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I realise this is quite niche but I was wondering how viable is it to cut of a certain group of forces from supplies using bombers. I'm mostly thinking of situations where a lot of forces, think an entire German Army or Soviet front are being supplied by just 1-2 rails. The sort of situations that you'll run into near Leningrad, the entrance to Crimea or deeper into the Caucasus.

What I specifically want to know is roughly how many bombers you would need as either the German or the Soviets, what sorts of loadsouts work best, what are the best air directives for this and what should you target.

My guess at the moment is that for one railway as the Soviets you'd need about 500 heavy bombers (IL-4s, DB-3s, B-25s) and you probably want to do ground attack railyard on depot hexes that also don't have an airbase on to minimise flak loses and interception. I'm guessing heavy bomb loadouts are best suited but I'm not sure. I'm also unsure about how much damage medium bombers (Pe-2, SB-2) can do with 500kg bombs.

I expect maybe losses of around 50 planes per turn assuming no AS, if there is AS you'll get absolutely slaughtered and can forget about heavy bombers for half a year.

Anyone have any insights on this?

Generally speaking, if you want to destroy something you go with heavier bomb loads. If you want to interdict movement, you go with lighter more numerous bomb loads/rockets. With that said, I have found that interdicting ground unit movement is pretty much pointless. I have done a couple of simple tests to achieve Level 3 (30 points or more) interdiction in missions that have a 1 hex radius, and it does nothing to slow up enemy movement or attrit the enemy when moving through it. I have read that level 3 should slow up the enemy's movement by quite a bit, but I am seeing no affect at all.

I have bombed railyards in major cities with heavy payloads and have found that if the flak is not too bad and they don't get intercepted that the damage can be pretty severe to the railyard. That should have a corresponding negative affect on rail capacity. If playing a human though I would urge caution and at a minimum double check the target hex flak levels.