AA efficiency

[Panzer_Freak]

I have played alot of games now. When it comes to AA-efficiency I am a bit disappointed, many AA-pieces are good to use against ground targets. But I have no good experience of AA vs aircrafts. They seem not to throw them of target and not a single aircraft has been shot down by my AA so far. I usually have a minimum of two AA-pieces per game (usually playing large, and a few time huge games). I usally use 20mm Flakvierling, 37mm Flak 36, 40mm Bofors, and the soviets 40mm as well. I have so far never used the 88 or the soviets 90mm AA piece. Do I have had bad luck or are AA useless vs aircraft?

AA during WWII did not shot down everything, that I am aware of, but by this time when I have played alot of games they should have knocked out at least some of them. It does not even seem as they are able to disturb the planes when attacking and the aircrafts also seems to have a unrealistic good aim and detection ability (compared to battlereports from WWII).

I really likes this game when it comes to realism, but in my experience the aircrafts vs ground targets and AA vs aircraft is that aircraft are unrealistic good at what they do. They seems to have better aim then modern CAS-aircraft and AA seems useless against aircraft. I actually would tell my AA not to shot at aicraft if I could, because it is a waste ammo, and when an aicraft attacks it also reveals how many AA-pieces I have invested in. I will from now on only play games with out Aircrafts, which is boring because I do not like to have to many house rules when playing. At least the aircrafts should be possible to knock out some planes and also have the possibility to disturb airplanes when they attacking. No more aircrafts in a game before this is fixed. Or have I only had bad luck?

[Hapless]

One of the big differences in real life is that AA isn't confined to the size of a combat mission map: when air support in game is circling the map at a few kms distance it can only be fired at by whatever AA the victim has brought along, whereas in reality the planes would likley be having to contend with more significant AA fire from other positions in depth.

I take planes as often as its sensible (strafe-only P-47s are 30pts in CMFB- so basically the only good reason not to take a handful is the weather) and I can tell you that while AA isn't hugely effective, neither are the planes. I've seen them strafe Panthers they can't destroy instead of halftracks full of infantry that they would collander, I've seen them strafe dead infantry in a wood instead of platoons of infantry running in the open... they're not exactly a reliable asset.

They are vulnerable to AA- my planes abort all the time, sometimes they get shot down- but I find the best way to deal with enemy airpower is to have a realistic appreciation of how effective it is, plan to account for it, then ignore it. My airpower does very little physical damage, but has immense psychological impact on human players... which you can discount if you choose to.

[Panzer_Freak]

Ok, well I have not used much aircraft my self to much. I have seen some blue on blue, but good info about that how they abort missions did not know that they do. I must have had some bad luck against aicrafts so far then, because they have ripped up my forces quite well alot of times even though I have had alot of AA. And even if they do not kill a tank, they can damage/destroy optics and such. I'll keep testing games with out house rules against aircraft and see if my experience with aircraft changes.

[JyriErik]

I have seen AA shoot down aircraft, but it's very rare.  In the  "Road to Bastogne" (Fuhrer Begleit Brigade) campaign  I managed to shoot down 3 or 4 in the span of the campaign.  Considering you get up to a dozen or so AA in some battles it's still not a good total and most of the time you miss or manage to drive them off for that run if you're lucky.  That said, when you know the opposing side has aircraft, it's usually another episode of that game show skit "How not to be seen" an hope the aircraft don't find you anyways. 

 

Now, I will admit that seeing a dozen flak open up & shoot into the sky is pretty cool to watch, and if they do hit the plane, the crash is VERY satisfying...

 

Jyri

 

[sburke]

In CMSF I have had my ass handed to me a lot by technical based AA fire which is relatively unrealistic.  US helos did face issues but not to the degree I see in CMSF.  Just one of those things that has to be based in context  The US deep air assault in Iraq was largely stopped by crude AA in quantity and in Sadr city they were concerned about an AA unit. Generally large caliber AA fire was rarely effective, but in CMSF it can be.

