Coastal Defense Guns

[Dereck]

ORIGINAL: Monter_Trismegistos
Once again you imply that i'm implying something I didn't. Don't do that, OK? The one who mentioned Truk and Rabaul was me and only me - as a example of good defended place. Now to the point. I want you simply to show me (or others because i have no Morisson book) where Morrison writes about shelling HEAVY DEFENDED place with only cruisers and destroyers. Salomons? No,I said HEAVY DEFENDED. Maybe Truk? No definetely no, Truk was too heavy defended and a smal pack of CAs & DDs would be simply blown from water.

Truk and Rabaul are immaterial to this discussion Monter because the focus of this discussion was NEVER those two ports but the Solomons. Truk and/or Rabaul had nothing to do with the original posts nor my post either. My post simply stated destroyers and light cruisers were successfuly used in the Solomons to take on Japanese shore batteries. I never once implied or claimed they were used at someplace like Truk or Rabaul.

All your posts have done is muddy the waters and shift focus away from the facts I posted onto something never mentioned nor implied to begin with.

[Iridium]

I've seen only a few bits O' info on Solomon CD guns. Bougainsville had at least a couple 6" guns from what I've seen but I have yet to see any reliable, complete CD OOBs.

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: dereck

ORIGINAL: Monter_Trismegistos
Once again you imply that i'm implying something I didn't. Don't do that, OK? The one who mentioned Truk and Rabaul was me and only me - as a example of good defended place. Now to the point. I want you simply to show me (or others because i have no Morisson book) where Morrison writes about shelling HEAVY DEFENDED place with only cruisers and destroyers. Salomons? No,I said HEAVY DEFENDED. Maybe Truk? No definetely no, Truk was too heavy defended and a smal pack of CAs & DDs would be simply blown from water.

Truk and Rabaul are immaterial to this discussion Monter because the focus of this discussion was NEVER those two ports but the Solomons. Truk and/or Rabaul had nothing to do with the original posts nor my post either. My post simply stated destroyers and light cruisers were successfuly used in the Solomons to take on Japanese shore batteries. I never once implied or claimed they were used at someplace like Truk or Rabaul.

All your posts have done is muddy the waters and shift focus away from the facts I posted onto something never mentioned nor implied to begin with.

Dereck, you have Morrison many of us do not. Is there any reference in Morrison to the Japanese cramming 100 CD guns all over 3" into any base in the Solomons? I suspect not.

To everyone...therefore, IMO we can't argue that the CD gun routine is whacked based on this or other similar combats we've seen in game.

A. How many Japanese bases had 100+ CD guns crammed in? I suspect we should be looking for examples with maybe 20 guns outside of major bases.

B. How many times during the war did an Allied commander bombard a heavily defended base without prepatory aerial and long range bombardment as occurred in this example? I suspect very few if any.

C. Even if ordered to bombard such a location would the Allied commander have stuck around long enough to be considered cheese of the Swiss variety? (This is where the routine is probably broken if it is broken at all)

[BlackSunshine]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

Allied or Japanese, revisionist or not (don´t you have enough of that anytime soon?? [8|])I want to see a book (Morrison or any other book) where a TF conisted of some CA and DDs attacked and duelled with around 100 5,5" and 4,7" guns and didn´t take damage. You probably can´t come up with side xy paragraph ab says.... because that never happened. Come on! Forget to bring up historical facts to say this or that is wrong. Use your BRAIN! Your brain will tell you that 100 guns shooting at some ships may cause damage. Is this historical? No! Would it be realistical? No, to place that many guns! Would the damage be realistical? Yes, if so many guns were in place.

This revisionist sh.. is just so lame... If I´m playing Allied and place 5 CD units at Lunga after taking it and the Japs come in to bombard me with such a TF they get creamed. Again 100 CD guns and a damaged TF. So now come up with Morrison blah blah blah.

It has been said often enough: unhistorical play = unhistorical results. Goes for air, sea and ground combat....

