Air Combat gone wrong

[DKF12]

Allies vs Japanese AI
01/06/ to 01/08/1944
Scenario 6 Full Campaign

Japanese fleet Allied Fleet

CV 6 CV 7
CVL 5 CVL 7
BB 3 BB 7
CA 3 CA 11
CL 5 CL 10
DD 24 CLAA 3
DD 28
Japanese Fleet divided into 4 separate TF's
Most of the allied pilots were in the 55 to 65 experience range.
Fighters were mostly Hellcats
Half the Avengers were upgrades
Out of hundreds of DB and TB attacks on Japanese TF only one bomb hit on a CVL and a BB
The Allied Fleet lost a CV,CVL and BB
Also suffered heavy damage to more than half the capital ships particularly the Carriers
What should I be looking for better pilot training, Better Captains, ?
I am at a loss. After days of setup, months of game play, hundreds of hours of watching tutorials and You Tube let's plays (Were they never seem to finish a game]ad nauseum I am about ready to declare this game unplayable and go back to WITE 2. Please someone save a drowning Commander

[Mike McCreery]

There is alot of information you have not shared regarding TF/air compositions, attack height, etc.

I see you have a lot of ships but they are scattered across 6 or more groups.

Without knowing everything I can say that battleships are attack magnets and placing them within your air TF's provides a lot of diversion of attacks onto them.

When you attack a group with a lot of AA, usually the first attacks are not very good due to the defense but if you can get multiple sorties to hit the same group the follow on attacks are generally more productive. So, if your attacks hit multiple separate groups then you faced full AA.

By having your groups scattered across the ocean you lose the ability to cover multiple TF's with shared CAP. The Japanese are using 1 hex to gain this ability. That is why their cap is 200 planes where yours would be nowhere near that in any scattered TF group.

You should be able to train navy fighter pilots up to 70 air quite easily, experience is gained from flying combat missions. You can fly sweep training at 100' to improve defense.

[RangerJoe]

Remember what Heinz said: "Mass not driblets!"

You are using driblets.

If you had a regular AAR from the beginning, you could have asked for help there and you would have received help there. Here, you are posting a snapshot with no background information and expecting to receive help where there is insufficient information available. I have no clue just what you are trying to do so I can't suggest task force compositions and movements.

If you read some AARs from the beginning (I don't know if you have done so or not) you will be able to see what people are doing and how they do it. Unfortunately, there are fewer AARs being made and updated lately.

[LargeSlowTarget]

More info needed:
Allied TF composition
Average Air, Naval bombing and torpedo skills of your pilots
Attack altitude
CAP percentage
TF leaders

As the others said, separating your carrier TFs several hexes from each other is a bad idea and probably the main cause of the bad performance, the other factors can contribute.

[PaxMondo]

What all the responses so far are trying to tell you is:

The ACM (Air Combat Model) in this game is multi-dimensional and highly accurate for the time period of this game. You really want to read up on various threads in this forum about it.

[traskott]

If u post the save file prior the turn of combats, we could take a look.

[DKF12]

Thanks for the input. I have read a lot of the posts on the subject in the war room but not in the AAR.
I THINK the biggest mistake I am making is battleships and that my forces were scattered.The Japanese were in 4 TF’s in one hex. All of my attacks were met with as many as 150 + zeroes.I was getting only a small fraction of my TB’s and DB’s thru. The last reply talked about posting the save file.How is that done ?

[RangerJoe]

Thanks for the input. I have read a lot of the posts on the subject in the war room but not in the AAR.
I THINK the biggest mistake I am making is battleships and that my forces were scattered.The Japanese were in 4 TF’s in one hex. All of my attacks were met with as many as 150 + zeroes.I was getting only a small fraction of my TB’s and DB’s thru. The last reply talked about posting the save file.How is that done ?

You might have to .zip the file.

You also should describe just what you were trying to do.