Air Wing Massacre

Ok I lost 2 entire fighter air wings(240 fighters each) for no reason?!?
I did a routine run on a C3 thinking Ill just take out the intersepters first. I sent my vanguard air wing out to destroy them easly BUT when I sent the attack order it came back telling the target was too far away and literally It destroyed every plane and killed every single soldier in the air wing. This country is 1000 miles away, my airwing had full supplies aswell. so whats my dumb reaction? Send the back up singers to attack a different target on the other side of the country,, same message and same result leaving them all dead.
So wth happened ?!?!?

Oh yeah the C3 didn't lose a single thing.

What was the Q of the weapons? If they were your starting weapons of 120Q, then they will die very fast. You need 330Q weapons to have a good cost:profit ratio. Post your country name and other players will be able to provide more info. Also the planet would help.

We checked the war log.
You have fought a C3 before. That was easier.

this war was against a C3 of war level 2.
it has 2 interceptor wings with 260 interceptors at Q140. You attacked one and the other came to its support. You had 240 fighters of Q120.

Fighting at level 2 is harder.
you need many more or higher quality.
At Q300 the pictures would have been entirely different.

At higher levels, C3 countries have more defense at higher quality. winning such wars is not trivial.

please read the war levels documentation or ask on the forum.

I know players who won wars against C3s at much higher levels.

Therefore Mr Zechariah never attack a def wing directly. Attack the defense of a non garrisoned target such as a COUNTY or TOWN. This will make only one of the int wings respond. Keep attacking the def until the ints no longer respond.

Or...nah, I'm not giving it away.

And that was a lesson I learned the ol' fashion way.

Oh, I just didnt really understand because the 2 fighter wings Ive been using took out I think out 3-4 level 1 c3 and 1 level 2 c3 with no problems before so I figured it was going to the same. Lesson learned, thanks for the help.

same happened to me.... try using a ground based strategy of taking out interceptors ..... a division with mid range missile bats and offensive anti air bats should do the trick...have them all attack a town or something the interceptors will respond and be shot down by the offensive anti air bats