Weather poor. You didn't expect anything else did you?
I decided to take a chance and ignore the ships today, they are all up north right now and I want to hit these airfields close to the coast. That must be how they are responding so quickly. The Dornier's from Kampf 2 have called in mission ready so they lead the attack today. With the weather so poor I will have them head in very low. This will help them avoid the fighters and use the ground from better navigation. They will initially head toward Eastbourne Dock then turn north to strick Hawkinge, I will use all three groups in this attack with Jagd 3 group 1 & 2 as a close escort at 15000ft. If they have to engage they will do so from superior advantage.
SUCCESS! Hawkinge is critically damaged! The RAF countered with only five squadrons and the fighters decended from heaven to hammer them into the ground, leaving the bombers a unobstructed run, in fact of all the bombers only one was damaged! They destroyed two hangers, two staff buildings and one warehouse while severely damaging 17 more buildings including two fuel dumps. The fighters did well by destroying two Spits and damaging two more, destroying seven Hurricanes and damageing seven. They suffered only 7 damaged and 5 destroyed with only three pilots killed, wonderful! Now that Hawkinge is out I will start to harrass this Lymphne Air Field just west of Hawkinge.
I order a steady stream of attacks, a total of four in all all spaced twenty minutes apart starting at 1600. All together I commit Stuka 1/1, 2/1, 1/3 and 2/2, I even load bombs on Zero 26/3. I have the remaining Zero and Jagds protect the bombers stream, and by the end of the day Lymphne has suffered heavy damage. I must get a recon plane their tomorrow to verify the damage.
We only damage one hurricane in this time frame and the Stuka and Zeros took a beating, but the airfields are severely hurt. This must slow their reaction time down. I will follow up tomorrow on Lymphne and other fields down the coast.
--------------------------- Total losses to date Stukas 29 Damaged 24 Destroyed Me 110 12 Damaged 14 Destroyed Me 109 13 Damaged 12 Destroyed (All from Jagd 3, the only 109 group in the fight these days) Do 17 1 Damaged 0 Destroyed
