unrealistic air combat...

[HansBolter]

Been busy at work lately with little time to post, but I'm enjoying watching DEB................give a fool enough rope.....

[SuluSea]

ORIGINAL: Ike99



You´re speaking of attacking ships at sea, at night.

Without radar, or perhaps even with the radar they had at the time, it would have been extremely difficult to just find an enemy task force in open sea much less attack it with a carrier strike.

I'm also speaking about finding their own carrier at night and landing on pitching decks after the attack if you read earlier in the thread .
The USN practiced night landings on the USS Langley in 1925, that doesn't mean they were night capable even some 16 years later.

ORIGINAL: Ike99

[:D][:D]

[Ike99]

The USN practiced night landings on the USS Langley in 1925, that doesn't mean they were night capable even some 16 years later.

Night carrier operations are not as much science fiction in World War 2 as you´re assuming Sula. As I pointed out earlier, it was within the capability of the time.

...VT-10 be scheduled for a night strike against Japanese shipping remaining in Truk lagoon on the night of 16-17 February.

At 0410, TBF-1Cs catapulted from Enterprise for a night masthead-level bombing attack on shipping. LT Van Eason, VT-10's exec, led the strike. It was planned that individual runs would be accomplished by radar; the bomb release point would be determined by the pilot, assisted by radar...

...Independence provided night reconnaissance and night combat air patrol for Task Force 38 during this operation...

There is a book on this subject from the Allied side called...

Dark Sky, Black Sea: Aircraft Carrier Night and All-Weather Operations (Hardcover)

Probably worth the investment for the CF designers to make the read. Finding specific night operational information would be more difficult for the Japanese side because of the language barrier but it is know they practiced and trained for night operations as well. I´m sure some information good be found by digging deep enough though.

Hansbolter-Grow up and try debating with other adults like an adult and stop childishly calling people sttupid and adking if "their brain can take it".

Hansbolter-Been busy at work lately with little time to post, but I'm enjoying watching DEB................give a fool enough rope.....

Hypocrite-One who plays a part; especially, one who, for the purpose of winning approbation of favor, puts on a fair outside seeming; one who feigns to be other and better than he is; a false pretender to virtue or piety; one who simulates virtue or piety.

Ahem...how much rope have you got Hans?

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: Ike99


Ahem...how much rope have you got Hans?

Auspiciously, not enough to get myself banned!

Face it Ike, some folks have the savvy to use the rope you give them to tie others up in knots, while some merely manage to hang themselves with it.

As you may have gathered by now, I'm not the self hanging type.

[ILCK]

ORIGINAL: Ike99

The USN practiced night landings on the USS Langley in 1925, that doesn't mean they were night capable even some 16 years later.

Night carrier operations are not as much science fiction in World War 2 as you´re assuming Sula. As I pointed out earlier, it was within the capability of the time.

...VT-10 be scheduled for a night strike against Japanese shipping remaining in Truk lagoon on the night of 16-17 February.

At 0410, TBF-1Cs catapulted from Enterprise for a night masthead-level bombing attack on shipping. LT Van Eason, VT-10's exec, led the strike. It was planned that individual runs would be accomplished by radar; the bomb release point would be determined by the pilot, assisted by radar...

...Independence provided night reconnaissance and night combat air patrol for Task Force 38 during this operation...

There is a book on this subject from the Allied side called...

Dark Sky, Black Sea: Aircraft Carrier Night and All-Weather Operations (Hardcover)

Probably worth the investment for the CF designers to make the read. Finding specific night operational information would be more difficult for the Japanese side because of the language barrier but it is know they practiced and trained for night operations as well. I´m sure some information good be found by digging deep enough though.

Hansbolter-Grow up and try debating with other adults like an adult and stop childishly calling people sttupid and adking if "their brain can take it".

Hansbolter-Been busy at work lately with little time to post, but I'm enjoying watching DEB................give a fool enough rope.....

Hypocrite-One who plays a part; especially, one who, for the purpose of winning approbation of favor, puts on a fair outside seeming; one who feigns to be other and better than he is; a false pretender to virtue or piety; one who simulates virtue or piety.

Ahem...how much rope have you got Hans?

Yes but the example you gave of of Allied craft equipped with radar, the Feb 16-17 raid on Truk was 1944 and so outside the time of UCV. There's clearly no evidence of the IJN or any other Japanese force being able to mount large scale effective night raids as opposed to one off strikes by some Betty pilots and in fact there's precious little evidence of ANYONE mounting consistently effective night operations in WWII until planes became radar equipped.