^gets it^

ORIGINAL: castor troy
So if that´s true that´s more than effective to me. Would it been US guns and a Jap BB it would have been also effective to me (before some revisionist or fanboy thing comes up again [8|]).

Only 3 guns and 22 hits? So what when there were 100 guns like in the example of the thread starter. Make them 100 neutral guns and a neutral BB please.

Two of the best posts in the whole thread. Well played Castor Troy.[&o]

[Mynok]

dereck said:

I never once implied or claimed they were used at someplace like Truk or Rabaul.

No, but the example being discussed in this thread is more typical of what one would have seen at Truk or Rabaul, not Bougainville or Tarawa, in history. History is irrelevant to this situation because it is unhistorical, as castor troy pointed out. We have no examples of historical admirals being that stupid.

One might debate the hit percentage, especially since this was likely at night. But there is no excessive gunfire going on as my simple arithmetic demonstrated above.

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: el cid again
Japan had the most formidable coast defense guns ever built. Only Oahu was more defended - in sheer numbers - but only in August 1945 did it approach the sophistication of the Japanese major CD units (when the first of two ex-battleship turrets came into service). We never challenged this sort of installation - unlike ours the Japanese guns were not vulnerable to air attack. You may take this either way - that there is no data and believe whatever you like - or the data is it was too difficult to be worth dealing with. Even Rabaul and Truck were not challenged - both had major defenses if not first line by Japanese standards. But the really big installations guarded the major straits to access the Sea of Japan.

Sorry CID, but this is wrong. The most formidable CD guns in the Japanese arsenal were the three twin 41 cm turrets mounted in the Tsushima Straits. With a range of over 32,000 yards, they were fairly potent, but their Fire Control was only "average". The US Army Model 1919 16" guns could shoot over 49,000 yards with better fire control. Even the Naval 16" guns made available by the Washington Treaty (which also made the Japanese 41 cm turrets available for CD use) could shoot over 45,000 yds. Turret mounting is basically defensive, providing some additional protection at the price of coverage and range.
The only other guns in the Japanese Arsenal with relatively modern fire-control were the six 12" turrets, two 10" turrets, and two 8" turrets which were also mounted primarily at Tsushima and Tokyo Bay.
The rest of the Japanese equipment was pretty old (they never declared anything "obsolete") and the Fire Control was not much better than "open sights" from the gun positions. The largest were the Krupp model 1890 11" Howitzers (which were used in the same manner as the US model 1890 and 1908 12" CD Mortars). Most were 3" to 4.7" pedestal mounts suitable primarily for shooting at Landing Craft.

The "key" to successful CD is the "Fire Control and Plotting" systems which direct the guns, and here the Japanese lag behind. Even in 1945, they were unable to field a successfull Fire Control Radar for their CD units. The same was true for their "mechanical" Fire Direction Systems. While you are right that no Naval Commander would willingly take a TF through Tsushima or into Tokyo Bay, most of the Japanese coast was vulnerable to the kind of attack the US could launch by 1945. And in the rest of the Pacific (with the possible exception of Truk), their CD guns were pretty much "local control" installations lacking the kind of Fire Control available to US mobile CD units.

[Charles2222]

ORIGINAL: Mynok

Pardon me for a moment, but i can't help but notice what might just be a coincidence. How did you come up with 3.8 hits? Multiply that by hundred, roughly, and you come up with that 388 figure I saw earlier. Only problem is, that's 388 GUNS, not hits. Those 388 guns only hit 258 times.

388 shots. There were only 100 guns.

Well I wondered if you hadn't got your information from somewhere else, since it 100 multiplied by 3.8 just happens to workout to this gun figure, only, as I said before, if it's these figures you're using, it is talking about guns:

Naval bombardment of Lunga, at 67,97 - Coastal Guns Fire Back!

