Air Strikes

[LUCASWILLEN05]

Just set up a small air strike test. A Soviet Medium tank company set up aong a road in a village for a "rest stop" defended by 4 38mm AA guns. No tanks were moved during the air strike as I just wanted to see what happened and no TRPS were set.

The German air strike was conducted by 4 Stukas with the heavy loadout option. The air strike lasted about 12 minutes before the Stukas appeared to have used all ordannance. The Luftwaffe went after the AA guns first knocking 3 f them out entirely and virtually destroying the crew of the fourth. 2 Soviet T-34s were knocked out during the course of the air attack. Observations of crew reactions showed that some of the tank crews were getting pretty nervous for a while but began to recover fairly quickly once the ar attack had effectively finished. A couple of houses in thevillage were also completely destroyed in the attack and at least one other suffered significant damage,

[Michael Emrys]

...defended by 4 38mm AA guns.

Huh? The Soviets made guns in that caliber?

:confused:

Michael

[LUCASWILLEN05]

Huh? The Soviets made guns in that caliber?

:confused:

Michael

i may have misread as I was looking at the black print on green backgound which is rather hard to read.My only real criticism of the game design. I was he Soviet Medium AA battery anyway.

[YankeeDog]

37mm. It's basically a 40mm Bofors design which the Soviets re-chambered for their 37mm round.

[Lt Belenko]

Huh? The Soviets made guns in that caliber?

:confused:

Michael

37 or 38 give or take a mm. His micrometer needs calibration.

[LUCASWILLEN05]

37 or 38 give or take a mm. His micrometer needs calibration.

As does

1 My eyesight

2 The black on green interface which really is hard to see when trying to read the vehicle type information

Anyway the point was the effect of the airstrike given the conditions I set for it. The Luftwaffe might well use a dozen or so aircraft for this kind of mission rather than the four I used in this initial experiment. It will be interesting to see what happes when I

1 Include more aircraft at the level of a more typical strike package.

2 Add a TRP to see if the Luftwaffe will hit where I want them to attack (even if their commander is a drug addled collector of stolen art and a fetish for hunting lodges!)

3 Remove the AA defences

4 Reinforce the AA defences

[MikeyD]

This brings up the rather interesting (and new) play option of purchasing AA units and making a point to NOT commit them to ground combat, keeping them out of harm's way so they can perform their AA duties in peace.

[LUCASWILLEN05]

This brings up the rather interesting (and new) play option of purchasing AA units and making a point to NOT commit them to ground combat, keeping them out of harm's way so they can perform their AA duties in peace.

Which, after all is what AA assets are for

[TimoS.]

What is the Area of Defense of that 37mm AA Guns? How far can the effectivly Attack Enemy Airplanes?

How does those CAS work. How they find their Targets and is there some sort of hiding your Units?

How to avoid blue on blue fire?

[Vergeltungswaffe]

What is the Area of Defense of that 37mm AA Guns? How far can the effectivly Attack Enemy Airplanes?

How does those CAS work. How they find their Targets and is there some sort of hiding your Units?

How to avoid blue on blue fire?

Your AA units will fire on anything that comes in range.

CAS will find its targets by flying over, deciding what they just saw, attacking it, missing it wildly, and then go home and report complete success.

You can hide and it may or may not help, but you can't avoid blue on blue. That is going to happen with air attacks on occasion.

[womble]

CAS will find its targets by flying over, deciding what they just saw, attacking it, missing it wildly, and then go home and report complete success.

Funny. Accurate, but amusing nevertheless.

[Vergeltungswaffe]

Ya gotta' love 'em.

[LUCASWILLEN05]

Funny. Accurate, but amusing nevertheless.

Hopefully the air boys will hit the enemy, not you. Whichmight explain why the Germans like to hit a position just before the attack but not too early otherwise the effect would wear off or too late otherwise the Luftwaffe might hit friendly forces. Which I suspect did happen on occasion.

[JasonC]

The described attack is way, way, way too effective. There is no way in heck the average Stuka sortie killed half a tank on the ground, let alone half a tank plus an AA gun. And in a duel between 4 medium AA guns and 4 slow aircraft, the AA guns are way, way, way favored to score more KOs and come out ahead in the exchange.

The average ground attack sortie might score half a *truck*, not half a tank. And the AA response would damage one of the attacking planes - with a much higher chance of shooting one of them down, then of the reverse.

[snarre]

JasonC , its debend what wepons stuka has mounted but any way its wery wery effective in real life. sou i dont see any problem on this and good setupted aa gun on big map can shoot airoplanes down

[costard]

JasonC , its debend what wepons stuka has mounted but any way its wery wery effective in real life. sou i dont see any problem on this and good setupted aa gun on big map can shoot airoplanes down

Anyone have a screenshot of a big AA gun's battle score? Any 'planes listed?

