The Mother Load

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: JWE

Dang .. here we were all excited. Poo. Anyway, you have my contact info, wouldn't mind seeing what you got in any case. Maybe we could use some of it? Same Ts & Cs apply.

Ciao. John

I'll dig around for it.

[String]

ORIGINAL: Terminus

Sort of like the peek we had behind the Iron Curtain after the Cold War, where the Red Army was revealed to be a completely rotten edifice...

Well, as the empire went into decline so did the army. But up to early 80's it most certainly was not a rotten edifice. Source? Most of the older estonian male population who had to serve in that horrible machine.

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: String

ORIGINAL: Terminus

Sort of like the peek we had behind the Iron Curtain after the Cold War, where the Red Army was revealed to be a completely rotten edifice...

Well, as the empire went into decline so did the army. But up to early 80's it most certainly was not a rotten edifice. Source? Most of the older estonian male population who had to serve in that horrible machine.

It wasn't rotten; it was just very different from western militaries. For most of its history, it was competitive, but during the Reagan administration, America decided to take advantage of its technological lead to force the Soviet Union to spend more and more on maintaining its competitive position. In the end the Soviet Union couldn't afford it. At that point, America was fairly close to not being able to afford it, either.

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: herwin
I'll dig around for it.

Thank you very much for your offer. While you are looking, there are a couple areas in which we would like to get a bit more robust. Our source material is excellent, and original, but a bit thin ‘on the ground’. These are:

Power Plant Specs: particularly the late model composite fired engines – we only have a few references as to temp & pressure. Anything else, even if from the same sources, would be very valuable, as confirmation, if nothing else.

Scantling State: We know late war Japanese construction wasn’t scantling deck design, and much of it wasn’t full scantling either. We’re looking for which yards constructed on a full scantling basis; the remainder will have constructed on a scantling deck basis.

Frame State: Dr. Parillo is consulting with us on this and made his notes available, but we have no data, except that which we can back-calculate from load parameters and hydrostatic pressure on vertical hull sections. I know this is very technical, but what the hey, who knows from whence it may come.

That’s about it. We have a good handle on about everything else. Maybe Sam’s constructor ledgers will give us a wider window. Anyhow, that’s pretty much all we need to put the stake in the ground. Anything you got will be heartily appreciated. Attribution in accord with the standards you are well familiar with.

Anyone else reading this, with verifyable information on the listed subjects, please direct your responses to jw.eldredge@cox.net .

Ciao, all. John

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: String

ORIGINAL: Terminus
Sort of like the peek we had behind the Iron Curtain after the Cold War, where the Red Army was revealed to be a completely rotten edifice...

Well, as the empire went into decline so did the army. But up to early 80's it most certainly was not a rotten edifice. Source? Most of the older estonian male population who had to serve in that horrible machine.

I spent many years analyzing the Soviet Military. It wasn’t so much rotten, as it was different; and different in ways that made it vulnerable to Western politico/military initiatives. We took one path, the Sovs took another; once our path proved out, the Sovs couldn’t catch up without redefining 50 years of historical/political development.

The inertia of 400 million people, centrally directed, multiplied by 50 years of reinforcement, is hard to overcome. So they stumbled, and then they broke. But don’t sell them short; Russian Federation has some very, very good troops; very well trained, very well motivated; professionals that I would probably like and would have a drink with (politics aside).

Their schools are as good as ours. Their commanders are right and tight. They have a modern military that we would be well advised to consider.

Just my 2 pesos. John

[el cid again]

Mark your calendars - I completely concur with JWE. Well - almost completely. In some areas, the Soviets did better than we did. I think it was Norman Polmar who was talking about nuclear submarine designs with a Russian senior naval official. Talking about the variety, the Russian said "We had competition between different design bureaus. Under Rickover, you had Stalinism." But in general - to say Russian design is not inferior, just different, is correct across the board. We assumed their aircraft were copies of ours - but they were not - as we found out when we got to play with them. And Soviet ideas about modularization - we laughed at them in the 60s - they had no technicians - but WE could fix anything. Ha! But we needed two hours to two days to fix it. Their OPERATORS could swap out a module in 5 minutes - most of which was just going to get the thing. Today - we do it their way. Even our techs mainly are board swappers - and those who troubleshoot to the component level are all old men. Sometimes their ideas were even better.

[Dili]

I always apreciated 2 things about Soviet military art concepts : Their definition of Operational between Tactics and Strategic and their definition of Weapons Complex.