[SuluSea]

No Japanese carrier planes had the technology that the TBF 1Cs had and as Ilck said it happened in '44. A Zero pilot was lucky if he had a radio that worked.

I still haven't seen anyone provide or even find in my research any successful night attack by IJN air. I believe Erik Rutins said it best so I'll quote him from a different thread regarding the same subject.

However, I think that since this is a historical game, most players will not be happy about repeated use of tactics that were not historically possible.

[barkhorn45]

"I still haven't seen anyone provide or even find in my research any successful night attack by IJN air"
I think I documented successful night attacks by IJN air units if your reference is to IJN carrier night ops I wish you would specifiy this in your post as it is it makes a blanket statement which i have refuted in that the IJN DID successfully attack at night do I need to repeat my references

[Ike99]

Yes but the example you gave of of Allied craft equipped with radar, the Feb 16-17 raid on Truk was 1944 and so outside the time of UCV. There's clearly no evidence of the IJN or any other Japanese force being able to mount large scale effective night raids as opposed to one off strikes by some Betty pilots and in fact there's precious little evidence of ANYONE mounting consistently effective night operations in WWII until planes became radar equipped.

There was no technological breakthrough that allowed night carrier ops in 44´ ILCK. It was simply a matter of choice.

All the technology was already available. Lights, instruments and radio beam homing.

An airplane equipted with radar operating from a carrier would have no advantage in bombing a fixed point over one without.

The radar at the time was very primitive. It could see an object at night on the open ocean, German U boat in the Atlantic for Example. Or an airplane in the open sky, bombers over Berlin. But if an object had anything solid behind it, the contact would be lossed in the radar return...clutter.

This is precisely what happened in the 44 Truk raid mentioned. The ships in the lagoon were lost in all the radar return against the Lagoon. The targets were found visual simply because they knew of course there would be Japanese ships at Truk!...of course!

[:D]

Then they were attacked visually.

The radar on mentioned aircraft gave no advantage and were not necessary to make such a mission. The same mission could have been made in 1943 or even 1940 given pilots with night flying training were available.

[SuluSea]

ORIGINAL: barkhorn45

"I still haven't seen anyone provide or even find in my research any successful night attack by IJN air"
I think I documented successful night attacks by IJN air units if your reference is to IJN carrier night ops I wish you would specifiy this in your post as it is it makes a blanket statement which i have refuted in that the IJN DID successfully attack at night do I need to repeat my references

I made clear in my many posts in this thread I was refering to carrier operations, which just so happens to be the topic of discussion posted by the thread starter.

[bigbaba]

even at static and big targets like kassel and other cities in germany, the hit ratio of the RAF bomber command was more then bad in 1942. and remember: we are talking about big cities and not a comparatively small target like PM AND we talk about the royal air force, which was way ahead in electronic warfare compared to the japanese.

the hit ratio of the RAF nightbombers in 1942 was lesser then 20% of the bombs in a 5 KM radius around the target. an RAF commander said about the question, if he had attacked the right city: "all i can say is that we dropped xxx tons of bombs over germany." and that was the situation in 1942 even with target finding systems like GEE.

air-surface radar (the british HS and the US HSX) were in development at the beginning of 1942 and not ready for action. the japs even did not developd such a radar in WW2.

so when large 4E bombers of a leading nation in electronic warfare had such a huge problems in 1942 to find a huge germany city at night, then tiny carrier aircrafts of a underdeveloped nation (in radar technique) were more then ever unable to find a small allied base in south pacific at night, attack it precice (killing 600 men and causing 100-150 hits on the AF) and fly back to their carriers and land safety.

and although i could not see ikes reals OP-loses, they were low for sure, because he was able to repeat this attacks very often with nearly exactly the same number of AC.

[Ike99]

even at static and big targets like kassel and other cities in germany, the hit ratio of the RAF bomber command was more then bad in 1942. and remember: we are talking about big cities and not a comparatively small target like PM AND we talk about the royal air force, which was way ahead in electronic warfare compared to the japanese.

the hit ratio of the RAF nightbombers in 1942 was lesser then 20% of the bombs in a 5 KM radius around the target. an RAF commander said about the question, if he had attacked the right city: "all i can say is that we dropped xxx tons of bombs over germany." and that was the situation in 1942 even with target finding systems like GEE.

air-surface radar (the british HS and the US HSX) were in development at the beginning of 1942 and not ready for action. the japs even did not developd such a radar in WW2.

so when large 4E bombers of a leading nation in electronic warfare had such a huge problems in 1942 to find a huge germany city at night, then tiny carrier aircrafts of a underdeveloped nation (in radar technique) were more then ever unable to find a small allied base in south pacific at night, attack it precice (killing 600 men and causing 100-150 hits on the AF) and fly back to their carriers and land safety.

