is are they really hitting much (they shouldn't)? As far as I know the Germans brought only a few night fighter units to the eastern front.

[DeletedUser1769703214]

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

No, to my knowledge they weren't night bombing. It's not all that accurate. They were flying lots of night harassment missions with mostly U2s. The op losses flying at night are probably high, and the question is are they really hitting much (they shouldn't)? As far as I know the Germans brought only a few night fighter units to the eastern front.

Soviets are night bombing (regular bombers) in mass in his game I believe is what is happening. Thus he wanted to get the night fighters from the Western theater. That is how I read it but that is just me.

[DeletedUser1769703214]

Plus in my opinion Soviets are bombing the wrong thing. The CRUX of Germany is fighters. I have yet to see a single Soviet day bomb or night bomb German airfields. When you see the Soviets night bombing German fighter bases with 250 night bombers and causing German fighter losses without a way to curb the threat the topic discussion will come up in a hurry. It will happen & can be done. I personally would rather kill German fighters, no matter the quantity, than bomb ground forces if I were a Soviet but that is just me.

On the first turn alone you know where the German fighters are based. Just saying...

[AlbertN]

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

No, to my knowledge they weren't night bombing. It's not all that accurate. They were flying lots of night harassment missions with mostly U2s. The op losses flying at night are probably high, and the question is are they really hitting much (they shouldn't)? As far as I know the Germans brought only a few night fighter units to the eastern front.

Soviets are night bombing (regular bombers) in mass in his game I believe is what is happening. Thus he wanted to get the night fighters from the Western theater. That is how I read it but that is just me.

HYLA got me precisely in my intent.

Soviets are bombing en mass - and frankly I am unable to read the damage they have done. The combat reports give percentages that have not made any sense to me. [If anyone wants to explain them, they're welcome - but at the combat report if I see a 87% damage for instance, that is not matched by the damage inflicted on the relevant structure; it does not help that there is a 'repair' phase in the middle too during Axis logistics].

But right now my interest is 'I want to be able to get the Night Fighters from the West to counter Soviet Night Bombing, but I cannot because they're locked to the Theather.'

[Joel Billings]

IIRC, the damage numbers are fogged up so real damage can be much lower than stated. I'd like to see evidence of night airfield bombing that does a lot of damage. Anything is theoretically possible, but I don't think it's likely.

[DeletedUser1769703214]

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

IIRC, the damage numbers are fogged up so real damage can be much lower than stated. I'd like to see evidence of night airfield bombing that does a lot of damage. Anything is theoretically possible, but I don't think it's likely.

I did not say a lot of damage. Think cumulative over many turns with a great many bomber runs on fighter bases. I have tested this with Germans I will see what the Soviets can do. If I get the German numbers with more Soviet bombers I will be happy.

[DeletedUser1769703214]

Any plinking away of fighter planes to the Germans is detrimental in my opinion.

[DeletedUser1769703214]

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

IIRC, the damage numbers are fogged up so real damage can be much lower than stated. I'd like to see evidence of night airfield bombing that does a lot of damage. Anything is theoretically possible, but I don't think it's likely.

Do I win a prize?

I set this up in less than 10 minutes and is just one airfield NIGHT bombed 3 times. I showed this in WITE1 and am now showing it again in WITE2. I know a lot of things that many may not with the amount of time I have spent in both games now. I have also helped a great many over the years that would listen to my rumblings including Tyronec when he first started. But I will always claim I know nothing. Without further ado here is the bombing and I am certain that I "can" devastate the German fighter force in a game as a Soviet bombing at night.

Again this is only 1 bombing I set up in the Southeastern Air Army, think if I did this across the whole front. I will let that sink in.

Total aircraft destroyed on this one bombing run in the south.

11 German Fighters
6 Recon Planes

17 total planes destroyed on the ground 11 of them being precious fighters. I stand by what I said, "the Soviets are bombing the wrong thing".

Picture 1 or 3

[DeletedUser1769703214]

Same base 2nd time same bombers

Picture 2 of 3

[DeletedUser1769703214]

Same base 3rd time same bombers

Picture 3 of 3

[DeletedUser1769703214]

Just think if those recon planes were not there to absorb some of those losses.

