Bomber Crew

[Tuna]

UI noises could drive one crazy!

[jomni]

UI noises could drive one crazy!

Sounds like kerbal gibberish

[Boggit]

Great post SDR.

Yes it's probably true that strategic bombing was not very effective in crippling the industrial power of Germany.  The side effect of adding another dimension to the fight that the Germans had to divert resources to is probably more significant than the industrial damage.

+1  O0

[Boggit]

Crew doesn't have any sense of urgency. Or maybe legs are too short.

[Jarhead0331]

Yes it's probably true that strategic bombing was not very effective in crippling the industrial power of Germany.  The side effect of adding another dimension to the fight that the Germans had to divert resources to is probably more significant than the industrial damage.

I think this conclusion is only partially true, and certainly only applicable to the early years of the war. I think most historians will agree that by mid-1943, the allied strategic bombing campaign was having significant impacts on the German war economy and its ability to replace attritional losses of war materials.

[mirth]

I think most historians will agree that by mid-1943, the allied strategic bombing campaign was having significant impacts on the German war economy and its ability to replace attritional losses of war materials.

Very much so. It's also true that a vast amount of men and material went into 'Defense of the Reich' units. There were something like 10,000 88s used for air defense, keeping them off the Eastern Front as anti-tank weapons. Similarly, the Germans had to concede air superiority in the East starting in 1943 as fighter units were recalled for bomber defense.

[Father Ted]

I think something often over-looked in the discussion of the effect of the strategic bombing campaign - at least in the case of Bomber Command - is its emotional aspect.  At the start of the war the Brits had suffered defeat in France and had then their own cities blitzed.  Early to mid-war, bombing German cities the only way of hitting back, of making people feel better.  Even if the strategic impact on the enemy was small, there was still some value in it on boosting the morale of the populace.  Remember, bomber crews were all volunteers - men who wanted an outlet for their revenge.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

The Flare Path (the only reason I go to RPS anymore) has a blurb about the game.

I really hope this game can be modded.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/09/08/the-flare-path-museum-piece/

[jomni]

Looks entertaining. Lots of customization too.

[Grim.Reaper]

releases this week....greenman gaming has this for less than $10 if you use the coupon code listed on their site.  not sure about this game yet, but for that price worth a shot.

[FarAway Sooner]

Great post, SDR.  I think you  nicely covered both sides of that topic.

Yes it's probably true that strategic bombing was not very effective in crippling the industrial power of Germany.  The side effect of adding another dimension to the fight that the Germans had to divert resources to is probably more significant than the industrial damage.

I think this conclusion is only partially true, and certainly only applicable to the early years of the war. I think most historians will agree that by mid-1943, the allied strategic bombing campaign was having significant impacts on the German war economy and its ability to replace attritional losses of war materials.

If in fact that's what you're saying, I'd agree with your assessment that the Air War in Europe was a war of attrition.  It drained away German resources (in terms of artillery, fighter defense, and general infrastructure defense) that could have been used elsewhere.

But if you are asserting that it had an impact on Germany's ability to replace attritional war losses by destroying their means of production, I'm just not aware of any scholarly work (including that of the US Strategic Bombing Survey) that's borne that out.  The only place it had a dramatic impact was in the production of aviation fuel.

It did impose a significant attritional burden on a German economy that was already losing a war of attrition, so it was successful.  It was, in effect, a "Second Front" 18 months before there was a Second Front. 

It just didn't have any major impact on German war production that I'm aware of.

[Micha]

Why the game has a graphic for 5 years old childs ?

[Con]

Interesting concept but combines all the things i find terrible in a game, hectic button mashing with deliberate cartoony graphics in a historical setting that is complete fantasy to using real tactics.  My fear is kids will play this and think this is how the air campaign was fought

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

I picked it up (along with Cuphead) from Greenmangaming a few days ago (gotta try to stop buying things once the gin gets poured) and it unlocked today.

I fiddled around with the tutorials.  There's a lot going on and I really like the theme but I cannot stand the Nintendo Wii style bobblehead characters.

Also, I ran into some triggering bugs during both tutorials I've played so far.  The prompts never came up the first time I tried each mission so I couldn't complete it.  I had to exit the game and restart in order to get the triggers to work.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

I'm enjoying the hell out of this.  There's a fair amount of depth to it and even some nods to technical and historical authenticity (wing spar in the middle of the fuselage made traversing the bomber difficult).  I dug into the savegame file and found the parameters that let you alter race and gender so I could set up a more historically representative crew.  Fiddled with the .bmp files to see if I could upload proper liveries.  The files loaded fine but I need to fiddle with the sizes to get them to display properly.

Going to try to see if there's a way to change out the Kerbal-speak with proper voices next.