Bf-110 is THE fighter

[Flying Pencil]

Originally Posted by bongodriver

it didn't do so well in real life though, I think they withdrew it during the battle of britain and made it a night fighter because they lost so many.

Herman Goering ordered them to fly close escort the bombers, thus lost all their advantages.

They are strictly a first-strike warplane, and need close cooperation in case EA got on 6 (the MG-15 TG was hardly adequate).

The Hurricane was slower, but can out maneuver the 110, a Spit was more then match.

OH, the purpose of the 2ed crew, the TGer, was NOT for the BB gun in rear, but to switch the 60 round, 15kg MG-FF cannon magazines, a difficult task even in level light!

Ok, I forgot how much the 60 round drum weighs, but know for fact the MG-15 magazine is 4.5Kg loaded, pretty hefty.

[Flying Pencil]

Originally Posted by BlackbusheFlyer

Most wartime accounts of 110's from RAF pilots gave them little credence and both hurricane and spitfire pilots felt they were more than a match for the 110. GC Johnnie Johnson wrote in his book 'Wing Leader' an account in his early days from some Czech Hurricane pilots: (page 35)

"The 110 didn't give you any trouble. In fact it was slower than the hurricane and was of little account. As soon as they were bounced, the 110 pilots formed a defensive circle. But this was easy to break up, as long as the 109's weren't lurking above. The 109's! Yes, you soon knew when they were about!"

Personally rather than relying on theorists and statisticians, I prefer to trust the word of the guys who flew against them.

Interesting.
Yes, actual combat reports are worth more then statistical.
Then again, circle defenses (luftberry circles) are not that good. Bad tactics IMHO.

[Flying Pencil]

Originally Posted by He111

Can you change the armament in COD ?? I would like to see the rear gunner with a 20mm cannon, then lets see how vulnerable it is!

Actually Arm all the He111 with 20mm dorsal guns then 109s can do what they like! LOL!


He111.

Never had 20mm, but did get MG-81z, twin 7.92 BB's, 3600 RPM :O

111 had 13mm installed

[Oktoberfest]

Originally Posted by 123-Wulf-123

The rule that didn't allow us to fly it.

Because we were rolling up the missions in no time flat.

And the bloody Spitfairies whined because we kept blasting them out of the sky becuase the clownasses kept attacking 110s and flying in front of them........

The rule that when they brought it in meant many WC veterans left WC..... THAT RULE.

Ask Oktoberfest.

Yeah, we wiped so many asses with our 1942 Bf110G2 vs P51, Late Spit IX, Tempests and P47s....

And we managed to strike the ground targets as well.

Well, when you have the good team tactics and get a crowd of 6 to 10 Bf110 flying together and working with brain... It can result to pretty unexpected result.

Training and team tactics will always do better in results than superior aircraft capacities with no discipline and no tactics.

That's how we managed, for example, in a fight with 6 110 vs 6 late war single engine fighters (2x51, 3xspits and 1xtempest) to get a 6 to 0 kill at 5000 meters. And this was not an exception.

This part is good memories.

And indeed, WC mods changed their rules for a few reasons:

- First, the map designed to last 3 hours lasted 20 to 35 minutes because we destroyed all of their targets pretty much quicker that they expected. This leaded the red team to two types of frustration.

-Second reason is frustration number 1 : all the P47, P51 and Spit IX pilots that wanted to use their absolute altitude advantage were pissed off. They spent 25 minutes to climb and cruise at 10 000 + meters (where they know that they are out of reach of any axis plane), but nobody was coming to fight against them anymore, because we gathered all the possible escort around the 110 group to get cover while attacking the ground targets, which of course,are below 10 k.
Those (astronauts) pilots couldn't figure out why they were losing and started whining like mad to the WC moderators about us. They didn't want to change their tactics to protect their targets (which would have meant to take a risk) and wanted the rules to adapt the opposition to their style of gameplay instead of adapting to the gameplay of the server.

-Third reason is the second frustration : some of the red team pilots (roughly the half that didn't play "fly me to the moon") tried to protect their targets. However, heavily outnumbered by the axis team because of the adopted tactics (fly in a pack with 5 to 10 FWs and 109s to cover the 5 to 10 attacking 110s), they just got wiped out one after the other, unable to carry on their CAP missions. They too started to complain (I don't say to whine, they actually tried to do their missions) because the game became too difficult for them.

