This morning I felt like going for a bomber run or two.
I logged into Orange and studied the map, looking for a good target. The Knight strat factories, while not too far away, were completely surrounded by tightly grouped airfields and GV bases 3-4 deep with nearly 100% radar coverage for three or four sectors in every direction. Thinking this would invite too much trouble I looked at the Rook side of the map. The strats were half a world away from the nearest Bish base and I didn't want to spend three hours getting to the target.
This left me one choice, hitting airfields or GV bases.
The Bish appeared to be hoarding bases so I decided my effort wasn't needed there and since I was, as always, flying alone, hitting a town somewhere else made no sense. That left me with hitting the fields themselves.
OK, I found a field that the Knights were using to spawn GV's and fly aircraft against a Bish GV base. Perfect. A field chosen now the question was what to hit. Ord, troops, fuel (not really a viable option) or, wait... hangers! Yes! If I could drop the fighter hangers then those pesky fighters wouldn't be able to come up and bother me. Then I could hit the GV hanger to help our GV defense. It was such a natural choice and flying a formation of Lancasters I could easily drop an entire large airfield.
Well, that's what I did... twice.
Granted there were no furballs going at the base I hit but there were Bish GV's there and aircraft attacking them, and, as I said, launching from there against a Bish GV base. Once the hangers went down though more Bish swarmed in, then, as the fighter hangers re-upped the fight dissipated leaving just the Bish GV's and attacking enemy aircraft.
Anyway, with the recent advents of strat targets being moved to the hinterlands and radar covering 100% of approach paths I think losing hangers will become more and more prevalent. Could I have gone for ord? Sure, but a single fighter can take ord out in a single sortie. I wouldn't need to fly heavies for that.
So next time you wonder why bombers are taking out the hangers and ruining a furball just remember, it's the only viable taget they have left.
