Ariwing Size

[corvus]

I curious if the size of your Airwings makes any difference. E.g. if you have 20 capacity availabe, do you put in one Wing of 20 Planes or some combination of multiple wings? I usually go for the full 20 Plane wings, but what do you guys think? Am I doing it wrong? Is there some sort fo optimal Airwing size?

[brygun]

Most of airbases get a section patrol planes for scouting and ASW score

Ill assign additional squadron of attack planes, early torpedo planes later medium bombers.

Thats for having different types of planes.

AFAIK when a battle starts the planes at an airbase are lumped together so 2 x 10 planes of the same type is the same as 1x20. the 2 x 10 or 3 x 6 lets you have different planes types. This gives different search ranges and speeds. Also allows balancing ASW vs attack.

If a distant colony and not under threat I might just have 1 x 4 patrol planes alone (4 being the minimum). If I want skilled bombers ready its 1 x 4 pat and 1 x 4 MDM. If fighting, espicaly an invasion, picks up it gets bumped to 1x 6 patrol planes and 1 x 14 medium.

[corvus]

What about carriers?

[oldpop2000]

Well, the airgroup for my CV Lexington has two,12 plane fighter squadrons,

and two 11 plane dive bomber squadron.

My Manila airbase has 6 patrol plane in a squadron, 9 fighters in a squadron, 9 medium bombers, and 8 dive bombers. These should be all in one air wing.

I don't know if that helps.

[brygun]

For carriers...

early either
1/3 fighters
2/3 attack (torpedo planes)

for a 28-32 plane CVL that is 12 ish fighters for its own cap and no escort, with 16-20 torpedo planes for attacking.
In the early stages no body really has planes

for a 60-70 ish CV
1-2 squadrons of fighters
1-2 squadrons of attack planes (torpedo and sometimes dive bombers)
balance the numbers for either
1/3 fighters
2/3 attack
or
1/2 fighters
1/2 attack (favoring torpedo planes)

In this phase the big damage is torpedo bombers. Dive bombers have extra affect on CVs by tending to start fires among aircraft and seem to be better at hitting DD. Torpedo planes are always dangerous but have trouble hitting DDs as they evade well. This is historical as most navies kept using mostly torpedo planes. While dive bombers did do good work at Midway most of the targets aren't carriers, especially after Midway yuk yuk yuk.

With 1/2 fighters you are now both doing a cap for yourself and sending out escorts. Counting for planes unable to fly from mechanical issues a 64 plane carrier loaded vs avail squadrons assuming including divers for example
A fighter 16 with 14 ready
B fighter 16 with 14 ready
C torpedo 20 with 16 ready
D dive 12 with 10 ready

= this assumes stopping carrier recon flights which will use up some of the torpedo planes if you allow them. assumes CL and CA manually plotted floatplanes.
= fighter A is pretty much used up on doing your own CAP with maybe a few spare
= divers sent as 4-5 divers with 2 fighter escort... this gives 2 "guesses" where the enemy CV is, be sure to set target priority to CV
= Torpedoes go out with 16 with 4-8 fighter escort to punch through enemy CAP, set priority BB or CV according to battle
= There may be a small amount of fighters to send as cap for your BX ships or as a barrier (barcap) by sending them on "escort" to a likely enemy plane area without any attack planes


From there you need to consider what the enemy has, how good your AA is and so on.
Cold War dive bombers get mauled by SAMs while torpedo planes are really used for launching missiles so still valid

In longer battles if you crush the enemy air force in the area you can switch fighters to a secondary attack with bombs or rockets (medium load if you have it researched)

There is alot of good reading on fighting carrier wars. One idea is that increasing your fighter force for defense is also reducing your strike force. You really need to find a balance.

[corvus]

While I'm grateful for the advice about carrier airgroup compositions, that's not really what I'm asking.
I'm not asking about airwing compositions, just the size. I want to figgure out it it is better to have 2 wings of 8 fighters or 1 of 16 or if it doesn't make any difference.

[brygun]

Jan 16, 2024 17:44:01 GMT -6 corvus said:

While I'm grateful for the advice about carrier airgroup compositions, that's not really what I'm asking.
I'm not asking about airwing compositions, just the size. I want to figgure out it it is better to have 2 wings of 8 fighters or 1 of 16 or if it doesn't make any difference.

Slight difference

Each squadron cues separately unless you use the "co-ordinated air strike". Once you do use it the planes spend time around the carrier grouping up.

For large squadrons wanting to send only a few planes you just cue up that number like 4 of 12 dive bombers.

In the extreme of say using many 5 plane squadrons a 20 plane attack force needs more time to "group up".


