Matrix do something with this nonsense...

[Nikademus]

Perfectly coordinated!

Actually it wasn't. Each squadron arrived seperately and the SBD's had to wait around for the TBD's to arrive. It helped that they were attacking a very weakly defended target which doesn't really apply in Guest's example.

[ChezDaJez]

That's what I was proposing. It's not wrong that all the Japanese planes fly during the Morning Phase, only that they arrive in a huge clump that overwhelms the defense. Had they arrived as 180 and 170, I'd have no complaint. "Uber-Cap" should suffer the same restrictions. Just because you have 120 Fighters on CAP doesn't mean that they are all in the air at the right moment. Should probably be no more than 40-60% that can meet an attack...with the Americans getting better as the war goes on and they master the FDC/Radar coordination. But even in the Mariana's Turkey Shoot not every fighter was involved in every intercept.

Then we are on the same page. And I agree that only a portion of CAP should actually engage and the number that do engage should be based on the raid's altitude, the amount of warning (from radar, coastwatchers, etc...) and the relative size of the raid. It just tickles me to see all 200 CAP attack 10 bombers. IRL an air controller might order 20 fighters or so to intercept but he certainly wouldn't send all he had at his disposal under normal circumstances.

I've read that at the Marianas Turkey Shoot only about 30% of the available CAP actually sighted the enemy and of those that did, only about 60% actually engaged. Most of the raids were relatively small (<30 aircraft) and controllers vectored small groups of fighters towards each detected group. Of course, most intercepts took place well away from the carriers.

Chez

[Przemcio231]

Yeach and as far as i know Japs Did not have the capability to cordinate the CAP effort

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: Przemcio231

Yeach and as far as i know Japs Did not have the capability to cordinate the CAP effort

It depended on the weather and timing. Early 42, neither side had developed/perfected a proper Fleet defense directed from the carriers, though the USN as everyone knows was on their way to it. The Japanese CAP was largely on it's own in the air, but if visibility was good enough to give them advance warning and if the enemy attacked along a single vector, they could put up quite a tenacious defense as they did at Midway (ironically, their CAP's best preformance up til the point McCluskey's boys showed up) A combined multi vector strike would most likely overload the CAP. (US too)

[Przemcio231]

Yes i know but the US dude's at least had Radar Warning that something comes to clobber them[:D]

[ChezDaJez]

Yeach and as far as i know Japs Did not have the capability to cordinate the CAP effort

They did but not to any extent approaching what the US did.

Normally only Japanese flight leaders had radios and Japanese controllers could (and did) issue intercept orders. The problem was that the radios were very inferior and often did not work. More than one flight leader ripped them out of their aircraft because of their poor performance. In addition, the Japanese never set up separate radio frequencies for air combat direction. That's one of the reasons the Japanese also decided to use main guns to fire in the direction of the incoming raids to alert pilots of where to go.

Even when they did work, the flight leaders were often unable to relay the orders to his flight because the rest of them had no radios. This was especially true if they had been scattered during a previous engagement with the enemy.

Their loss rate would have probably gone down also if the radios worked. Saburo Sakai said there was nothing more frustrating than being unable to warn his fellow pilots of enemy fighters that were about to jump another flight. All because the Japanese high command couldn't/wouldn't recognize the necessity of tactical aerial communications.

Chez

[Yava]

Hey Guest... btw. Do you know why that jagdpanzer site is offline for such a long time?

[Przemcio231]

Cheez i read that Tinian Corp Zero Pilots dumped their radios as they were to heavy for them.... but this is rediculus[:D]

[Monter_Trismegistos]

You mean Jagdtiger's forum? Its online now, but it changed adress.

[Guest]

Yava.
Actually Jagtiger forum are working.
Link to forum and to my AAR:
http://jagdtiger.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=114&start=0

[Yava]

Great! Kinda missed it... see it's not the same...&nbsp;[:(] was such a good and a big forum...

[Guest]

These same people. But old forum lost all data.

[Yava]

ORIGINAL: Guest

These same people. But old forum lost all data.

That's good... you had that avatar with that Jap officer[;)]

[Guest]

Yes. Unlimited faithful for Emperors matter (if it's correct) - General Terauchi.

