Battlestations: Midway/Aircraft Tactics

Aircraft are the most powerful units in the game given their high attacking power and high speed. There are several kinds of aircraft, including:
 * Fighters: Includes the A6M Zero and the F4F Wildcat. These planes are typically armed with machine guns and have extremely high manoeuvrability, allowing them to out-turn and out-fly all other aircraft. Typically they have machine guns, but they can be equipped with small bombs too. The bombs cause very little damage. Equipping them with bombs also doesn't appear to affect their manoeuvrability, but dive bombers are far better.
 * Dive bombers: Includes the D3A Val and the SBD Dauntless. These bombers start high and dive low on their targets. Ineffective against targets with strong deck plating, like battleships, they are best wielded against lightly armoured targets, mainly destroyers and light cruisers. They can also bring the hurt on aircraft carriers given the huge size of their deck. Difficult to destroy, but in general causes little damage.
 * Torpedo Bombers: Includes the B5N Kate and the TBD/F Avenger. These planes start low, then climb high after releasing torpedoes. Torpedoes must be dropped at an altitude less than 1,000ft while the plane is almost parallel to the ocean - otherwise the torpedo will detonate when hitting the water. Far easier to use than dive bombers as well as being far more devastating, they are easy prey for targets with a lot of anti-aircraft fire.
 * Carpet Bombers: Includes the B-17 and the G4M. These planes fly at high altitudes and drop massive amounts of bombs on targets. They are rather easy to use and are oftentimes heavily defended by themselves, but their accuracy is typically abysmal. They are effective against all targets, but particularly excel in bombing shipyards, airfields, and aircraft carriers in particular.
 * Recon Planes: Includes the PBY Catalina and the H8K Emily. These planes are slow, but they sport sonar, making them ideal for anti-submarine operations. They come equipped with either bombs, twin torpedoes, or most devastatingly depth charges. Without a doubt the submariner's most deadly enemy, since recon planes can see and attack them without fear of counterattack from the sub. It should also be noted that recon planes can land on the water. If they land on the water near a shipyard, they can be rearmed with additional weapons. Unfortunately, this must be done manually.

All the above types, excepting recon planes, are produced at either an airfield or, most commonly, at an aircraft carrier. Recon planes are produced at shipyards.

Taking Off
To put aircraft in the air, select the unit you want to launch planes - whether a carrier or an airfield, and open up the control panel. In the above example, four squadrons are available.
 * The "H" indicates the squadron is at home base.
 * The diagonal arrow pointing up shows that the squadron is currently in the process of taking off.
 * A straight arrow indicates that the aircraft is currently in the air.
 * A diagonal arrow pointing down indicates that the aircraft has received landing orders and intend to land.
 * A skull and crossbones indicates the squadron was destroyed. If you have additional planes, you can launch them.

Beneath those icons you will see:
 * Type: The aircraft the squadron is currently using. You can switch this whenever the squadron is landed.
 * Assigned: The number of planes assigned to the squadron versus the total number of planes of that type you have.
 * Weapon: Here you can choose what the planes are loaded with. Typically this involves bombs, depth charges, or torpedoes.

The number at the top right of the window indicates the number of planes airbourne versus the number of planes you can actually put up. Regardless of how many planes you assign to a squadron, the number of airbourne planes cannot exceed the plane cap.

In the above example, the carrier can have 12 planes in the air at once. You have four squadrons. You can assign squadron members evenly (each squadron has 3 members - 4 squadrons times 3 planes each = 12 planes total). You can also choose to have 5 planes in two squadrons, but that means one squad is left underpowered at only two members (5+5+2=12).

Landing
Landing aircraft is important, especially for bombers. Landing planes saves them for later use in the long run.

In the diagram above, note that the carrier has 10 SBD Dauntlesses - three of which are assigned to the squadron. If all three planes in the squadron are lost, then the max number on the right will decrease to 7. You can still launch planes, but if those planes get shot down the max further decreases to 4. Eventually you'll have 0 planes left in reserve, and you will be unable to launch planes of that type. Landing units, especially bombers, therefore, is vital. To order a squadron to land, open the Command menu and select the Land option. You should hear "Landing orders acknowledged, sir" or something of the sort, and your squadron status will be set to "LAND".

The AI takes its time landing - you can attempt to land yourself, oftentimes quicker than the AI, by simply reducing your airspeed (your gear will come down automatically) and simply touch down at a low speed. You can do this for either carriers or airfields, but carrier landings are considerably more difficult than airfield landings.

As mentioned above, recon planes like the Catalina can rearm themselves by landing in the vicinity of a shipyard (although you must do this manually). Simply do the same thing as before, except on water. Landing on water should be easy - just don't come down at a sharp angle and you should be fine. Keep your throttle low and get close to the shipyard to rearm (you should not need to enter the shipyard, and docking the plane is impossible).

