Strats for Strat Bombers

[noobermenschen]

Playing my second campaign, decided to go with Norway. With their aluminum production and the convenient location close to Northwest Germany my goal was to build AIR FORTRESS NORWAY: Heavy fighters, strat bombers, airfields and a big ass radar in Ostland (Thank you @Secret Master for that tip).

It's now May 1945 and things have not gone exactly as planned. Long story short:

Spoiler

- My Allies (probably UK) managed to stick a landing in Holland, which drew off the German garrisons so AIR FORTRESS NORWAY became WALTZ INTO DENMARK WITH MY HOME GUARD DIVISIONS NORWAY. Germany has not been amused by this but AI is AI so they alternate pounding me back into Schleswig-Holstien with packing up and leaving to put out another fire elsewhere. As a result I hold a rough triangle of Hamburg-Stettin-Dresden (including Berlin) between the Elbe and Oder rivers on a 1-2 divisions per province front - for the time being.

- The Soviets are in trouble. Germany attacked in Feb 1941 and Japan jumped in, now Turkey has joined the Axis (second time in two campaigns for me). Stalingrad is the last major victory point city still in Russian hands and the Heer is knocking on the door. So I have a half dozen divisions in the far north ready to move into Kola if and when the SU capitulates.

- The Allied beachhead alternates between just about to break through the Rhine to just about to get Dunkirked. At this point they are in trouble again with a huge Vichy offensive that may yet wipe them out. UK did land in Eastern Germany/Northern Poland and linked up with my bridgehead but I am not placing a lot of stock in their success.

- The Nazi war machine may be showing some cracks. Germany is at Scraping the Barrel and I haven't seen a full strength Panzer division the entire war. I am too new to the game to be sure if this is significant yet.

- I am considering my options to get things moving, but will soon run short of manpower (currently at All Adults Serve) and civilian factories (all those friggen dockyards that I captured and don't need have messed up my factory ratio). I will likely research CAS and heavy tanks to best utilize what manpower I have left, but will need that sweet sweet steel and chromium near Murmask before I can afford the big iron. I have one building slot left for a nuclear reactor, but will not have my first nuke before 1948.

Now for the subject at hand: I have about 800 heavy fighters, mostly in wings of 200 but have split one to keep those pesky NAVs at bay. I also have 400 strats in two wings.

The heavy fighters + big ass radar has worked out very well. Norway dominates the skies in Scandinavia and Northern Germany, and I can escort bombers as far as the Mediterranean. I have also tried to throw a fighter wing over any Allied landings to give them air superiority.

The strats have certainly buffed up my warscore and seem to do some damage where they bomb, but they haven't really flattened anything. I started bombing Eastern and Northwest Germany, but with the Nazi capitol in Vienna I have been hitting Western Germany, Czechoslovakia and the Alpine region.

So has anyone used strat bombers as a war winner? In HoI2 playing as UK I loved bombing German infrastructure down to zero so they couldn't supply their army, could that work in HoI4 or can UK even build enough bombers by 1939 to really damage German supply lines? Do you use them effectively as USA or any other nation and how many bombers do you need to make it work?

 

[Secret Master]

My Allies (probably UK) managed to stick a landing in Holland, which drew off the German garrisons so AIR FORTRESS NORWAY became WALTZ INTO DENMARK WITH MY HOME GUARD DIVISIONS NORWAY. Germany has not been amused by this but AI is AI so they alternate pounding me back into Schleswig-Holstien with packing up and leaving to put out another fire elsewhere. As a result I hold a rough triangle of Hamburg-Stettin-Dresden (including Berlin) between the Elbe and Oder rivers on a 1-2 divisions per province front - for the time being.

I mean, at this point, I'd be throwing the playbook out the window. You hold Berlin, but have 800 STR. The Soviets are in trouble, but the Germans are cracking. I guess you could break out some liquor and ponder what Churchill would do. (Which would be drink the liquor and come up with a new strategy.)

I don't even know if strategic bombing is the right answer to any of the problems you are facing. They can help, but it sounds like a gigantic mess.

I will provide some guidance on using the bombers. Here's a handy checklist.

