Guides for Best use of Axis Air units Turn 1

[akluke]

Just swapped across from WITE to WITE2 and looking for some guides/info on how to get anywhere near the historic first turn losses inflicted on the Soviet AF. Have let the AI run it with repeated results around 120-140 axis acft lost for about 220 Soviet acft. Still ploughing through the manual and just experimenting with some T1 strategies. Any help/advice appreciated. I did look at the Hobby General video and noted that he seemed to let the AI run turn 1 air with nearly 4000 soviet acft destroyed ...

AKL

[✪ STⒶR ✪ ⓭]

On the first day I set up bombing missions on enemy airfields that contain fighter planes. After that the rest of my planes go in ground support.
Since the soviet fighters are all destroyed the bombers who support their units get anihilated during ground combat engagements since tehy try to support their ground units but lack fighter escorts

[HB]

Originally posted by akluke:

Just swapped across from WITE to WITE2 and looking for some guides/info on how to get anywhere near the historic first turn losses inflicted on the Soviet AF. Have let the AI run it with repeated results around 120-140 axis acft lost for about 220 Soviet acft. Still ploughing through the manual and just experimenting with some T1 strategies. Any help/advice appreciated. I did look at the Hobby General video and noted that he seemed to let the AI run turn 1 air with nearly 4000 soviet acft destroyed ...

AKL

Look at air directives, remove all recon sorties, you dont need them and 100+- will get shot down, look at the assets assigned to each mission, override auto and give all of AGN sorties 15 ftrs min as escorts, to 30 bombers ( if you play on hard difficulty double the escorts strength) assign all air groups to be used so one Gruppe is not over worked, delete mission that are outside ftr cover, you dont want un escorted Bmbs being bounced.

For AGC go withy 20 ftrs escort to 30, look at the box that has the range from the target hex, expand those to include more air bases in range, but reduce the number of strikes on all by 1 down to min of 1), again remove mission that you cant cover with Ftrs, assign all assets to be used. Romove Me 110 from being used and assign a new air directive of Air superiority over a 10 hex square in teh centre where you expect to attack with ground forces in the movement phase.

AGS as above. Relocate the Ftr group guarding the oil fields, and bring it north and swap it with a Romanian recon Gruppe, resupply the air field after you pick immediate re deploy rather than a planned on.

Now look at your air bases, change all Me110 from bmb to Ftr, dont give them drop tanks, have drop tanks on the Me109, dont have drop tanks on stukas and swap the bomb load to more and smaller bombs, check the swap for all of the type so you dont have to dom eah one on its own.

Save this set up, then run it, look at the results, if you see a mission is getting hammered check to make sure it has Ftr escorts and has all the a viable assets to chose from picked, or increase the number of escorts, re load the save and run again, rinse and repeat till your happy with outcome.

[akluke]

Many thanks for your responses.

Cheers,

AKL

[HB]

Originally posted by akluke:

Many thanks for your responses.

Cheers,

AKL

Enjoy the game! if you play on hard or higher the SU AI will be very responsive and not taken by surprise as much, and the first turn air war may not work out how you think it ought to froma historical perspective, without a lot of work, you can always use an easy setting for T 1 air phase and get a surprise attack for a lot less losses, and not have to change much, then switch to the higher level for the ground war and going forward.