Uses for vvs long range air command?

[Obamacubed]

I have tried using them to bomb semi freshly captured rail yards, hopefully before my opponent can get fighters in range but to no avail, they are always intercepted, and suffer huge losses and deal no damage to the rail yard or port. Any tips?

[Jango32]

It's not worth it to bomb railyards and ports, you're better off not doing those missions. Either send these bombers to the theater boxes and exchange them with something better or just use them in ground support.

[Saturn V]

You could try what it did historically during some periods of the war: nighttime raids on Axis cities (i.e. strategic bombing).

[Zebtucker12]

Destroying RIGA and such is pretty usefull or if the german rail is very chokepointy.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

It's not worth it to bomb railyards and ports, you're better off not doing those missions. Either send these bombers to the theater boxes and exchange them with something better or just use them in ground support.

This is the best answer I have seen. Although I am not a very good Soviet player I believe there is another answer but I need to prove it out first. Until then Jango "The Book Guy" and yes he is "THE" book guy I believe is spot on.

[PeteJC]

I have tested interdiction results on clear hexes around Kirovograd. Very little flak in the area and no enemy airforce interference. You can use them to interdict 1-3 separate hexes. I ran missions for EACH AOG separately at 9000 feet, high intensity & every day. The LR Group had 802 bombers in 8 AOGs at 92% supply coming out of the Stalino Rostov area and staging at Krivoi, Dnep. & Zap. Loadouts were the ones with the smaller and more numerous bombs. I ran them on 1 hex. 2 hexes and on 3 hexes (not radius just on a hex itself). On average the results were:

1 hex: On average that was about 2400 sorties with about 100 lost and 50 damaged planes in my tests. The hex had a level 7-9.9 interdiction.

2 hexes: there were 4500 sorties around 160 lost and 115 damaged with results of 6.9-9.9 interdiction levels.

3 hexes: 6100 sorties 185 losses 140 damaged on average with results of 7-9.9 interdiction levels.

If I don't assign the missions to the specific AOGs and just set one mission to LR group at a 1 radius but with 200 as the strike # we get around 5,700 sorties and 60 losses and 110 damaged with interdiction results on 4-5 levels in each hex.

When I ran the 1 radius test in another area that happen to have planes intercepting the losses were 600 bombers to 20 fighters A2A. These results stayed the same at altitudes from 9,000 all the way to 25,000 feet. So, moral of the story is you better be sure the skies will be uncontested.

[PeteJC]

giving this one a little bump as it has been 6 months. Has no one figured out a decent use for these planes or is the best way to handle them is to send them off to the Far East..

[Beethoven1]

They are useful for giving the German fighter pilots easy kills so that the German fighter pilots can all get their experience ratings up to 99.

Other than that, they are also useful for attracting German AA fire. This uses ammunition, which requires freight, and hence can mean a bit less freight going to ground units for Germany. However, Germany doesn't really have a freight problem once the freight penalty disappears in Spring '42, so if you are going to suicide your bombers to soak up ammunition, the time to do it is in 1941. For this reason, be sure not to fly at high altitudes to avoid flak. Instead fly at low altitudes so that the low altitude flak and AAMGs will also be in range and can expend ammunition. And don't just fly the default routes for bombing, instead try to fly back and forth along the length of the front line directly over all the German divisions so that German troops from all 3 Army Groups can expend ammunition shooting at your planes. Use the AA map mode to spot concentrations of flak and head directly for those.

And other than that, remember that just because something is in the game doesn't mean it has to be useful. Romanians and Italians are in the game, after all.