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

[KyzBP]

April 9th, 1942

EEEEKKKK!!!!

This is probably the most terrifying sight to see in this game.  You NEVER want to see your carriers engaged in a surface battle.
I wish someone would've went after these Destroyers. ;)

The result.

Luckily we got out of that almost unscathed.  The damage to my ships is minor and we've hurt even more of his DD's.
After taking down my notes for the previous day, saying I was going to chase his transports, I changed my mind.  It was a painful
decision but I decided to let them go.  If Geek managed to get CAP over the transports then my bombers would be cut to pieces.
If I strayed into land based bomber range the my carriers would be at risk.  The safest move was just to back off.  Maybe my land
based bomber or my subs can interdict his transports.  If I were to lose these carriers I would have zero chance of stopping an
invasion anywhere other than AM or India.  Given the high level of proficiency that his DD's possess, I think I should just be happy
that I didn't lose anything.

Raiders at Tjilatjap.

Just what I needed.  As if Fuso and Friends wasn't bad enough I now have these guys to deal with.  What really hurts is the Mitchells
that got beat up.  These guys have been doing a great job so far and I may really need them soon.

All the attacks on Java and Sumatra are convincing me that he's going to finish off Java and Sumatra once and for all.  That will allow him
to completely shut down my supply line to Australia.  Right now his transports are all standing by in the strait between Java and Sumatra.
When his transports move, we'll know the story.

Bombers at Padang.

I just wanted to show the Flak/AA damage being caused by the ground troops at Padang.  We're using up a lot of supply
answering these raids so I'm going to have to try to sneak some supplies in here provided I still own this in a couple days.

Air raid at Rockhampton.

I managed to catch some of his planes on the ground without taking any losses.  There was no CAP present and
no bombing missions against me here.  That tells me I probably made the right decision in pulling the CV's back.  I'll
bet he moved all his aircraft North in response to my CV's.

Bombing Bundaberg.

We did a lot more than just this but for some reason this is the screen I chose to keep.  Not sure why.

Attack on Bundaberg.

Fingertips.  We're probably down to half the strength we started with.  The next attack should do it.  I don't think
my armor is going to make it in time.  I just hope the retreating troops head South when they break.

I'm only 1 day behind now so pretty soon this will be back to real time.

[JasonPratt]

See, every destroyer you sink is one more destroyer who isn't around to raid your transports or to mess with your subs' ability to mess with his transports.

Yeah, the game ought to be able to give you a reasonable guess if a transport was laden with something, and perhaps what kind of something depending on how it went down. It can tell you without even rounding numbers (even if the guess has a margin of error) how many troops went down, but not whether the thing was running low in the water with anything else at all?

[FarAway Sooner]

I'm not so sure on that.  Whether it's dive-bombing or torpedo bombing, how do you tell what might be on a ship without boarding it?

In brighter news, you have finally found the kryptonite to Geek's DDs.  The bad news is, it's the escorts to your CVs!!   ;D

[KyzBP]

See, every destroyer you sink is one more destroyer who isn't around to raid your transports or to mess with your subs' ability to mess with his transports.

Yeah, the game ought to be able to give you a reasonable guess if a transport was laden with something, and perhaps what kind of something depending on how it went down. It can tell you without even rounding numbers (even if the guess has a margin of error) how many troops went down, but not whether the thing was running low in the water with anything else at all?

I agree.  I'm not sure why it gives you nearly exact information about troop composition but nothing in the way of supply, resources, or oil.  It wouldn't change the way I do anything but it'd be nice to know if I'm sinking an empty ship or one laden with treasures of the Far East.

[JasonPratt]

I'm not so sure on that.  Whether it's dive-bombing or torpedo bombing, how do you tell what might be on a ship without boarding it?

Subs (and anyone else really) could tell from experience whether a transport had something on it by how low it set in the water. So the game should be able to tell you something was on the ship even if it wasn't men.

As to what, watch the water afterward. Lots of bodies with gear = troops. Lots of oil, maybe on fire = oil. Lots of explosions as the ship goes down = munitions. Lots of load that just goes straight down = metal things, but some debris might still be floating on the water. Don't even need to hang around much to see some of that; or even hang around at all to hear some of that on the sonar. Lots of burning sounds, oil. Lots of booms, munitions. Lots of screams, troops. Lots of weird clanking sounds, metal.

