Posted by: Dekr *401 Rams*

Message: TACTICS:If you were escorting bombers, how would you do it in WB?

How would you configure your resources to escort a bomber box in Warbirds?

1. How far would you be? how many on each side?

2. What plane type would you take? Fuel load? Would you take bombs to help clean up a field?

3. How would you configure your planes? Left side, right side? rear? how much higher?

4. How about your radios? Would you listen to the bomber group? Or just follow the leader?

5. Forward sweeping ?

6. If bounced on the left side, what are your ROE (ruels of engagement) to deal with the threat?

7. Is it possible to truly protect a bomber box?

S/L Dekr 401 Rams

Posted by: starry

Message: Seems to me that it's pretty simple in the arena. Most intercepts have the following characteristics:

1/ From the rear.

2/ On egress.

3/ Co-alt or below. Sometimes from above but not very often.

The problem with fighter escorts in the main arena is that they want to furball more then escort, so they vanish to low alt on ingress. As a result I don't think I've ever had a fighter escort on egress and that is by far the most dangerous time.

Steven Tarry's Rules For Escort are therefore:

1/ Form up to the rear and above the box. Just enough to prevent a fighter from climbing into the bombers. About d20-30 back and 4-8k above.

2/ On ingress do not under any cicumstances chase enemy planes more than 5k below the bomber box.

3/ Never, ever commit the entire escort to chasing off a single dweeb 190 co-alt and slow d10 behind the bombers, damned it! :) Only one or two planes should brake formation at a time, since you only need to force a dive from the other aircraft.

4/ Ensure the escort knows the egress direction so any trailing fighters can try to catch up. There should never be a situation where the bombers have no escort on egress, since this is the most dangerous time.

I think the single most important and most often broken rule is number 3. If you don't commit your entire force, even rule number 2 isn't so bad (you just have one less escort, since they allmost never catch up again).

What do y'all think of that?

Steve

Posted by: -torgo

Message: Well, as with history, I believe forward sweeps VERY far ahead are the most effective...out of sight of the bomber box.

I'd keep a handful of fighters "with the buffs" to keep them happy, but the majority I'd have sweep out well ahead along the flight path. Buffers tend not to like this (as they were very resistant historically) because "seeing" their escorts gave them psychological security...but in WWII escorts tightly "Tied" to the buffs were very ineffective.

As an American commander in Solomons II, we were completely mystified by the constant Japanese practice of having their fighter escorts stacked directly ABOVE (and often a bit behind!) their Kates and Vals. We were able to easily destroy their bombers by simply diving through...now, what would have screwed us were large numbers of fighters goingwell ahead of the bombers, engaging us in a massive furball (and as we all know, these constantly get lower and lower) with the bombers arriving minutes later at high altitude.

-torgo

Posted by: starry

Message: : I do it all the time in my squad missions. It is Shaw's most important factor, forward sweeps.

I believe they are a complete waist of time and may actually be more harmfull than good. This (of course) _only_ applies to the WB main arena. :-)

The problem with forward sweeps in the main arena is that they do not really protect the bombers, but attempt to destroy fighters before they can reach the bombers. As everyone in the main arena has unlimited lives this is futile and just dwindles the escort force down to nothing, with no hope of another escort catching up.

IMO :-)

Steve