Ideal cap altitude?

[corona]

I seem to recall in the manual that climb rate is very important to air combat (duh) and that if on the air combat animation screen it says 'AVG climbing to intercept bombers' it means that they are too high for your fighters to intercept.

So aside from the aircraft (don't remember which types off the top of my head) that get penalties from flying too high, I figure 'heck, the higher the better to dive on enemy planes' but I'm still getting some really depressing fly-by's (20+ friendly fighters just watch as 10 unescorted bombers cruise by). I'm sure you've had this happen:

'AVG intercepts bombers'
'AVG bounces F/T Yamada Datai'
'AVG dives on bombers'
'Air to Air combat done'

Any thoughts?

I've tried altitudes of 20,000 and 25,000 where as most incoming enemy bombers/fighters tend to stay in the 14-17,000 range (this is vs AI).

[Mr.Frag]

5k above the bombers. Their escort will normally be 3k about the bombers.

[Captain Cruft]

Most of your fighters on "CAP" are not in the air but in "ready state" on the airfield. They have to scramble and then climb up to wherever the bombers are, that's why climb rate is important.

Strangely enough this is how LRCAP works too ...

P.S. Empirically it seems there is no guarantee of intercepting incoming planes, except for CV battles.