Worst Airstrike I've seen.

[Panzer_M]

I was playing a game tonight as the russians, didn't know what my opponent picked for support, but I figuref since I got a I16 to harass him with, he had some airpower.

well I was amassing my infantry behind LOS actually about 2.5k from the MLR, and a Ju87B dropped a bomb on my infantry.

total casualties from this strike were

398 w/115 KIA.

out of 650 or so troops(no armour) when I started.

I've never seen such a lucky shot before.

[GAGA Extrem]

Reminds me of a CMAK match against my brother.

Desert, moderate hills, small map, troops perfectly deployed for assault.

2nd round: Plane strafing sound

3rd round: Ju-87 displayed on screen. target line to my tanks.

GAGA's face: °_°

JU closing in to my tanks in the middle of my troops.

GAGA's face o_o

JU dropping the bomb. I can see the projectile falling directly into my main formation.

GAGA's face: O_O

Impact. One battallion infantry does all the same animation: stand up, fall down...

GAGA's face: O_O;

Round four: Auto-surrender. You have suffered a total defeat, blabla, your losses: 514 men / 262 KIA

GAGA's face: there's no smilie for this expression...

So, what did I learn from this? Never, ever, try to stack your troops if there is any chance for your enemy to get a JU...

[Sanok]

In my airstrike horror story, I was playing a CMBO scenario via email. It was one of the first turns of the game, when I hear a plane coming. It dropped its bombs on some vehicles I had traveling on a road. I lost three trucks, the three 105mm guns they were towing, a 150mm rocket spotter, and a company HQ.

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Panzer_M:

[snips]

well I was amassing my infantry behind LOS actually about 2.5k from the MLR, and a Ju87B dropped a bomb on my infantry.

total casualties from this strike were

398 w/115 KIA.

When you say you were "amassing" your infantry, do you mean you had them standing on each other's shoulders? Or was there room to fit a Rizla betwen them?

All the best,

John.

[securityguard]

How on earth do you lose 398 men in a single airstrike? That seems impossible. Or, at least, an harsh exaggeration.

Sheesh. I think the most I've ever lost to an airstrike was a spotter in an operation. He was riding on the back of some tank and the tank completely brewed, easily 500 points down the drain in one precision strike.

Worst damage I've done to a player was when I bought a crack spitfire (probably came out elite) and it dropped a bomb right on a precious convoy. Took out two half tracks, a 105mm howitzer and several trucks with infantry on it. Another strafe run got a half-track as well.

[Sergei]

Sounds like way too high concentration of troops. I always try to keep 20m distances, this depends on situation of course, and at least some 50m between 'waves' of troops when advancing. Those supermegadeath scenes sound like for a second you forgot that you weren't playing Starcraft and you were trying some kind of infantry rush concentration, or then had your troops mixed and bungled up like spaghetti because of auto-deployment of reinforcements.

[Panzer_M]

It was a reinforcement I got on the pickett's charge map. They came in on the corner with no cover, so I picked the mass to move to the trees, to line up for a charge before they crossed the fields to cememtary ridge.

then I noticed 1/2 the squads go prone, and I am clicking on squads to find out what is targeting them, then I finally get one with a yellow line pointing to the sky and I am like....oh..shoot planes.

then the it gets ID'd a JU87 and let's loose a single bomb in the mass of infantry.

[Paul AU]

I was playing (against the AI), one of the scenarios on the original disk… Germans attacking with tanks/Stugs across a fairly open map.

The briefing said, something like, “it may be hard going, but don’t worry, you have a full squadron of ground-attack air support…” I thought “oh no!”

“How do I call off the air support?”

Sure enough, my planes did more damage to me, than to the enemy.

It’s indicative, I think, that my gut reaction was “oh no.”

[GAGA Extrem]

Well, as for my defeat, i had not much options tp deploy my troops, the terrain was very flat and open on my flanks and the only cover was through the center.

Well i have learned much since this match and now i am always going to buy a few AA guns

[DTrill]

1st turn in a QB, I got AA and am feeling pretty safe. One bomb, KO's 1 T34, thinking to myself "it's a good thing I have my armor spread out like I do". I check the rest of the force ... 4 guns damaged and 1 other crew bailing. The next closest tank to that bomb was 60m and the farthest was at about 110m with most at around the 80m mark, all with some scattered trees between them and the blast. Amazing how all your plans can change on turn #1.

[Zalgiris 1410]

Wow, I've never seen such massive airstrike damage so now after reading this thread I think I better start to buy me some planes! :eek:

The worst that's happenned to me from airstrikes is, apart from them sometimes taking out a tank or a gun or two, is actually from when they miss the exact target or ditch their load scrambling away from my Flak and the bombing gets troops and equipment around the aimed at unit or just any where else.

I always have AAGs in my QB games against the CPU opponent. Sometimes while with between 6-9 AAGs I've completely shot down dozens of planes without them even surviving so such as to dropping a single bomb sometimes. FIGJAM! :cool:

I recomend always taking the 37mm-40mm caliber AAGs over the smaller 20mm types. IME the heavier ones are more effective as flak against aircraft and more likely to knock'm out of the sky quicker than the lighter stuff. The other thing to consider is their on board effects against enemy ground units. They have better penetraition capabilties against armour and their higher blast effects make them very good for hitting enemy troops.