 WW2 era not as much.   My experience has been the same as above, poor targeting etc  they are rarely as effective as one would hope and beware of them strafing your own force. 

i think the question to be asked is how effective AA fire should be and I don’t have an answer for that 

Edited July 22, 2019 by sburke

[snarre]

frendly fire really annoying on Red thunder and it happend mayby too often , on other titles you can atlast control where aeroplanes attack.

[Michael Emrys]

6 hours ago, sburke said:

i think the question to be asked is how effective AA fire should be and I don’t have an answer for that 

In WW II its effect was mostly to distract attacking pilots and make them uncomfortable. Shootdowns did occur, but not that often. Huge amounts of ammo were fired off to get each kill, and over the front lines it was mostly small to medium caliber stuff that did the job. One area in which it did have some effect was compelling Allied air bosses to route attacks to avoid the AAA, but that meant flying courses where their bombing or paradrops were significantly less effective.

Michael

[slysniper]

Actually, hard to ever know how accurate it is to real life.

but I think they have it about right for what I have read on accounts. But it never hurts to have different opinions

[Wicky]

In CMBO I recall a Stuart getting credited with an aircraft kill

Overall flak effectiveness in CMBN depends on a few things in CM battlefield context as mentioned above.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VUX3DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA193&lpg=PA193&dq=Normandy+ground+attack+aircraft+aa&source=bl&ots=a9xz9UCXKY&sig=ACfU3U2KCfXwUr_I7lVo3I-c0Lu7iKhc3w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiKlOqvzMjjAhU6QUEAHW8GAgMQ6AEwDXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=Normandy ground attack aircraft aa&f=false

[A Canadian Cat]

1 hour ago, Wicky said:

In CMBO I recall a Stuart getting credited with an aircraft kill

Now that would be cool. Sounds like a challenge - be the first to post a any tank with an air craft kill on the game end screen. Bonus points it the tank is a Stuart.

[Erwin]

4 hours ago, Michael Emrys said:

Shootdowns did occur, but not that often.... 

One area in which it did have some effect was compelling Allied air bosses to route attacks to avoid the AAA, but that meant flying courses where their bombing or paradrops were significantly less effective.

Just curious... If it was accepted that shootdowns were rare, why did they change routes to avoid it if it made the drops/bombings significantly less effective?  

[Wicky]

8 minutes ago, Erwin said:

Just curious... If it was accepted that shootdowns were rare, why did they change routes to avoid it if it made the drops/bombings significantly less effective?  

Like minefields, AA units can't be everywhere and was used to protect what was considered worth it or on known routes (as applicable for heavy & med bombers)

When reading about Paradrops like D-Day and prior at Bruneval Raid they avoided flying overs major towns to avoid unnecessary losses as they had more concentrated AA.

Airborne daytime drop losses to AA could be heavy as happened later in Holland and Operation Varsity. And heck Invasion of crete 

 

[MikeyD]

I do wish my allied Bofors units were a bit more impressive.

When you hit modern war titles AA effectiveness jump dramatically. Some may say too dramatically, but lets recall the US lost nearly 10,000 aircraft during the Vietnam war. Half that number were Army helicopters (nearly half of all helicopters in Vietnam). I expect if you were to set Blue ECM levels to blast during a scenario Red AA effectiveness might drop... but not many people play with ECM set to high.

[Michael Emrys]

3 hours ago, Erwin said:

Just curious... If it was accepted that shootdowns were rare, why did they change routes to avoid it if it made the drops/bombings significantly less effective?  

The air generals were supersensitive about losses to AAA. One particular example is that of the Operation Cobra bombardment. Bradley had insisted that they bomb west to east staying south of the highway, which was a readily visible landmark. He was outraged when the air generals flatly refused to do so because in flying parallel to the front like that would mean maximum exposure to flak. Instead, they flew a course crossing the front from north to south. This minimized their exposure to flak, but it meant that any bombs falling short would land on our own troops...which did in fact happen, killing a couple hundred of our troops including Lt. Gen. Lesley McNair.

