those escorts were out of position Brooke...
A harsh critic!
Actually, the escorting in Battle Over Germany was generally good and disciplined.
In the pic I posted showing lots of escorts, that was more typical of how they were initially. They'd have a couple of squads above and behind the bombers -- those are the guys who make sure attacking fighters get only one pass, and they are in decent position. Then there are squadrons posted left, forward left, front, forward right, and right of the bombers. That is good position for intercepting planes like FW 190's coming in from sides or ahead. They would also have some squadrons ranging around trying to intercept our slower, lower bomber destroyers farther out from the bombers. Usually pretty thorough.
Now, we were working to counter that, of course, so there ended up being situations eventually where escorts got stripped or pulled out of position. When I fly axis, one of my jobs usually is to go find bombers, track them, and to disrupt escort, so a lot of my screen shots are from that perspective.
Oh, and invariably in these events, the allies try at least a 1-2 times to sneak bombers in unescorted (usually with some fighter sweeps, that the axis works to avoid, and positioning a group of bombers to look like a fighter sweep while there is an obvious heavily-escorted group of bombers elsewhere). Some of my shots can be from that situation, too.
