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What do you find are the best parameters to bomb a Russian city (railyard, etc.) and not take huge air losses? So far the results I've gotten make me just not want to try it anymore.

Air losses can be grouped into three main categories: Air-to-Air (A2A), operational, and flak-related losses. Let's look at each one in turn and discuss some strategies to keep them at a minimum.

A2A losses occur when your aircraft go head-to-head with enemy fighters. An effective way to lower these losses is by ensuring your bombers are escorted by a squadron of top-tier fighters to keep enemy fighters at bay.

Next, we have operational losses. These can be mitigated by conducting a moderate number of missions, ideally in favorable weather conditions, and launching them from well-supplied, large airfields. It's also essential to avoid pushing your aircraft anywhere near their maximum range.

There are a few ways to reduce flak losses too. One of these is to deploy all available bombers in a single large raid per day, as opposed to multiple smaller ones. This approach generally encounters less flak. Additionally, carefully planning your mission path to avoid areas known for heavy flak, can significantly improve your chances. Increasing your altitude is another option, but it can reduce the effectiveness of your mission, so use this tactic with discretion.

However, no matter how many preventive measures you take, always remember that the Germans are lacking in true strategic bombing capabilities like Flying Fortresses. As a result, your bombing missions might inflict only moderate damage to enemy factories which they can repair swiftly. Consequently, bombing aircraft factories may not yield the desired outcome; you might lose more aircraft than the net decrease in enemy production.

Thus, strategic bombing opportunities on the Eastern Front are scarce and often not cost-effective. However, I can suggest two situations where it could be marginally beneficial:

1. Targeting enemy ports. This tactic can limit their port capacity, thereby reducing the rate at which they can move units by sea. Unlike naval interdiction, which only hampers supply movement, bombing ports can hinder troop transports. This strategy can be useful when you want to slow down an enemy evacuation or take control of a significant objective, like Sevastopol, before it can receive reinforcements.

2. Attacking small manpower centers without flak defenses. Although the benefits may be minimal, the potential loss of bombers could also be significantly less. Just ensure you have sufficient fuel and other resources to support these bombing missions.

Just remember, strategic decisions require balancing risks against potential rewards, and sometimes the best course of action might be to withhold fire rather than risk precious resources.

Der Kuenstler wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 2:10 am What do you find are the best parameters to bomb a Russian city (railyard, etc.) and not take huge air losses? So far the results I've gotten make me just not want to try it anymore.

Not bombing them at all.

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Manpower:
I once tried figuring out what would be if I'd bomb Manpower (not sure if I am missing something).
IIRC I bombed Riga for a whole week (without recon before!): So this would cause the loss of ~3.4k manpower, assuming that no additional speed-up for repairs will be (auto)assigned.

So at this point I'd contradict (?) with K62's:

K62 wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 4:07 am 2. Attacking small manpower centers without flak defenses. Although the benefits may be minimal, the potential loss of bombers could also be significantly less. Just ensure you have sufficient fuel and other resources to support these bombing missions.

Altough I'd like to learn what's the numbers behind that idea for being worthwile, I may miss something.

Industry:
The only Industry which could be worth bombing would be the specific AFVs/planes. The problem here is that once the Chassis/Airframes are built, those are stored and will be converted into full tanks/planes whenever needed. The system is not outputting Chassis = Tanks in a 1:1 ratio (1:1 mostly for stuff which only has 1 "Version") and so you may end up with many Chassis in storage which then will be converted into tanks while you are bombing the factory (how many chassis/airframes are in surplus within which turn you need to check for yourself, each is different).
Here is the Soviet Pool situation from an older game version in september 1942, may differ from current game version! Railyard
Here the issue for me (and how far I've understood it so far, I'd like to be corrected on that,) is that the Railyard is only related to capacity. So let's say bombing a frontline/2nd line City with a Capacity of 60k, which is only receiving 5k freight each turn anyways will not do anything at all if not destroyed 100%. I've done strat recon 3 days long before the bombings.

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Something worth adding is that the first mission/day of the mission (mission in this specific week, not "Day1") seems to always give the best results, not sure how this is exactly working. Also not sure what happens if you do Day1+Day7 whether the "alert" for that hex is reset until Day7 or so. But looking at that it seems more worthwile doing single-day bombings of targets (needs someone to elaborate on that or comprehensive testing).

Generally speaking people (me included) would like to see immediate devastating effects/impacts of what's beeing done, but that's not how it works. Historically speaking & ingame. ...ignoring nukes.
And as K62 pointed out, Germans had no (serious) Strat bombers in numbers.

K62 wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 4:07 am Air losses can be grouped into three main categories: Air-to-Air (A2A), operational, and flak-related losses. Let's look at each one in turn and discuss some strategies to keep them at a minimum.

A2A losses occur when your aircraft go head-to-head with enemy fighters. An effective way to lower these losses is by ensuring your bombers are escorted by a squadron of top-tier fighters to keep enemy fighters at bay.

Absolutely not true!

In order to reduce your losses, you must ensure such a situation on the map that you would not encounter enemy fighters at all, and only then what K62 advised in case you were unable to achieve what I say.

Good thoughts all - thank you! The wisdom of bombing with the Axis forces seems to be: generally don't do it. The Luftwaffe wasn't designed for that.

But what about bombing in order to reduce supply/soften defenses in preparation for an assault? I've read some advice here that that is important. What settings are best to get results/reduce losses in that situation?

Let's start with the fact that everything that is available in the game, everything can be done and everything will be moderately effective if the situation allows.

You need to find moments and create such conditions so that no matter what you decide to occupy your aircraft with, in the end it was useful.

To do something just because you can, regardless of the situation on the game map, you will make a mistake.

Your actions must be meaningful, you must know the answers to the questions:

How?
Why?
For what?
What forces?
Against what forces?

Der Kuenstler wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 11:30 am But what about bombing in order to reduce supply/soften defenses in preparation for an assault? I've read some advice here that that is important. What settings are best to get results/reduce losses in that situation?

What I can say:

• You can not (directly) destroy Fortifications by Air
• DISrupted CUs in AD: GA-UNIT will be disDISrupted before Ground Phase btu will get Fatigued
• If you want to kill with AD: GA-UNIT you need to use bigger Bombs ~100/250kg+

...additional I believe AD: GA-(Air)Interdiction is underrated, occasionally in AARs they are mentioned/used and debates occur but noone took the time to comprehensively verify all that and put it into a GUIDE-type for everyone to see at once, so one wouldn't need to dig through 2 years of AARs without even after that having a 100% certain answer.

I got the impression that air superiority, recon, and interdiction are the only ADs worth the losses; yes, and bombing airfields on Day #1.

Compared to WITW, it just seems the air war is not a big deal here.

Comments? Thanks.