1) Put them all in one wing for most attacks. There may be time to split them up and hit multiple air regions, but concentration of force is the right answer most of the time.

2) Research all techs in the strategic destruction tree. Go daylight bombing. Get the last tech that gives even more bombing efficiency at the bottom. You will thank me later.

3) If you have enough fighters to suppress the Luftwaffe completely (as in, they can't beat you in the skies away from home), focus your bombing in a single air region for weeks on end. Monitor the "buildings damaged" report on the air region window under Days (so you can track how many buildings were blown up over the course of a week instead of a month). If you go 1 to 2 weeks with few buildings damaged, you may have killed everything in the region. Move to another one. If the Luftwaffe can contest your bombing and has more fighters than you, move the bombers around to air regions where the Luftwaffe isn't flying.

4) You can't tell what factories are bombed, but you can tell if infrastructure, AA guns, RADAR, air fields, synthetic plants, ports, and forts are damaged. Use the state view to see how badly damaged some regions are. You see a state with repaired stuff, hit it again. (Humans will refrain from repairing pointless things, but the AI will try to repair all kinds of stuff.) Note that synthetic plants show up on the resource screen. When they are damaged, the resources they produce disappear from the resource screen.

5) If the Soviets are hurting, and you see infrastructure in the occupied Soviet Union that is intact, go ahead and bomb that too. Killing infrastructure the Germans are using should hurt their supply situation.

6) You might also bomb the infrastructure where the Germans are trying to push the Allies into the sea.

7) I have no idea what ministers Norway has. If you have a minister that affects night flying for aircraft, appoint him...

8) ...which leads to my statement. Bomb 24 hours a day with no retreat. Night bombing is crap, but the goal is to keep the pressure up. Since you can escort your bombers everywhere, flying at night might encourage the Luftwaffe to intercept at night. Then you can shoot some more planes down. And if you do some extra damage, that's great, too.



Keep in mind that a strategic bombing campaign is meant to do a few things.

1) Damage the enemy's economy.

2) Force the enemy air force to fight the strategic bombing, not run air superiority on the front lines of whatever combat is happening.

3) Divert resources from land and naval warfare to the air war. If the enemy builds AA guns because your bombing hurts, then you have diverted CIC away from projects like building more MIC.

When you bomb Germany, she has to make a choice: fight Bomber Command or the Soviets with the Luftwaffe. In SP, the AI can't do both. If she splits the Luftwaffe, she can't oppose the bombing effectively nor gain air superiority over the Ukraine. If she ignores the bombing, you destroy her industry eventually. If she opposes the bombing, the Soviets gain air superiority and blunt German offensives.

 

[noobermenschen]

I mean, at this point, I'd be throwing the playbook out the window. You hold Berlin, but have 800 STR. The Soviets are in trouble, but the Germans are cracking. I guess you could break out some liquor and ponder what Churchill would do. (Which would be drink the liquor and come up with a new strategy.)

I don't even know if strategic bombing is the right answer to any of the problems you are facing. They can help, but it sounds like a gigantic mess.

I will provide some guidance on using the bombers. Here's a handy checklist.

1) Put them all in one wing for most attacks. There may be time to split them up and hit multiple air regions, but concentration of force is the right answer most of the time.

2) Research all techs in the strategic destruction tree. Go daylight bombing. Get the last tech that gives even more bombing efficiency at the bottom. You will thank me later.

3) If you have enough fighters to suppress the Luftwaffe completely (as in, they can't beat you in the skies away from home), focus your bombing in a single air region for weeks on end. Monitor the "buildings damaged" report on the air region window under Days (so you can track how many buildings were blown up over the course of a week instead of a month). If you go 1 to 2 weeks with few buildings damaged, you may have killed everything in the region. Move to another one. If the Luftwaffe can contest your bombing and has more fighters than you, move the bombers around to air regions where the Luftwaffe isn't flying.

4) You can't tell what factories are bombed, but you can tell if infrastructure, AA guns, RADAR, air fields, synthetic plants, ports, and forts are damaged. Use the state view to see how badly damaged some regions are. You see a state with repaired stuff, hit it again. (Humans will refrain from repairing pointless things, but the AI will try to repair all kinds of stuff.) Note that synthetic plants show up on the resource screen. When they are damaged, the resources they produce disappear from the resource screen.

