How do you all like new v1.20 bug fixes?

[brisd]

So far the patch improvements seem historical and accurate. No more uberB-17's, Bomber Harris and his kitty in tears as a result. I need a few more weeks of play vs AI to make sure before I go back to pbem. The game was a JOKE to me prior to 1.2 that's what I thunk. :p

[Black Cat]

Originally posted by brisd
So far the patch improvements seem historical and accurate. No more uberB-17's, Bomber Harris and his kitty in tears as a result. I need a few more weeks of play vs AI to make sure before I go back to pbem. The game was a JOKE to me prior to 1.2 that's what I thunk. :p

Posting the damage your US Heavy Bomber Sq.`s receive each mission , for at lease 30 turns, and the time it takes to repair them would be really helpful to Matrix in addressing this issue.

Thanks

[wpurdom]

"The only poor part was again in the uber-preformance of the bombs. Naturally my three battleships (two Kongo and one Nagato) attracted much of the attention of the SBD's. Hits were not proliferent as my AA was strong and the land based SBD's were quite green, most newly arrived from the States and not as proficient as their carrier based compatriots. Only about half a dozen hits all told on each one through two raids. However because of the overpenetrative qualities of the bombs, every one penetrated the deck armors to cause serious damage.....such that one battleship sank (no torp hits were scored.....only bombs) and the other two were crippled. "

I agree with this and other postings on other threads about the performance of bombs against BB's. Given some specific examples I'm aware of (such as the Mikuma and Mogami at Midway), I'm not prepared to assert that the bombs penetrate too much with CA's (although in that case they may have actually done much of the damage without technically penetrating), but they seem vastly too effective against BB's.

[Oliver Heindorf]

Bug fixes ?

Which bug fixes ?

The game is perfect as I am

OK, seriously, I started the game with 1.20 ( the patch was aviable the day the game arrived ) and therefore I cant say alot about it

[Erik Rutins]

The repair rate fix was only part of the whole bomber issue we addressed, but this aspect may indeed have gone too far. We're considering tweaking this back a bit for the next patch, as it's a minor thing to change, but overall 1.2 seems to have been a big success.

We continue to monitor the forums, although we haven't been as vocal as usual in the last week. Work has been continuing here at a feverish pace on a variety of projects. You may have noticed the various changes to the forums and the overall website, the addition of new projects, our presence at conventions this summer and so on and so forth.

It's generally a good idea to let a patch "settle in" so gamers can put the play time into it that we have and sort out whether they have any issues with the current balance or not. Impressions formed in the first few hours or days often contain some major inaccuracies simply because of not enough play time.

Regards,

- Erik

[denisonh]

Thanks Erik

Keep up the fire

[Nikademus]

Originally posted by wpurdom
"
I agree with this and other postings on other threads about the performance of bombs against BB's. Given some specific examples I'm aware of (such as the Mikuma and Mogami at Midway), I'm not prepared to assert that the bombs penetrate too much with CA's (although in that case they may have actually done much of the damage without technically penetrating), but they seem vastly too effective against BB's.

Actually, the examples of Mikuma and Mogami show how resilient 2nd and 3rd gen (non-tinclad in other words) CA's could be against HE type bombs of the 500 and 1000ILB variety given that both ships were pounded all day by numerous airstrikes and one still got away, the other only sank well after the last attacks......and this 'after' they'd already colided and crippled themselves. Mikuma surcombed eventually but a good torp strike would have acomplished much quicker what took all day for bomb only laden ones to do.

Such a pickle for the pursuing USN forces that there was discussion of hauling out some specialty 1600ILB AP bombs converted from 14 inch battleship shells that were carried (exclusively i believe ) by the CV Enterprise at the time. The idea was squashed though because they compromised the fuel of the SBD too much.

True SAP and AP style bombs weren't developed till later in the war and there was never a 500ILB 'AP' type bomb. As far as UV goes, bombs should be deadliest in terms of causing incendiary effects and topside damage (which is why wooden decked carriers are so vulnerable), but in actuality these early/midwar bombs have little to no actual armor penetrative qualities, so one shouldnt be seeing the 100% deck armor pen against harder targets such as 2nd+ gen CA's and of course , BB's as this leads to serious sys and floatation damage in most cases.

Add to incendiary effects, damage-disablement to lightly armored topside equipment such as AA, secondary mounts and even radars are problems that should worry local TF commanders so bombs are certainly not ignorable but they wouldn't have as deadly an air as torpedoes unless the target is very lightly protected (ala a CL (2nd gen US excluded), or a DD or AP)

Certainly the 10inch/5inch pen rating for the 1000ILB/500ILB bomb must be addressed in the next patch (I hope )

[doomonyou]

are you saying that a 1000lb bomb dropped from a dive bomber going a couple of hundred miles per hour wouldn't penetrate the deck armor of a warship? Even if it exploded in the deck wouldn't it tear the holy hell out of the first five or six decks, fires, etc? I understand things like the incredible mountain like armor of the Yamamoto but cruisers could take hits like that?

