Sara, Lex and Hornet Air Groups (in RHS)

[el cid again]

After reports that the symptom that caused me to revert to 4 squadron CVs (RHS originally tried 5) is no longer present, I ran tests - and it indeed is the case that the ships behave normally. RHS is immune to combining VB and VS squadrons - we don't honor the naming conventions code looks for. So we only have the resize issue - and the new form it takes is tolerable - and also avoidable if you prefer. Add to that - we give you "extra" carrier qualified squadrons - in case you want to substitute back in regular squadrons after a resize. We found a way to have many CVE squadrons "resize" to their proper size - forever - ashore - on a different ship - name it.

And we still have a couple of technical problems (art pointers, EOS has a missing VF unit, some HQ assignments) which mean we will issue another update. SO we will go over to five squadron CV as standard.

ALL RHS scenarios will feature starting Lex and Sara with 5 squadrons (both historical). EOS ONLY will retain a five squadron USS Hornet - and the Shangra La squadron. In other scenarios, Hornet is available sooner - at New Orleans - but has no B-25 unit on board. [It was based at Norfolk, and it was pretty green, and needed to work up the B-25s once that was thought of. We let players decide when to field it - and control the air craft type.] What is missing in non EOS is the B-25s - not because they are not historical- but because they don't quite work properly. While a B-25 can land on a carrier - this was not how it was done for the raid. This may be temporary: I expect to take Shangra La out when/if Matrix gives us a proper Doolittle squadron.

[Used to be - when we did five squadron CVs - we got only 9 ready planes per squadron - after one day. No longer.]

[bradfordkay]

"It was based at Norfolk, and it was pretty green,"

Now where did you come up with this? My information is that the Doolittle Raiders were volunteers from the 17th Bomber Group and 89th Recon Squadron (redesignated 432d Bombardment Squadron on April 22) , all based at Columbia, SC before they volunteered for the secret mission.

[el cid again]

Well - first of all - there isn't any contradiction here. It is pretty confusing too - because the unit on USS Hornet was ad hoc - not a unit per se.


Note I wrote about the USS Hornet - and it is not based in Columbia but at Norfolk. This has nothing whatever to do with where the B-25s came from.

Apparently the raiders - there were only 16 of them - all came from the 89th group. There may have been some from another unit. But they were not a separate squadron per se - no squadron name at all - just a task organization in Navy talk. When I failed to ID the unit, I posted a query, and Forum members explained this. So you can find it in a thread somewhere. After that, I named the unit the "Shangra La Squadron" after the FDR radio announcement about the raid.