-Fourth reason : The inadequation between clichés and reality. Most of the online pilots have read in all books and seen in all movies how the 110 was a sitting duck starting from mid - 1940 (BoB era). So as soon as they see a 110, they jump on it thinking "Hey, that's 200 easy points!"

However, given the 110 defensive and offensive tactics we developped AND the always present escort, they always got shot down, most of the times by 110s, and without doing much damage.
This couldn't suit their perception of reality, so they started to say that the 110 was an unfair advantage in the Blue team because it was comparable, in performance, to the P38 L Late... And at the end, the moderators adopted this Point of View.

That's how everything was made to give more and more disadvantages to the 110 squadron, eventually leading the team to disband through frustration and a big feeling of injustice (that's how we were rewarded for using an outdated 1942 design against late 44 allied planes?)
A certain number of vets of Warclouds left the server. Diplomacy was not used well at all at that time either, which didn't help to keep the heads cool.

But honestly, so much bullshit was written to justify this decision that I lost pretty much the will to continue to manage a 110 squadron.

I fly it still a bit and manage to do things well from time to time (2 month ago, using BnZ only, I managed a 26 to 1 k/d ratio, just for info). Red pilots can also be surprised to see a 110 above 9 k... And remember that IL2 version of the 110 is undermodelled, be it in speed and max reachable altitude !

110 was a very good plane in 1940. It was flown by the best pilots of the Luftwaffe as Göring wanted it to be elite units. That's because they were heavily misused in the BoB that they suffered so many losses and didn't do as well as they did over Poland, France, and the Soviet Union....

I think that the 110 will be the absolute terror in CloDo because all axis pilots that adopted BnZ tactics in IL2 will transpose those tactics to CloDo while using the 110.

[csThor]

If you chain an aircraft like the 110 to the slow-moving bomber formations the results are predictable. The defending fighters can bounce them at will and they're too heavy to get to any speeds useful in combat. Fact is they had the range, the firepower and the speed to be used in fighter sweeps which could have created all sorts of issues for the RAF (such as attacking squadrons taking off or assembling, strafing runs against airfields and parked aircraft, picking off damaged fighters trying to limp back to their base etc). But the Luftwaffe choose not to. Talk about utter failure of common sense.

[Blue 5]

Fact is they had the range, the firepower and the speed to be used in fighter sweeps which could have created all sorts of issues for the RAF (such as attacking squadrons taking off or assembling, strafing runs against airfields and parked aircraft, picking off damaged fighters trying to limp back to their base etc). But the Luftwaffe choose not to. Talk about utter failure of common sense.

Apart from Er. 210, which did a superb job. Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, this was not lost on Germany's opponents

[David Hayward]

Criticizing the Germans for parking their fighters next to the bombers instead of sweeping out ahead is easy to do with 20/20 hindsight. But the Americans did the same thing when they were first able to send P-47s and P-51s to escort bomber missions. It wasn't until later that they realized that sending the fighters out ahead was a better tactic.

[Kurfürst]

Good post Oktoberfest. Should I say... sadly typical human behaviour?

[Blue 5]

Criticizing the Germans for parking their fighters next to the bombers instead of sweeping out ahead is easy to do with 20/20 hindsight.

They didn't; it was more nuanced than that; JG26 – with the blessing of Goering – worked around a 3-tier system that saw one Gruppe on sweep, one on high cover and one on close. It was sometimes adopted by other units. The rationale behind the 110s being used as close support was to free up 109s for less constrained escort. Had the 109s been present in sufficient strength then the heavier fighters might have been allowed to operate more imaginatively as Er. 210 was.

The 8th tried something similar once they had enough aircraft and experience; one squadron ahead, one above and one close. They could pursue retiring fighters if the bombers remained covered.

[Oktoberfest]

Originally Posted by Kurfürst

Good post Oktoberfest. Should I say... sadly typical human behaviour?

Thx Kurf,

I just hate it when people claim common clichés like absolute reality without testing.

And just for the info for other people who might put a doubt, on Warclouds alone, I had over 4000 sorties with the 110, with an average of 20 minutes eac, and longest sortie of 2 hours and 32 minutes. This gives you an idea of how much I could try and improve my concepts about fighting in the 110. And Warclouds is at least a "competitive" environment.