The Air War Begins AAR continued:
First Week, October '42
Decisions, decisions… It’s not practical to add a new BG and then try to take out a U-boat pen in the first week. We won’t have enough points for decent bomb loadouts after spending 12 on a new B-17 group since the M30 bombs will have little to no effect on a hardened target. Alternatively, we could add a new BG and then go after two airfields with mostly M30’s. That should leave us some spare SO points for next week and then we’d be ready with 5 BG’s to attack a U-boat pen in the second week.
But after many sleepless nights :) I came up with a different plan. I could not bring myself to send BG’s over targets without escorts and repeat the mistake that Bomber Command made in real life. So we added the 4th FG led by Cmdr. Anderson to our organization for 8 SO points and banked the other 9 points. That will give us the ability to run two escorted missions this week each consisting of a B-17, B-24, and Spitfire group. All bombers will be equipped with M30’s and we will be hitting two airfields. Even if we don’t destroy both we should hit them hard enough to easily kill both in the second week without spending any more SO points. That will leave us lots of options for the third week.
Mission 1: The target was the airfield at Bergen, Netherlands in hex 12. Luftwaffe response was Average for the week so only the squadron in the hex can intercept. Our group consisted of the newly acquired 4th FG plus the 91st BG (Cmdr. Wray) and the 44th BG. They arrived at the target to find that the Germans had put out smoke pots. Every bomb roll would have a -1 air to ground modifier. No bandits scrambled. They probably had too much smoke in their eyes to fly. The smoke must have obscured the flak gunners too as we only suffered the loss of 3 B-24’s. We scored 11 hits on the airfield causing heavy damage, but one short of the 12 needed to destroy it.
Mission 2: The target was the airfield at Amsterdam, Netherlands also in hex 12. Once again the 31st FG failed to hook up with the bombers so the 305th BG and 93rd BG (Cmdr. Raper) would be unescorted. And, in keeping with Murphy’s Law, a squadron of Bf-109’s with bombs scrambled and attacked our bombers. The bombs hit the 305th causing three kills and the formation dispersed. The fighters killed an additional 9 aircraft in two passes through the group and our return fire was ineffective. The flak took down an additional 9 bombers, all in the 305th causing them to become Shaken. Not surprisingly the 305th scored no hits on the airfield. The 93rd got 7 hits for medium damage.
All in all a very bad week due in large part to the incompetence of the 31st FG that resulted in the needless loss of a dozen aircraft and their crews to the bandits. A special inquiry into the matter has been opened.