388 Coastal gun shots fired in defense.
Allied Ships
DD Le Triomphant, Shell hits 39, on fire, heavy damage SUNK
DD Voyager, Shell hits 46, on fire, heavy damage SUNK
DD Stuart, Shell hits 39, on fire, heavy damage SUNK
CL Perth, Shell hits 27
CL Achilles, Shell hits 15
CL Leander, Shell hits 42, on fire
CA Canberra, Shell hits 34, on fire, heavy damage WIll SINK .. 86/80 damage
CA Australia, Shell hits 16

Japanese ground losses:
69 casualties reported
Guns lost 3

While I understand some of the general argument was that the ships got too wiped out during 'this' battle, it's really not that outrageous necessarily. Only 258 hits out of 388 guns? Just a bit earlier in the thread somebody showed 3 150mm's hitting the Colorodo 22 times 7.1 times a gun. If those 388 guns had done even half as good as those 150"s though whole fleet would have sunk easily. Assuming you were talking about 100 guns hitting 388 times, that would be roughly about the median between far less than one hit a gun and 7.1.

[Mynok]

388 Coastal gun shots fired in defense.

It appears we take different meaning from this line. You are saying that means there were 388 guns whereas I take it to mean there were 388 shots.

Since 2ndACR already told us there were 100 guns, I'm sticking with my interpretation. [;)]

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: Mynok

388 Coastal gun shots fired in defense.

It appears we take different meaning from this line. You are saying that means there were 388 guns whereas I take it to mean there were 388 shots.

Since 2ndACR already told us there were 100 guns, I'm sticking with my interpretation. [;)]

yes, definetely there were 100 guns and 388 shots fired from these guns

[Berkut]

Maybe someone covered this already, but...

If we assume that CD guns en masse can deal out serious damage (and I have no opinion on that), at the very least shouldn't them actually *sinking* several ships be pretty...odd?

I mean, if I am the squadron commander, and I go in and try to shell, and my ships start getting the crap kicked out of them, I am leaving. Why would I sit there and get sunk?

Shouldn't there be more examples of the bombardment group being driven off, rather than demolished?

[Ron Saueracker]

ORIGINAL: Berkut

Maybe someone covered this already, but...

If we assume that CD guns en masse can deal out serious damage (and I have no opinion on that), at the very least shouldn't them actually *sinking* several ships be pretty...odd?

I mean, if I am the squadron commander, and I go in and try to shell, and my ships start getting the crap kicked out of them, I am leaving. Why would I sit there and get sunk?

Shouldn't there be more examples of the bombardment group being driven off, rather than demolished?

Cause and effect are not modelled.[:(]

[el cid again]

No El Cid, if you're going to say something like that you POST the data and sources to back up your assumptions.

I have posted sources on this before - more than once. I do not have time to do scholarly documentation in every comment - and I don't see this being done by others very often. If you elect to believe it isn't true - go ahead and believe it. But it IS verified and it WILL BE in the next version of CHS as well as RHS. I am a bit of a serious student of coast defenses - and have visited many of the major sites and collected literature on them. You are not required to believe me - but that does not mean it is not worthwhile to post quick and dirty for the sake of any who know I have a clue. There is a thread where it was said that my even-handed handling of this subject might result in reforms of a major oversite - and indeed it did in terms of getting a consensus in the CHS team. Ron is completely wrong - coast defense in the game is UNDERSTATED - not overstated. USN taught as late as Viet Nam not to tangle with coast defenses as a general concept. Guns ashore inherantly outrank ships. Only USS New Jersey could more or less ignore the NVA guns, and even she could get hurt in the sense of having people get killed. I have no clue what your attitude is based on - but this is a discussion board. It is a place to debate ideas. If you really want the sources - search in this board for the several places they are posted. Or ask politely.

[Dereck]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

No El Cid, if you're going to say something like that you POST the data and sources to back up your assumptions.

