PZC System not much being said

[Dog Soldier]

Air attacks on guns has been mentioned as ineffective by several people in this thread. I would imagine that to be true if the guns were deployed. It would be hard for the aircraft to sneak up on the gunners. They would hear the planes coming and move into prepared foxholes and slit trenches until the planes were driven off or expended their ordnance and left. The idea that gunners would stay at the guns if not actively firing to be strafed seems silly. Also hitting a gun or close enough to put it out of action would be a random event by air attack. Carpet bombing might have more success, if the battery was properly located by the bombardier. Disruption could be a more likely outcome as ammunition gets hit and cooks off. It would take the battery some time to get things back in order.

Planes did not stay over a hex for two hours to bomb and strafe. My experience talking to veteran WW2 pilots was they would make a bomb run and maybe a strafing run or two then get out of the area. Staying around would invite flak to get the range on the aircraft, or enemy fighters could show up and then your cooked with your dive bomber or modified fighter so low when the enemy fighter pounces. In our abstract PzC air war, it seems like these distractions, (real or imagined) do not exist, but the thought of getting attacked when at a disadvantage (like attacking a ground target) was reason enough for pilots to not hang around to see those guns were destroyed and all the gunners killed. The pilots rarely saw if they did damage at all. The wing camera's were used to determine this and those were not on every plane.

Dog Soldier