[Nikademus]

Originally posted by doomonyou
are you saying that a 1000lb bomb dropped from a dive bomber going a couple of hundred miles per hour wouldn't penetrate the deck armor of a warship? Even if it exploded in the deck wouldn't it tear the holy hell out of the first five or six decks, fires, etc? I understand things like the incredible mountain like armor of the Yamamoto but cruisers could take hits like that?

Well in effect.....yes.

For one....a dive bomber screaming in at 200mph in a dive is going to tear it's wings off.

2nd, since these are non-armor piercing bombs, any signifigant armor thickness (2+ inches) is going to have a good chance of setting off even a 1000ILber whoose "armor penetrative" capabilities is very low due to being fuse initiated (and sometimes located at the nose vs the base of the bomb)

Most modern battleships had a "bomb deck" of about 1.5inches to 2.5 inches designed to initiate fuse action against bombs dropped at heights of around 10,000 feet (more velocity than a dive bomber would achieve but also much less accurate) They are also assuming a dedicated AP or semi AP bomb which are not the weapons used in UV. They are GP or more commonly reffered to, "HE"

Look at the various carrier actions of the war.....Midway was an exception as 3 of 4 carriers knocked out were set off by the incendiary effect i mentioned coupled with being in an extremely vulnerable state.

For Coral Sea, Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz however, the big carriers of the Shokaku class, while badly damaged at times, managed to survive well despite their wooden flight decks because the bombs would essentially fuse off nearly instantly on hitting the wooden and light metal decks causing damages but more importantly causing fires or better yet causing secondary explosions if fueled planes, munitions or other volitile substances were in the area.

A CA is a bit marginal, mostly because it has less "deckage" between it and it's vitals whereas battleships often can insert additional splinter decks between the main armor deck and the vitals which help keep subsidiary damage from reaching the vital machinery and ammo spaces.....

So even if the main armor deck causes the bomb to detonate, the "splinter effect" could cause below deck damage but unless the bomb is AP or even Semi-AP, more likely it will detonate on impact and cause topside damage and fires which of course, can be dangerous if unchecked. Weapons damage to light mountings and fittings of course is permanent until repaired. It also depends on the class too. A 1st gen 'Tin clad' for example like the pair sunk in the Indian ocean would be vulnerable even to 250kg's but look at the preformance of Mikuma and Mogami at Midway? They collided, got crippled, got pounded all day from Midway and Two carriers full of SBD's and one still got away while the other only slowly surcombed with it's topsides a shambles. Thats what makes torpedoes so much more the bane of warships. Had the USN had a few intact TBD's or better yet, TBF's, the battle would have been far shorter.

I'll repost the quote i placed on the bug forum courtasy of a friend who had a source with more hard figures than myself;

"There never was a USN 500# AP bomb in WW II. Additionally, throughout 1942 there was no true. SAP or AP bomb at all, any size. In 1942 there was, for all intents, a single type of 100#, a single type of 500#, and a single type of 1,000# bomb - HE. The only variable was the fuzing, which was limited to nose and/or base fuzing that was either instantaneous or with a 1/100th second delay which does not allow for much penetration distance of anything, let alone armor!

Now, as an aside, from Pearl Harbor to Midway at least, USS Enterprise (CV-6) carried a limited supply (probably one squadron load of 18) of approximately 1,600 pound battleship AP shells (14"?) that VB-6 was prepared to haul aloft to use against battleship targets. However, due to the 600# weight overload, the SBDs would have been forced to drop off at least 100 US gallons of fuel (from the doctrinal full load capacity of 228 US gallons) to do so, giving them a one way range limit of no more than 100 miles, prefeably much less. There were discussions amongst the Enterprise/TF-16 Air Staff on 6 June as to whether or not thse "bombs" should be used on against the suppected "battleships" the airgroups had been pounding all day, Mogami and Mikuma. "


Another friend quoted a 1000ILB Mark 33 bomb used in the latter half of the war that was AP or Semi AP (not sure which). This specimen was estimated to have a penetrative quality of around 5 inches if dropped from a height of 10000 feet. Note that this AP bomb still contains less than half the pen quality of the UV HE 1000ILB bomb which is rated at a whopping 250mm (almost 10 inches!)

An early war HE or GP 1000ILBer would have much less than that. Maybe 2inches if it's lucky. Carrier Taiho for example had a 3inch flight deck which was rated against 1000ILB bombs.

In short, against GP or HE bombs, it doesn't take much armor to stop them.....even more so if delivered by dive bombers as the velocity gained from being dropped at extreme heights is greater than that of a dive bomberbut of course less accurate.

