Comparing aircraft production (CVO baseline revised)

[ChezDaJez]

a US frigate got hit so bad her back was broken. Her captain wrote a book in which he discloses he never had been trained to know how to even detect such attackers - had never attempted to use the systems on board to do so - and had none of his weapons stations manned. A 'solution' must include software - the training of the fleet - or it isn't a solution.]

You have a couple of your facts wrong here, Cid. If Brindle wrote a book, it has not been published or at least I could not find it. If you have a name for it, I'd be interested in reading it. There is a book called "Inside the Danger Zone" written by Harold Lee Wise and published by the Naval Institute Press. This book describes the situation in the Persian Gulf and does discuss the Stark along with the Vincennes, the Sammy B, and others. The Stark is not the focus of the book however.

Assuming there is a published book by Capt Glenn Brindle, I would be very hesitant in trusting anything he said considering that he was removed from command and forced to retire as a commander not a captain for dereliction of duty.

A Naval Board of Inquiry found that he had failed to take ANY precautionary measures when an Iraqi Mirage capable of carrying Exocets was detected at 40 miles approaching the ship. The plane closed to 12 miles and all he did was attempt to contact the aircraft in question. He failed to take any action even after being told the aircraft had suddenly reversed its course. He failed to call general quarters, he failed to unlock the Phalanx system, he failed to maneuver so as to unlimber his 3" gun, he failed to arm the chaff system and he failed to warn the crew. He was also found to have misreported the SLQ-32 readiness status in that he never reported it as being only marginally operational at the time to higher authority. The board recommended that he be court-martialed. The Navy however gave him NJP and forced him to retire.

He would have a very large axe to grind. I certainly would find it very difficult to believe that the captain of a US Navy warship had never been trained in the use of precautionary measures for the defense of the ship.

I'd also like to know the source of your statement that 80% of the missiles fired in the Persian Gulf hit buoys. Considering that Iraq alone fired over 200 Exocets and hit 74 ships, some them with two missiles produces a hit rate of at least 37% (and not allowing for multiple hits on the same target). The Iranians fired around 3 dozen Silkworms. Many hit ships but several also targeted Saudi and Kuwaiti oil loading facilities heavily damaging them.

Chez

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: herwin

Morse and Kimball go into this. The operational analysis included 477 cases where a Japanese plane was headed towards a specific ship. 172 hit, sinking 27 ships.

Class Attacks Percent hits
BB/CA/CL 48 44%
CV 44 41%
CVE/CVL 37 48%
DD/APD/DM/DMS 241 36%
AP/APA/AKA/AKN 21 43%
LSM/LST/LSV 49 22%
Small craft 37 22%

For large units, manoeuvring decreased the percentage of hits. For small units, it was the reverse, due to the resulting degradation of their AA.

When CNO had intel that USS New Jersey would be targeted - five months in the future - by a combination of land based and sea based ASCMs - and possibly MiGs at the same moment - his instructions were "I don't want a single hit." The goal of fleet air defense is never to permit multiple tens of % hits - particularly in this age where the cost of ships is astronmical and the number of warships is small by WWII standards. Nor are sailors "expendable" in the WWII sense.
I listened to a live broadcast with the PLA general (Admirals are generals in PLAN) commanding during a Clinton era Taiwan crisis: when asked what he would do if he had to fight USN, he replied: "I will attack, firing missiles until I achieve hits. Probably one big case with hundreds of casualties will send them home. If it does not, I will keep shooting until it is enough." [my condensed paraphrase and translation, this was broadcast live at the time, and I intercepted it]
Now this sort of reasoning is often thought to be just posturing - but it isn't. The general is right: as long as the saturation levels are so low - the problem lies in sending a saturation attack. To that end, PLA has modified many very high speed ballistic missiles as well as cruise missiles, and if short range rounds are counted, we face high numbers of thousands available to expend in a naval theater (meaning in excess of 5000) - never mind the number of jets that could be sent. No one has any illusions we even have the ammunition to hard kill this sort of numbers - never mind that we would have anything like one shot one kill success rates. [In Viet Nam we WERE attacked - for four years - by jets and ASCMs. While we defeated every attack - they never pressed the defense with a proper saturation attack. The record was two jets and a missile killed by USS Sterette in 1972 - the first missile kill in real combat by another missile in history. Had even six been used at one time, it is probable we would have been hit. The usual attack was by two, and the usual defense was electronic rather than hard kill - hard kill is more or less what you do when you fail to fool them with electronics. Surely WWII students know that attacks by multiples of six is a possibility.]

