Bf110 Defensive Circle

[Erkki]

Originally Posted by csThor

I always thought that the Bf 110 was grossly misused in the BoB. With its relatively high speed and devastating armament it would have been more sensible to sent it on far-ranging fighter sweeps pretty much like the P-51 was used a few years later. It could have disrupted the stream of RAF squadrons forming up over their airfields, it could have made low-level strafing runs against airfields and it could have picked off stragglers and damaged aircraft trying to get back to their bases. It had the range, the speed and firepower to do so ... It was just used in the most pointless way one can think of.

There was one amusing scenario way back on the old german Warbirds server where I flew in a Bf 109 G-6 and we were supposed to escort Bf 110 G-2 packed for bomber hunting. Well, things didn't work out quite as planned ... the Bf 110s suddenly found themselves over an untidy gaggle of P-51s and when the contact reports came in we started sweating in our 109s. But then the chat buffer exploded with kill messages when, as one P-51 pilot called it afterwards, "it started raining 110s". I looked once at the kill messages, then twice ... then came a disbelieving "Am I seeing things? Those 110s killing the Mustangs?" And finally our whole 109 group was laughing via TeamSpeak. I think the Zerstörer guys got some fifteen or twenty P-51s in the process but no B-17.

To the above... Apparently the few times the Bf 110s were not assigned to escorts, plus Erp.Gr.210, they were rather successfull both air to ground and air to air. In a strategy game Eagle Day (and the redone, Gary Grigsby's Eagle Day to Bombing The Reich), the Bf 110s are artifically forced to escort and bombing only(latter for just 2 units), because "it would be a game killer" if allowed to sweep or do free hunt.