S3 Series

Any and all input is welcome. Just finished watching the 3rd round of the Players Championship and I'll mull over a plan this coming mid-week. Enjoy the day with your significant other on sunday!

With you on that sir!

Numbers at the point of contact is King.

Aggressive action when the enemy is encountered with overwhelming force brought to bear.

Ignore the defense and play offense.

We can't completely ignore the defence, but with this frame we can apply more offense, I would suggest closing IT/LW fields close to our landing sites and perhaps sinking some of their static ships in that vicintity as well. Bombing ships is not ideal, just remember if you are low level, do not overfly the middle of the ship to avoid the invisible 1,000 mast.

If we are really interested in sinking their shipping, the Wellington carries 2 torps

We certainly can totally ignore defense.

Who cares what they do on offense? We are supposed to be invading Sicily, not worrying about what they might be doing to Africa or some islands off the coast.

We don't have enough players to even think about splitting up.

Yes, we are preparing to invade, but if they sink all of our supply ships we may not have anything to invade with.

I am not saying no to sending all planes to Sicily, but after our initial strike we may find them sending half of their aircraft to kill our supply ships. If they do so, we should replane and send all of our fighters to outnumber and overwhelm the NME attackers.

When you send fighters in 8-10 at a time vs 25-30, you wind up with no fighters left. No fighters = no defense of anything. We don't need a 30 plane gaggle, but we do need 30 planes within a minute or two of each other. The initial merge will decide the outcome of the night, and will be settled within the first 5 minutes of actual fighting. All we did last frame was to give the opposition 3 small skirmishes. The outcome of the fights were never in question. The axis forces didn't gain the majority of their points right off the bat. They gained them after we were reduced to an insignificant fighting force. You think the 352nd doesn't understand this?

All I would personally ask for is for all fighter squads to bring the right tool to the table. You wouldn't bring a screwdriver to hammer a big nail, and it's insanity to bring the P-40F, instead of the Spitfire IXe, if you are assigned to a high-altitude mission just because "we want to get rid of the P-40F early". I firmly believe that somewhere, a fairy dies every time a S3 squad commits to such impatient stupidity. I've seen this thinking to many times now, including from the 4th FG, so I'm not pointing any fingers. Please save low-alt planes for low alt strike, defensive or NOE escort missions. Use high-alt performing planes for high escort and high cap missions.

Thank you for reading
/Robert

I do see the 475th having a point. If we plan for what might become a big engagement, then we would be wise to bring everyone and their neighbour. If we want a more spread out picture, then we would do good to only engage where we have local superiority.

If the bombers are going in high, then they will need escort. Some close and some ahead, the forward job is to try and break up and NME formations, not to get into a furball. The close escort keeps the NME from returning for a 2nd pass.

Is this the correct escort doctrine