I have posted sources on this before - more than once. I do not have time to do scholarly documentation in every comment - and I don't see this being done by others very often. If you elect to believe it isn't true - go ahead and believe it. But it IS verified and it WILL BE in the next version of CHS as well as RHS. I am a bit of a serious student of coast defenses - and have visited many of the major sites and collected literature on them. You are not required to believe me - but that does not mean it is not worthwhile to post quick and dirty for the sake of any who know I have a clue. There is a thread where it was said that my even-handed handling of this subject might result in reforms of a major oversite - and indeed it did in terms of getting a consensus in the CHS team. Ron is completely wrong - coast defense in the game is UNDERSTATED - not overstated. USN taught as late as Viet Nam not to tangle with coast defenses as a general concept. Guns ashore inherantly outrank ships. Only USS New Jersey could more or less ignore the NVA guns, and even she could get hurt in the sense of having people get killed. I have no clue what your attitude is based on - but this is a discussion board. It is a place to debate ideas. If you really want the sources - search in this board for the several places they are posted. Or ask politely.

El Cid, I have never seen any of your posts backed up by the source, page number and quotes like so many of us do. If you don't have time for "scholarly documentation" in your posts don't post stuff which can't be validated.

There are plenty of people who do post with our sources listed and we take flak yet you post and expect everybody to take your post as gospel. If you want people to accept what you post back it up with facts instead of the rhetoric that you don't have time to post your source. Until you do you don't have half the credibility that people who at least attempt to document their posts do.

[el cid again]

What size guns were they? 12"L40s off of obsolete Battleships?

Actually, the last generation of Japanese coast defenses - built a decade after our last generation (at Fort Drum) - all used the same turret - with 12 inches of face hardened armor - but DIFFERENT guns. These guns were all naval surplus - an IJA 16 inch gun designed for coast defense was not put into production because IJN 16 inch guns were available from "the ships that never were" cancelled by the Washington Naval Treaty. The turrets were all twins - and three of them (on Iki island, Tsushima island, and near Fusan/Pusan on the Korean side of the strait) were sited to control access to the lower end of the Sea of Japan. More narrow entrance points - between Hokkaido and Honshu, and between Kyushu and Honshu - as well as access to Tokyo bay - were defended by 12 inch, 10 inch and 8 inch rifles in these same turrets. Now these should not be confused with older 12 inch defense installations which were a lot like ours. Also, remember Japan had a design for a modern battlecruiser with 12 inch guns, and in the event these were also not built, but guns for them were developed at Muroran (a place even today it is very hard to get information about or from). What made these installations really different is that they were designed for the age of airpower - the turrets are concealed from the air - and they are defended by proper AAA defenses. All the power plants, magazines, troop facilities, etc were underground - comparable to the extensive work we did on Oahu but only completed in one case in August 1945 (and never completed in the other case) - except our sites were NOT concealed from the air. Japanese defenses were so well concealed that in some cases they were never found. We just found 2 eight inch singles at Singapore - one of the most populated places on the planet - hidden by trees in a park! These particular eight inch were dual purpose weapons, and a long forgotten wartime document indicates we avoided bombing near them because they were anything but ineffective.

[el cid again]

Truk and Rabaul are immaterial to this discussion Monter because the focus of this discussion was NEVER those two ports but the Solomons. Truk and/or Rabaul had nothing to do with the original posts nor my post either. My post simply stated destroyers and light cruisers were successfuly used in the Solomons to take on Japanese shore batteries. I never once implied or claimed they were used at someplace like Truk or Rabaul.

Expand your mind. The charge is the game CD is too powerful. This might be true, but the data cited does not support the charge. Ron ran into a trap that SHOULD have been about as effective as it was. And it WAS comparable to Rabaul - so your comment is out of line - and MT was correct.

[el cid again]

A. How many Japanese bases had 100+ CD guns crammed in? I suspect we should be looking for examples with maybe 20 guns outside of major bases.

B. How many times during the war did an Allied commander bombard a heavily defended base without prepatory aerial and long range bombardment as occurred in this example? I suspect very few if any.

