An Idiots Guide To Losing Your CV's Before 1942: WiTP:AE KyzBP vs UCG

Started by KyzBP, June 22, 2015, 04:02:39 PM

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JasonPratt

I didn't help that they 'upgraded' the Zero engine pretty early in the war to something slightly faster with much less range.  :P

(I mean, that would have helped for being an interceptor in local base defense, but it didn't help when the whole production line universally switched to this.)

ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
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PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

Quote from: FarAway Sooner on March 14, 2016, 10:54:10 PM
And, had they been produced in larger quantities, their lack of a pilot training program would have had dire implications for the survivability of those planes.

Their institutional disdain for manual labor being dishonorable, would have hurt them another way, too, as it was already doing from near the beginning: there was practically no organized repair and maintenance planning on the frames they did have. One of the commonest things when Allies would take an Imperial air base, was to find tons of planes lying around in states of disrepair which could have been fairly easily fixed and put back in the air. E.g., this plane has a shot carburetor, so that's it, it's dead, put it over there next to that other plane with a missing widget -- but with a perfectly fine carb.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

FarAway Sooner

Yup.  Compounding the problem, Japanese widgets were totally unreliable.

O0

KyzBP

A great conversation you guys have going.  I switched all my Airacobras to under 10k feet in altitude to see if that improves their performance.  If Japanese maintenance crews were as bad as you guys say, I'm going to send in some commandos to pull the spark plugs from Geek's planes thus grounding his entire Air Force. At last, air superiority! :uglystupid2:

Alright, back to work.

April 4th, 1942

ASW gets back to work.

His subs really can get annoying so it brings me great pleasure when I can knock one of his boats around.

I imagine he feels the same way.

Rolling a sub into DD infested waters is a bold strategy, Cotton.  Let's see if it pans out. 
It didn't.

Our morning visit to Palmyra.

I believe this will be the last of them for awhile.  I'm going to let it wither and use the troops that were earmark for Palmyra
as part of my new, diabolical plan.  I'll reveal it once it's in motion.

Geek sends his bombers over AM.


We had a much better showing this time.  The P-40's did a bunch better.  The Pratt and Banzai fields have or are
about to reach level 4.  Once they reach level 5 I can begin flying the big boys in and turning them loose on Tokyo.  I'm excited
about the prospect but they'll have no escort and will probably suffer sizable loses.  It's so hard to wait though.

4E's doing damage.

The Big Boys took out a zero AND 110 troops without suffering a loss.  If they can do that over Tokyo then I have no reservations
about sending them in without their little friends.

B-25's take on the Fuso.

There's nothing that these feisty Mitchell pilots won't try to bomb.  It sure would've been nice to get a hit on the Fuso.  It's
been on a rampage lately and needs some new port holes.

Another battle in China.

We didn't lose this base yet but the losses in China are staggering.

jomni

Strategic bombing on Japan this early is exciting. When are your Lightnings and Mustangs coming?

KyzBP

Quote from: jomni on March 15, 2016, 09:14:26 PM
Strategic bombing on Japan this early is exciting. When are your Lightnings and Mustangs coming?

I have a couple small Lightning squadrons in the U.S. but their experience level is so low they're almost unusable right now.

KyzBP

Earlier we were talking about planes, squadrons, and experience.  Here's a few examples of the difference experience makes.

Col. Cole's P-40 squadron at AM.

This squadron has a 57 for experience and has a 1 to 1 kill ratio.  It was actually worse before Cole took over and fixed
this group.  We'll check back with them after more air to air combat takes place to see if they continue to improve.

Here's LTCD McCluskey's Wildcat (F4F-3A) squadron stationed on the Lexington at AM.

McCluskey's squadron has better planes than Cole's (my opinion until you guys throw facts at me to show me I'm wrong)
but what McCluskey really enjoys is a very experienced pilot roster.  These guys have a 47-1 kill ratio courtesy of their
74 average experience.

Here's Maj. Walker's Wildcats aboard the Yorktown of the bomber heavy CV group.

They haven't experienced any air-air combat yet so their experience remains unchanged from the start of the war.  Once they start
getting into some scraps their experience should start climbing...provided they survive.

Here's Maj. Lynch's P-39 squadron from Canton.

Their 91 kills leads all other squadrons.  It's slightly deceiving though because most of their kills were the unescorted carrier
bombers that attacked Canton early in the war.  Once they went up against Geek's experienced carrier fighters the Airacobras began
dropping.  They still have a 5.7/1 kill ratio but without the 50+ bomber kills they'd be behind in kills.  These guys are currently enroute
to test their mettle against some of Geek's land based fighters.  Hopefully my newly learned tactic with Airacobras (thanks to you guys)
will give them the edge over Geek's Zeroes.

Here's what happens when you're forced to throw inexperienced pilots into battle long before their ready:
SLDR Price's Aussie Kittyhawks.

Price is not the original leader of this squadron.  The original leader is KIA.  These guys were in way over their heads when they were
forced into action by Geek's early invasion of Australia.  Their kill ratio is 1 to 27 :o.  Having less than 50 experience
is going to greatly reduce your life expectancy.  Having experience under 40 means you'll probably die during take off.

I don't know what the mechanics are for gaining experience but it seems that surviving combat is more valuable than training stateside.
The combat vets increase exponentially faster than those just set to train. 

Airborne Rifles

Does leaving them stateside to train for a longer period of time increase their experience? I seem to remember that later in the war American pilots had an order of magnitude more time in the cockpit before deploying to combat than their Japanese counterparts.