The British almost always bombed from at least 17,000 feet and considered that ¨Low Altitude¨ Most times they were even higher.

Doesn´t take much to throw a bomb off target by five miles when you´re 25,000 feet high.

When you´re lower that´s another equation.

Why would one expect dive bombers and torpedo planes to be able to hit a 135 meter ship with a fair degree of accuracy as they did, yet expect them to miss what is at least probably a 1500 meter airfield illuminated by parachute flares almost 100% of the time?

Besides, if the British scored around 20% from what was probably an average bombing altitude of at least 20,000 feet in the dark...I would think my hit rate of, probably around 20-30% from between 3-5000 feet would be right in line with ¨realistic¨ It´s pure speculation of course. Seems logical though.

[tocaff]

Gather & check your facts.  A large fixed target was hard to hit.  Now check on the definition of the British for the area of radius that they considered a hit.  What you might consider a miss just might have been considered a hit for those times.

A small moving target is much harder to hit from any altitude.

[Ike99]

Gather & check your facts. A large fixed target was hard to hit. Now check on the definition of the British for the area of radius that they considered a hit.

I did gather and check my facts. If you do have some contradictory facts, post them and not some general ¨gather your facts¨ post. [8|]

A small moving target is much harder to hit from any altitude.

How do you figure a land based airfield to be a ¨small¨ & ¨moving¨ target anyways?

[Tactics]

[font="times new roman"]Interesting thread here. [/font]
[font="times new roman"] [/font]
[font="times new roman"]I’m playing WITP, but not multiplayer since I’m too chicken; and because I’d still don’t fully understand production, yet.[/font]
[font="times new roman"] [/font]
[font="times new roman"].....but it seems to me this is just about PVP – Player vs. Player.[/font]
[font="times new roman"] [/font]
[font="times new roman"]It doesn’t matter what game it is, orcs and elves, rainbow six or UV. Some people want to try and re-make history and see if they can do better, or recreate a knight vs. knight sword fight. Others just want to win, the end justifies the means with those people - This is PVP. Get used to it! PVP Happened, OMG! Thats what they always shout.[/font]
[font="times new roman"] [/font]
[font="times new roman"]If I wasn’t having fun or thought some joker was gaming the game and hiding behind alleged facts or dodging the issue by posting obscure tidbits – I’d drop the game. Screw it.[/font]
[font="times new roman"] [/font]
[font="times new roman"]Just log out and wait for the ganker to leave, then come back and find someone who thinks more like you.[/font]

[tocaff]

Uh huh, and your facts are from where?  Don't ignore this question like you do to all of the others.  I want to read these "facts" of yours from the source, not on your say so.

Why is it for instance that when a daylight raid made by the US 4E bombers over Germany dropped their loads with the "vaunted" Norden bomb sight and had to go back and do it again against a sprawling industrial complex because all but a few bombs hit the actual target?  In WWII the radius of an area hit was huge compared to today so precision bombing then was a joke compared to today.

Land based airfields were small in comparison to cities.  Many airfields in the area covered by UV were nothing more than a small area carved out of a jungle, not like an airport serving cities of today.  I offer up Henderson on Guadalcanal as an example of this.  It was used by single engine planes (small) because it was small at first.  Facilities at Henderson were non existent at first, example: refueling was done from 55 gallon drums with a hand pump.  Moving targets are the ships you referred to, or did you forget?

[Ike99]

I’m playing WITP, but not multiplayer since I’m too chicken; and because I’d still don’t fully understand production, yet.

I´m not sure anyone does really.

Others just want to win, the end justifies the means with those people - This is PVP. Get used to it!

That´s why the games have PBEM code security. [;)]

Uh huh, and your facts are from where?

Here is a good place to start Tocaff...

Night Strikes on Truk

[tocaff]

So specially trained and radar carrying planes made the attack that you talk about.  The dateline here is 1944 while UV doesn't cover anything later than 1943.  The planes were USN and not IJN or IJA.

