Slitherine

I totally disagree - air defence units were never used to defend against ground attacks by choice. They were used because they were "there" and sometimes were effective - the 88mm Flak is the best example.

A general woudl never have deliberately chosen to put Air defence out as his first line of defence.

To anyone who knows anything about history they will rightly expect their ground units to easily overwhelm air defence.

In my opinion they have to be changed!

I agree they get some reasonable defence bonus to withstand an attack, but is should not be that prominent as it is now, except eg. you have switched your 88`s from AA to AT mode, than of course they should be deadly, as outside AT, Germans also used them as Artillery against ground units.

And I agree, if you attack AA units, they have by default powerful firepower, so it can shoot back and defend. I have a feeling they just need some toning down on the defensive side, but not become completely defenceless.

I totally disagree - air defence units were never used to defend against ground attacks by choice. They were used because they were "there" and sometimes were effective - the 88mm Flak is the best example.

A general woudl never have deliberately chosen to put Air defence out as his first line of defence.

As far as I know, 88s were used even as field artillery!

http://www.achtungpanzer.com/88mm-flak- ... htm#high_4 is an interesting site for flak 88 operational variety.
Say because of lack of other material? I dont know but in fact 88s were used as deadly AT units, especially during the Soviet counter-offensive in the late war. They remained deadly until bigger guns could be loaded to allied and russian tanks (so these could destroy 88s from distance)

IIRC it was because they turned the 88 AA on to the Matildas in the desert that they realised its AT capabilities, too. But that was in defense rather than attack, of course.

@Kerensky

Not sure I understand what you did there. I am not familiar with the massed attack rule. Are you saying that by having several units next to a defender that each individual attack will be more successful? If so, I was unaware of that, thanx.

Still, in your picture you have a huge number of men, it should not be necessary to devote 1/2 of your forces to assist in one attack, I think that would cripple the rest of your attacks for the turn.

To those I that say suppress with artillery first, yes that is what I do, but if there are several of them, all of your artillery will be tied up. Put some artillery behind the aa unit, and it gets worse. Put a couple T34 tanks behind them, and you have a counterattack on your artillery with units that should have been engaged by your tanks and stukas rather than having them all tied up suppressing AA units. What I'm trying to say is that it snowballs into a non historical battle that favors the defender.

Another thing, German blitzkriegs quickly outran artillery....

dave123 wrote:@Kerensky

Not sure I understand what you did there. I am not familiar with the massed attack rule. Are you saying that by having several units next to a defender that each individual attack will be more successful? If so, I was unaware of that, thanx.

viewtopic.php?t=22899&highlight=mass+attack

With enough initiative difference, now look what happens. None of those surrounding Germans units have fired or attacked to soften up the AD gun, I merely use them to change initiative, as an alternative to going into equipment.pzdat and manually changing initiative.

Kerensky wrote:For the record, there was a variant of the Do335 Arrow that was a fighter-bomber, but I agree, it was best known as a fighter.

Yes, initially it was fast bomber. There is a topic on this forum where I explained why Pfeil in A version should be regarded as a tact bomber with active AA and not fighter.

On a related note: for most green people the most important allied fighter is P-51D Mustang, which saw action just at the end of war.
The real heroes are:
- Hurricane, which saved England in 1940
- Spitfire, which appeared in bigger numbers after Battle of Britain and always was a tough enemy for Luftwaffe
- Mustang B/C, which saved strategic bombing raids over Germany and probably did much more damage than the famous D version

And lots of other machines used here and there.

Regarding Hurricane:

Version IIB had 12 machineguns, 2 of them were usually removed; IIC had 4* 20mm cannons; IID had 2*40mm cannons. The last one should be regarded as tact bomber, as the plane got old - and 40mm cannons weren't the best against enemy fighters.

You forgot the best was actually the P-38 Lightning which was used in both theaters.