[herwin]

OK, from my notes on Japanese Navy construction. I was putting together an econometric model of armament production in Japan prior to and during WWII. These are minimum numbers based on occupancy.

Sasebo Navy Yard had two construction slips for DD and above. One was used for CLs and DDs, the other for DDs.

Kure Navy Yard had three large construction slips. One was used for Yamato class BBs, and the other two were used for cruisers and carriers.

Mitsubishi (Nagasaki) had four slips. One was used for battleships, one for cruisers and carriers, and two for CVEs/DDs. There may have been two slips for cruisers and carriers.

Yokosuka Navy Yard built battleships (one slip), carriers (one slip), and destroyer escorts (up to five, starting in early 1944--may have utilised the carrier slip for one)

Kawasaki (Kobe) had a large slip (carriers) and a destroyer slip

Maizuro Navy Yard built destroyers (two slips early, expanded to four in late 1941).

Uraga had two slips for destroyers.

Fuginagata had two destroyer slips and added a third in early 1944.

That seemed to have been it for warship construction.

1941--74707 linear feet of building ways, 34903000 square feet of shipyard floor space, 57 shipyards, with 12 major yards. Manpower and steel shortages from the beginning of the war.

[el cid again]

By working backwards from ship launch times and locations, and also from some records of actual docks in various locations, I built a table of the minimum size and numbers of docks which must have been present in July 1941. Essentially there must be enough capacity to build what was actually built. But in some cases - we have good yard descriptions in books - see the book Musashi for one example.

This material is in an older version of Excel - and I must convert it to read it.

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: herwin
1941--74707 linear feet of building ways, 34903000 square feet of shipyard floor space, 57 shipyards, with 12 major yards. Manpower and steel shortages from the beginning of the war.

Very nice, Herwin.

I think I posted a big list sometime back – maybe a year or so, ago. Either somewhere here, or maybe it was for base definition for AE, I forget. Here’s an example from some semi-related Mitsubishi stuff. Anyway, I’ll see if I can find the rest it.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries: Nagasaki: 1 @ 250m, 1 @ 200m, 1 @ 175m, 4 @ 125m.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries: Kobe: 1 @ 150m, 2 @ 125m, 3 @ 100m.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries: Yokohama: 1 @ 200m, 1 @ 150m, 2 @ 100m.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries: Shimonoseki: 1 @ 150m, 2 @ 100m
Ciao.

[mikemike]

Some time back I posted the following:

I looked over the sizes of Japanese naval shipyards. They don´t seem to conform to what was built there in RL. I went through my reference material and figured ot the maximum number of ships that were built at a single yard at the same time. Under the WitP model, to have the historical building rate, each of the yards should have the capacity to generate building points equalling the sum of the durabilities of all ships building there.

This is the list of the eight most important yards I came up with (only surface ships DD and bigger):

Kure Navy Yard (Loc Hiroshima/Kure) was building in 11/41:
Yamato (185)
Nisshin (45)
Oyodo (33)
Total: 263

Yokosuka Navy Yard (Loc Tokyo)was building in 8/41:
Shinano (180)
Shokaku (100)
Sum: 280

Uraga Docks, Yokosuka (Loc Tokyo) was building in 8/40:
4 x Kagero DD (44)
1 x Yugumo DD (11)
Sum: 55
Sum for Loc Tokyo: 335

Mitsubishi, Nagasaki (Loc Nagasaki) was building in 4/42:
Musashi (185)
Junyo (50)
4 x Akitsuki DD (52)

Sum: 287

Kawasaki, Kobe (Loc Osaka/Kobe) was building in 8/41:
Zuikaku (100)
Hiyo (50)
Taiho (115)
Sum: 265

Fujinagata, Osaka (Loc Osaka/Kobe) was building in 1/40:
5 x Kagero DD (55)

Sum for Loc Osaka/Kobe: 320

Sasebo Navy Yard (Loc Sasebo) was building in 11/43:
Ibuki (40)
Yahagi (27)
Sakawa (27)
2 x Akizuki DD (26)
Sum: 120

Maizuru Navy Yard (Loc Maizuru) was building in 8/41:
Shimakaze (13)
2 x Yugumo DD (22)
2 x Akizuki DD (26)
Sum: 61

The Naval Shipyard numbers as they are:
Nagasaki 292 (should be at least 287)
Sasebo 0 (should be at least 120)
Hiroshima/Kure 45 (should be at least 263)
Maizuru 308 (should be about 61)
Osaka/Kobe 42 (should be at least 320)
Tokyo 280 (should be at least 335)

The reason I say "at least" is because at most of these locations submarines were building, too, amounting to between 60 and 250 building points. I´ve left out submarines because my sources don´t give exact building dates and because I think that their durability numbers don´t properly reflect the time and effort needed to build them, especially the late-war types ST and STS which both have a Durability of 36, surpassing the CL Oyodo (and meaning they draw resources for a year), but were nailed together in RL in a couple of months using sectionalized methods.

