S3 Series

There will be 3 boxes coming in to attack. The middle one is AI B17's with their OTTO turned down as low as possible, the will be in groups of 5. The Allies must divide their Human forces evenly between the lead box and the 3rd box. Each Human Bomber will have one AI wingman. That makes for a lot of bombers.

I would expect the lead sweep to be done by the 352nd, with the 23rd close escort to the lead group and the 4th covering the 3rd box. If the main force of the LW are post the first group, the 23rd wold drop back and cover tine 2nd group as well as the 352 be all over the map, however, they will be together.

The P51B has visibility problems, but can perform well and it has lots of firepower. The P47D has good visibility and good firepower as well. If you get in trouble and dive out, the P47 will be able to outdive you and expect to be hunted to the deck. The best hope is to run into our ack.

I would expect the lead group of buffs to be at 24K, with the following groups at 28K and 30K. If the 190's dive on the first group, they will only be able to get at the 2nd or 3rd group on egress. Also, the first group should be B17's, as the 24's perform better at high alt.

Heavy clouds are at 30,000. I expect the B24's to come in just under 30K, drop their bombs and climb into the clouds on the way back.

30K is above real operational alt for the 190's, so I would concentrate on B17's, which will be at lower alt.

Rockets can be fun, they travel D16 and explode, so if you set your minrender at D18, as soon as the buffs render, point our nose up and fire. 127 has 2 rocket kills, 1 bomber and one friendly fire kill so be aware who is in front of you

The P51B has no real advantage at high altitude so as long as you don't try to turn fight they won't be super effective. Diving below 20K WILL get you killed.

Stay fast, make your pass on the bomber and be patient working your way around the flanks back to an attack position in front of the bombers. Wing pairs with good mutual support performing effective egress under pressure techniques (no turns past 90 degrees of the egress heading and pressured fighter drags below supporting wingman) will have much success.

I suggest making your head on pass on the bombers, extending out of visual range and working around the flank outside of visual range to a new attack position in front of the bombers.

If we are patient and attack the bombers early on their ingress and keep the pressure up fairly constantly we should be successful.

I will ask SPINDZ to make my event arena public with the ETO terrain. I will install some bomber AI and airstarts so folks can practice bomber attack techniques. To be fair I will enable Allied fighter airstarts as well.

I will also publish a DDS map with a compass rose on Berlin with range rings. This will allow the GCI to declare the bomber ingress radial (compass bearing FROM Berlin) and current range.

As an example, if the bombers are approaching directly from west at 200 miles, the GCI would announce "Stream 270 radial, 200 miles". All attackers would then know to position themselves directly west of Berlin for the next pass. One can assume bomber progress will be 6 miles per minute so if it takes 10 minutes to re-position from the time of the last GCI call the next attack position will be 130 miles west of Berlin. (Bomber progress in 10 minutes is 60 miles plus 10 miles in front for a good setup.

Practice is the key to success in this series. Speed is key to success attacking bombers and rear hemisphere attacks are absolute suicide.

I agree rear hemisphere attacks on bomber groups is suicide. But I see it over and over again by good pilots even. I think its because you invest so much time getting there you dont want to pull out of even a bad position. That being said I see bad attacks on lone bombers by 2 or 3 fighters usually working so shooting out a bomber from a formation is important. Let him go and get re-positioned for another good attack on the bomber group. Eventually the lone bomber will be singled even if he has escort. Lone attacks by fighters against anyone should be absolutely forbidden. Buddy up even if you scramble alone.

Dawgers routines offer a good test to both player and AI bomber damage\defenses. The heavy bomber damage model has been tweaked since we last faced them so dont expect such easy pickings as we had in TWF. Rumour has it that the offline test settings have the same damage models as the arena now so you may be able to test offline as well.

That is very good Dawger, I am going to copy it and send it to my lads.

You got any idea on the 190A8 performance at 30K? Not even sure if it can get up there.

Also to note, both sides have 8 steps of fighters (not counting the Knights fighters)

I believe the P47D22 is still a razorback, and thus still has significant rear vis issues?

Copy which? My briefing if so you are welcome. I also have an egress under pressure briefing I can post.

If its is the DDS you are referring to, that is meant to be used in game.

If you publish orders early enough I will add pertinent information to the DDS file as well.

I copied the Attacking Bombers you posted in this thread, should be mandatory reading for every LW pilot.

This is my idea for Frame 1.

LF6 takes the 109G6 and scouts for the usual North Sea route (let's stay off the DAR)

Everyone else take the 109A8, w/Drop Tanks and hover over Bremen (L73) I would wait about 30 minutes before lifting. With 100% Gas and a Drop tank it had 73 minutes in the Main (Greece Terrain, don't know if there was a multiplier there). We will be operating under a .75 multiplier, so reduce any airtime by 25%

Do you want a delay on the scouts as well? The G-6 is a terrible scout plane for endurance, but probably the best we have at hi alt. If bombers go north they usually group over northern England and then head out.

All of the S3 aircraft will be updated for fuel burn prior to the event. At fueldiv 1.0 the Axis fighters will have 3 hours at 50% throttle and about 80-90 minutes at full throttle.

Unless the update doesn't happen this week.

I sent the files in yesterday so I hope it gets done in time.