Bf-110 is THE fighter

[Kurfürst]

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

[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.

[Kurfürst]

Originally Posted by Oktoberfest

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.

Anytime. Each plane has strenght and weakness.. and team tactics work with all, and the faster the plane and the more guns it have, the better team tactics work. Agility is more a matter of one-on-one fights.. IMHO. When many planes are present, speed is the only sure defense, and quick kills are essential.

I do hope we see you and your ZG on Cliffs of Dover servers mate!

[Oktoberfest]

As soon as the game is playable !

[Blue 5]

Wood and Dempster

Though they may have been correct in this case, their book is pretty dated. Stephen Bungay, Alfred Price, Richard Overy amongst others have written more recent works which - though not perfect - have benefitted from more recent scholarship (as well as the authors' own research).

[Kurfürst]

This is a bit of an off topic, but personally, I do not have that much of an opinion of these new, more recent authors, especially Bungay. Bungay seems to me an extremely wishful neo-conservative author, and there are some glaring errors in his book.

The most notable is IIRC where he famously argues that losses sustained caused LW strenght was falling by some 30% - in fact he quotes the exact same statistical curve as Wood and Dempster some 30 years ago, except the W+D correctly labeled the table that it shows LW strenght in Western Europe - meaning that Bungay doesn't quite get the difference between redeployment and attrition, and strenght reports shown by ie. Murray disprove his so called analysis. The problem is, he has a set concept from the start, a 'revolutionary' one (which basically repeats the same as some authors 50 years ago), and he doesn't really lets the facts get in the way.

Richard Overy is, IMHO, a "serial author", much like Beavor. He's seemingly an expert of every aspect of history. He has read a thousend book, made no actual research himself, formed his opinion, which invariably causes some distortion as things get 'lost in translation' and wrote a 1001st. No thanks. I am interested in the historical facts, and rarely in an author's personal opinion of the facts. There are rare exceptions - for example Wilmott's summarial book on WW2, which I found reasonable, balanced and overall, excellent.

About Price I have mixed feelings. He is a very good writer, and an established air war historian, who is also reasonable, and tends to be as objective as possible; evidently he also makes his own primary research, unlike some others who seem to equally well versed in just about every historical field possible. OTOH, I often get the feeling that he tries to write best sellers, rather than book, deep history books, examplified by the horror that Runciman unleased upon the world under the disguise of a book about the Crusades. :p

Basically the British side of the Battle is very well covered, in depth, by British authors, but the contrast is striking when they start writing about the German side. Its obvious that they have little understanding, little or no research, and they repeat each other or some old clichés. And I have my doubts about the so-called recent research by generic historians - the British Goverment did a couple of studies and some data collection immidiately after the war, and basically all post-war authors repeat the same papers, and give varying, and often preconceptional conclusions based on that. They want to tell a given story, rather than write a good analytical history IMHO.

Personally I like Hooton for this reason, he seem to rely on a lot of German sources when writing on the German side of the Battle. The same goes to Foreman. But what I'd really like to see is a BoB book by Jochen or somebody of the caliber; rumor is at TOCH that one such of a horror depth book is in preperation, an ultimate bible, with every little detail possible... we have to wait and see.

[Il2Pongo]

then someone should tell that to the poor residents of Warsaw.

The only way the Germans were going to win the Battle of Britain is if the Brits quit.
The British defended with one hand behind their backs and still won quite easily.
Is almost like the Germans had not designed their airforce to attack a well defended country, but the British had designed theirs to stop attacks on their country.

The BOB played into the strengths of the RAF. And fully away from the strengths of the LW.

As to the 110, in a war of attrition, it was more expensive then the germans could afford in both resources and people. By making the germans think that 109s would not need the range to escort the bombers, and diverting scarce resources from an actual war wining plane that they had, the 110 was a tragic german mistake.

But even without it, and with that many more 109s, the result would have been the same. The whole strat bombing concept that you can force a country to submit if it is ready to resist you is flawed, and has been proven flawed. But the allies could afford to have a flawed concept and still win the war. The germans could not afford flawed concepts like the 110. Their chance to win the war was so small that such a critical diversion during their formative pre war build up was very significant.

[Flying Pencil]

Originally Posted by Kurfürst

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

Completely agree.

Their seems to be a trend that allied players think they are instantly "uber" becuase they have planes that won the war.

Then reality smacks them around, but are too thick to realize they are at fault.