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| | Message text Tornade wrote:
litehoof wrote: Tornade wrote: litehoof wrote: Tornade wrote: Wishgamer wrote: Regis wrote: If they retired with honor, then they as still considered as on the map for victory purposes... Aha!! Ok, thanks Regis, yes they sure did. assuming the game was a fighter sweep of some sort...so the side that retreated has been swept from the sky...and cannot possibly score a victory of ANY sort you CANNOT achieve air superiority by shooting down one aircraft and running away...this whole retiring with honour business is just nonsense Actually, a fighter sweep that kills an enemy and gets away is a win. Combat usually boils down to attrition. Killing an enemy and flying away may not give you superiority that day but over time it will. I guess it all depends on what the immediate objective is. well my understanding of the objective of a fighter sweep is to clear the opposing force from the sky...so if you fail to do that...then you fail in the mission no matter how many planes you shoot down... clearing the sky of enemy fighters leave the enemy on the ground vulnerable to the ground attack planes...or the bombers...or the recon aircraft killing a fighter or two and running away may look good when tallying kills....but wont amount to a hill of beans when the bombers are leveling your industrial centres...unopposed fighters are straffing your airbases...and the ground troops are pushing forward under the air umbrella that was not cleared away by your thinking Litehoof...the German airforce would have eventually defeated the Allies in World War Two instead of being crushed the way it actually was I beg to differ. The Allies didn't control the airspace over Germany until the end of the war. By shooting down one fighter after another and returning home they gained superiority as Germany failed to produce new pilots to replace them. True that the actual goal is to control the airspace in the immediate future in some cases. Mostly WWI was a stagnant war and planners could look forward to thinking in terms of months and not hours. An actual attack may need to sweep the skies, but a campaign may need to just wear out an opponent. Again the goal of the mission would indicate if a kill and run would be a success or not. differ as you choose Germany enjoyed air superiority at the beginning of the war...loosing it to the western Allies in the summer of 1940 and the failure of the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britan...Germany shot down more fighter planes than the British did...but shooting down fighter planes did nothing to cripple the British industry or eliminate the ability of the RAF to defend their airspace...RAF pilots consistantly ignored the escorting fighters to go after the more important bombers because those were the targets that really mattered...a fighter plane can do little damage beyond being a nuissance and is essentially a defensive weapon i dont need to go into the details of just how decisive the Allied bombing campaign was...or just how ineffective the German fighter planes were in interfering with it...they caused losses to be sure but never enough to halt the campaign entirely...the German fighters were first riddled by the massed gunfire of the Allied bomber formations...then swarmed by clouds of escorting fighters and finally smashed as they sat on the ground with empty fuel tanks...they never lacked recruits...but there was never enough time or fuel to train them properly...Germany lost the air war simply because they did not understand the importance of strategic bombing...they produced magnificent fighter aircraft and arguably had the best fighter pilots in the air...but without heavy bombers they could never hope to strike a crippling blow at their enemies you say that the Allies did not gain air superiority until the end of the war...but that is not really accurate...from the time that the Allies began escorted daylight raids in 1943 it was clear that the Luftwaffe could do very little to interfere with the comings and goings of the bomber formations...by the end of the war a German aircraft could hardly take to the air without being pounced on by ten times as many Allied fighters...even the invincible jets were slaughtered as they attempted to land at their home airfields by hordes of long range fighter planes orbiting, waiting for just such a target...transport targets...troop formations...communication facilities...none of these could operarte during daylight hours without fear of overwhelming attack by Allied aircraft...that's what air superiority is all about thw whole idea of air superiority is to be able to successfully apply air power to your tactical and strategic objectives
First of all, that's WWII, NOT WWI. So the doctrine is different.
Second of all, the stratigic Bombing did little to really cripple the German industrial machine. It forced it underground, but in general, they managed to keep new planes and tanks, and equipment up to date. It was the lose of the oil fields, both in North Afica, and the Ukraine that really crippled them. They were unable to move the equipement they created. They managed to build up quite a large force of Armour, and Airplanes for the battle of the Bulge, but the lack of fuel created a lot of problems, but in moving vehicles and supplies, and in mounting air strikes. They certainly did mount airstrikes, even as late as the Bulge. So it was the lack of fuel that was the problem, that and of course, simply lack of manpower to fight on both fronts.
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