It was typical of the attitude among the top Air Force commanders to regard the lives of airmen as more important than the lives of the men on the ground.

Michael

[nik mond]

I had remarkable opportunity to talk to a Lancaster navigator many years ago. For them spotlights were a real threat as they were tied into the sighting and plotting of the flak. If a Lancaster got lit up they immediately changed course and altitude. I mention this after watching wicky's video link above where it was not a factor for American crews on daylight raids.

Digressing further, but this gentleman showed my father and I has flight logs, he would flip to a couple entries and well some pretty hairy stories.

[Bulletpoint]

My experience is that AA is not effective at shooting down, nor driving off, aircraft in this game (CMFB).

Also AA doesn't seem to have any effect on the planes' ability to spot or hit ground targets.

Edited July 23, 2019 by Bulletpoint

[Warts 'n' all]

The amount of aircraft kills that my AA have managed can be counted on one hand, and I think that they have all come in Red Thunder.

[StieliAlpha]

36 minutes ago, Warts 'n' all said:

The amount of aircraft kills that my AA have managed can be counted on one hand, and I think that they have all come in Red Thunder.

Same with me. I am playing since many years and remember, say, two shot down planes.

I’d say, AA (in an AA role) is not worth it in CM.

But then, I feel on such a small scale this is only realistic. I remember trying to follow planes with a mounted AA-MG during my Bundeswehr times. Hopeless... You would need a lot of bullets in the sky to hit anything.

Edited July 23, 2019 by StieliAlpha

[Combatintman]

1 hour ago, Bulletpoint said:

My experience is that AA is not effective at shooting down, nor driving off, aircraft in this game (CMFB).

Mine is different.

[Vergeltungswaffe]

Played in an umpired CMAK mega-campaign some years ago.

One scenario saw my battalion of US armored infantry crossing a big open space and come under attack by 4 Stukas.

All those .50's shot every one of them down before bomb release. It was glorious, but scary as the Jericho siren was ramping up and I was waiting for horrible things to happen on each pass when each one got hosed.

[MikeyD]

I'm not sure, WWII AA effectiveness may have been tweaked upward a bit for the latest patch. At least I recall it was on the list of stuff to look at. If the chance of a shoot-down got altered it must've been only slightly. I'm not exactly knocking aircraft out of the sky after the patch. There's some stuff in the game that's so rare its almost like its not in the game at all. In all my years of playing I think I've only seen 2 instances of an AP round deflecting down off the Panther gun mantlet and into the hull.

[Bulletpoint]

13 hours ago, MikeyD said:

In all my years of playing I think I've only seen 2 instances of an AP round deflecting down off the Panther gun mantlet and into the hull.

I've seen it hundreds of times. But never saw it penetrate the top hull when doing that.

Edited July 24, 2019 by Bulletpoint

[Bulletpoint]

14 hours ago, Combatintman said:

16 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

My experience is that AA is not effective at shooting down, nor driving off, aircraft in this game (CMFB).

Mine is different.

That's good.

My experience is based primarily on one mission where I had a large number of German AA vehicles, including many Wirbelwinds, against 2 US strafing planes. It's a mission from the Road to Bastogne campaign.

I replayed the mission three times and noticed the planes would happily spot and engage my AA vehicles despite taking an enormous amount of flak. During two of the three replays, I eventually shot down one of the two aircraft, and in the last game both planes survived.

What's your experience?

[Placebo]

You also need to consider AA effectiveness not just on planes shot down but also aborted attacks and more chance of the plane missing the target. From what I understand, in ww2 they realised a lot of the AA was relatively ineffective, but to throw the pilots aim off it was a better response than just ducking and hoping for the best 

 

Edited July 24, 2019 by Placebo

[Michael Emrys]

There is also the psychological aspect. Think about it: It is more satisfying to feel like one is fighting back, even if it just means futilely throwing stones, than just to be cowering passively.

Michael