[LukeFF]

JasonC , its debend what weapons stuka has mounted but any way its wery wery effective in real life. sou i don't see any problem on this and good setupted aa gun on big map can shoot airplanes down

In certain situations and certain time periods, yes. By mid-1944, not so much. It wasn't out of sheer boredom that pretty much the entire German SchlachtGeschwader force was re-equipped with the Fw 190 F-8 in 1944.

[LUCASWILLEN05]

The described attack is way, way, way too effective. There is no way in heck the average Stuka sortie killed half a tank on the ground, let alone half a tank plus an AA gun. And in a duel between 4 medium AA guns and 4 slow aircraft, the AA guns are way, way, way favored to score more KOs and come out ahead in the exchange.

The average ground attack sortie might score half a *truck*, not half a tank. And the AA response would damage one of the attacking planes - with a much higher chance of shooting one of them down, then of the reverse.

The tanks were lined up on a road in a village and I deliberately did not allow them to move. The purpose pf this as to set a baseline for further experimentation.

In this case the Luftwaffe actually chose o go after the AA guns which were deployed in the open around the village. That AA battery was virtually wiped out in the attack. Regarding the tanks, a couple of bombs got lucky. Those tanks would probably have been repaired in a day or two anyway given that they were merely "destroyed" and were not actually burning.

And the Soviets did not manage to shoot down a single Stuka. So this was ot actually all hat much of a success for a flight of four Stukas who, if anything had the odds loaded in their favour for the first experiment.

[Placebo]

You need to build up a picture of CAS effectiveness over a lot more examples. My 1 game I have played with IL-2 in CAS was the completely opposite experience.

No AA defence and it manages to bracket a panther with bombs and straffing but it was still operational. Also I saw (a PE-1 it think) very cheap CAS unit strafe my T-34 by mistake and the bulllets bounce off harmlessly, no damage at all!

[JonS]

The average ground attack sortie might score half a ...

While that is true, it's kind of useless since averages aren't made up of half of anything. That's like saying half the population are virgins. It may be true, but neither you nor I are half a virgin.

Sorties killed something, or they didn't kill something. Talking about averages is useful when discussing a front that encompassed thousands of miles, thousands of days, and thousands of aircraft. It's not terribly useful when talking about four aircraft attacking a dense target on a small map except to give a very very rough ballpark, one with fairly large error bars. Even if we accept the global half-a-truck average (and, seriously; there's no reason not to) Fermi estimation still puts the results of Lucas' trial in that same ballpark.

[Michael Emrys]

...half the population are virgins.

Not around here, thank god.

Michael

[JasonC]

Lucas and JonS - just nonsense. A dive bomber had about once chance in 6 of hitting a target the size of an *aircraft carrier* - if you go 4/4 vs targets the size of a small gun position, we are in the twilight zone, not WW II.

[LUCASWILLEN05]

Lucas and JonS - just nonsense. A dive bomber had about once chance in 6 of hitting a target the size of an *aircraft carrier* - if you go 4/4 vs targets the size of a small gun position, we are in the twilight zone, not WW II.

Jason you are clear that this was an initial baseline test involving stationary tanks parked on a road in a village and the AA stationed in open terrain without protection are'nt you I

In other words a situation that gave the Luftwaffe as much of an advantage as they could have. Knocking out two tanks and 4 AA guns was not that great in this pretty ideal situation. Maybe a full squadron of say a dozen Stukas would have done more although one should probably organise them in two or three waves bringing the second and hird waves on as reinforcements perhaps five minutes apart.

Watchng the morale effects of the strike were rather interesting. Crews seemed to be getting pretty nervous. It is not just the pysical effects of air attack we need to consider but the effect on mmorale aswell.

The German tactic was to make he grond attack as immediately as possible after the Luftwaffe in order to maximise the advantage gained over an enemy who, hopefully, was still stunned afte the air assault. But it was a very fine judgement that had to be made. Too early and the Germans risked friendly fire from the Luftwaffe. Too late and the Allied defenders would have largely recovered their morale.

[JasonC]

68 SBDs completely unopposed in the air pushed over at 3 giant flattops 300 yards long and over 40 yards wide. They got 12 hits. And that was the biggest outlier success of dive bombing in the entire war, any theater, any mission or opponent.

[LUCASWILLEN05]

68 SBDs completely unopposed in the air pushed over at 3 giant flattops 300 yards long and over 40 yards wide. They got 12 hits. And that was the biggest outlier success of dive bombing in the entire war, any theater, any mission or opponent.

So you think two T-34s knocked out (but not burning) plus the four AA guns could be seen as any more than a mediore performance given the ideal circumstances of this initial, baseline test?

With more realistic test conditions it may very well prove that the physical results will be evenless impressive. A really intense air strike may very well have a significant impact on morale

By the way, a knocked out tank that is burning with onboard fuel and ammunition exploding is very likely going to be either a total write off or will at least require extensive factory or workshop repair. In thiscase however the two destroyed tanks were no burning and therefore would likely be back on line after a few days repair in the Tank Corps repair workshops