S3 Series

Seems the JG 127 encounted escorts in the North Sea and engaged them.

475th overflew the buff group, found no high escorts, and turned to engage the buffs.

Hades flight (Dawgers flight) found imbedded escorts with the bombers, and promptly started engaging them. Clover Flight (mine) came in and engaged P-51s.

Was a swirling furball for a brief period.

So the question is: Did the 190s get turned away from the Bombers by the escorts, or did the strippers successfully do their job?

It was hard to tell from buffer traffic...heard dolch hollering about buffs covered up...but I think he may have been looking at 475th 10k above the buffs (looking a whole lot like the escorts we were searching for should have looked like!).

Anyhow, need feedback.

Also we need coordination from the 190 Groups on ETA till intercept to ensure they have cover.

Guys getting used to Bullseye yet? Feedback there as well. Also any feedback on the maps dawger did? He is going to add a few more range indicators to mark the range rings (so if you are zoomed in, you can see what range ring you are on).


Dobs

Our biggest problem with the attack was the weaving that the buffs did. (good tactic on their part) I saw a few escorts as I made my passes through the buffs but they did not really do anything. A 3 ship of Jugs did attempt to break up about 8 of us as we made our way back out in front of the buffs again. They failed though, and that was about it. We had large numbers majority, it almost seemed that most of the escorts never even made it to the buffs. I think every guy in the Haze/AE group had at least 4 HO attempts. I my self had 6 , that is a crazy amount and I never had an escort threaten me the whole time.

About the map thing, I actually like it over the grid system, my brain doesn't process the whole grid location relative to the direction I am flying very well. The polar grid solves this for me. Still it is no substitute to having a dedicated GCI on your TS. Phenix did this for us and it was invaluable.

In my view the strippers seem to have set the bar to a new high. Both frames now have seen the aggressive escorts engaged early and taken out of the fight, and the rest of the escorts seem unwilling to leave the buff box.

For a completely honest assessment we must ask ourselves if we can attribute our success more to superior tactic and execution on our part or horrible escort on the opponent part. What does the videos show? how many escorts were actually with the buffs?

The escorts did just fine. The issue was timing. When Lf6 hit the human buff box it was crawling with Mustangs. Reference DrDart's first video. The box we were referring to was about 5 miles ahead of the AI's seen in your video that had no escorts. I personally flew through 2 flights on my second run through box. The Mustangs would chase and then let us go and became scattered. Then you boys showed up and kicked their ass all over the place all in about 5-10min. Judging by the kills they had all 3 fighter groups in one area.

I instructed dolch only as a notification to the 190s and nearby 109s that we still had plenty of fighters in the area. My hands were full shooting B-24s and dodging mustangs to type away. JG 77 apologizes for the outburst after and was handled at the time. The escorts were doing their job marvelously, if we hit the lead box maybe 5min later no doubt they would have been completely stripped.

Our success I think is the discipline of all of our fighter groups. You hear it in the chatter, 109s only pressing escorts low and moving on, 190s setting up solid runs on the buffs and keeping speed to avoid any pursuers. Especially after this frame we have all the initiative. They don't know whether to stick with the buffs cuz we will just blast right through them, or to get aggressive, but leave the buffs naked. We also have the advantage of repairing and getting back in the fight. Every damaged one of theirs has to immediately rtb.

Zinwick, <S>

No one upset on this end, biggest reason he may have not seen the strippers, 127 wing with 7 pilots, was in the X ray box spread out in wing pairs as far as we could be to cover the most area, in fact if it had not been for yukone in the last element we may have missed them entirely. The feint down south moved the 475th southerly to investigate, and as we were spread thin it was not a real "gang bang" by the 127 wing into the bomber stream. But we did notice on our first few fly bys absolutely no fighters with the buffs at least 10 minutes before the 190s hit, they must have been late to a RV area with the buffs because soon after they appeared. . Dolch is justified in his question and we did not take offense.. Just explained why, and we were heavily engaged at the time.
<S> and look forward to working with you in the future.