So, according to these numbers
- Nagasaki is about right
- Tokyo is a bit small
- Maizuru is wildly oversize
- the other locations are far too small

I used laying down and completion dates culled from several books (mainly Whitley), so there may well be some overlap I didn't catch (as apparently in the case of Hiyo - Taiho), also I included ships both still on the slips and in fitting-out. I tried to pick the period where each yard had the most ships building simultaneously. The yard sizes I referred to are Stock, Scenario 15. On the whole, my numbers seem to correlate fairly well with herwin's data (he says patting himself on shoulder).

[herwin]

You can have multiple ships fitting out and others repairing, but usually only one in a graving dock or on a slipway. There was a second BB on the BB slipway at Kure in 11/41 and Oyodo was on the other. Shinano was built on the same slipway as Shokaku. Uraga had only two slipways. Zuikaku and Taiho (and probably Hiyo) were built on the same slipway. I thought Ibuki was at Nagasaki.

If you really want to model a shipyard, treat the building ways and fitting out docks separately. You also have to model the various kinds of repair work and refitting separately. Or as JWE says, woof!

[mikemike]

ORIGINAL: herwin

If you really want to model a shipyard, treat the building ways and fitting out docks separately. You also have to model the various kinds of repair work and refitting separately. Or as JWE says, woof!

That's right. Managing the shipyards in detail would be a complete game all by itself. But in WitP (and also in AE -I haven't heard anything else), a ship consumes its ration of building points each day from laying-down until delivery, so that's lumping on-slip time and fitting-out time together, which is the basis of my argument.

Regarding Kawasaki Kobe, Zuikaku was commissioned on August 8, 1941, Hiyo was launched on June 24, 1941, and Taiho was laid down on July 10, 1941, so in July 1941 Zuikaku was barely still fitting-out, Hiyo was just launched, and Taiho was just laid down. I should have used 7/41 as the reference point.

Ibuki was laid down in Kure on April 24, 1942, launched on May 21, 1943,and towed to Sasebo in November, 1943 to be completed as carrier. Apparently, Ibuki followed Oyodo on the slip. Also, Kure had No. 111 in the battleship dock, but work on the ship was stopped in November, 1941, and it was cancelled and broken up in September, 1942, so I didn't count it.

The numbers for Fujinagata and Uraga comprise ships in all stages of building, not just on the slips.

As I've said, at least Mitsubishi and Kawasaki must have been busy building subs at the same time, but from my references, I can't nail down the dates.

[el cid again]

Absolutely correct. It is also a very fun game - and many strategic players love it.

In my model - we have separate engine plants - different plants make steam reciprocating engines, steam boilers, steam turbines, or diesel engines. These are also size limited by plant. Also - we permit some small craft to be powered by aircraft engines or automotive engines - which come from those plants and are NOT available for aircraft or automotive production if you so use them on ships. Each engine has a model number - and so you can be building a given engine at a given plant - or suspend production - or you may retool to a different engine - but that involves a delay and a tooling cost. This way you have to figure out when to build what engines - and if the plant is bombed - you might not have them in time for the hull.

Then we have graving docks (or slipways or assembly lines in certain automated yards) - again rated for size - each of which may be assigned a given hull. IF you produce the SAME hull in the SAME dock over and over - the time to produce can decline (a die roll is involved). IF you change the hull type in the dock - there is a delay to retool and rejig the dock. This is only for an initial period.

AFTER launch - you have 'fitting out basins' - and you can tow a hull from one yard to another for fitting out.

Each class has a long lead time - you order it so many months before it lays down in a graving dock. It has a hull building period in the graving dock - at which point it launches. It has a fitting out period after that. And then it is just a green ship - with no crew skills - until you work it up for a period of many weeks. Each stage requires monthly deliveries of materials, adequate labor and power - and if any is missing - or there is damage to the facility - production is suspended.

You have to deliver engines to the ship half way through its hull building period. You have to deliver electronic devices like radar or sonar to the ship at the start of its fitting out period. If they are not available - production is suspended until they are.

