CAP gets slaughtered

[Gnueck]

Hi, I have been playing UV last time 2003. A few days ago, I gave it a new try with the latest 2.5 patch.

Nice game, I really like it, but one thing annoys the **** out of me: my fighters!

I playing the "no Midway" scenario as US and my fighters, well, they simply have no use at all.

I am now in Jan 1943, and my CAP gets eliminated with nearly no resistance and losses to the enemy attackers.

I've tried everything- resting, training, differnt alt... nothing works. You build up and train forces, 99 moral, 0 fatigue and then and incoming strike destroys 40 of your planes and gets one(!) zero damaged. Even my P38 elite squadrons do next to nothing against a handful Zeros and some Vals.

So my question would be: is this a kind of sick joke or is it known to be broken. I had not one good result in about 40 airbattles.

[fuelli]

Have you tried with different altitudes? At 10000 feet which is the default value you will get bad results even with P38.

[xj900uk]

Agreed with the P38,  it needs to be at least 15' feet, preferably 20k+.
 
The F4F Wildcat usually comes off 2nd best against the Zero no matter what attitude but you could try putting a number of different squadrons at different altitudes (I usually have 8k', 12k' & 18k'+).  Sometimes that makes a difference

[fuelli]

Beside altitude, if this is a game against the AI then what is your difficulty level? At higher levels I think the combat values for AI units are "adjusted".

[anarchyintheuk]

Having radar at your airbase will also help.

[Kingfisher]

Wait for the Corsairs to arrive and then watch the pendulum swing so far to the other side it snaps the cable.

[borner]

early allied fighters are too weak, late ones too powerful.

[decaro]

ORIGINAL: Gnueck

... I playing the "no Midway" scenario as US and my fighters, well, they simply have no use at all.

There are several "No Midway" scenarios; are you playing the one where Japan has an improved pilot training program, etc?

[xj900uk]

early allied fighters are too weak, late ones too powerful

Training/doctrine for the early Allied fighters was wrong (excluding those skippered by Clair Chennault) as Wildcats, P39's & P40's tried to engage Zero's in a turning, low-speed dogfight and got creamed. Clair Chennault's Flying Tigers in China quickly learned to avoid this and concentrate on high-speed slashing attacks (something the Aussie's eventually picked up on over PNG) but both the USN & also the USAAF lost a lot of good pilots throughout '42 by concentrating on the wrong tactics when faced with Zero's, as a result they lost heavily and the IJN lost very few Zero's either on Escort or CAP on '42 or the first half of '43 in air-to-air combat.
It is true though that Joe Voss in his memoirs notes that the Cactus Airforce, around the 4th qtr of '42, began trying out some new tactics, keeping the speed up & not engaging in a turning match with the Zero's, but he also observes this was against official USMC doctrine (which he wryly comments was hopelessly out of date)