5) If the Soviets are hurting, and you see infrastructure in the occupied Soviet Union that is intact, go ahead and bomb that too. Killing infrastructure the Germans are using should hurt their supply situation.

6) You might also bomb the infrastructure where the Germans are trying to push the Allies into the sea.

7) I have no idea what ministers Norway has. If you have a minister that affects night flying for aircraft, appoint him...

8) ...which leads to my statement. Bomb 24 hours a day with no retreat. Night bombing is crap, but the goal is to keep the pressure up. Since you can escort your bombers everywhere, flying at night might encourage the Luftwaffe to intercept at night. Then you can shoot some more planes down. And if you do some extra damage, that's great, too.



Keep in mind that a strategic bombing campaign is meant to do a few things.

1) Damage the enemy's economy.

2) Force the enemy air force to fight the strategic bombing, not run air superiority on the front lines of whatever combat is happening.

3) Divert resources from land and naval warfare to the air war. If the enemy builds AA guns because your bombing hurts, then you have diverted CIC away from projects like building more MIC.

When you bomb Germany, she has to make a choice: fight Bomber Command or the Soviets with the Luftwaffe. In SP, the AI can't do both. If she splits the Luftwaffe, she can't oppose the bombing effectively nor gain air superiority over the Ukraine. If she ignores the bombing, you destroy her industry eventually. If she opposes the bombing, the Soviets gain air superiority and blunt German offensives.

That is the one downside to playing minor powers - When your allies jack things up it's hard to retrieve the situation for them. Per your advice:

1) I already have both wings hitting the Alpine Region, with 200 fighters to keep the Axis from disrupting them.

2) Done and done. I went Daylight Bombing and I think I the two doctrines at the bottom aren't mutually exclusive (that's a little confusing sometimes, I am going back and researching a couple of air doctrines that weren't in exclusive branches).

3 & 4) I have been monitoring daily progress but will start looking at the charts, which will likely help more than seeing "0.0 buildings bombed yesterday, time to move on".

5 & 6) It may be too late to help Ivan (I fear it will be a bad day for the Allies when that front collapses), but I might give Vichy a taste of Norwegian air power and see if that will help the Allies out. I may have to have my two bomber wings in separate regions to pull that off though.

7) I don't think I have a night bombing guy, but I might switch my Air Reformer to the Air Safety guy, I'm losing more planes to landing accidents than combat right now.

The Luftwaffe seems to have given up on defeating my bombers, but i will keep trying to distract Germany's considerable resources (They already have Construction Repair as their permanent focus). I will likely throttle back my Strat production once I have CAS III researched but will keep a couple of factories going to keep my existing wings up to strength.

Thank you for the advice! Anyone else have any favorite tricks they use for their strats?

 

[SgtHydra]

Wars unfortunately are won by land units, not by strat bombing.

Tac, CAS, and fighters obviously are worth getting; but really all strat bombing does is cause the enemy to have a traffic jam in their Construction tab. This might seem worthwhile, but it really isn't. All military IC spent on a strategic bomber is IC not spent on basic infantry, fighters, and more useful units.

It's both an opportunity cost problem, and a 'victory points matter more than anything else' problem.

 

[noobermenschen]

Wars unfortunately are won by land units, not by strat bombing.

Tac, CAS, and fighters obviously are worth getting; but really all strat bombing does is cause the enemy to have a traffic jam in their Construction tab. This might seem worthwhile, but it really isn't. All military IC spent on a strategic bomber is IC not spent on basic infantry, fighters, and more useful units.

It's both an opportunity cost problem, and a 'victory points matter more than anything else' problem.

When you have 3 million pops, you don't have much INF to spend IC on.

Well I've made it to October 1945, and amazingly so did the Soviets (and every frontline state there has it's infrastructure trashed already), though the Germans are still at the gates of Stalingrad and the Japanese are attacking Tashkent - An oh-by-the-way I forgot to mention a couple of major details: Japan is a monster with Chinese puppets and 500 divisions who conquered the British Raj, though the Allies are taking it back (as the Dominion of India ), which may explain their lackluster effort in Europe. And the USA, faced with two huge Axis powers running riot all over Eurasia, nuked Rome.