[ChezDaJez]

Cheez i read that Tinian Corp Zero Pilots dumped their radios as they were to heavy for them.... but this is rediculus

Many leaders dumped the radios because they were carp, very sensitive to vibration. The wieght savings was minimal but some pilots believed it help their maneuverability. From the pictures I've seen of the radios, they couldn't have weighed more than about 18kg.

From j-aircraft.com:

The following conclusions were reached in the report. The radio sets were well designed and at the beginning of the war, well built. As the war went on, shortages of raw materials began to affect the quality of the radio components. One of the earliest problems encountered was a lack of coordination between the manufacturers of the radios and the aircraft builders. Frequently, no provision was made for mounting points for the radios in the initial cockpit designs of aircraft. As a result they were fitted as an afterthought in whatever space was available. This led to problems of accessibility in some aircraft types. Crewmembers had difficulty adjusting frequencies, volume and other parameters of the radios. The greatest problem encountered was that of correctly installing the radios with proper wiring, shielding and grounding of the equipment. It seems that little attention was devoted to this problem until late in the war. Insufficient shielding of the ignition system of the aircraft caused interference with reception of signals to a great degree, as did static charges generated by the passage of the airframe through the atmosphere. It seems that there were very few officers at fighter group level who were familiar with radio systems or who cared to conduct effective programs to maintain them. The resulting poor performance quickly led fighter pilots to cease using the radios and resort to the old visual methods. In the case of some land-based groups, they removed all radio equipment to enhance the performance of the planes. Ship-based planes needed to retain their radios for navigation and homing purposes.

Very early in the war the lack of radios severely limited tactical control options that could be exercised by flight commanders. Sakai, Saburo wrote of the death of fellow pilot Miyazaki, Yoshio and the near ambush of Lt. Sasai, Junichi under circumstances where formations had drawn apart and he was unable to tell the straying aircraft that they were about to be bounced. These incidents occurred over New Guinea in May 1942. Later, during the air battles around Guadalcanal, Japanese fighter formations had great difficulty coordinating escort actions due to heavy cloud conditions degrading visibility at multiple altitudes. John Lundstrom cites this on page 192 of “The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign”.

Chez

[Bombur]

His first strike consisted of 89 fighters and 108 DB/TB. All were shot down by your 250 Zero CAP. No way would this have happened in Nikmod. Agreed he would probably still have lost all his CV's but enough of his a/c would have got through to perhaps sink one or two of your carriers.

Stock A2A model stinks. I am suprised anyone is still willing to play a game using it.

We had about two battles with more or less the same correlation of forces in Nik mod, and the results were pretty the same that Przemcio231 is complaining about. I was playing IJN, won the two battles and placed some complaints about this in our old AAR (Defeat disease-Nik vs Bombur). I also complained when I lost my Coral Sea battle to Nik but then aknowledged my complaints weren´t correct. Even in Nik mod, it´s hard for USN to score hits against KB if number of bombers attacking target is close to 2:1 favoring Japan. Furthermore, the stacking of Japanese BB´s and CV´s in the same hex results in BB´s absorbing significant amounts of damage. It´s likely that the new Nik mod will result in more balanced CV vs. CV battles, I´m not sure. In a few months we will have an answer to this question. Coral Sea´s Nik vs. Speedy resulted in mutual CV anihilation...

[Przemcio231]

Well i have other experience with NIK mode i would still lose some CV's but i would at least inflict some Damage

[Nikademus]

Admitedly I should not have fought that last battle at all.....facing 10 IJN flattops with only 2 USN CV and a CVL + 3 Brit CV's. Ah well......if only i'd have allocated more fighters for escort i would have knocked out a good number of his carriers. Next time.....just you WAIT! [:'(]

My battle with Speedy was much more even in the allocation though all 3 flatops on my part survived while his two were sunk. Thats the good news for me. The bad news....is that Shokaku and Zuikaku were both crippled and will be out for at least 8 months with 70ish SYS damage (and a long perilous trip back to Japan) Shoho will probably out for 4-6 months. Had i been hit with 1000LB bombs or any torpedoes, I would have lost at least one CV i'm sure.

[Ron Saueracker]

It doesn't have to be a tactical level simulation to include tactical elements that would make turn resolution more realistic.

irrelevant

Exactly! This lame ass excuse about it not being a tactical simulation is the get out of jail free card to every legitimate complaint.

[Nikademus]

horsehockey.