Monday morning quarterbacking is tricky. I think there isn't an easy answer to this.
Looking back, Tokyo was tough to get to at T plus 60. From the airspawn, we had a half bag. Half bag was the only way we were getting home considering we flew about 22 sectors round trip.
All off line practice flights indicated we would be landing with about 5 to 10 minutes to spare with a few clean up B29s having to land on a CV due to time constraints and some damage.
Considering the fuel loadout, and time to target on a DIRECT route from the airspawn, I believe Tokyo was the only base we could get to and land on time. It was a LONNNG flight round trip.
Knowing that we now have B29s at our disposal, I recommend making their trips long. It makes for difficult planning and coordination. Maybe adjust airspawns a bit. The proper airspawns and friendly fields would have made for better planning and B29 distribution.
I agree that it was overkill over Tokyo but I am not complaining! I was in one of the B29s! I have had my share of defending with minimal enemy. I have also been on the receiving end of what we did to Tokyo. It is hit and miss. Yet, we still keep coming back.
I appreciate what everyone else does for FSO from the CM team to the average guy that simply shows up to fly and keep the numbers good for any squad.
In retrospect, it comes down to the CiC and the CM team. Is it possible that the CM team could have adjusted the airspawns? Could we have given additional time for the B29s to get home past T plus 120? They guys over Tokyo wanted to fly to the West and keep going to the other air strats but time was extremely limited.
Overall, we had superior bomber squads in the B29s as well as OUTSTANDING fighter sweeps and CAP over target.
As it was said over Tokyo as the last bombs dropped and egress operations began, "You build it, we will break it". That was an outstanding sweep and CAP as well as bombers hitting target.
Regarding another post about the B29s hitting additional targets (in the target area) not assigned. It happens and for that I am sorry. A perfect plan usually falls apart the moment the first shot goes down range. That is true in FSO as well as it is in real combat. There is no really good answer to that. Perhaps the CO of that squad should have reached out to the CiC to obtain additional targets so you could have dropped elsewhere. A second strike so to speak. Again, communication with the CiC and the CM could have given that squad another shot at hitting something else and I think that a certain few may not have been as frustrated in the end. My own squad were falling over eachother trying to squeeze into the assigned lanes for our squad. As a result, I released bombs only to see the buildings go before my iron hit the ground. Frustrating indeed, but, we all did our part and over all, as Strike Team Orange, we accomplished our mission. There is always the possibility that several B29s could have goine down leaving some targets left, in that scenario, we would have had to come back and drop over target again. Our sweep and CAP was so effecient, that didn't happen. The end result was that everything over Tokyo was destroyed. I anticipated heavy losses and was pretty sure we would have to come back. But... ...it didn't happen.
So, for what it is worth, monday morning quarterbacking, I think we learned something from B29 tactics for FSO and think we can tweak it a bit now. This is still a new concept. But in time, I think it only gets better from here.
Fun FSO for me anyways.