C. Even if ordered to bombard such a location would the Allied commander have stuck around long enough to be considered cheese of the Swiss variety? (This is where the routine is probably broken if it is broken at all)

One place for sure is Rabaul. Another probably is Truk. In both cases we did not go in like this - and in both cases we did attempt air bombardment - which was effective against ships and other targets but not against the guns. I also think the game does withdraw - it even cancels the mission when I WANT to continue it - sometimes - due to CD guns.

[Mynok]

If you don't have time for "scholarly documentation" in your posts don't post stuff which can't be validated.

Jeez...now who's playing "thought police"........ [>:]

[el cid again]

The most formidable CD guns in the Japanese arsenal were the three twin 41 cm turrets mounted in the Tsushima Straits. With a range of over 32,000 yards, they were fairly potent, but their Fire Control was only "average". The US Army Model 1919 16" guns could shoot over 49,000 yards with better fire control.

Actually, we agree on where the guns were - at least. We completely disagree on the fire control. At least my information is from a book on naval weapons most of which are naval and coast defense guns. For the US Army I have other books and they indicate you are pretty wrong. We don't actually know the range - I know of a case where an officer decided to test it and the shot was lost - never spotted at all. Which is not too shocking at over the horizon ranges. The US Army had no radar for coast defense guns in this era - and even the radar present at places like Hawaii and Fort Stevens were not of the slightest use in such a role. This was strictly optical stuff - and you cannot spot the fall of shot at 49,000 yards (which is 24.5 nautical miles). Our coast defense guns were good at realistic ranges - it was normal to hit or straddle on the first salvo - and in fact it was forbidden to try to hit because of the cost of replacing the target barges (hit on the first shot and the shoot is over for this day).
They were so good they gave the job of figuring out AAA to the coast artillery. But you seem not to know that NO Allied nation EVER came up with proper AAA simulators (like Japan did), or a real computerized data plotting center for anti-air combat (like Japan did). We did NOT have a monopoly on good fire control concepts or equipment, and it is only ignorance that perpetuates the wartime myths that we did. When a significant review in a reference that treats the guns of all nations in an even handed way (being critical and giving praise to all nations technology) says these were "probably the best" - it is very likely the authors, who bothered to become informed on all nations technologies, are correct. Anyway, even if they are wrong, it is not clear, and just because you don't know it does not mean I am wrong to say so. I will say the language used is qualified by the words "probably the best ever constructed" and I will even agree with that qualification. There may, for example, be some 1950s vintage Russian development we don't know about or some other technical exception.

[el cid again]

Even the Naval 16" guns made available by the Washington Treaty (which also made the Japanese 41 cm turrets available for CD use) could shoot over 45,000 yds.

You are confused about range. Not that you are completely confused about what gun had what range - your data is correct except you OVERSTATE the Japanese range! - but that you are confused about its significance. These guns COULD HAVE fired to any range had they been given more elevation. This was not required for that location. Long range fire below the horizon (anything over about 32,000 yards) is very inaccurate and, without aircraft, virtually impossible to correct. These were CONCEALED batteries that did not intend to engage until EFFECTIVE range - and they were (unlike ours) concealed from the air. That was easier to achieve by not requiring super elevation (above 23 degrees).
The guns were sited so that they could not be engaged from very long ranges even by battleships. Each turret was the heart of a separate brigade - including 2 or 3 battalions of infantry, a battalion of engineers, 2 battalions of AAA, several other kinds of artillery, and supporting units. They were commanded by general officers and, in that era, were certainly the "most sophisticated" coast defense sites in the world.

[el cid again]

The only other guns in the Japanese Arsenal with relatively modern fire-control were the six 12" turrets, two 10" turrets, and two 8" turrets which were also mounted primarily at Tsushima and Tokyo Bay.

Incorrect. While some of these mountings were at Tokyo Bay, most were at the passages between the Japanese main islands. See in particular the Tsugaru Straits forts. Once upon a time I was home ported in Japan, and during yard periods I was able to visit most of the sites.