Tactics for Cliffs of Dover.

[Tacoma74]

Originally Posted by robtek

@Tacoma74

if you fly the 109 always at 400+ km/h you would have to land in england without fuel

Flying at 400km/h isn't that hard to do at about 45%-55% throttle in level flight (with the proper trimming of coarse). Or at least that's what I've noticed in IL-2: 1946. I'm not one of those that fly at 110% everywhere i go, that is just nonsense... But like people are saying fuel concerns are going to be the biggest limiting factor when it comes to time spent across the channel. But we'll just have to wait and see just exactly how accurately fuel consumption is modeled in CoD. The RAF will definitely have the advantage as far as fuel tho....

[Tacoma74]

Originally Posted by Triggaaar

Your points on the fuel system and superior diving match what I've read, but I'm not so sure about climb rates. Where are you getting the data from? According to wwiiaircraftperformance.org (and I have no idea how accurate it is, but a few here have pointed to it) the BoB Spits are faster than the 109s and climb at least as well:
http://www.spitfireperformance.com/spit1vrs109e.html
on that page the climb rate is shown as about the same for the standard MkI Spit, and I assume the 12lb boost model would be a lot better. Speed wise the standard Spit is slower at many altitudes, but at it's optimal altitude the Spit is faster. The 12lb boost Spit is faster than the 109s at all altitudes.

I'm not suggesting that information is definitive, feel free to post any other relevant information.

I've been doing a bit of reading and it seems you may be somewhat correct. The Spit MkI did outclimb the Bf-109E, but only above about 7,000 feet or so. But I stand firm with my claim of other advantages. The 109 just seems a better plane to me, but it takes alot of practice and getting used to.

[David603]

Originally Posted by Triggaaar

So, reading that WWII performance site, the Spit was faster, climbed better, and turned better. Oleg may have had to program the fighters closer just to give the 109s a chance.

Oleg has said several times in the past that his aim is to simulate reality, not to create "balanced gameplay".

[BadAim]

As has been said soooo many times, here and elswhere, the pilot has much more to do with the outcome of a battle than the aircraft. The simple fact is that both aircraft have strong points and weak points and the pilot who knows them, exploits them properly and has conserved his fuel enough to exploit them at all will be victorious. Or at least get home in one piece.

I'll be the ball of fire heading towards the ground.

[Triggaaar]

Originally Posted by Tacoma74

I've been doing a bit of reading and it seems you may be somewhat correct. The Spit MkI did outclimb the Bf-109E, but only above about 7,000 feet or so.

I'm only reading from that wwii performance site link, I haven't read much of that before. According to the info there, the Spit even outclimbed the 109 from the deck, if the 12lb boost was engaged. The details from the 190 that landed in Britain is interesting too.

But I stand firm with my claim of other advantages. The 109 just seems a better plane to me, but it takes alot of practice and getting used to.

Do you mean it seems like a better plane in IL2?

Originally Posted by David603

Oleg has said several times in the past that his aim is to simulate reality, not to create "balanced gameplay".

Thanks for that. Although that's what we'd all ask for, it's not necessarily what's best for the game (depending on the area). The balance of pilot skill on our servers will be fair, but in real life it was very different. And numbers on our servers, and tactics are also similar, but in real life these were very different too. If these reports are really true, that the Spit was faster (slghtly), climbed better (with boost), and out-turned the 109E (easily), and Oleg makes them as such, there will be a lot of unhappy blue players.

[BadAim]

Originally Posted by David603

Oleg has said several times in the past that his aim is to simulate reality, not to create "balanced gameplay".

Yea and Amen! The plane-set is intrinsically perfectly balanced. Those of us who get shot down will do so because we ran out of altitude, airspeed or luck and no other reason.

[Tacoma74]

Originally Posted by BadAim

As has been said soooo many times, here and elswhere, the pilot has much more to do with the outcome of a battle than the aircraft.

Yes very true. Overall it was a pretty even match and really came down to pilot skill.

[Blackdog_kt]

Very enjoyable and interesting thread, but unless we set a basic common ground in regards to difficulty options in the server and mission profiles, every single opinion in this discussion would be correct
Are we taking about full difficulty or not?
Are we flying on a custom made DF map with smaller distances or the full size one the game will ship with?
Are we flying historical profiles or are we going to use our hindsight to gain an edge?