All this shows me is what I already knew. 

[DEB]

ORIGINAL: SuluSea

The few that say the IJN could pull off a night attack have failed to offer any proof of a successful mission.

Why do we need to provide "proof" of a successful mission ( or an unsuccessful one come to that?[&:]

From my perspective, I'm just saying the Japs could do night time carrier OPS if they chose to. I'm not saying it's not high risk with little to gain.

In daylight seasoned IJN pilots were mauled at Coral Sea even going up against pilots in the USN that had little to no  dogfighting expierience. Zuikaku had nine operational planes left by the end of the carrier engagement. Certainly if the admirals in the IJN thought they could night attack and have success they would have.

This is daytime Air to Air combat. We were discusing night time Base raids ( from carriers ). [:-]

If you choose to play a game using the night attack tactic you're not playing a game that's even close to historical but strictly gaming. Might as well play Star Trek.

If that's your veiw then by all means stick to it, but it does not make you right, neither does the majority view on this forum make it right.

Did you know that until some time in the last 50 years the Roman Catholic Church refused to acknowledge that the world was round.

[DEB]

ORIGINAL: ILCK

ORIGINAL: SuluSea

The few that say the IJN could pull off a night attack have failed to offer any proof of a successful mission.

In daylight seasoned IJN pilots were mauled at Coral Sea even going up against pilots in the USN that had little to no dogfighting expierience. Zuikaku had nine operational planes left by the end of the carrier engagement. Certainly if the admirals in the IJN thought they could night attack and have success they would have.


If you choose to play a game using the night attack tactic you're not playing a game that's even close to historical but strictly gaming. Might as well play Star Trek.

I think this is a bit extreme since night attacks are POSSIBLE but the simple fact is that, based on what we've seen here they are:

a) Way too effective
b) Suffer a too low loss rate

The game should elegantly handle this by making the attacks not work and suffer losses plus the fatigue that means any reasonable player should not do them just as their historical counterparts decided not to for the same reasons.

Well said that man!

[DEB]

ORIGINAL: mdiehl

The complete absence of Japanese CV launched night raids at any time during WW2.

Proves nothing in the context of what I am saying . READ THE POSTS.

The extensive evidence that night operations from CVs had high operational losses merely trying to land and take off.

Proves nothing in the context of what I am saying . READ THE POSTS.

The absence of any Japanese accounts indicating that night operations were part of IJN doctrine and training.

Did you not see / read the Interigation report I posted a link to ? What's that if not evidence.

The observation that the only successful night CV ops were conducted by special night ops groups intensively trained for that specific purpose by the USN and first deployed in 1944. Both the USN and IJN were interested in night ops. Both determined prior to WW2 that night attacks on fixed targets much less mobile targets were not worth the casualties.

Can't disagree with that. Not saying OPS were done or successful, just POSSIBLE.

Targeting. Allied PBYs and other a.c. had surface search radar that allowed them to locate targets and make a radar guided attack approach. To make it work, the a.c. so armed notablty had a radar operator, a pilot and co-pilot both dedicated to the business of making sure the plane did not fly into the water, and a bomardier who took his weapon release cue from the radar operator. The Japanese did not have anything like that.

You're still talking AIR to AIR & Air to Ship, We are discussing Air to Base.

There is no evidence at all for any kind of 1942/3 cv based night attack capability.

Again, you are ignoring the evidence I have "listed" & linked so you can see.

As you note vis proficiency, sanity, etc. that is after all the point. A good *consim* might let a player attempt it, while guaranteeing "no successful attack" and while also guaranteeing higher than usual operational losses. Which elicits the question-- why waste the time coding for something something that if properly modeled no one would attempt to do?

Indeed, why waste the time. It was surely possible to exclude Carrier based Aircraft from night missions. So why did they ( the game designers ) NOT do it?

That is not correct. Romulan Birds of Prey was an analogy. Applying the analogy to WW2, any capability that did not in fact substantially exist might as well be a Romulan Bird of Prey. I use that analogy when confronted by a particular question, commonly deployed by people desperate for an ahistorical game about a historical subject matter, typically expressed as follows: "If you want to duplicate history, go read a book." My reply is that if someone wants a game that fabricates a capability that did not exist, don't play a WW2 Consim, go play Starfleet Battles.

Which ever way you put it , it's like using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut.

Get a clue.

Get a life!!