Nah ROC, there was noway to defend on this one. You guys did a great job in escort. But with the late plane set and the fire power of 20 and 30mm loadouts, more axis fighters than ally buffs in the air, all it takes is one pass with a couple of hits to take out the buffs.
Unless they decide to turn to dogfight after the merge, it is all but over for a bomber. With something like this, you would almost need a 2 escort per buff, and that type of numbers isn't possible.
But the main question still remains, with the scenerio setup of being this late in the war, it doesn't seem to follow along not only with any historical value, but also doesn't follow the trend of previous setups.
The FSO buildup time frame prior to this (invading mainland europe, movving forward to germany and italy) used time period planesets and formations. With this late in the war, utilizing time frame planesets, why all of a sudden pull formations out of the set? In all lead ups to this FSO, formations were used in pushing into europe and moving on to germany. Now its Feb 1945 and nmy fighters outnumber buffs?
Don't get me wrong, but when things don't seem to fit I have to ask. I asked when the ceiling cap for buffs was drastically changed when it wasn't before, and I have to ask why this changed. Maybe I'm seeing this wrongly, and if so I do apologize. But I had to ask the question.