To which I originally added a ship design layer. It didn't work out - players would not design reasonable ships. So I substituted a 'shopping cart' of design options - mostly historical plans or reasonable and simple variations of those - and players just pick from the list.

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: mikemike

ORIGINAL: herwin
If you really want to model a shipyard, treat the building ways and fitting out docks separately. You also have to model the various kinds of repair work and refitting separately. Or as JWE says, woof!

That's right. Managing the shipyards in detail would be a complete game all by itself. But in WitP (and also in AE -I haven't heard anything else), a ship consumes its ration of building points each day from laying-down until delivery, so that's lumping on-slip time and fitting-out time together, which is the basis of my argument.

Woof ! Indeed. Think mikemike will be a bit more pleased with AE results, although our implementation will surely have its own unique limitations and defects. Broke it down so there’s Naval Yards, Civil Yards, and Repair Yards.

Navy and Civil Yards had the same kind of research as ya’ll did; # of ways, sizes, yadda yadda. The simplistic assumption (valid in most cases) is a sufficiency of fitting docks (an excess actually) for expected cycling thru the ways. I think it’s reasonable (simplistic, but generally valid) to model the process as a one-step, build/launch/fit, for ‘ordinary’ stuff.

The ways should be the pacing item, but both ways and fitting docks become bottlenecks for capital vessels; a yard could have 6 construction ways, but perhaps only 2 are > 200m, and only 1 is > 275m. Construction delays at any of these backs up the queue.

Wouldn’t be hard to have a much more grainy model; heck, could probably write the pseudocode in a morning. Would require addl data files, though, and substantial production system code rewrite, as well as a rewrite of the repair, upgrade, conversion routines – not trivial.

Personally, I would have done it, but everything is predicated on a WiTP Stock base – make it better if possible, but fundamental changes were limited and prioritized. Andrew, Don & I could kick, scream, hope, pray, and do all we could, but shipyards ain’t as sexy as things that go boom.

Btw, we don’t use durability, as much as ‘tonnage’ (and that has its own peculiarities). Oh well.

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: JWE


Personally, I would have done it, but everything is predicated on a WiTP Stock base – make it better if possible, but fundamental changes were limited and prioritized. Andrew, Don & I could kick, scream, hope, pray, and do all we could, but shipyards ain’t as sexy as things that go boom.

Btw, we don’t use durability, as much as ‘tonnage’ (and that has its own peculiarities). Oh well.

I'd have gone for that only if you could also produce the equivilent of the Personal Assistance in Microsoft office. [:D] Managing shipyards is scary

"What do you want to do?"

Build a ship

"Sure! I can help with that.....what kind of ship?"

One that goes Boom and smites all my enemies.

[Mike Solli]

ORIGINAL: JWE

Woof ! Indeed. Think mikemike will be a bit more pleased with AE results, although our implementation will surely have its own unique limitations and defects. Broke it down so there’s Naval Yards, Civil Yards, and Repair Yards.

That sounds a lot like the Naval, Merchant and Repair of WitP. I know I'm missing something. What?

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: mikemike
As I've said, at least Mitsubishi and Kawasaki must have been busy building subs at the same time, but from my references, I can't nail down the dates.

Yes indeedy, Mitsubishi and Kawasaki both were building subs at their Kobe yards, Mitsui built some at its Tamano yard, and Kawasaki built a bunch of later war ‘small’ subs at their Tanagawa yard.

Both Kobe yards could technically build 6 at a time; 3 side-by-side pairs, each about 3 months apart in the construction process. As one pair was launched, the next two pairs were shifted down the way and a new third pair was laid down.

The submarine ways were constructed wide, with an ‘overhead’ track along both outside edges, and an ‘overhead’ track down centerline. They were arranged in 3 ‘stations’, each station having close aboard machine shops and milling/welding facilities suitable for work needed at that station.

Even though they had a significant footprint, submarine slipways were beam constrained. Unless one ripped up the entire slipway and rebuilt it, one could not build anything bigger than a DD, and would be would be highly challenged with a Kagero, even.

Took about 6-9 months to build a normal sub, maybe 6-9 months for fitting. I have the monthlys from Mitsubishi that include subs and they are very close to the paradigm. Of course, everyone could, and did, build a sub on a close aboard surface ship slipway, from time to time.

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli
That sounds a lot like the Naval, Merchant and Repair of WitP. I know I'm missing something. What?

An excelent question for the AE forum.

What might be missing is how they are defined, what specifically they do, and what are the game parameters for using them.

[Mike Solli]

Ok, I'll ask there.  Thanks.