Swede- JG 127 Wing

I agree with Zinhwk on this. The timing was off just a bit plus Gold Flight of LF-6 intercepted off the bomber group's 4 o:clock so we had to parallel them to get in front for an HO pass. Both before and after the pass we did have escorts to dodge but most of us got in at least one good pass before having to disengage. Some of us had to engage mustangs after emerging from the bomber stream but we were able to evade them pretty well and our damaged aircraft landed for repairs and rejoined the fight. All in all it worked well for us.

<S>

And by escorts I meant Strippers. I was thinking of them as escorts to the 190s in my head.

Well, in any case the second group of 190s (a8s) had a very well stripped buff group to hit. The lead group also had several smokers when we got there. The strippers were still providing support on our second and third engagements, so i think stripping was very well done.

Sorry we were a few minutes late to the 1st dance. Glad that those who received pressure from bomber escorts were able to evade well enough to stay alive! I think everyone wound up having a fun night, and each squad racked up a number of kills. I'm thinking the Allied forces aren't enjoying the series as much as we are so far. -S's.

475FG went south to be in position if the southern bandits were bombers (My gut said no but we had to move that way anyway)

Once the bombers were spotted we immediately went north, using the position reports to establish an intercept heading. 475FG split into two squadrons, HADES and CLOVER. CLOVER under DOBS went north of HADES under me. He overflew a bomber two ship that HADES picked up and killed.

That may have delayed us about 2 minutes from reaching the bombers.

We spotted the bombers but were closing from 4 o'clock. We were high 5 o'clock looking to whack the high 6 escorts but found none. As we closed on the bombers I saw many smoking and obvious HO runs in progress. We still saw no escorts.

After nearly ten minutes of visual on the Main bomber group I reached a position where we could split S into an attack on the bombers.

I lined up on a bomber for my HO pass only to discover it was a Mustang. I promptly shot him in the face, popping his fuel tank and rolled off, getting a few rounds into a bomber. I went off high into a massive loop and back down to look for the "escorts". I found 4 Mustangs about 1000 feet above the bombers and slightly in trail. I made a guns pass on all four with MG only and pushed them below the bombers. Another zoom above bomber altitude and I lined up another pair of Mustangs who promptly ran for the safety of the bomber guns. The bombers were in a tight formation and I wasn't going anywhere near them from rear hemisphere so I let the Mustangs run to momma and barrel rolled off high right as members of HADES were calling enemy escorts everywhere. Spotted an Angel in need and rolled in on his bandit. A few cannon rounds started an oil leak so I called everyone off as he wasn't going to get home.

By this time CLOVER had arrived from the north and HADES was engaged with probably 8-10 Mustangs. We chased several down low and once we got them squared away on a westerly course and safely away from the bombers, we popped off to look for more. Fuel was down to less than 8 minutes for everyone so I started calling for RTB's once clear. I landed Field 60 with 4 minutes fuel, reformed HADES, Refueled and headed south for round two.

My overall impression is the escort is ineffective, relying on bomber otto for bandit SA. Proper Close escort would be positioned 5 K above the bombers altitude and some distance ahead behind and to each side. The lead group tries to disrupt the first pass and the other three make sure there are no second passes. They were far too close to accomplish this.

Of course, it isn't all the escorts fault. The bomber pilots are (and always will be in this game) their own worst enemy. While the bomber formation was unusually tight it was still a modified version of girl scout trail formation allowing an easier solution for our attacks. And they fly as fast as they can, further stringing out the formation and making it very difficult for the fighters to stay in position. If the bombers are flying at fighter cruising speeds it is super simple to strip the close escort. The very act of investigating bogeys puts the escorts in trail with not much speed differential to regain position.

The escorts end up having to fly straight line formations or they will run out of gas trying to run high power weaving flight. This makes ALL of the Allied aircraft flying the same profile and it is very easy for an Axis group to blend in. My 5 ship flew from the back of the bomber formation to a position to attack just high enough above them to stay out of icon range and were never challenged.

If the bombers were flying slower, the Allied escorts would be constantly weaving and the Axis fighter formations would stick out very plainly.

The Allies could have better success by slowing down the bombers. The only other choice is a relay system of escorts so they can stay fast but I don't think they have enough pilots for a relay system.

But I won't be telling them all this. I am enjoying bouncing Ponies, popping a few rounds in them and making them sweat the 300 miles back home.

Yes - I see this too.