And since we can't all agree, i suggest that we give our personal "starting conditions" before presenting our opinion.

For me, this is full difficulty servers on the real-life sized map (at least i hope there will be servers that do that regularly ), while using tactics of our own instead of Goering's ones.

In that sense, i expect that the plane to really outshine and surpass its real life counterpart will be the 110, because people will actually fly it in a way that maximizes its advantages in the sim.

They will learn to stay fast and only boom and zoom, they will either range ahead of the bombers or zig-zag above them as top cover, they will do low level bombing raids to key, pinpoint targets under the cover of radar and generally fly in a smart way. Back in the day i've seen people take on model 1943-1944 Spits at 7000m or more when flying model 1942 110G-2s on the warclouds server.
With the proper people who know their teamwork and just a single engined fighter to force the spits to maneuver it's pretty scary how effective it could be, and the 110G-2 in IL2 is a total dog when compared to late war allied fighters. In CoD where the performance gap won't be as wide, i can't imagine what will happen but i'm really interested to find out. For the record, i was mostly flying 190s in IL2 but in CoD there's so many new possibilities that i'll most probably fly both sides regularly.

Anyway, all this hindsight we have opens up a big can of worms, since the 110 is actually turned into a useful aircraft with the range to escort the bombers all the way to the target. It just has to be flown in a top cover role and not close escort.

First of all, fuel is an issue but has the potential to cause problems for the defenders too, as illustrated here:

Originally Posted by JG52Uther

So RAF boys,what do you do? Carry a full tank and hope you don't meet a 109 with 50% fuel, or take off with 50% and hope you don't run out and have to land before we turn up...
Will make for some strategic flying on a realistic server!

Another point, since i assumed i'm not going to fly the way they did but try to see the "what if" scenario of the battle, things will be further shaken up.
For starters, since the axis force will have some way to travel, it's no harm climbing to their absolute ceiling IF we're talking about a level bomber attack.

What i would do if i had a team of like-minded pilots in such a scenario? Easy, i'd sent the bombers out with 110s as top cover first of all. Correct me if i'm wrong, but i think i read somewhere that the 110 was faster than both the hurricane and the spitfire. Sure, maneuverability and acceleration might not be great, but if all you do is dive on RAF fighters and spoil their firing pass on the bombers before you climb back up, then that won't be much of an issue, plus you'll be getting your share of kills too.
If the 110's also do it in pairs instead of all at once, even if the first pair that dove down gets attacked, another pair will be able to dive down and clear them.

This means the fighters will not be "on-call" for the bombers, but attacking under favorable terms. Initially, this will be hard for bomber pilots but overall and statistically speaking, it's a better deal. It's better to lose 3 bombers during the first pass of the RAF fighters but shoot down or damage and force to RTB 50% of them, than lose 1 bomber during the first pass but get tangled in a dogfight which ends up with less RAF fighters killed, your escorts decimated and the bombers making the rest of the way unescorted.

So, what about the 109s? Well, i would send them AFTER the bombers and 110s were about halfway across the channel. Remember, best economy cruise speed doesn't usually equal best endurance speed which tends to be lower. Effectively, this means that 109s cruising at 220km/h might have fuel for 75 minutes and have a range of X miles, but if they cruise at 300km/h they might have fuel for 50 minutes and yet cover X+200 miles.

So, instead of having the 109s follow the bombers even loosely and wasting that range, i would send them off after the bombers and 110s. How long? Well, that needs some planning and a bit of math. In any case, long enough to overtake the bombers before they reach the English coast and be over the target maybe 5 minutes before the bombers reach it. Assuming they have 10 minutes of fuel in combat power over there, they are free to do as they want and attack, shoot down and damage as many RAF fighters as they can before they even get up to the bomber's altitude.
The ones that do get away and press on to the bombers will be outnumbered by the 110s, which will proceed to boom and zoom them repeatedly.

