Close Air Support

[z1812]

This from the features page.

Air support attacks can now be directed by an air Controller, or attack on their own.

[LUCASWILLEN05]

This from the features page.

Air support attacks can now be directed by an air Controller, or attack on their own.

Yeah but the manual appears to contradict that. Unless of course i was meant to say the Russians are restricted to attacking targets of opportunity.

[Piecekeeper]

As far as I can remember there where no air support in ANY campaign ore scenarios in cmbn?? Are there in cmrt?

[MG TOW]

I see these planes sometimes like anything in the open that moves. But then again that happened all too often in WW2 especially.

[Piecekeeper]

As far as I can remember there where no air support in ANY campaign ore scenarios in cmbn?? Are there in cmrt?

Are there?

[Combatintman]

Yes there are

[ASL Veteran]

As far as I can remember there where no air support in ANY campaign ore scenarios in cmbn?? Are there in cmrt?

The British have air support in Colossal Crack in the Commonwealth Module

The British have air support in the Market Garden campaign

The enemy has air support in the German campaign in CMRT. I don't think there is any friendly air support in any of the campaigns or scenarios in CMRT but I'm not certain.

[womble]

As far as I can remember there where no air support in ANY campaign ore scenarios in cmbn?? Are there in cmrt?

Not in the base game, to my recollection, but certainly in MG.

[Fizou]

I don't think there is any friendly air support in any of the campaigns or scenarios in CMRT but I'm not certain.

There is friendly air in at least one of the German scenarios. Cant remember which one but was browsing last night and hit one that had.

[LUCASWILLEN05]

My question is how to simulate the German tactic of dive bombing a target with, let's say, a squadron of Stukas just before the Panzer attack went in.

Supposing I were designing a scenario simulating a fair size German counter attack. I decide to give the Germans a dozen Stukas available immediately. If I set a TRP in the middle of a village that is one of the objectives for the attack is it likely that those Stukas will dive bomb that locaton assumingof course they see something significant enough in the area.

And, if my Panzers got too close is there a danger of "Friendly Fire"

I think I like the concept of the new way of handling air at least i terms of the Russian Front having read some detailed descriptions of how boh sides were operating in 1943 (George Nipe Decision in the Ukrane and Blood, Steel and Myth) As I understand it there had not been very much change

However if someone at BF works out a way of including an Air Observer dedicated to callig in the aircraft in addition to the current method that wuld be ideal for the Russian Front. Might well involve some very clevercoding to do that!

[womble]

My question is how to simulate the German tactic of dive bombing a target with, let's say, a squadron of Stukas just before the Panzer attack went in.

Supposing I were designing a scenario simulating a fair size German counter attack...

What I'd do is set up the (potentially already combat-attrited) Russian forces on the map, and test out what a dozen Stuka do to them, given a TRP, then reduce the defense accordingly for the actual scenario. After all, the Stuka went in before the counterattack, no? Leaving the dive bombers as part of the scenario tends it towards being a crapshoot: if the Stuka do well, then the scenario is "too easy" for the Germans; if they swan around with their flying hats on back to front and don't spot any "juicy" targets, the scenario becomes "too hard". It'd be a good way of adding variety to replays though, perhaps, if you could be sure they'd only hang around for the first few turns and would find and bomb enemy targets before the fighting got properly mixed up.

[MikeyD]

Dive bombing Stuka formations before the Panzers went in might be a year or two outside of this timeframe.

[LUCASWILLEN05]

What I'd do is set up the (potentially already combat-attrited) Russian forces on the map, and test out what a dozen Stuka do to them, given a TRP, then reduce the defense accordingly for the actual scenario. After all, the Stuka went in before the counterattack, no? Leaving the dive bombers as part of the scenario tends it towards being a crapshoot: if the Stuka do well, then the scenario is "too easy" for the Germans; if they swan around with their flying hats on back to front and don't spot any "juicy" targets, the scenario becomes "too hard". It'd be a good way of adding variety to replays though, perhaps, if you could be sure they'd only hang around for the first few turns and would find and bomb enemy targets before the fighting got properly mixed up.