[Sir Slash]

Or they could use those X-Ray Torpedoes.  ::)

[jomni]

Kyz, do you use WITP Tracker?
Just curious.

[KyzBP]

Kyz, do you use WITP Tracker?
Just curious.

I've looked into it a couple of times but I never actually used it.  I don't remember why.  I'll have to check into it again.  Thanks for the reminder.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

I stumbled across this site earlier today.  Thought you might be interested.

http://ww2live.com/en

[Sir Slash]

Very nice video. Thanks for posting SDR.

[FarAway Sooner]

Great stuff, SDR.  Thanks!

I'd never known it until a year or two ago, but naval AA was another great example of doctrine struggling to catch up with technology.  Let me expand a little on my understanding of the exact limitations that the Japanese had with AA fire control on their 25mm cannons early in the war.

When a dive-bomber is attacking, it's typically coming in at an angle of between 65 and 80 degrees.  At the incredible dive speeds they came in at, this meant they were moving very fast.  They also dropped their bombs well above their targets, in order to give themselves time to pull out of the dive without ripping their wings out or blacking their pilot out.

WW II movies show lots of .50 caliber fire serving in an AA role, but in a classical dive bombing attack, your machine guns weren't going to be very effective.  AA planners quickly realized that just throwing bullets up into the sky at a target moving that quickly wasn't a great way to shoot it down before it dropped its weapons.  So they moved towards larger guns throwing shells higher up into the sky that were big enough to explode. 

However, this is where it becomes a much more complicated 3-dimensional mathematical problem.  Gunners needed to be able to predict the altitude of an aircraft and fire shells that would detonate at the right altitude.  Against an airplane dropping 500-700 feet/second, this was harder. 

They didn't ask AA gunners to do this math on the fly--they gave mechanical aids like sight rings to estimate by how much of the plane filled the ring to estimate how high it was, etc.  But those sights needed to be correct and you needed to have your crews trained with how to use those sights.

The Japanese place great emphasis on fighting spirit, but they also overemphasized offense.  This led to inadequate resources and planning being dedicated to things like AA doctrine, damage control, etc.  This doctrine worked fine in the early months of the war, but by Coral Sea and Midway, the shortcomings of this approach were starting to become pretty clear.

[JasonPratt]

Wow -- I am about to lose a whole day watching those videos!!  8) O0

[besilarius]

AA doctrine never really caught up with airplanes and their tactics until the proximity fuse was developed.
Prior to that, the USN had two basic tactics.  Barrage fire was choosing a window that the dive bomber stream had to pass through.  Then you threw everything, included fused shells timed to explode, into that window.  The theory was that if there was enough fire in the window, any surviving plane and it's crew would be shaken up enough to ruin their approach.
The other was using a rocker arm in the fire control.  Basically, you fired at the bomber stream at say 2,500 feet.  After so many seconds, the altitude was adjusted to 2,300 feet, and  then again adjusted all the way down.
Neither really worked well.
The better the bomber crews, the less effective nearby flak was in disrupting their attacks.

[Staggerwing]

The proximity fuse was a real marvel for it's time, and very unrepresented in the annals of WW2 weapons. One of it's variants was basically a tiny radar emitter in a cannon shell:




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_fuze

[besilarius]

Some detailed information from a study of kamikaze defense.

Type of Attack    Planes Shot Down      Rounds per Plane
     
                                                                          20 mm        40 mm       5"/38 MT*        5"/38 VT
Kamikaze                      24                             27,200        6,000         1,000               200

Non-Kamikaze                      41                             30,100        4,500          1,000              550

* MT = Mechanical Timer (i.e., Time Fuzed AA Common)

These figures are from the Special Defense Operations Research Group (SpecORG) study, "AA Defense of the Fast Carrier Task Force - 24 October 1944 To 21 March 1945", Anti-Aircraft Study No. 8, revised 11 September 1945.  They address only carrier task groups, for which the best data were available.