I will say this. Even the 40 man NOE raids have a place in the game. Sometimes they are the only kind of missions or organized effort you can find.
I have been in plenty of 40 man NOE raids. A lot of them were standard affairs, I'd say about half. Those missions were fine. It's not so much the "I get to fight" feeling as the feeling of "I am contributing to an effort larger than myself. It doesn't matter if I get kills or not. I'm doing my part to help the group." About half the time in those missions, the raid goes ahead as planned, undisturbed by major opposition. The other half, it get's completely bogged down. The latter scenario is often the catalyst for those infamous, gigantic furballs that seem to suck in half of the entire server. The NOE raid gets intercepted. The fighter escorts begin to do their best to protect the 110's and other attack craft. More defenders come up. If there are organized squads participating, this is where it can get good. A new mission (or sometimes two) is created. Somties the mission is omitted and instructions are given verbally. The attackers re-up at the nearest base in fighters and high-tail it to the base. Furball gets going. The entire objective of the raid is lost, but everyone gets to be in a GPU-melting, stick-busting good time.
The other half is something else entirely. The other half is made up of an entirely new demographic of NOE raids. Theme raids (In Service of the Queen, Looney Gooney, ect) that are as large as the standard raids, but go out of their way to achieve historical accuracy, fighter sweeps, duration flights, and even more. Back when I was active, I flew with rook squad leaders like Limbo0 and 96Delta, so when we had a mission, it was always grand. There are two NOE missions that I remember as clear as a whistle.
The first was a raid on a Bish field with a nice waterfront view. Our original approach was off of a CV in heavy Corsairs. When that raid was marginally intercepted, we left the others to fight it out. Limbo and Delta took the LCA and 357th pilots in attendance and formed a second attack mission on a neighboring base. We quickly hit the runway in La5fn's, with bombs and full guns. We took off as quickly as we could, heading NOE to a second base nearby. Once we passed over the hill, only about 3K from the airfield, it came alive. The mission itself was made up of around 25 La5fn drivers. Once we hit that pass, more cons than I ould count came up to fight. Not only did it turn into a low level furball.... It turned into a massacre. The tightest, densest, most chaotic furball I have ever seen in my entire time playing AH. It lasted less than 10 minutes. And then we struck again. Soon after the attack was met head on by heavy resistance, Limbo0 told everyone there to reup at the same base with an La7 with 50% fuel and wait for further instructions. Once enough of us died, we reupped as quickly as we could, passing by yet another flight of rook La5fn's headed to roughly the same area, but a different base. Once we got there, it was still a gigantic, fuming furball and everyone involved had an incredible time.
My second NOE raid that I'm writing about had much less action, but I remember it just as vividly. There were around 12 of us. It was the map where the rooks hold the bottom edge. We put up a mission to take a small number of Lancasters, loaded to 75% fuel and plenty of ordinance. We headed out east from the rook mainland to go way out beyond the Bish space and around to two lille v-bases out in the rear, beyond two mountain passes. After we launched, we stayed as close to the deck as possible, going out over the water. Our escorts scouted ahead about 3/4 a sector. For about an hour, we flew over water towards a mountain pass that we would use to stay under radar all the way to the v-bases. About 70 minutes in, we made our turn north and headed up into the mountain pass. We had a few close calls with the hills, but we made it ok. Then we got to the bases. I can't remember completely if we capped them or not, but I do remember landing at one of the v-bases. Definately the LONGEST NOE raid I have ever been on. It was a blast. I wouldn't do it again, but it was an incredible experience.
