S3 Series

hhmmnn
methinks the first fighter group goes in at approx. 25 k, gets very aggressive, pushs or drags down to 10 or slightly less, followed 2 min later by a max alt group, again going very aggressive pushing or dragging down to 10 k, followed by sbd group armed 1k bomb at 15/18 k with embedded escort at 25 k at their high 6. Idea is to break em up, scatter em, run em off, kill em but the strikers MUST be no more than 3 min behind fighter groups to take advantage of the mix up that will occur with no time for bad guys to regroup up.
Ships are static, not moving. Dive bomb attack from 15 k should be fairly accurate and needs two planes per ship. SBD is fairly maneuverable, release bombs no lower than 5 k ( so they arm) maintain some alt for egress and maneuvering and staying within sight of fighter guys fighting at 10k or slightly lower.
If I am correct I see values n ships running from 700 pts for boats, 1500 pts for captital ( dd's) and 1000 pts for cargo. 1k bombs doing about 1100 pts of damage so even a near miss may not kill the ship, but 2 certainly will.
This keeps strikers close to us, at a better alt to see and protect, a better airship for strikers to maneuver in. All the groups must be within 3 min flight time of each other and all groups remain fighting for no more than 5 to 6 min which time allows strikers to complete their mission and move out, fighter groups right behind strikers, in othr words strikers last one in by no more than 3 to 4 min and first out meaning fighters MUST remain fighting for no more than 6 min thus giving them time.
Recommend fuel saving cruise for fighters to target, which also allows strikers to keep up and this narrow attack window means there will be no fuel issue for fighters to remain over target.
Now, if you really wanna get trickey and IF we had enough strikers ( for those who dare) send in a torp group timed to arrive 10 min after initial strike group egresses target area, bad guys think we retiring and go land rtb rearm and reup and torps hit noe, ( hopefully agin no opposition) but that is a highly dangerous move.
Perhaps egress 1st strike out to north ( or south) whilst 2nd strike moves in from opposite direction
Just thinking out loud.

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As usual all very good thoughts gentlemen.

Timing Timing Timing........... with communication.

Dar is the main enemy at this juncture. We need to saturate the target area with "dots" (all white this series) on the dar both ours and the enemy, then the strikers can come in at any alt they want and be just another dot (not separate).
The probability that separate units are simpler to diagnose/identify because of speed or direction or formation is high.

At the point that we have fighter units in the target area, we know that "dots" are flooding the dar, buffs go in.
At THAT point the layering starts to take effect, so, fighters in at max alt saturating the dar in target area, then buffs report X time to target, then designated fighters (group{s}) descend to 10k or such before buffs in target area, other group to 20k such and at least some remain at 30k such. Timing of egress will be JUST AS IMPORTANT as the ingress because what will happen is ALL will be low and need to egress as ONE especially buffs, NO LOITERING.
During this, at strike time the high fighters going to 10k WILL BRING DOWN enemy fighters TOWARD the buffs also, it is unavoidable.

Remember, they can replane locally and we MUST go far to recycle so a HIT HARD and LEAVE TOGETHER (with buffs calling the egress) is recommended.

Timing Timing Timing communication.

Suggested

Juice

PS Added, obviously if the area is too hot buffs need to wait or egress and we come back.

It is my opinion that a fighter squad leader should be in control of "go/no-go" strike unit.
Being on station and able to know the situation. Timing needs to be worked out so that we can have a window of opportunity. Strikes probably should take off first and gain altitude then fighters take off because of speed difference.

I guess we need to decide what the target will be and what planes the strikers will be using.

Personally, I like the idea of flying the F6 again, but the level bombing in the TBD from high alt vs stationary shipping with 3X500 lb bombs and up where the f6 is much superior sounds like a good idea.

Years ago we climbed the TBD up to medium alts with torps then dove onto the ships instead of an NOE approach. We lost some a/c but overall the method worked fine if the player could control his a/c's speed while spiraling down. I don't seem to remember it being horribly difficult to make the climb but last Monday after frame one I was considering options for attacking Truk so I loaded up a TBD and set up a climb. Now I had to leave suddenly but my results were terrible. Seems to me it was like 30 minutes to 10k or something. I believe jman posted about this and it seems his results were much better. Anyhow....I think a frame with medium alt TBDs is certainly worth a try but testing has to be done and soon.

A time on target MUST be established and everything and everyone works backwards from there. Two of the three primary FGs could be totally offensive with zero alt restrictions while the third would be assigned to stay high early driving zekes down from nosebleed alts but always staying higher than the TBDs. Their primary job would be to cover the initial target egress of the TBDS clearing direct attacks. Once fairly clear they can head back and help the other two FGs.

Same method could be used with SBDs only the egress alt would be NOE and the bombing results would not be as successful.

I did testing last night in the TBD. With (2) 500lb bombs, WEP2 it took 25min. to get to 13K. Then level at about 115mph towards target without WEP. One 500lb bomb takes out most ships (except the capital ships).

With climbing and such, it takes about 50~55 min to get to target. This would require the TBD's to up before the fighters (probably 30 min. before) then have the fighters up and climb.

just my observations. If people are better than me in the SBD, then by all means go for it!

Climbing should done out of radar. Slow climbing TBDs will just waste the fighters fuel and give the Axis time to plan. TBDs should be level and up to its full speed at it when they first cross into dar. I said last frame that it might be best for this to be a later timed sortie so all our fighters have first sortie sweep with full forces to wear down their numbers a bit.

btw I am not a fan of this side switching. Two frames is not enough time to test and improve strike plans while giving our future killers all of our thoughts and ideas to be used against us. We already have so little going for us.

Sleepy is most certainly in a position to know the answer to bomb arming time and "near misses". Personally, it is my experience that a "near miss" on a ship gets ZERO damage. Additionally, unless you dropped bombs on the ships in the S3 Arena, and found that it takes "X" hits with a "Y" bomb, that the OT Values listed in the "New Terrain Objects List" are like a new car: "Your mileage may vary".

Mt-Dew I agree completely with you on the side switching of fighters only. It gives ftrs good idea of what each is doing.

Gut feel says it would be in the range of 100 minutes. I'll run a test tomorrow.

In some tests earlier I can confirm that near misses do work. e.g. I dropped 2x1000 near a Cargo and it did go down. This is w/ the online/offline procedure and its never been clear to me if the settings indeed stay intact or not. I have tried to compare between purely offline vs going online/offline and have not seen a material difference. So don't really know.

The current Terrain Object List has:

Boats - 1000
Cargo - 1500
Capital - 2000

Sleepy in your infinite free time can you please audit the above object list make sure it's accurate? We buffs rely on it for planning and historically (S3 history that is) it has been a pretty good measure of how many bombs are required per target, would be great to regain confidence in it.

bomb damage values as posted by Sleepy are:

"100lb" : 320,
"250lb" : 480,
"500lb" : 765,
"1000lb" : 1100,
"1600lb" : 1530,
"2000lb" : 2100,
"4000lb" : 3900