Quote:
Originally Posted by RPS69
Your approach is a dogfight one.
On a campaign approach, someone must fly those secondary types you despise, but were much more important than pure fighter ones. They decided more battles than any fighter, and they represented life and death for fallen fighter pilots.
Try to read the german float plane missions over the black sea, or the storch scouting on the eastern front. Those guys got more balls and skill than any fighter pilot.
|
Didn't say I despise them. And I know it is much much more difficult to get a good result in a slower "death trap" plane. And for a whole war, transports and recon for example play a much greater role as the tactical scenario of IL2 is capable of simulating. And as I see it, if you can do that mission in plane A that is way below the performance envelope of a contemporary fighter, it is possible and not that much different in plane B that has 10% more performance. For a fighter though these ten percent are more important IMHO.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Furio
There’s an example that demonstrates this concept beyond any doubt. Probably the single, most decisive dive-bomber attack took place at Midway, the battle in which a handful of SBD Dauntless pilots turned the tide of war. But their success was largely determined by VT8 squadron Devastators, hopelessly obsolete torpedo bombers equipped with unsuitable torpedoes. The Devastators were all shot down, but kept busy the Japanese Zeros, leaving their carriers defenceless against SBD. We can say that, acting as decoy, Devastators decided the battle no less than Dauntlesses.
Probably no one will ever want to fly a Devastator pilot career, and a flyable one would be a dispensable luxury, or a curiosity, but the AI only Devastator is, IMHO, one of best additions ever to TD era Il2, showing how much precious a secondary type can be.
|
I see that differently:
It was a grave mistake to have own planes in the process of rearming while there was a potential American strike under way - and if doing so, then it was sheer folly to not have a massive CAP present.
The first enabled the enemy to strike the carriers with deadly force even with a few hits, the second made it highly propable for the above to happen.
The existing CAP beeing distracted by the Devastators for me is not as decisive (though it helped) - it would IMHO not have mattered if the CAP were at altitude -as three squads of dive bombers arrived nearly at the same time(some fine piloting on that day by American crews).
And it would likley have been enough to hit every carrier once/twice -Akagi as an example, and later in the war there were other carriers that sunk after one or two hits because the hits started inquenchable avgas fires.