[DeletedUser1769703214]

I did not want to show Soviet Night bombing airfield again since I did not want to have it used against me. But since my games are on hold I did. Currently Germany is powerless to stop it unless they too want OPS losses to heaven and beyond. Then on top of that the Germans would be lucky to shoot down anything thus only suffering OPS losses and better to just not fly and instead "PRAY" to whatever gawd you believe in. Thus why AlbertN is looking for a solution to a problem. Just for info I tried intercepting at night in an AAR against Bobo and failed horribly. The documentation on this is in my AAR against Bobo.

[DeletedUser1769703214]

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain

I did not want to show this again since I did not want to have it used against me. But since my games are on hold I did. Currently Germany is powerless to stop it unless they too want OPS losses to heaven and beyond. Then on top of that the Germans would be lucky to shoot down anything thus only suffering OPS losses and better to just not fly and instead "PRAY" to whatever gawd you believe in. Thus why AlbertN is looking for a solution to a problem. Just for info I tried intercepting at night in an AAR against Bobo and failed horribly. The documentation on this is in my AAR against Bobo.

There is a solution for the Germans to counter but not cost effective.

[DeletedUser1769703214]

Just FYI German total with ~120ish planes was roughly doing ~0-5 losses per day of night bombing.

[loki100]

so we now have what ... 5 threads of endless posts telling us the game is utterly broken, biased whatever.

As to this, well first its utterly ahistoric that the LW would have pulled night fighters from city defence in the West. Really thats it.

Second, I can think of 2 solutions to create a NF presence pretty easily if I needed to.

[Speedysteve]

If this is a problem right now the easiest thing is just to HR against any night bombing (except maybe U2’s for GS/GA vs units)

[DeletedUser1769703214]

ORIGINAL: loki100

so we now have what ... 5 threads of endless posts telling us the game is utterly broken, biased whatever.

As to this, well first its utterly ahistoric that the LW would have pulled night fighters from city defence in the West. Really thats it.

Second, I can think of 2 solutions to create a NF presence pretty easily if I needed to.

Loki, If you know of two solutions that could help AlbertN in his game why not give him the solutions along with everyone else on the forum that could use it? Instead we get the above

Loki you still fail to understand. Your "HATRED" for anyone that says anything about the game you don't like blinds you. It throws you into a demon fit that clouds your judgement and makes you lash out as if you are saying, "This is what WE have given you and you will like it, it is "infallible"! You really should open your eyes & your heart and stop with the hatred. I will pray for you.

Just to clarify, I never asked for NF's from the West. I have never asked for anything in this post other than showing that Night bombing can be done on German airfields. Mr. Billings asked for an example and I did the example. I get judged, convicted, and sent to jail by those that have closed minds.

[MSAG]

Hi,
I am the reason of the Albert's post. In our game he is trashing me mightily (we are at T9).

Most soviet player air war strategies that I observed are: (1) stop using air force (perhaps with exception of some naval/air transport) or (2) use GS or interdict GA (taking massive losses). In my humble opinion both strategies do not bring material benefits at all or do it at prohibitive losses cost.

I was looking for alternatives -(after short trial we agreed with Albert not to use GA(unit) for now) I tried railway / railyard bombing day/night and day interdiction and airfield bombing as well. I also played with fighter fight settings (mainly by trying to make the fighters use the optimal altitude for their fights). I lost 2000+ LBs already paying for the lessons learned.

My night attacks were aimed at railyards. Frankly due to FOW I am not sure about the results. Most reports I was getting were showing manpower hits. Railyard hits were reported in maybe 25% of the cases. Aircraft losses vary. Typically 10-20% of planes. Flak moves it up. When Albert's fighters scrambled and intercepted the losses were close to 100%.

I think that if the effects are as erratic as reports suggest than no HR is necessary.

However, I would hate to adversely affect the playability for my opponent so I am open to accept any limitations he may deem needed.

BR
MSAG

[DeletedUser1769703214]

ORIGINAL: Speedysteve

If this is a problem right now the easiest thing is just to HR against any night bombing (except maybe U2’s for GS/GA vs units)

That is the easiest.