That's the kind of thing I want to know. This was a very effectve German tactic so it should have considerable physical and morale effects. By 1944 of course the Soviets knew very well how the Germans operated. If I read the manual correctly it is now possible to shoot aircraft down so one way to realistically balance this out is to deploy a fair amount of AAA to defend against the Luftwaffe. One might also make some of the Stukas come on as a second wave reinforcement five minutes ino the game. Possibly more realistic considering the air safety issues of operating that many Stukas over a typical CM battlefield even one as large as 4 - 5km square.

It would be very interesting to see how allof this works out.

[JasonC]

Lucas - give the Germans 1-2 300mm rocket FOs with conscript quality, effectively forcing them to be used for prep fire. They will spread around enough that the Germans would be dumb to fire them after their own forces are driving into the map area, because they will hit friendlies. So they will want to fire them as a prep barrage. 300mm rockets randomly landing all over the map on the first turn or two will simulate your air strike very well.

[LUCASWILLEN05]

Dive bombing Stuka formations before the Panzers went in might be a year or two outside of this timeframe.

Actually he Germns were still doing this sort of thing as late as December 1944 on the Russia Front

From Days of Batle"German ground attack aircraft ncessantly attacked ,Homok,Ipolysagand Gyerk fom o930onwards he Soviets deployed only 18 fighter aircraft and 3 IL2s grund attack aircraft in the a\ea, In the meantime Generalleutnant Schmidt was at the command post and witnessed the German Ground attack aurraft attacking ''homok where they met heavy Soviet anti aircraft fire" P34 Norbrt Szamveber.Days of Battle We are told the airmen claimed two anks and 3 anti aircraft guns This was just prior to a large scale German atack o 19 December 1944 in Hungary

This tells us that the Germans were still trying to use their previous tactics which had worked very well in 1943.However,by this time the Soviets had figured out how to deal with this defending with heavy concntrations of anti aircraft.

So the Germans can still, with historical justification employ a significant number of ground attack aircraft but the Soviets will be employing large concentrations of ati airvraft guns to defend against ths tactic. So the German tactics of using say a squadron of 12dive bombers can stll be used but they cannot expect to beso effective against heavy concentrations of Soviet anti aircraft weapons.

My experiment today showed he Luftwaffe to be rather less effective only knocking out 2 tanks from a Soviet tank company (4 Stukas were used in that attack and the AA fire was fairly heavy) There was a definate albeit shor lived morale effect on the Soviet tankers even though the physical destrucion against th tanks was limited.

[JasonC]

A late 1944 "ground attack aircraft" is not a Stuka dive bombing from medium altitude. It is very likely a FW-190 (with added armor plating) on a high speed and low altitude pass.

As for killing tanks with tac air, claims are not kills and WW II pilots overclaimed tank kills specifically by at least a factor of 10. If you want to know how many tanks were actually lost, you have to go to the losing side's ground force and their own reporting on the specific event, not to anything the attacking side pilots are saying, from the air.

[LUCASWILLEN05]

A late 1944 "ground attack aircraft" is not a Stuka dive bombing from medium altitude. It is very likely a FW-190 (with added armor plating) on a high speed and low altitude pass.

As for killing tanks with tac air, claims are not kills and WW II pilots overclaimed tank kills specifically by at least a factor of 10. If you want to know how many tanks were actually lost, you have to go to the losing side's ground force and their own reporting on the specific event, not to anything the attacking side pilots are saying, from the air.

It might have been an air strike using FW-190 but the poit really was the German Luftwaffe were clearly still using the same tactic in Hugary 1944they hadbeen using in 1943. Using a different platform makes no difference to the use of the tactic. Jus the way the job was carried out.

As for the claim that 2 tanks were claimed destroyed that seems reasonable. And destroyed does not always mean a burming tank. Even in game we see tanks marked as destroyed but not acrually burning wrecks as others are. W might consider the latter as total wrie offs, the former as repairable in the division workshops or back at the tank factory.

As it happens in the experimental airstrike I set up the two tanks destroyed by the Stukas were, as it happens not actually burning, just "destroyed" One of these actually ended up in a bomb crater!