Attn BF: Behavior of planes should be looked into?

[Peterk]

Here's the situation. I'm playing a Quick Battle that was generated by the Biltong rules. June 22nd - the early attacks on Russia. 5000 pt. assault on a medium sized map (2km deep by 3km wide), mostly open, lots of steppe to traverse to get within range of the objectives.

The rules give me 1500 points to spend on Air Power so I stock up on 8 Stukas and I'm smiling.

The game starts and the Russians have 3 pillboxes and a bunker visible on the first turn. I figure these should make natural targets for the bombers.

I start 1 company moving on the steppe from the start line towards first good cover about 1000 meters away.

The problem is that the Stukas seem to have taken a liking to strafing my guys moving in my open and every time a plane flies overhead they drop, lose their movement orders, and every single turn I have to replot 20 or so units all over again.

The planes are attacking my squads far more than they are attacking the enemy pillboxes and it's making movement pure torture. This is the 2nd QB in a row where planes were present where I've noticed this tendency towards friendly fire.

I just don't think this is terribly realistic. I understand that the fliers frequently made mistakes and accidents happened BUT in context it's quite silly.

The battle is an ASSAULT, therefore it makes sense that the pilots should know the enemy is entrenched and that any large bodies of men moving in the open are friendly. It doesn't make sense for obvious enemy targets like pillboxes and bunkers to be ignored to attack companies which are fairly obviously moving to the attack.

Were there any instances of troops on the beaches getting strafed by their own planes on D-Day??? I don't think so...because it was fairly obvious that the enemy were the ones in the trenches not the ones scurrying for cover in the sand and moving forward.

In a meeting engagement I can accept the current behavior but not in an assault.

I know most battles are not played with air-power and this probably won't get seen very often...but the way it is now makes definitely seems to make planes far more of a liability than a help to the attacking side.

[Biltong]

The unwritten rule seems to be: Go Slow!! If you advance too quickly you get it, but if you advance slowly the planes will support you, even going so far as to pin enemy (in the open) just in front of your troops. The one I'm playing now I've got Stukas pinning 2 squads within 50m of my guys and no friendly fire so far.

However: wether one should have to go slow, is another story... Bad comms with the air? Bunkers I can still understand: most will be well camouflaged against air attack.

Generally I find buying Air a waste of points... to be avoided if you can (use Favor) ... The damage they cause vs their point cost is out of wack... Nice sound effects, but very little bang for the buck. Something that needs tuning IMHO.

[SgtMuhammed]

They do get their money's worth every once in a while though. I recently had a Stuka take out a platoon of T34s hiding behind some trees (unfortunatly the tanks not the plane were mine) and then return to decimate one of my defensive positions with machine gun fire.

Then again I did get to see some Henkels take out a couple of its own trucks and ACs.

I can't say if there is actually a problem or not so I won't. Remember though that air to ground communication and coordination was pretty basic at the time. Yes it was refined to a degree but not anywhere near what we have today. About the best it got was the ability to call aircraft into an area and hope that they were able to find the enemy. Ground forces could help sometimes by marking their positions or those of the enemy but it was still largely upon the pilots to find their own targets. Things look very different from the air at 2 to 3 hundred miles an hour than they do on the ground. Several allied units even went so far as to state that they would rather do without aircover because of friendly fire incidents. So it did happen, and indeed still does, and happened enough to be percieved as a real problem even late in the war.

I don't use air enough to really notice but of the 20 or so attacks I have seen during my games only 1 or 2 have been against their own forces. Just my two cents.

[V]

planes spot moving targets easier.

I think

[athkatla]

Also, we are still getting "friendly fire" casualties now from the air. Remember the Gulf War, and that's even with all the hi tech a/c and communications we have now!

[DevilDog]

I've read numerous German first hand accounts of the war in the east and have yet to hear of friendly fire incidents by Axis air power. I'm not saying it didn't happen; it obviously did, but I've yet to read about it. As a matter of fact all the German accounts I've read from non-coms up to general have universal praise for the Luftwaffe close air support and distain for the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the Soviet A.F.

Remember that the Luftwaffe was highly trained in the early stages of the war, more so than their Allied counterparts. German doctrine was to use the close air support for shock value close to the front lines and as mobile artillery for forward units once breakthrough had been obtained and they out-raced their organic artillery.

[V]

Originally posted by DevilDog:

I've read numerous German first hand accounts of the war in the east and have yet to hear of friendly fire incidents by Axis air power. I'm not saying it didn't happen; it obviously did, but I've yet to read about it. As a matter of fact all the German accounts I've read from non-coms up to general have universal praise for the Luftwaffe close air support and distain for the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the Soviet A.F.

Remember that the Luftwaffe was highly trained in the early stages of the war, more so than their Allied counterparts. German doctrine was to use the close air support for shock value close to the front lines and as mobile artillery for forward units once breakthrough had been obtained and they out-raced their organic artillery.

planes have ratings in CMBB. Not all German pilots were veterans going into Barbarossa. Quite a few were, but certainly not all.

Friendly fire did happen tot he Germans on the Ostfront. I will have to dig through my books to find specific instances which I remember, but it did happen.

And I would venture to guess that in CMBB, the rating of the pilot has a lot to do with instances of friendly fire.

A green or reg pilot is much more likely to hit friendly troops than a vet or crack pilot, for instance.

[Panzer76]

Remember that the units often used smoke to tell the air support where the enemy were, where they were and were they wanted them to attack. This doesnt happen in CMBB.

[Schoerner]

Originally posted by Panzer76:

Remember that the units often used smoke to tell the air support where the enemy were, where they were and were they wanted them to attack. This doesnt happen in CMBB.

That would be cool, if CM would allow for that, too.

This would give more control of the planes to the player.

[Grisha]

German close air support was an acquired thing which happened only after von Richthofen(?) took charge of some air corps (8th?) in the Crimea in 1942. He laid the groundwork for German CAS, and until then German air support was more of an interdiction operation than dedicated air support for ground troops. One thing the Luftwaffe did not want was to be subordinated to the ground forces, and they fought this long and hard until they were, in fact, subordinated to the Wehrmacht. Von Richthofen was a bit of an exception, but this probably has much to do with his unusual rapport with von Manstein. As it was, you didn't really see the beginnings of close cooperation between German aircraft and ground troops until the summer of 1942.

By summer 1944 Soviet air-ground cooperation would reach effective levels, complete with air liaison officers assigned to forward ground units, and specific air units being assigned to specific forward ground units, usually down to the regimental level.

[phil stanbridge]

I've had good and bad experiences. I once had one attack take out a hidden platoon (or more) of halftracks and relevant support equipment. Certainly made life easier for me, although the ai doesn't make the best use of them anyway That was the most successful result, but I've also taken plenty of friendly fire too. One fighter just kept straffing his own side - Comical. I haven't used air support in 1.02 so I don't know if it's been tweaked at all.

Moving targets (especially tanks) seem to make the most obvious targets IMHO and I've seen plenty immobilised or worse with single strikes.

[Matias]

Hrm... I just read about this in Antony Beevor's Stalingrad so here's one source.

Page 114 (Source given as the War Archives in Vienna) describes point units of the 24th Panzer Division advancing near Stalingrad in 1942 being missidentified as a concentration of enemy tanks by Stukas. In that instance friendly fire was averted but...

Lets ponder for a momment how German tanks on the advance with their recognition flags were completely mistaken for Soviet tanks lying in wait.

Now ponder how much harder it must be to differentiate the little ant like people...