S3 Series

I don't think I saw them overfly the city...

Nice job early on forcing escorts to leave their mission role.....

Enabled FW's to get into the stream unmolested for 2 passes (JG475th perspective).

Dobs

Haze and AE was able to make a good first pass through 2 or 3 buff groups too. Once we recovered and re upped the bombers hit Berlin, Haze/AE made contact of egressing buffs 40-60 miles west of Berlin but they still had a 10 or so high escorts. My pass got all messed up , the mustangs did a good job at that point staying with the buffs and making it difficult to set up a second pass. All in all I think it was one of the best tactical attacks on buff groups I have been a part of in this type set up. I have not been a fan of the AI stuff last few scenarios but I think it worked out pretty good in this one. Good plans and comms throughout.

edit: Id love to hear more about what happened with the first stripper engagement , I didnt see or hear much of the 352nd after that. Great job!

I think JG51/77 took on the 352nd fairly early on. I recall seeing dolch killed (bummer, as long as I'm on the axis side), but then shortly thereafter I think I remember juice getting killed and I know vulche was killed relatively early on.

As you said though... after that 1st contact, the 352nd was earily quiet for the remainder of the night. JG475 still had a 3 ship operational in the last hour of the frame (some had to log off early due to work/family/etc) and were going to try to get one more pass on the west bound bombers. Several cons were reported as making a bee line for us (thought we were off dar?), so we had to do a bit of cat/mouse/running. Our GCI reported 5-6 contacts headed toward us at one point after we had visual on a bogie. I suspect the dots that were still looking for a fight during the last 40 minutes were the 352nd. Excellent work thought by the stip club to give us a decent chance to bring down some buffs. Don't know how many bombers got dropped, but it was more than I expected!

Last Berlin series, I was a member of the 4th FG and did the bomber escort thing. We just didn't see too much action in the bomber group during our escort service back then, mainly because the 352nd had managed to weed out the strippers and made the escort job easy. We only saw the occassional 1-2 ship attacks and they didn't hang around for repeat passes usually.

Again... seems like our strippes did an outstanding job!

Lf6 Engaged the Escorts early. Killed six + 2 bombers. And we were short more than seven pilots.

And yes - there were no close escorts for the Bombers as they crawled over Europe. 352nd was stripped before they hit the land.

Mimic the praise for LF6--the anti-strippers got engaged early and thus the strippers did their job.

We had high mustangs over us as we went through...but made our passes, and when threatened dumped the nose....they were reluctant (smartly) to follow.

Two passes through the bomber group on first sortie..one more than I expected honestly.

So a big Salute to LF6!

Dobs

Thanks guys.

Initially a leading two plane element became engaged with a group of four P47s then the rest of LF6 worked our way into the fight as more P47s entered the fight. We were successful in dragging the whole pile of them behind and lower than the bomber stream but we ended up fighting all the way to the deck. I believe they were a bit annoyed with us.

Glad we could help.

<S>

I echo all of the above sentiments. Easy two passes on the bombers and it would have been three but we ran out of gas. I think we got 3 bombers (2 for Dobs and 1 for Fepper).

Second sortie ended up in a low fight with Mustangs with almost even results. I believe we got 5 with 3 losses.

I had missed changing my fuel to 100% after selecting a drop tank so I had to refuel at 44 with dolch in tow. Dolch and I spread out to hunt. In the process of regrouping with LF6 the bomber stream materialized around me. I wish I recorded it but WB frame rate was crapping out with so many objects in one area. There were at least 5 distinct buff groups and fighters high, low, left and right. I was about 9km and was still looking up at P-47s. I then made a snap decision to turn to their heading and it worked! So there I was completely surrounded but out of icon range of anyone typing away their position while keeping my head on a swivel.

Once Lf 6 arrived it was a cat and mouse push around until they seem to say eff it and pursued us to the deck. They thought they had advantage swarming a small contingent but then the rest of Lf 6 arrived on top of them. P47 is not so graceful on the deck.

Big Salute <S> to LF6. Stripped away the escort and the bombers started falling like leaves in fall ( or Maple Leafs in the spring )

Great job to the Bomb killers, I don't believe anyone tried a 6 pass and many kills were recorded.

Trail player group destroyed a industry target and made it home losing a few AI along the way. Two AI grps ditched themselves rather than face the wrath of the Luftwaffe while the other 4 were shotdown.