After Action ReportOverall, that was a great mission FiLtH, and I had fun, as did most, if not all participants. It was also a really good turn out for a board-posted and arena advertised mission. For an initial attempt, the formations were not too bad, and the high, middle, and low formation fields of fire seemed effective.
Lead group had a very tight formation. High group pretty good, and (my) low group was spread out and included some late coming stragglers. 1000 foot veritcal seperation between groups seem to work well, 500 foot might be a little better (vertical seperations could have been a little greater among the groups flights, many of them were co-alt). I kept my formation too far to the left, which was evident when I reviewed the films. My bad.
But, as this is an AAR, I can see a few places for "sustained" and "improve" observations too.
- Take off. Roll out went poorly, as usual for these mission. I must have seen six flights roll immediately on spawning, despite hold on runway calls and text. Only way I can see to seperate groups a little on rollout is to post carbon copy missions for each group, with 1 minute delays between their launching. You will still have a few late spawners, but they can either catch up, or join a following group. These missions can be saved ahead of time, and even emailed to Group Leaders as files. Then, only need to adjust runway and field option, and launch time, to post them. Group Leaders, since they know the mission, can even spawn on their own, and roll forward a little bit along runway, and wait for their group to spawn and roll out ahead of them. Can even run GL with skins' to help some identify them.
- If you roll with 60 second delays mentoned above, the lead flight will have to roll back earlier on throttle, say 40MAN after stable flight and climb steady, in order for trailing flights to catch up. The trailing flights ought to meet up at higher alt, so the lead flight should become the low flight. Adjust as neccessary. 40 MAN early on also helps late spawners to catch up with formation while in climb. 35 MAN may be necccessary once in level flight. (** Manifold settings dependent on altitude..... manifold pressure falls as alt raises....**)
- Once lead has set MAN, keep it there. Everyone else adjust theirs to keep the distance from their lead.
- Communications, having each Group's Flight Leader direct comms got a little hectic over the games' limited intercom for the entire Combat Wing. There really needs to be only one voice for the mission most of the time. So long as the pilots know which is their Group Leader to form on, and the Group Leaders can form on the Wing Leader as previously determined. Perhaps they should be on seperate channels for the briefing and instruction of the pilots, or on initial climbout, or maybe seperate channels will work best. Three GL's and one FL talking on one channel not the way to go.
In LCA, 96Delta often ran voice coms, and I and others would repeat those directives in the Text Buffer, as well as keep a running checklist going about flaps, MAN, RPM, salvo, delay, advert for gunners, and so forth as per our mission brief and OP ORD.
- Avoid waypoints, don't try to ride that blue rail..... Initial rollout and climb out should be under full power, 0 to 1 flaps, and NO course changes, with MAN reduced after stable climb achieved..... trying to ride that map course and waypoints will screw up any large formation. Wing Leader set's the course, with as few shallow turns as can be manged. Group Leaders comform to Wing Leader. Pilots conform to their Group Leaders. For a tight, good looking formation, these movements and speed adjustments must be kept to a minimum. You can make adjustments at major turns to being off the map course and waypoints. Turns also need to be announced well in advance to make sure everyone gets the word.
If you feel you must have courses and waypoints for mission, include the egress route to get back home..... the remaining formation split in two after the drop, some left, some right.
- Most strat factory and city targets should be attacked along N-S or E-W line of attack. Just the way they are set up in the game. Can use compass to help keep groups in line with each other.
- I've read some issues vs 250# bombs in other threads. B-17's best load out is either 16 - 250# or 12 - 500# bombs used against strat targets. Factories, towns, and so forth. Probably not a good choice for an HQ raid. B-24's with 2K bombs for HQ.... or 8 1-K's with half on the city, half on the HQ would work. And if we'd had Lancs, those swarms of 163's would have chewed us up totally. In short: know what target or targets you are hitting, and tailor the planes to that mission.
- 50% fuel will probably work 90% of the time. We run at less than full throttle most of the mission. 50% will allow buffs with fuel leaks to continue flying for a while. Probably a pretty good default.
- "Drop on Lead" -- might work against an area target like a city, especially in AvsA or senerio maps, but limited use on area targets in arenas, and very poor against point target like HQ. Might be historically accurate, and look good in video..... but really the game mechanics don't support it. If we were bombing the city of Tokyo in that map..... then, yes, it works well, and you could get away with salvos' of 100#'s with all that overlap. Game mechanics come into play here.
- Formation with Hi, Mid, Low groups. I did not expect such a good turn out.
We had enough bombers to take down 4 strat targets. If we had each group 3-flights across, and however many rows deep, for the three groups. With the low-left squadron down the left side of a target, the middle group take the middle, and the high-right squadron take the right side of a target - set appropriate salvos and delays and areas of responsibility over the target (or just set salvo, and longer delay, and count on bomb spread to take care of things downstairs), we could have hit several sites in one mission.
That was a lot of ordanance to deliver..... not the right mix for an HQ, but still a lot of ord.
- In the films, I noticed a lot of bombers breaking formation once enemy fighters appears. They'd climb, dive, go to full throttle, drift off...... I think the dead zone for some folk's rudder controls to be increased a little are in order. My guess is they have twist throttles, and as soon as they start wrenching their joysitck in turrents, they kick out the autopilot.
- Set up a mission for escorts, or get a squad to run it, on a seperate freq from the buffs.
Overall a good effort. And certainly gathered a lot of opposition. I think the formation worked well for a first attempt. Follow on missions should mange to keep it tighter, and more effective. A lot of perks were spent to come up after us.
