Bf-110 is THE fighter

[David Hayward]

Originally Posted by Blue 5

The rationale behind the 110s being used as close support was to free up 109s for less constrained escort.

Which means the Germans already realized that the 110 was a pig. They were hoping that very few Brits would get past the 109s, and that the 110s would be able to handle those which did. Had the Germans thought the 110s could take on Spitfires and Hurricanes on equal terms they would not have hid them behind the 109s.

[Blue 5]

Which means the Germans already realized that the 110 was a pig.

Possibly something along those lines but less binary. Fom memory, Fink (Bomber Commander, Luflotte 2) and Osterkamp (Fighter Commander Luftlotte 2) seem to have come to this arrangement to allow the JG to maximise their exchange rate with Fighter Command (Osterkamp appeared to be worried about draining the 109 strenght prior to the actual landing).

Having the 110s as close support was the outcome, though it does have an obvious disadvantage given the design. Maybe the lack of Zerstorer spokesman at their meeting was the critical factor?

[David Hayward]

Originally Posted by Blue 5

Having the 110s as close support was the outcome, though it does have an obvious disadvantage given the design. Maybe the lack of Zerstorer spokesman at their meeting was the critical factor?

The design put the 110 at a disadvantage no matter what tactics they used. I'm sure we have all seen the gun camera video of a Spitfire easily turning out of the line of fire of a 110 planted in it's six. Hiding it behind the 109s was probably the best of the various crap sandwiches at the table.

[Kurfürst]

Originally Posted by Blue 5

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.

Indeed - German tactics were far more complex than just the simplified, common version of 'everyone flies close escort'. Wood and Dempster describe these tactics:

"By September, standard tactics for raids had become an amalgam of techniques. A Freie Jagd would precede the main attack formations. The bombers would fly in at altitudes between 16,000 feet (4,900 m) and 20,000 feet (6,100 m), closely escorted by fighters. Escorts were divided into two parts (usually Gruppen), some operating in close contact with the bombers, and others a few hundred yards away and a little above. If the formation was attacked from the starboard, the starboard section engaged the attackers, the top section moving to starboard and the port section to the top position. If the attack came from the port side the system was reversed. British fighters coming from the rear were engaged by the rear section and the two outside sections similarly moving to the rear. If the threat came from above, the top section went into action while the side sections gained height to be able to follow RAF fighters down as they broke away. If attacked, all sections flew in defensive circles. These tactics were skilfully evolved and carried out, and were extremely difficult to counter.

Its a good hint for Blue pilots, too. Basically on bomber escort I'd fly the 110 as top cover, lurking above the bombers and waiting for somebody making a try.. BnZ works splendidly in the 110. When I was flying a Hurri in Battleground Europe, a well flown 110C, fighting in the vertical was literally untouchable..

[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.

[123-Wulf-123]

Originally Posted by 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.

Excellent and correct