Torpedo Bombing
When piloting a plane armed with torpedoes, you have to fly low (the game says "slow and low", but speed generally isn't an issue) with your plane flying parallel to the sea. Dropping the torpedo from a high altitude means the torpedo will explode upon hitting the water. The torpedo bay won't even open if you're upside down or have your wingtips touching the ocean. Once within a close enough range of the target (experience will tell you when) press and hold the bombing mode key and, while doing so, pull the trigger to release your torpedo. Hold the trigger to watch the torpedo streak through the water and hopefully land a hit. Even if you don't watch the torpedo, you'll hear "Ordnance was on target, sir!", confirming you have made a successful torpedo run on the enemy warship.

Once your ordnance is gone, it's best for you to turn around and head back home, but be careful when issuing landing orders - if the rest of your squadron is behind you, they might not have released their torpedoes yet. Issuing a landing order at this time will prompt the entire squadron - including those who still have their torpedoes - to turn around and head for home (not only wasting time and torpedoes but also aircraft, as the expose their vulnerable tails to the enemy). Therefore, it's best to let the AI handle the landing orders. The squadron will automatically return home once all its torpedoes have been expended.

Torpedo bombing is one of the most effective way of attacking ships, as it not only causes leaks but also it punches under the waterline, bypassing a battleship's heavy belt and deck armour.

Dive Bombing
The other method of attacking ground targets is dive bombing. Best used by dedicated dive bombers, dive bombing causes little damage and is difficult to perform, but it is from the ship's perspective the most difficult to stop, given the bomber's high altitudes. Dive bombing in theory is simple - fly as high as you can, and once you're somewhat past your target, roll over and plunge like a brick right at the enemy target, and drop your bomb when you're sure it's going to hit. In practice, however, it is considerably harder than it sounds. Most rookies dive too early or too late, or are simply too afraid they are going to crash into the ocean.

Your best bet is to simply follow your wingmen. The AI will almost always do a better job of dive bombing than you will, so simply let your wingmen lead the target and watch them. If they rudder right, you rudder right too. When they roll over and start a dive, you do too. Once you're in the dive, it's all up to you.

Plummet as fast as possible towards the enemy target and at this point toggle on your bombing mode to see where your bomb is going to hit. Position your crosshair over the enemy warship and, once you're low enough, drop the bomb, cut your throttle to the absolute minimum, and pull out of the dive. Again, hold the trigger if you want to see if it scored a hit. You'll still hear "We hit it!" regardless, however.

Carpet Bombing
The easiest and possibly most destructive way of attacking enemy ground targets is with a carpet bomber. These massive planes carry equally massive amounts of bombs - the B-17 has a whopping payload of 24 bombs. You need to fly straight and level over your target in order to release, however - you aren't a dive bomber, and while a dive bomber can perform a level bombing attack, a level bomber cannot perform a dive attack. Once you've positioned the crosshair over the target, simply open your bomb bay doors with the bombing mode button and pull the trigger to start dropping bombs. There are two main methods of carpet bombing ships - from side-to-side (port to starboard or starboard to port) or from front-to-back (or back-to-front - bow to stern or stern to bow). Bombing from side-to-side almost guarantees a hit, but given the ship's low profile in this manner, most of the bombs will miss.

Conversely, bombing from bow-to-stern or stern-to-bow will result in far more bombs striking their target, but at the same time if the enemy warship is moving fast enough and turns, most of the bombs could miss. Against the lighter targets, therefore, it might be wiser to employ dive bombers instead of carpet bombers.

Strafing
Strafing is pretty easy, but don't expect it to cause a lot of damage. The most you can do is annoy the enemy. It does, however, have its purposes. Strafing is simple - using the forward firing guns on a plane to attack a ground target. Given the weak nature of guns, however, it only affects extremely lightly armoured targets - personnel landing ships (that is, Daihatsus and Higgins Boats), patrol boats, the cargo of cargo ships (shooting their superstructure does little to no damage) and most types of land installations (Fortresses, shipyards, and airfields being notable exceptions).

The most useful part of strafing, however, is the ability to target exposed anti-aircraft emplacements on an enemy ship. It won't affect fully-enclosed turrets, but if you intend to disable the enemy's machine gun emplacements or flak guns, strafing may be a viable solution. Simply attack the enemy with your machine guns and shoot the gun until you see a small explosion.

Strafing is possible really with any type of ship that uses an anti-aircraft weapon (in theory, flak guns work too, but they are often too inaccurate to strike such small targets). A good place to try surface-to-surface strafing is in Defence of the Phillipines. Take your PT boat and drive it close to the enemy destroyer. Arm your machine guns and fire at the enemy's own machine guns. You should be able to blow them up.

Note that enemy gun emplacements will automatically respawn, so don't expect a target you disabled ten minutes ago to still be a sitting target for your air wing.