Bombardment and Coastal Guns question.

[incbob]

Newbie trying the Marianas (sp?) scenarion and I ran into some questions.

1) I have a Bombardment force that keeps resetting to Surface Combat every turn. Is is suppossed to do this? How do I get it to just bombard and do nothing else.

2) Port attacks are supposed to take out Coastal guns. How much do you have to attack with to take out a coastal gun? I have attacked a lot and not seen one taken out.

[SunDevil_MatrixForum]

1. They are suppose to do this, just have to set it each turn.

2. That is what I was told too, it seems to take a long time to take out enemy CDs. I would like to hear more about this as well.

Hope this helps.

[geozero]

The shorter scenarios and the ones right after the PH attacks are really meant to be instructional. I can't conceive being able to or having enough ships, planes, troops and resources to set out on any major island invasion tasks in those shorter scenarios.

The U.S. player should not be taking islands IMHO until well into 1942-1943 when they have more troops, ships, etc.

If you want to get a feel for invasions early on try playing the Japanese.

Other than that CD's can do a lot of harm. But a frontal attack on a well defended location is not always prudent. Try Bombarding longer, attacking with planes, destroying supply routes, etc.

It may take a little longer. And ther's no way around it, island hopping Pacific theater warfare was a bloody affair. Expect heavy losses no matter what.

[incbob]

That is what I figured.

I am doing this scenarios mostly to learn what to do and what not to do. I have already learned a lot. Really I haven't done that bad...landed a lot of troups and only lost 3 AP and a LST. Of course, I have had a LOT of ships damaged, but I completely messed up on the bombardment and bombing. Next time I will do better

[Mr.Frag]

Just a note:

BB's tend to run low on their heavy ammo quickly and *this* is why the TF is reset to surface TF and withdraws.

A more aggressive commander may buy you an extra round or two but that is about it.

Remember that the key difference between "Do Not Retire" and "Retire" is that it will not time itself to arrive at night and sprint away before the sun rises.

[SunDevil_MatrixForum]

And when the enemy shows up with a surface fleet to prevent your invasion, its good to have some BB's as a fleet defense.

[mongo]

After dinking around a bit, I'm fairly concerned about the CD guns effectiveness.

Taking the Marianas for example. If I send a DD bombard group vs. Saipan (or worse Guam), they get shredded by the CD guns. As far as I can see however, these are 155mm? They also range out to hit (quite often) my BB groups as well.

I can understand this if they are the true (big gun) CD groups like Manila, HK, or Singapore, but these seem to be standard artillery groups as the base hex.

Plastering the port facilities does help a bit, but it seems as though you have to put in weeks of air before it's safe for the ships to take over (and only the first shot from a Bombard group is every really effective - enemy units hunker down pretty tight after that).

IIRC, even for landing like Iwo, the US Navy only spent 1-2 weeks on station (someone correct me here if I'm wrong). I cannot think of too many APs that were lost from Japanese shelling either.

Now, my next question is why the amphib landing phase comes before bombardment? [&:]

Just something for the Devs to gnaw on..

[DBS]

Would second Mongo's concerns about CD weapon effectiveness - or rather non-CD artillery effectiveness after playing a bit head-to-head against myself.

Japanese bombardment force attacked Lingayen at night, with mix of BBs, CLs and DDs. One Japanese DD sunk by 155mm fire (I had moved in a US Field Artillery regiment).

Two points:

- with a pair of BBs in the force, it would be questionable in reality whether the destroyers would have tended to close in to shoot as well - understandably, but a bit ahistorically, the game assumes every ship in a bombardment force bombards.

- very good shooting by field artillery against a moving target without the benefit of CD fire control. It was the fire control and training that made coastal defence a specialist artillery function, rather than the type of ordnance used.

Is there adequate differentiation between CD and field artillery?

[HawaiiFive-O]

Taking the Marianas for example. If I send a DD bombard group vs. Saipan (or worse Guam), they get shredded by the CD guns. As far as I can see however, these are 155mm? They also range out to hit (quite often) my BB groups as well.

I can understand this if they are the true (big gun) CD groups like Manila, HK, or Singapore, but these seem to be standard artillery groups as the base hex.

Guam: 21x 5.5 inch, 28x 4.7 inch

Tinian: 2x 5.5 inch, 4x 4.7 inch

Saipan: 8x 8 inch, 20x 5.5 inch, 27x 4.7 inch

Those 8 inchers on Saipan are murder if you aren't careful. Tinian's the obvious weak point in the Marianas.

Personally, I'm fine with the strength of the CD batteries- forces you to go slow and 'prep' the battlefield. But it's a definite shock when you first encounter the strength of the guns.

My only change would be to change the routine so that destroyers know to hang back and let the heavies engage the shore emplacements. As it is, I think they close the range to add their 5 inchers to the bombardment, and pay the price for their actions.