PLACE & HIDE your armour, vehicles and guns in cover as much as you can during your set up. Keep the equipment hidden for as long as you can during the battle and at least especially during the first few turns . AFAIK this seems to make the planes waste flights observing from a distance trying to find a target. You might hear them, but they don't appair to make a bombing or straife run at your forces.

BTW thinking about the examples in this thread, to me it seems that the planes involved in causing such heavy damage may be carrying the heaviest of their bombs. I am now wondering if the planes were able to choose their bomb load according to the situation rather than just having them assigned. Any thoughts? :confused:

[ September 12, 2005, 11:16 PM: Message edited by: Zalgiris 1410 ]

[General Bolt]

I took out a small early Russian tank and 50+ men in a single strike. About turn 10 or so, those were his reinforcements that just entered the game and died.

I saw the smoke and my opponent said ask about the total damage at the end.

[Falcon988]

I'll never forget the CMBO operation Villers Bocage. When all my armor was destroyed and the Tigers were advancing on my infantry, the airplanes came out of nowhere at the last minute and blew them up. Greatest feeling ever.

But probably the best airstrike I've seen was in CMBB. You all will get a kick out of this I'm sure. During a scenario depicting the battle on the Seelow Heights, my opponent was rushing Russian troops on "pontoons" across the Oder river. So here are hundreds of Russians with 100% exposure, and then comes my four 109's who strafe the hell out of them with their cannons and machine guns. Never saw so many troops going down at the same time. It was beautiful.

Of course I still lost the battle, but that probably bought me a lot of much needed time to evacuate most of my army.

[dieseltaylor]

No AA again I suppose Tsk!

[michael_wittman44]

I guess that using alot of AA when possible if you want to bunch your troops up.

[SgtMuhammed]

CMBB one of the Stalingrad scenarios where the Germans are probing. I was defending and had my only good armor (T34's) hidden to ambush on the flank. Got busy with my MLR and didn't notice my 34's get hit. One bomb, one dead, 4 gun damaged, so long flanking attack.

[Vixen]

I've had my own planes wipe out two of my own squads and a tank......

[Wingmanx]

CMAK

A huge open desert type map set in africa with a large town as the setting. We decided to go with maximum damage settings, so we were fighting over little more than a ruined city, with me playing the Germans and him as the British. Upon the beginning of the match, from what I can already see of his units, I see alot of infantry. I decide, allright, I can move into position before him in the city, which I have covered with some guns and several platoons of soldiers as well as three PanzerII's to move into the city with the troops.

Battle commences. Pretty straightforward. My troops start moving from ruins to ruins, covered by the tanks. His infantry begin to advance. He reveals he has a couple of Valentine tanks, which are quickly kept busy by a lone gun I'd kept on a rise in the hopes of it causing some trouble before it got taken out. I forget how many turns into the battle it was, when I heard the drone of plane engines. Oh good! I thought. I'd purchased a fully loaded Stuka. Saw the silhouette move in and drop a bomb on one of his valentines. This made me think that was odd, because it wasn't much of an explosion and didn't seem to hurt the tank much (he later told me it had taken one crew casualty).

Not thinking much of it, I continued on. Next turn, I hear -another- plane engine. "Oh good!" I think. "That must have been his own plane hitting his troops earlier. Now here comes MINE!" The Stuka, fully loaded down with bombs, swooped down like an avenging demon and unleashed it's payload. Right on my Panzer II's and the squads that were taking cover in the ruins near them to protect each other. After the battle my opponent confirmed that he -too- had purchased air cover and that was his own plane that had bombed his tank. So in a matter of two turns our planes apparently both decided to switch alleigances.

One destroyed Panzer II later, another immobilized and easily half of the platoon wiped out. Sure it may not have been as costly as the losses some people have taken, but it kinda put a damper on my attempts to occupy the ruined city. ;P

[Earl Grey]

Worst/best I´ve ever seen:

CMBO - Westwall scenario 1945

The enemy was advancing with three tanks and a lot of engineers on my three bunkers and few platoons (mostly Volkssturm). Then the planes showed up and dropped their bombs. After the battle had ended, i checked and found out a 105mm Sherman had been killed by his own air cover.

CMBB - Korsun 1943

Had a platoon of Tigers and a platoon of Panthers advancing on a hill on the far edge of the map. (you should know this scenario) All the ISU´s and KV´s and T-34´s popped up and got knocked out by my tanks. I did not loos a single man or vehicle till the last turn - when an IL-2 knocked out one of my Panthers, killed three or four crewmen of the other tanks and damaging a few guns. Ruined my statistics...

[michael_wittman44]

I've had my own planes wipe out two of my own squads and a tank......

originally written by vixen. Ouch shows that like real warfare friendly fire is a distinct possiblity. It's sort of like a game I was playing when I captured Ami prisioners and the remainder of the enemy shot the hell out of them.

[frozen]

While building a battle from a board game. The board game specified a JU with a different load-out (like one 500lb). Well CMBB has the plane, but only with the MOAB and some baby bombs. What the hell I put the plane in.

Testing the Russians, my tanks are a bit bunched up to begin with, so on turn one me and my comrades organize our approach and drive some tanks to the left and some to the right. Than the sound of plane...

The MOAB blocked out the sun, and hit between two 34s (killing them of course), two other nearby AFVs had their looky loo comanders sent to the promised land. Two others viewing the devestation went into their version of shock and awe. Over all the death and destruction combined with the giant hole in the ground put a real damper on the rest of the op (lol).