I suggest that generally for carriers set the number of squadrons to the (number of planes)/20 found up, add 1 or 2 for flexibility. This lets you tweak the balance of fighter/torpedo/diver according to the current war. You can raise and lower number of planes without losing pilot quality to changing the type.

[oldpop2000]

Jan 16, 2024 17:44:01 GMT -6 corvus said:

While I'm grateful for the advice about carrier airgroup compositions, that's not really what I'm asking.
I'm not asking about airwing compositions, just the size. I want to figgure out it it is better to have 2 wings of 8 fighters or 1 of 16 or if it doesn't make any difference.

What you are asking is how many planes in a squadron. Should it be 8 fighters in two squadrons or one squadron of 16. Air wings are large organizations of up to 75 aircraft. An airwing generally has more than one type of aircraft especially on carriers. WW2 US Navy squadrons generally had 18 aircraft in a squadron. As the war progressed, the US Navy increased the number of fighter squadron from one to four, two dive bomber squadrons and one torpedo bomber. The air wing size was about 126 aircraft or more near the end. 

The Army air force did it different. I will let you work that out. If you need help, let me know.

[corvus]

Jan 16, 2024 18:09:18 GMT -6 oldpop2000 said:

Jan 16, 2024 17:44:01 GMT -6 corvus said:

While I'm grateful for the advice about carrier airgroup compositions, that's not really what I'm asking.
I'm not asking about airwing compositions, just the size. I want to figgure out it it is better to have 2 wings of 8 fighters or 1 of 16 or if it doesn't make any difference.

What you are asking is how many planes in a squadron. Should it be 8 fighters in two squadrons or one squadron of 16. Air wings are large organizations of up to 75 aircraft. An airwing generally has more than one type of aircraft especially on carriers. WW2 US Navy squadrons generally had 18 aircraft in a squadron. As the war progressed, the US Navy increased the number of fighter squadron from one to four, two dive bomber squadrons and one torpedo bomber. The air wing size was about 126 aircraft or more near the end. 

The Army air force did it different. I will let you work that out. If you need help, let me know.

I just douple-checked and the game refers to them as "air groups". I was misremebering the game's terminology for some reason.

So far I've been using groups of 8 planes on my carriers with a ratio of 2/1/1 of fighers/torpedo/dive bombers and groups of 10 or 20 on my land bases.

[oldpop2000]

Jan 16, 2024 18:23:08 GMT -6 corvus said:

Jan 16, 2024 18:09:18 GMT -6 oldpop2000 said:

What you are asking is how many planes in a squadron. Should it be 8 fighters in two squadrons or one squadron of 16. Air wings are large organizations of up to 75 aircraft. An airwing generally has more than one type of aircraft especially on carriers. WW2 US Navy squadrons generally had 18 aircraft in a squadron. As the war progressed, the US Navy increased the number of fighter squadron from one to four, two dive bomber squadrons and one torpedo bomber. The air wing size was about 126 aircraft or more near the end. 

The Army air force did it different. I will let you work that out. If you need help, let me know.

I just douple-checked and the game refers to them as "air groups". I was misremebering the game's terminology for some reason.

So far I've been using groups of 8 planes on my carriers with a ratio of 2/1/1 of fighers/torpedo/dive bombers and groups of 10 or 20 on my land bases.

If the game is using a finger four flight grouping, then there will be four planes in a flight and two flights launched with each strike. There should be at least four  flights of fighters available. That means the squadron should be 16 planes. With two squadrons on board, that will be 32 fighters. You will have to launch one flight for combat air patrols over the fleet. So, a strike group launches with eight fighters and the combat air patrol will have four planes launched with four planes on standby ready to launch.

Here is grouping for 1936  USA.

[brygun]

When placing planes on a carrier or base the game says "add airgroup" then names them 12345 Squadron. So airgroup and Squadron are pretty much the same thing.

>>>

I've been watching a bit of when I send planes from my carriers from different squadrons with the co-ordinated airstrike option. The amount of time being added seems to correlate to the number of planes being gathered not the number of squadrons. So there is little worry to using small sized squadrons in terms of game mechanics.

Like Oldpop I do tend to use sizes of 12-20 for carrier airgroups.

Land bases are different kettle that is still black. During peace time most times squadrons lowered to 4 and on reserve for 3 active planes. In war time each had 4,6 or 8 patrol planes. It may have medium bombers as 4 rising higher if its an active war zone. If an invasion is going on there I will max out the planes to boost the defense score. Some key locations get large standing wings of peacetime 6 of 4 plane groups brought up to the 40 or 60 level in wartime.