S3 Series

Very light numbers for us. We were tasked with hitting 2 airfields, unfortunately our numbers were too low to attempt this.

Gundoc, Muskyz, Gofly & I decided to take HE111s as there are no restrictions on them and we didn't want to use something that we would need later. (Ju-88s have restrictions)

We rolled north east over the water climbing slowly as the fight developed. Unfortunately discos made Gofly relaunch so we were split up. In a best case scenario we would have hit the airfield earlier than we did, but the speed of the He111 is only around 200mph.

Trying to maximize our small numbers we decided to try and string out the wingmen and attack in waves. While the target selection and execution was very good we fell short and were unable to hit the last two ammo bunkers before being overwhelmed with P-40s
It was a large field and we killed a lot of targets but just couldn't get near the field the rest of the night.
Most everyone was run down and killed on the way home, perhaps Muskyz made it back.

We re-upped again (2nd lives) and tried to get in to close that field but the enemy was everywhere and we just weren't fast enough to be able to get in without being intercepted.


Bomber log in
there were many problems as we had no icons and our gunners were set to safe.

Wingmen.
sending the wingmen on different flight paths really killed their altitude. there is no way (I know of) to tell your AI what altitude to be at. when you send them to a different spot they go to like 8000 feet so our long grab up to 18k was thrown out the window. each attack by the wingmen was into heavy AA at 8k. I was shot down by 88s and several others were damaged heavily by the AA fire. Gundoc took out a few 88s which made later passes more survivable.

Hopefully we will get a better idea of the target values and that will show us what to attack next frame.
Also, next frame I would ditch the idea of using wingmen individually and just get in and out fast dropping bombs wherever.

Appreciate everyone's efforts to get things going on the fly <S>

Strongly advise keeping your wingman with you until about 1 min or 2 before bomb drop, sending them off at that time. ( they won't drop when you do then) but the farther and longer you send them off the more alt they lose, If you set a short way point and don't keep up with them, they will circle that waypoint losing alt until receiving further orders......if you can transfer over to them within 2 or 3 min they havn't lost much alt.
bomber log in enabled in the TA for practice in this.

I thing that would have helped the most was getting a fighter sweep into the area from the west as you came down from the north. You cannot go around in these bombers without escort. The initial attack was a surprise and you got a couple good runs at it but the P40 is great below 15,000ft and could climb up to you quickly. That was the base for the 352nd their main fighter unit. So partly it was bad luck.

Thank you Night Stalkers/Nomads! You did the best that could be expected with the conditions you were given.

<S>
Nick