The challenge of course is modeling bombs correctly. What should happen is that the incendiary effect and damage to lightly protected weapons systems should be dealt with seperately from penetrating the armor deck (and hence leading to serious SYS and FLT damage in the process)

Fire at sea can be as dangerous as progressive flooding in it's own way, and this is one small weakness of UV as i've yet to ever see fires blaze out of control in any situation. Fires can cause the internal damages that the bomb might be unable to inflict if they burn long enough. Loss of weapons mounts and radar installations are of course self explanitory.

Any serious level of protective deck, from 2nd-3rd gen CA's and BB's of course should make non AP bombs penetrating to below deck a remote possibility. Some 2nd gen CL's too such as the Cleavland and Brooklyn class CL's which were armored more on the scale of CA's.

I would suggest that 500ILB bombs, which were never anything but HE....should have a virtual nill AP quality while 1000ILB HE should have at the most, 2inches so that yes, there would be chances of success against moderately armored targets such as CA's but not the 100% it is now. This is asuming of course that the code works in the way i've suggested

If not then it might not be practical for UV though the sight of seeing my best battleships sunk solely by bombs makes me wince with pain If thats the case then one can only hope it can be worked into WitP

[doomonyou]

but I wonder what the GAME effect of such things would be...Japanese initital battleship superiority would allow a King Tiger thrust to slaughter any base (my old favorite in another game, ah yes, one hundred king tigers never did show up together in the real war and yet here they are...roll your dice punk...)

Since in the real war nobody really felt like testing the "well it turns out that 1000lb bombs don't easily sink my ship" thing, it was less of a problem. But in the game, people will having played both sides quite quickly realize that thier heavy warships can approach certain areas (espeically before the allied LBA torpedo bombers and significant carrier forces show up and since submarines CANNOT inderdict enemy ships in any reasonable fashion) in teh early game with essential impunity and just wreck shop.

Since you seem quite knowledgable, how much armor would the 1000 lb he charge penetrate with just raw explosive power? Were the mogami and friend hit with 1000lbs or 500 lbs?

[wpurdom]

I don't necessarily disagree with Nikademus's analysis on the bombs, but since I don't find the case clear and convincing with respect to CA's, let me play devil's advocate.

"but look at the preformance of Mikuma and Mogami at Midway? They collided, got crippled, got pounded all day from Midway and Two carriers full of SBD's and one still got away while the other only slowly surcombed with it's topsides a shambles."

According to Morrison, "pounded all day" amounted to three attacks on the 6th of 26, 31, and 24 SBD's respectively. (One attack from Midway on the 5th got only near misses while the CV attacks diverted to the DD Tanikaze which dodged over 50 SBD's and shot one down - the boys seem to have been a little off from the 4th).
The two attacks on the Mogami: 2 hits in the first attack, one hit penetrated the No. 5 turret and killed everyone within. Morrison describes 3 hits in the second attack, two started fires and a third sealed up one burning engine room and killed over 90 men. Result, Mogami made it to port, but it was over a year before it was repaired.
How many bombs hit the Mikuma? I don't know, but it appears from the picture that everything above the deck, including all of the guns was rendered into scrap metal, the ship was wallowing low in the water and was abandoned after the 2nd attack. Given what happened to the Mogami and to the Mikuma's guns, it seems clear that those HE bombs can do a lot of system damage to CA's and it is probably expecting too much from the game to simulate all of the fine points of the different damage inflicted. Probably a lot of the damage is done without the penetration of armored areas.
Also, with respect to Japanese ships, one doesn't have to sink them to put the out of the war. Enough system damage and it will overload repair capabilities and make the ship so much scrap metal.
In contrast, the Nagato and Yamato were each hit by 2 1000 lb. bombs the first day at Leyte and their fighting abilities were unimpaired, again according to Morrison. The Nagato was also hit by more 1000 pound bombs the next day, but remained undamaged. The Mushashi got hit by torpedoes (10!) and went under.

[Nikademus]

Originally posted by wpurdom
I don't necessarily disagree with Nikademus's analysis on the bombs, but since I don't find the case clear and convincing with respect to CA's, let me play devil's advocate.

"but look at the preformance of Mikuma and Mogami at Midway? They collided, got crippled, got pounded all day from Midway and Two carriers full of SBD's and one still got away while the other only slowly surcombed with it's topsides a shambles."