[herwin]

Sid, you're muttering in your beer.

There are a number of open source discussions of USN AA effectiveness published in book form back in the 1960s that our readers can probably find if they look around carefully. The whole subject was very interesting when I was designing similar systems. (I was the software architect for some of the early LoAD concepts.) The Phoenix missile system was designed as a long-range stand-off weapon system launched from aircraft (originally F111B, later F14) loitering over the CVTF. It would be backed up by Sparrow and Sidewinder-armed aircraft in the air and on deck alert. The threat, of course, were the Soviet naval aviation strike regiments, which are not a current issue--although perhaps a future one.

[el cid again]

Problems with JNAF fighter production led to a revision of settings for CVO/BBO: Revised baseline:

7 Dec 41 Japan 409 Allied 733

3 Feb 42 Japan 615 Allied 943

24 Mar 42 Japan 668 Allied 959

6 May 42 Japan 685 Allied 1101

1 Jun 42 Japan 686 Allied 1143

Note the latter pair: Japan comes up 1 in capacity in just over 3 weeks, but the allies increase 42. This may be a point where the ratio begins to change.


7 Aug 42 Japan 686 Allied 1143

Now both appear to be at a plateau - all plants are apparently maxed out at this point in time.

11 Oct 42 Japan 812 Allies 1184

Pleauteau broken and both sides climbing again. If summer 1942 is the low point, the Allied advantage in capacity drops to about 1.4 in that period. But real production in Japan is always much less than capacity - while Allied production usually = capacity. I estimate the Allies add 3 planes to 1 on the map at the low point. Japan never is able to sustain even 2:1 total aircraft losses advantage - and ultimately it loses more than the Allies do - because of higher attrition rates (if you look at total aircraft losses - not just air-air losses). Eventually Japan is not even able to break even in air air combat - by which point it is losing several planes to 1 total. All of which seems right. Japan must figure out how to kill planes efficiently - using battleships is one of my favorite ways - or bombers and strafers vs planes on the ground. But it is never good enough to stay even in the long haul. Sooner or later the Allied advantage in adding more planes to the map and lower attrition rates must matter. To which add that eventualy Allied planes become very high quality and compete very well.

2 Dec 42 Japan 812 Allies 1186

Another plateau for Japan - and apparently a similar one for the Allies.

4 Jan 43 Japan 819 Allies 1498
16 Feb 43 Japan 851 Allies 1586

The logjam is broken, but the Allies climb much faster than Japan.
Aircraft issues statistics are implying that some Allied aircraft also do not build at the capacity rate - see in particular Catilina III. It may be this is related to HI points.


15 Mar 43 Japan 853 Allies 1611

The relative advantage in Allied capacity is climbing like a rocket - but the Japanese are barely climbing at all. To which add the Allies climb is in things like F6F - which already is entering theater at a greater rate than any other aircraft.

19 Jun 43 Japan 854 Allies 1857.

Clearly the Allies advantage takes off in 1943 and only gets greater and greater. Here it is 217% in capacity terms - and the actual production is probably on the order of 5 or 6 times greater. By now the aircraft being produced are of very high quality in general. Total aircraft losses for all causes are

Japan 4183 Allies 3231

That means, in spite of getting fewer planes entering the battle, Japan loses almost 1.3 planes for every Allied plane loss.

