My recon planes are always shot down!

[PantherCub]

Whenever I try to use recon planes, they are invariably shot down the first time they enter the map! This seems a bit excessive to me. Is there anything I can do to mitigate this? At present, they hardly seem worth spending points on.

[Mobhack]

I bet you are plotting them to fly right over the enemy side of the map, where they will meet his AAA?.

Fly the first mission over your own territory, with entry and exit lines on your side of the map. See if anything shoots at them, and if not, plot the next mission nearer to his front line. Repeat as long as you feel its safe - do not enter his AAA envelope, since slow low-flying spotter planes are an easy target.

Spotter planes see things from on high, and so can see at an angle down into his territory, especially moving vehicles.

[Griefbringer]

What Mobhack said. Spotter planes are slow and not very robust, and the spotting runs take quite a lot of time - thus allowing any anti-aircraft weapons close enough to take a lot of shots at them. So have them flying over the areas that you control, and spot from afar.

If you want to run spotting runs closer to the enemy controlled areas, then it is good idea to use your artillery assets to damage (or at least suppress) the enemy AA assets. If you have enough artillery, you may just try to pound likely positions in the rear. Alternatively, you may try to draw out AA fire with aircraft in order to find the approximate locations of the AA units - fast and armoured ground attack aircraft are more likely to survive such missions than spotter aircraft.

If you are fighting an opponent with lots of vehicle-mounted AAMGs, such as the US army, then it can be very difficult to take out all of the AA weapons.

[PantherCub]

Thanks for the answers! I'll try that.

I have used the tactic of blasting his AA with artillery before, in conjunction with attack planes, though realistically it seems a bit odd that the ground forces are clearing the way for the air boys instead of the other way around.

[Griefbringer]

Having served in AA unit in military, I do not see anything unrealistic with frontline AA weapons being high priority targets for artillery.

In game the spotter planes cannot call artillery fire, but in real world they could very well have radio link to ground artillery control, enabling them to issue coordinates for targets - and I presume they would consider any AA gun in close vicinity a high priority target.

Also, I don't really think that clearing the way for ground forces was really what the air units were doing all that much in WWII - attacking units close to the front line ran a risk of strafing and bombing friendly units (this happened historically, and it can also happen in game). Rather, they would be taking the battle to the depth and attack reserves, artillery and supply units in the rear, to prevent them from supporting the front lines.

[PantherCub]

Originally Posted by Griefbringer

Also, I don't really think that clearing the way for ground forces was really what the air units were doing all that much in WWII - attacking units close to the front line ran a risk of strafing and bombing friendly units (this happened historically, and it can also happen in game). Rather, they would be taking the battle to the depth and attack reserves, artillery and supply units in the rear, to prevent them from supporting the front lines.

I agree, and I used it more as a figure of speech. What I mean is that the game creates a cycle where artillery is helping the air force to penetrate to their targets, while I think a more historical cycle would be the air force hitting enemy artillery at the start of an attack to help the ground forces.

From what I know (which certainly is not everything) I think air support as in the game with planes striking enemies in actual combat contact with friendly forces was not really practiced in WW2, on account of the risk of hitting friendlies, at least not until very late in WW2. IMHO it would be more realistic with air attacks taking place before the battle than during it. Though the present effect that players have to think about AA defences and integrate them in their battle plan is nice.

[Griefbringer]

Originally Posted by PantherCub

IMHO it would be more realistic with air attacks taking place before the battle than during it.

On advance and assault battles you can do this as preliminary bombardment if you want to - and if you use level bombers they will not be available for a second run later on. (They probably will not hit anything useful, either.)

As for historical air actions close to the front lines, there was a practice of mounting air recognition panels close to the front lines, to indicate that this was still friendly area but that enemy front line would be somewhere ahead. Of course this did not always work quite the way it was supposed to - especially when some rear area folks wanted to be safe and mounted extra panels way farther from the front line than they should have been used.

Personally, I am not very fond of using air strikes myself. They don't offer the kind of tactical challenge that manoeuvring units on ground involves, they can take quite a lot of time to resolve (especially if there are lots of AAMGs around) and when I use them they rarely cause significant damage (cannot say the same for AI air strikes on my units, though).

[Imp]

.

IMHO it would be more realistic with air attacks taking place before the battle than during it. Though the present effect that players have to think about AA defences and integrate them in their battle plan is nice.

Takes it out of the scope of the game but as has been said air is mainly used in rear areas vs supply & if possible nice juicy targets such as units moving to position in columns.
Air attacks would then just become a random pre battle unit destroyer.
You buy 10 tanks & only 6 turn up.

Even with the advances of today I would say airs main roll is taking out infrastructure & support, look at Dessert Storm as an example they were surprisingly ineffective vs dug in units. Main effect was probably harassment & hindering along with a big drop in morale.

[PantherCub]

Originally Posted by Griefbringer

Personally, I am not very fond of using air strikes myself. They don't offer the kind of tactical challenge that manoeuvring units on ground involves, they can take quite a lot of time to resolve (especially if there are lots of AAMGs around) and when I use them they rarely cause significant damage (cannot say the same for AI air strikes on my units, though).

Amen to that!