You'll ask me why can't the RAF players reinforce/go at it again? Of course they can. It's just that on a 1:1 scaled map, the fuel needed to get there and the altitude the bombers are flying at, it might take an extra 20 minutes to do so if you want to enter combat from a proper starting altitude (by which time the 111s might be half way to France), or it might mean scrambling from a closer airfield but having to go on a maximum climb profile which makes you slow for prowling axis fighters. Not to mention that we'll have engine limitations in the new sim, so that climb will certainly not be at full throttle when flying in full difficulty servers.

This combination makes the most use of the 109s advantages, while making sure that the 110s won't have to deal with hordes of slower but better maneuvering, better accelerating single seaters so that the 110's better range can be exploited to stay with the bombers all the way to target and back.

This is exactly what the US 8th air force did later in the war when they decided to send the fighters ahead of the bombers and keep a token top cover escort in case something got through, it worked like a charm. Granted, the 8th didn't send heavy fighters to escort their bombers at that time (the p-38 was mostly phased out of escort duties at that time), which made the tactic even more effective.

As for the other aircraft, Stukas will probably get massacred as historically happened, but if they are escorted that way they'll at least stand a chance of taking out their targets first.

Finally, i expect we'll see a lot of people using bomb ladden 110s in under-the-radar raids with 109 escort, since the 110s can cruise at a speed which maximizes the 109s range.

Assuming we get a full difficulty online campaign server for the new multiplayer mode, that's what i'd do before anything else and raid the radar towers that way to open "corridors" for the level bombers.
Combine with a second wave of Stukas at high altitude, but coming behind the 110 strike package and you have this situation: the AI ground control vectors me to the high flying Stukas with the 109 escort (radar was mostly near the coast, so it's a shorter hop across the channel that 109s might be able to handle).
At that point i either spot the low flying 110s/109s and choose to dive back down towards them with an energy advantage, or press on to the Stukas regardless if i spotted the low flying 110s or not.
In any case, i will either have to allow one raid to break through or split my flight of RAF interceptors and take on two groups with half my force on each one, both of which groups are escorted by 109s. It's not pretty.

Notice that i didn't say anything about specific charts, i didn't quote any numbers and i didn't factor in pilot skill. The reason? This is how i would plan for flying and the things i'd take into consideration when flying either side in an online campaign with full difficulty.

Of course, for single missions like COOPS or what we currently have in mission-centric gameplay DF servers things could be much different, but if the multiplayer campaign has sufficient statistics tracking for each team's supplies like available pilots, aircraft, fuel, ammunition, repair timers for ground targets dependent on available resources,etc, things would get very interesting very fast. In fact, it could be the closest we could get to recreating a "what if" battle of Britain with the Luftwaffe flying proper tactics

[kimosabi]

Nice post blackdog. Which makes me wonder how, or if, sunglare off aircrafts will present itself on lower targets. There are countless reports from BoB pilots that mentions a sunglare off the canopy perspex/glass that reveals their bogeys position below.

[Triggaaar]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

Correct me if i'm wrong, but i think i read somewhere that the 110 was faster than both the hurricane and the spitfire.

Do a search and see what you can find. This is from http://www.battleofbritain1940.net/0014.html

"The Messerschmitt Bf110 originally was designed as three seat strategic fighter that had the task of clearing the way for the bomber formations that followed. Soon to become known as the Zerstörer (the Destroyer) they made their presence felt during the early part of the Battle of Britain when the Luftwaffe began their attacks on the Channel convoys. But even at the hands of hand picked elite aircrew, the Bf110 was to prove no match for the Hurricane or Spitfire and soon started to succumb heavy losses. Soon, Bf110 formations were to be escorted themselves by Gruppes of Bf109s and even though the elite Erprobungsgruppe 210 had many major successes, the Bf110 which started out as a fighter escort was relegated to the role of just a fighter bomber after the Battle of Britain. "

"Straight line top speed of the Bf110 was greater than that of the Hurricane, but it could not outrun the Spitfire. Normal practice was to force the Bf110 into a turn where its slow and wide turning circle was its greatest drawback. Another problem for the Bf110 was from surprise attacks by British fighters, where they became vulnerable because of slow acceleration from cruising to top speed. The Bf110 was to suffer heavily during the Battle of Britain. "