15 Jul 43 Japan 886 Allies 2024

[Historiker]

One question to the aircraft-pool

Are the numbers at the Japanese side coming from historical sources? I wonder why there are nearly all units not at full strengh while even the pool of many obsolete planes like the G3N or the Claude are very small - which I both would expect to be bigger.

[el cid again]

It depends on the scenario, but in general

units start at historical strength in CVO/BBO family

and are allowed to expand to the unit theoretical maximum size

pools also are historical - often I have every last plane identified - but sometimes this is estimated data.

In EOS family most of the pools are used to bring units up to strength as far as possible - or even to replace older types with newer ones. But nothing is ever free if I do it - there is strict accounting for aluminum, engines, plant capacity, etc.

Some Allied planes are ENTIRELY in the pool and there is NO production - to prevent problems with too much production - or because production has ended.

[Historiker]

Strange...
I would really expect more old planes in the pool, but if the data is mostly correct, ok

[okami]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

It depends on the scenario, but in general

units start at historical strength in CVO/BBO family

and are allowed to expand to the unit theoretical maximum size

pools also are historical - often I have every last plane identified - but sometimes this is estimated data.

In EOS family most of the pools are used to bring units up to strength as far as possible - or even to replace older types with newer ones. But nothing is ever free if I do it - there is strict accounting for aluminum, engines, plant capacity, etc.

Some Allied planes are ENTIRELY in the pool and there is NO production - to prevent problems with too much production - or because production has ended.

Have do reconcile the math? In CVO the Japanese have 126 Carrier borne A6M2 and 224 Landbased A6M2 with a further 7 in the replacement pool. The Japanese only have an industrial output of 6 A6M2 per month at start of game. The A6M2 only came online in September of 1940. They could not have produced more than 84 A6M2 aircraft at current rates over the time from 9/40 to 12/41. So is the industrial output low or did they just stop and lower their production of this aircraft?

[el cid again]

First - the rate of production of A6M2 was too low in CVO family - due to the loss of a factory to some other type - and that problem was identified and corrected a couple of updates back. This is not the case at the present time.

Second - I have actual production data - and we know the number of Zeros with a high order of confidence - the only variable being "how many were lost in accidents in its first few months of use?" The uncertainty is 2 or 3 - and we are using the median value in CVO and BBO. EOS is slightly different - but the production ramp up issues are so severe it has almost no impact by the start of the war. The only noticable difference is that more plants are tooled up and early war production will not only be higher - it will ramp up faster. It is possible the EOS pool should be 8 instead of 7 - but it is hardly worth a lot of effort to figure out.

[okami]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

First - the rate of production of A6M2 was too low in CVO family - due to the loss of a factory to some other type - and that problem was identified and corrected a couple of updates back. This is not the case at the present time.

Second - I have actual production data - and we know the number of Zeros with a high order of confidence - the only variable being "how many were lost in accidents in its first few months of use?" The uncertainty is 2 or 3 - and we are using the median value in CVO and BBO. EOS is slightly different - but the production ramp up issues are so severe it has almost no impact by the start of the war. The only noticable difference is that more plants are tooled up and early war production will not only be higher - it will ramp up faster. It is possible the EOS pool should be 8 instead of 7 - but it is hardly worth a lot of effort to figure out.

So how do I keep up to date on this? I am currently at 7.862.

[el cid again]

This problem will more or less go away in about two days. Mifune says he will post to the RHS site - presumably today.
A German and an Italian member are offering to post or send out copies. Cobra may post to Sendspace whenever he surfaces again. And I am sending out two mailings per day to those who send addresses (that is, new addresses get processed every 12 hours - not that the list is used that often).

I will freeze on the next release - for some extended period. We have reviewed and reworked - and from now on - it is going to be we will test the many new concepts to see how well they work - and "calibrate" the values (which may need different constants). In order to do the tests - and to begin work on an unrelated product - I will suspend active development.