I checked my air campaign charts as advised and my boys surely had been bombing stuff in the Alpines - Then I checked state stats and found they had been bombing Northern Italy instead of the German capitol.

Switched to Northwestern Germany and Northern France to help out the Allied beachhead now centered in Belgium, and it always seems on the verge of triumph or disaster but is still hanging on. Then everything came into focus about Secret Master's advice on concentration of effort - Looking over the one state left in Eastern Germany the Allies don't occupy, and which i stopped bombing some time ago...

...there was a nuclear reactor.

I threw every bomber I had at that one state and I can assure you 500+ strat bombers can wreck 10 infrastructure in a one state region very quickly. I then scraped up four divisions to raid the place - captured the reactor and the victory point province in the state and DE-molished that sumbitch just as soon as I could. Would have been nice to hold onto but I do not have the forces to do that yet.

To add insult to injury from that raid I picked up a refinery I may yet be able to keep - German divisions are now badly understrength, this is really turning into a war of exhaustion. He who has the last crown and the last crust of bread shall have victory! I am working captured German crowns, bread, factories, steel and rubber into my production lines and just launched an air campaign focusing all my strats, nearly 600 in three wings now, on Czechoslovokia, which has the only state (Bohemia) to have a full stack of flak so we'll see how that goes.

 

[SeekTruthFromFx]

A strategic bombing masterclass and a very entertaining AAR. Great thread, gentlemen!

 

[Secret Master]

Czechoslovokia, which has the only state (Bohemia) to have a full stack of flak so we'll see how that goes.

Be careful. Static AA can cause significant losses among STR if you aren't careful.

It may still be worth bombing, just watch your tooltips and look at bomber losses. If you can't sustain those losses, consider whether losing your bombers is worth hitting that state. If it's the last place in the Reich worth bombing, it might be worth it. Otherwise, you might want to shift.

 

[noobermenschen]

Be careful. Static AA can cause significant losses among STR if you aren't careful.

It may still be worth bombing, just watch your tooltips and look at bomber losses. If you can't sustain those losses, consider whether losing your bombers is worth hitting that state. If it's the last place in the Reich worth bombing, it might be worth it. Otherwise, you might want to shift.

Been a while but I thought I should update: The Czech bombing campaign was a mixed success - I didn't lose very many bombers to flak*, certainly not enough to make it unsustainable, though I didn't do a lot of damage, especially as it seems my bombers avoided Bohemia (the only state which had AA) until last.

I then moved on to Northern France, where Paris and Calais each have level 3 AA, then Southern France which had no AA, but again had mixed and uncertain success: My greatest losses were heavy fighters - outside of my big ass radar coverage my losses in air combat went from 4-1 in my favor to 4-1 against me, which was concerning but not unsustainable. Flooding the region with 600 bombers and 400 fighters increased my air detection and drove my air combat losses to 2-1 against me, a cost I am more than willing to live with. At first it seemed my Strats were hitting nothing but Vichy's capitol state but they began spreading the damage out just before the Allied armies arrived - Did my bombers have an effect on Vichyite resistance? I really don't know.

Anyway it's November 1946 and things have changed - Helped by a flood of Allied divisions and an American A-Bomb on Munich I linked up with the beacheads to my East and West, drove down along the Westwall to the Swiss border and captured Dunkirk which put all of German occupied France out of supply, then walked right in after the Heer evacuated and before Vichy could send help. Germany capitulated in April 1946 and I set to work liberating France (after adding a Panther N battalion to eight of my infantry divisions ). Even the Russians are making a comeback. I am at the Pyrenees and my bombers are hitting Spain hard, though there is a lot of air resistance (again 2-1 in the enemy's favor) and Madrid has level 4 AA - however my bomber crews have stood tall this time, that was the first state they hammered and they have not taken serious losses*.

I may update again as I am planning a Pacific campaign once Europe is under control. Thank you for the advice!

* Edit: I am wondering if, like you discovered for air combat, Radar is a big force multiplier for static AA through the increased air detection. No AI country I have found except UK has built Radar at all.