Looking for Bomber Pilots/Squads Interested in Joint Ops

[Trukk]

Is there any bomber squads (or pilots) out there interested in getting together one night a week to run a couple of tactical bombing missions with us as escorts.

What we are looking to do is hit ordnance or hangers on active airfields that are being used to attack us, or, hit hangers or towns that our side is attacking.  Basically contribute to the war effort with a small group.

We'd escort even one bomber pilot, two would be better, three would be perfect, four at the most, any more than that and it's overkill.  Now having said that, I wouldn't refuse more than four sets of buffs, but this is a case where bigger isn't better.

Our aim is to fly a realistic mission profile, achieve the objective and survive, so it would all be around 10-18,000' missions.  No NOE or 30k missions.

The two catches are (1) our squad times are 7:30-9:00 Eastern and (2) we fly Bishops as during this time they are normally the out numbered side.

So if you are a bomber pilot who'd like to fly with some escorts give us a shout!

[Daddkev]

  What is a baughmore?

[Lusche]

Had you wrote "strategic missions" I would have been in...

[Trukk]

Had you wrote "strategic missions" I would have been in...

Strat missions tend to be too long, have little if any effect on the map, and you just end up watching 262s and 163s attack the buffs.

[Lusche]

Strat missions tend to be too long, have little if any effect on the map, and you just end up watching 262s and 163s attack the buffs.

I'm certainly not going to try arguing you into it... just a few personal notes:

No, strats do dot have 'direct' influence on the map. But they can have a profound influence on the enemy... It's just that players are simply doing it completely wrong most of the times, bombing the wrong targets in the wrong sequence with no coordination. On large maps you do not have to run into 163's as long as you do not attack a strat complex that has retreated (in this case distances tend to be too long anyway). On some maps the distances can actually be much shorter than usually assumed. 262's mostly appear when there are huge strat raids, which are very ineffective. Smaller raids (small darbars) attract not much attention at all. I have made dozens of strat raids last tour and only encountered one single 262. Finally, the B-29 is the perfect plane for attacking the strats complex (which is only one part of what I'm referring to with the "'strategic' tag) and has a very high survival rate against all kind of enemy fighters.

And personally, I think there is no real  lack of bombers bombing hangars and towns, going a step beyond that old routine is what I'm interested in. In fact, it's for the first time in my 6+ years of AH that I'm seriously contemplating flying with other people and even starting my own squad for real (though I'd prefer a more loosely association)

[Trukk]

My experience has been that while one or two guys can get to the strats because folks just don't bother to intercept, but if you have 8+ guys they do.

You'd be surprised how hard it is to get buff drivers to escort, I can broadcast on the country channel that I've got four escort pilots looking for a bomber to escort and only once have I gotten a reply.  I've started to do a ".wingman" on guys who I know are buff drivers to find them on the map and if it looks like they are flying bombers (ie I can tell they lifted from a rear field to get alt), we'll just rendevous with them unannounced.

[Lusche]

My experience has been that while one or two guys can get to the strats because folks just don't bother to intercept, but if you have 8+ guys they do.

I do fully agree... 8 formations make a good darbar and will attract a lot of attention. If they are the usual B-24/Lancaster formations, they are very likely to get shot out of the sky.

But there is no need for 8 guys. With B-29's, two players can wreck the city, while a third can kill one or more factories (Or the two city killers can come back for the factory, after all City stays down for 6 hours) And they do not have to go in all at once, flying in the same sector all the time.
On a map like Ozkansas you can pretty much blend in the background noise of the very close frontlines.  I once did it during an afternoon with one other player (later some other players attacked the strats independently from us), and it took the enemy ages to notice what was going on, and then the response was never a strong one.

You'd be surprised how hard it is to get buff drivers to escort

No, I'm not surprised at all


Overall (and this is a general note, not directed any anyone specific), the mindset, awareness, knowledge and creativity/planning of the AH player population is rather ... limited, both in attack as well as in defense. I know this statement smacks of arrogance, but that's how I do experience AH


I also remember, when we had smashed the City on Ozkansas and started to take down factories, we tried to get some more buff drivers to support us, to no avail. Most were seemingly unable to understand what we were trying to do, as a matter of fact, several players did simply not believe what I was saying about the supply mechanisms. But worse: Even the well known arm chair generals who usually cry for porking of the enemy were listening to us when we pointed out that if they would pork the enemy frontline ords NOW, they would stay down for a much longer time than usual.

[Trukk]

Yeah, I think we are sorta on different wavelengths. On a typical night we have four to six guys online who would be flying escorts, so there's no way we could be just one or two.

Also for us, the fun is in flying a realistic mission, so while we want to contribute to the "war effort" we want to do it in a realistic way which eliminates a lot of the tactics that are commonplace.

[Lusche]

Also for us, the fun is in flying a realistic mission, so while we want to contribute to the "war effort" we want to do it in a realistic way which eliminates a lot of the tactics that are commonplace.

I'm curious: What would you call 'realistic' in this context?

[chewie86]

So trukk you and the 78th are back on business?! 

Great times when the 100th BG and the 78th FG as escort used to fly for sectors to flatten the enemy strats, I still remember them clearly. Always ran into enemy fighters, 109s 262s and 190s, occasionally 163s and ponies; we often went far beyond the front line.
Always great fun and pleasure to fly with you guys.

I suggest to any BG out there to pick up the 78th as escort anytime.

100Chewi

[thndregg]

There's been a lot of threads dedicated to this subject matter. I've already stated on a number of occasions I wish us bomb group crazies had something so vitally important to hit that the "bad guys" would recognize they need to fight us off of it- and vise-versa. Hangars at front line bases just cause more strife, & strats are not and have not been vital enough to matter.

[Lusche]

What about a strategic target that, when destroyed, would totally cripple a whole country's auto resupply and increase the down times of field items, like ords, dar, troops, field ack and so on, to a whopping 3 hours, on ALL fields?? Manual resupply would still work, but often there are critical situations where even that isn't really possible (for example bases without GV spawns to them under CV attack).

Would that be considered "vital"?

[thndregg]

What about a strategic target that, when destroyed, would totally cripple a whole country's auto resupply and increase the down times of field items, like ords, dar, troops, field ack and so on, to a whopping 3 hours, on ALL fields?? Manual resupply would still work, but often there are critical situations where even that isn't really possible (for example bases without GV spawns to them under CV attack).

Would that be considered "vital"?

Certainly bugs the brain, doesn't it?

[Trukk]

Hangars at front line bases just cause more strife, & strats are not and have not been vital enough to matter.

For large groups of buffs (ie the "public/announced missions") I can see frontline attacks not really working, but for smaller groups it seems to be effective.

For example last night we escorted Cajun and Kance who took down the hangers on a very active base that was being used to attack one of ours.  So for ten minutes (I think that is the regen time for hangers) it slowed down the attack giving our guys a breather and some time to get altitude.

[DaddieDrax]

Tuesday nights.  You can escort Kance and us other DHBG guys.  We show a big enough darbar that we have plenty of opposition!