KyzBP

Quote from: Airborne Rifles on March 16, 2016, 08:44:45 AM
Does leaving them stateside to train for a longer period of time increase their experience? I seem to remember that later in the war American pilots had an order of magnitude more time in the cockpit before deploying to combat than their Japanese counterparts.

It does, ABR.  It's just such a painfully slow process.  Any of my units that have less than 50 experience, and start off stateside, will remain there until they can get to 50.  It's an arbitrary number, 60 would be better, but at the pace at which our game is going I can't afford to wait.

Sir Slash

Still, that's a hell-of-a-whuppin you gave them at AM. Is that because Geekamoto's pilots are inexperienced?
"Take a look at that". Sgt. Wilkerson-- CMBN. His last words after spotting a German tank on the other side of a hedgerow.

KyzBP

Quote from: Sir Slash on March 16, 2016, 12:03:41 PM
Still, that's a hell-of-a-whuppin you gave them at AM. Is that because Geekamoto's pilots are inexperienced?

I'm pretty sure that's exactly what happened, Slash.  It's the one thing I was counting on.  I knew/know I have to pick my battles carefully.  I knew I would be throwing my best pilots up against his inexperienced pilots.  As long as I know where his CV's are then I know where his best pilots are. 

KyzBP

April 5th, 1942

A Dutch sub takes a peek into Singapore Harbor.

He didn't get to see much before getting smacked around in there.  I really should just hang around outside the harbor and not
risk ASW and mines.

Bombarding Moulmein...again.


Since Geek didn't attack anything I thought he would, I decided to send my Ambush TF to hit the airfield at Moulmein again.  He
had about 50 fighters based there.  There's a few less right now. :)  I'll hit it again and then leave the area.  I don't want to spend
too much time outside of the CAP.

Sub at Singapore finds the transports!!

And is sunk by them. >:(  This sub warfare thing is going to be hard to do if Geek keeps arming his transports.  Not fair.

Here's what's hanging out at Singapore right now:

With all that, you'd think I could just fire a random spread of torpedoes and just run like hell.  I got to believe we'd hit something.
All of that will be leaving port soon.  If this were a board game this is where I'd release the cat.

Wuchow falls.

We lost a lot.  Geek didn't. Moving on.

4E's over Geek's Spring Caravan.

We didn't do much damage to his merry band of nomads but these bombers now have a better kill ratio than the Aussie Kitty's used
in the earlier comparisons.

Marauders say hello to the new neighbors.

Nothing more than a little harassment.  I'll take free shots wherever I can.

Tomorrow gets interesting.  See you then.



bob48

As I remarked to geek earlier today, this has to be one of the most enjoyable AAR's I've ever seen, so thank you both for your efforts.
'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers'

'Clip those corners'

Recombobulate the discombobulators!

KyzBP

Quote from: bob48 on March 16, 2016, 02:22:25 PM
As I remarked to geek earlier today, this has to be one of the most enjoyable AAR's I've ever seen, so thank you both for your efforts.

Thanks a lot Bob!  I'm sure I speak for Geek when I say Thanks to all of you guys following this.  All the input from you "Bleacher Creatures" makes it easy to keep this going. O0

FarAway Sooner

A few random responses:

1) The P-40 was a fine plane, probably better than the F4F (although the latter had to be able to take off from a carrier, which introduces all sorts of other technical limitations) and almost certainly the best that the US had when the war started.  It got a poor rep early in the war, in part because American land-based air in the Pacific Theater was overwhelmed so quickly whenever it was attacked (e.g., the Philippines or Pearl Harbor) and in part because Midway gave a certain halo effect to all the units involved but the TBDs.  From mid-1942 to mid-1943, it got pretty favorable reviews from its pilots--but it was a full generation behind the P-38s (better at high altitude and longer range) and F4Us (faster, better armed, better performance at altitude) that showed up in 1943, so it didn't really have a period to shine much of anywhere. 

Not a great plane, but not a bad one.  It was used in a lot of ground support/strafing roles later in the war.  The F4F pilots were also much better trained at the start of the war, I think, so their squadron performance was probably impacted by that as well.

2) I have no idea if the game models this (directly or indirectly), but the American policy of rotating veteran pilots home quickly (adopted in part from British experiences in WW I) meant we had much better training than the Japanese by late 1942.  Not only did American pilots get more hours of training flight time (no shortage of aviation gasoline, which was a huge problem for Japan), but they got MUCH higher-quality instruction.  Why?

Each plane had its own characteristics and traits that matched up differently against different opponents.  Most American fighters could outdive a Zero (more specifically, after entering a dive they could turn at high speeds--the same characteristics that made the Zeke so deadly in a dog fight made it handle like a bath tub when trying to maneuver at higher speeds).  The American fighters could never out-turn a Zero in a normal dogfight, but they could easily trade altitude for an escape.  This meant that, whenever maneuvers took them down to low altitude and they were no longer fighting for their lives, they needed to get back high fast.  A P-40 or an F4F with a Zero on its tail at 2,000 feet was dead meat.

These were the sorts of lessons that veterans passed along to American trainees during instruction. 

The Japanese high command had no such practices.  They believed that fighting spirit would triumph over all adversity, which effectively meant leaving veteran pilots to fight until they died and trusting in new pilots' moral character to pull them up the learning curve.  In a sense, the Japanese learned the lessons of WW I 30 years too late, in the face of an enemy and technology which made the cost of those lessons dramatically higher than even the dreadful toll learned by combatants in WW I.

Most of this material comes from Bergerud's Fire in the Sky, but I've also seen it echoed in a handful of other places.  It also seems to be showing up in Hampton's Lords of the Sky, which I'm reading right now, although I'm not far enough in to be certain how he'll view it.