[mongo]

Thanks H5O..

I know I should never post early Monday mornings.. the poor noggin can't come up with numbers

Those battery listings do however beg a question: WTF do I always invade Saipan first????? [&:]

[HawaiiFive-O]

ORIGINAL: mongo

Thanks H5O..

I know I should never post early Monday mornings.. the poor noggin can't come up with numbers

Those battery listings do however beg a question: WTF do I always invade Saipan first?????

Because that's the island all your troops are prepped for! [:D][:D]

It's an interesting question. Do you scrap all the preparation work the 2nd/4th/27th has in place at the start of the scenario for Saipan, and instead go for Tinian? Tinian would make a fine base from which to bomb the daylights out of Saipan/Guam, and it's lightly defended. Total assault strength on the island, ~210.

I've played this scenario a few times. I've been thinking that maybe if you send the 27th + armor + arty against Tinian, you could take it (bombing the heck out of the defenders). Leave the 2nd and 4th back at Eniwetok. Then use Tinian to soften up Guam/Saipan.

Might be a good plan. But the sad thing about this scenario is- it really doesn't matter. [:D] The American forces so completely overmatch the Japanese forces, it's a total blowout no matter what the Americans do or do not do.

[mongo]

I've played this scenario a few times. I've been thinking that maybe if you send the 27th + armor + arty against Tinian, you could take it (bombing the heck out of the defenders). Leave the 2nd and 4th back at Eniwetok. Then use Tinian to soften up Guam/Saipan.

Ah... for the good old Pacwar days.. once you were in 44 you could execute 2 simultaneous 5 division landings, then turn right around and re-use the divisions (that took their objectives in 1 turn) for another landing [:D]

It's a curious idea Five.. I'll have to think about it once we patch and I get serious about a Grand Campaign. I'll have to see what the incoming divisions are getting as a default objective upon game entry. That's the really cool thing about WiTP - serious long range planning (like a game year). It's challenging since we are Nimitz/Yama down to the individual ship captains, but it's quite interesting.

[&o]

[2ndACR]

I think the US Navy only shelled Iwo for 3 days prior to the landings with the BB's.
There was alot of arguments between the Fleets over this due to the BB's having to
move on to Okinawa.

Going off of memory so I could be mistaken. I know CA's and DD's hung around for a long while,
but not the BB's.

[mongo]

I knew it wasn't very long.. I'll have to try to find my copy of Wheeler when I get home from work..

[UncleBuck]

I know that the Navy decided that Tarawa that had 3 days of preparation before landing was not enough. I have been pounding Saipan with 14 BB's and 12 CA's for three weeks. When I need to rearm, I send in my flights of B-29's to hit the Airfield and use up supply points. When the Bombardment group is re-armed and fueled from Eniwetok-now Satawal, I send them back and stand down my B-29's. I also have a strong CV force standing by off of Saipan to keep enemy shipping out of the area. Well In one game I tried the invasion after this three week pounding and my initial landing force was hammered. In the first over beach landing enemy coast defense guns fired 2500 shots. Needless to say I lost lots of LST/LCI/LSD/LCT's as well as many dd's and APD's taking serious damage. Now I know that Saipan has a good number of defensive guns, but come on. I had to have done at a minimum 20 bombardments with my BB/CA force in the preceding 3 weeks. I am going to try it again with round the clock bombardment using three bombardment forces in a racetrack to Eniwetok. I am going to soften it up for a full month and see what get for results.

As for attacking Tinian, it sounds like a plan, but I don't know that pounding on Saipan/Guam is going to make a difference. The only hope I believe is to starve them using Tinian as an unsinkable Carrier.

UB

[HawaiiFive-O]

Try settings your bombers on Port Attack. CD guns are only hit by Port Attack (not Airfield/Ground).

Works pretty well for me.

[UncleBuck]

Ok I will try that. I was using Airfield attack to try and use up the Supply. I didn't think I woudl have much effect on guns with air attack if my Bombardment forces were doing so little. I wonder if Dive bombers work even better since they coudl be pin point and negate the pop up type defense.

UB

[SunDevil_MatrixForum]

Something that is stated in the manual, and that has worked for me on the Tutorial and Scenario 6, is to put DD's in your Transport TF's because I guess they help the defense and support the actual landings. Before I put DD's in my Landing TF's they would get hammered, but when I put the DD's in only one or two landing ships in each TF had any real damage. Hope this helps.

[UncleBuck]

I have DD's in my transport TF's, and they are taking the brunt of the Defensive fire, not that it is much of a consolation, but he Landing Craft are being pounded as well. I was just pointing out that I did do a great deal of preperation for the landing with bombardment and still took horrendous losses on the initial assault. I also used the AGC's and Amphib HQ.

[incbob]

Here is a question and I will have to leave it to my betters to answer.

Is the damage we see being inflicted by CD's historical or ahistorical?