Quite frankly, I truly believed we were going to get wiped out last night. We did the attack on V75. We all took off with the attitude that this was either going to be REALLY bad or REALLY good. Nothing in between was in the stars for us last night. We ended up attacking with 3 really good squads last night (Anti-Horde, JG54, and The Unforgiven). The comms were superior and I have to admit that through the last couple of years, comms between squads have gotten really good. This was a strength for us last night. After the initial attack, we left 1 fuel up. We went back and got it. We then flew to A8 to create a cut off for the V27 (?) egress knowing something had to be coming this way. We ran into P40s. Since we came as 4 squads, we had the numbers. After helping to defend, we then went out towards V76 and discovered TUs. We worked like heck to set up a cut off and eventually pushed them away from the 3 airbases we thought they would come to. We were unable to catch them. Man they are fast! After all that, we decided to start de-acking all of the fields close by to create a vulch scenario. Nobody came so we just kept attacking. There were a lot of things at the end of the frame we destroyed that we will not get points for.
My summary is this...
We did gain superiority. I do feel that if the Yaks and LAs that we encountered had more fuel time do to a different multiplier, this could have been a different turnout all together. I would have been more fearful had we encountered more P39s or P40s. We did have a REALLY good squad flying escort for us last night (The Unforgiven) and I already felt a little more aggressive knowing they had our cover. However, I feel that by adjusting the burn rate and maybe changing the min/max for the Allies only may change the schematic for frame 3 a little better. I am willing to bet that both sides would agree to this as a fair compromise.
Any thoughts?
SlipKnoT
V75 was expected and planned for but we were simply one squad a few comms short of one of perhaps the most glorious clashes FSO could throw up.
I had planned for a sweep followed by an influx of Ju87s covered by 110s. Lacking numbers meant that I had to throw the LCA our largest squad in there to meet and break up the sweep. If they had been able to have a large turnout that would have been sufficient. I really needed just another half dozen fighters to hold off the 110s. The killer blow was the 20 Il2s that I had hovering east of V75 holding at 15k ready to plunge into the melee and take on the Ju87s and whatever was wheeling past their noses. The thought of a few 110s and IL2s going head on brought some amusement and all.
All depended upon a call of a sighting of the incoming strike force and its makeup. Throwing in the Il2s early meant they would get trapped underneath a high level attack. Too late and they would never be able to have any impact.
Unfortunately the sweep appears to have overwhelmed our forward elements so no call came. Once I saw the dar go down I committed them anyway. The departure line was inside the radar ring for 135 on its western side. If you look at a map, that's about 20 miles. I can tell you it may as well have been 200. There was a single element I had not allowed for. The (expletive deleted) wind setting! Whilst the Il2 is slow, into a wind like that it becomes a joke.
It only took a few minutes but by the time we arrived over V75 there was only a single tree top 110 retreating and we were never going to catch him. LCA had been taken out, the Vbase was smashed and we didn't have fuel or ord.
We rearmed and made a secondary attack.
Now comes the period which you describe. The time of "nowhere to go".
Because of the absolutely ridiculous fuel setting and the huge disparity in force effectiveness it causes, we were even denied the use of our bases for safe landing let alone rearming. This week the front was brought in closer. Whilst this meant at least that a P39 with a bomb could just make a target and get home it also meant that the LW with their fuel and numbers could simply sit over our front bases. They also sat over the bases behind them and even the next row of bases and deny us any opportunity to land safely let alone resortie.
Now if you get extra points for landing at a home base and that base cannot be accessed you get kind of a peeved feeling. You can't fight, you can't land, you just end up flying pointlessly for an hour, rearm and run further.
As frustrating and boring as that is I actually felt sorrier for the guys on the other side who were so bored that they ended up deacking towns along the front just to get something to shoot at.
I gave this one my best shot at trying to make something of a setup that allows one side to fly and fight and not the other. FSO doesn't allow you the luxury the preparation and practice to pull off the stuff I tried. It becomes more of a lottery.
The squads that worked with me yesterday were absolutely wonderful. No, seriously. Not just saying that. They worked and laughed and we had some real successes amongst the failures. We blew away our targets to an extent you wouldn't credit and put up a worthy defence with what we had. It was actually a pleasure leading.
Now if you don't want to do continuing damage to FSO numbers.
I have a suggestion:
Make fuel burn 1.00 or cancel next week.