According to Morrison, "pounded all day" amounted to three attacks on the 6th of 26, 31, and 24 SBD's respectively. (One attack from Midway on the 5th got only near misses while the CV attacks diverted to the DD Tanikaze which dodged over 50 SBD's and shot one down - the boys seem to have been a little off from the 4th).
The two attacks on the Mogami: 2 hits in the first attack, one hit penetrated the No. 5 turret and killed everyone within. Morrison describes 3 hits in the second attack, two started fires and a third sealed up one burning engine room and killed over 90 men. Result, Mogami made it to port, but it was over a year before it was repaired.
How many bombs hit the Mikuma? I don't know, but it appears from the picture that everything above the deck, including all of the guns was rendered into scrap metal, the ship was wallowing low in the water and was abandoned after the 2nd attack. Given what happened to the Mogami and to the Mikuma's guns, it seems clear that those HE bombs can do a lot of system damage to CA's and it is probably expecting too much from the game to simulate all of the fine points of the different damage inflicted. Probably a lot of the damage is done without the penetration of armored areas.
Also, with respect to Japanese ships, one doesn't have to sink them to put the out of the war. Enough system damage and it will overload repair capabilities and make the ship so much scrap metal.
In contrast, the Nagato and Yamato were each hit by 2 1000 lb. bombs the first day at Leyte and their fighting abilities were unimpaired, again according to Morrison. The Nagato was also hit by more 1000 pound bombs the next day, but remained undamaged. The Mushashi got hit by torpedoes (10!) and went under.

Japanese heavy cruiser turrets were in actuality lightly protected. 25mm maximum . (a small OOB error in UV) A better example of a hit against a well protected turret would be one landed on the SoDak from before third Guadacanal. zero effect on the interior of the gunhouse though splinter damage did cause one or two barrells to be not fireable due to saftey concerns.

I agree, CA's are marginal in this argument and even some battleships have weak spots that can be exploited. I'm certainly not advocating immunity from the air (as opposed to below the belt hits) but as things are now, bombs are way too powerful. In effect its the other side of the coin in approaching the problem of LBA vs ships at sea. It wasn't just because the LBA units could go in at ultra low levels with no penality incurred. It was also due to the fact that all it would take is a small # of 500ILB bomb hits and you had major damage to everything up to a Kongo class battleship (3inch deck)

The experience of the Mikuma highlights the problem. "lack of armor penetration" does not equate to total ineffectiveness. A 1000ILB HE bomb will have more concussive effect than a shell that is rejected (unless battleship caliber). In game terms this could be represented as a high incendiary effect with maybe some moderate system damage even if a non penetration occurs. My only worry here is that i would not want to see such an effect carried over to shells as they'll tend to have less ability in this area, esp if firing AP.

so a bomb hitting for example a 2nd gen CA might repulse the bomb from penetrating, but suffer a certain number of fire levels which in turn could cause sys, weapons and propulsion damage if left unchecked but unless it penetrates the armor, little to no chance of floatation damage etc etc. But i dont know if UV works this way or if it can.

I dont believe such adjustments would make BB's "uber". For one.....even simple steaming assignments bring SYS damage representing the wear and tear effect of continous running and such. In such cases even a non penetrating hit will often add a few SYS points here or there that represent topside and unarmored area damages. vulnerability of light weapons systems and radar further would deter a player from brazenly steaming his warships into dive bomber range

bombs can hurt a battleship, but they will rarely cripple it. However in a strategic/operational campaign, the player doesnt often have the luxery of playing like there's no tommorrow. Thats the balance factor. It remains though that torpeodes were what battleship captains truely feared as those weapons avoid armor and at the same time strike below the water causing the nightmare of progressive flooding (as well as slowing the ship making it progressively easier to hit)

cruisers fall between so what i'd suggest as before since i was asked and given what my own research turned up, i'd say less than 1 inch for a 500ILBer (which would make them dangerous to all AP AK, DD, and most CL, CS types and unarmored CV's) and 1000ILBers around 2 inches (convienient as most CA's have a 50mm deck.....if UV works like a Grigsby game of the past....this should allow an on and off chance of penetration.

outside of brute penetration, should be added the incendiary/blast effect...though this is a little broken in UV so your right....it might upset the game balance as it stands right now

Nagato and Musashi are good examples too. The bombs had little chance to get through but the explosive effect could sometimes cause fires to spring up below decks from concussed machinery, to shorted electronics to compromised vents.

The main thing such a compromise would acomplish is that it would take the bombs down a knotch in the danger bracket for medium and heavy armored ships leaving torpedoes the gravest threat (as they should be) As it is right now.....bombs, esp 1000 pounders are equally dangerous to torps.

I'm hoping most of all that this discussion lends itself to WiTP if it turns out that UV's code is too rigid for this to be adequately simmed.

[doomonyou]

that will be all....

[Don Bowen]

Originally posted by Nikademus


For one....a dive bomber screaming in at 200mph in a dive is going to tear it's wings off.

This didn't seem right when I read it, so I did a little research. From "SBD Dauntless Units of World War II" by Barrett Tillman and discussing early war tactics:

"Approaching the dive point at 14,000 to 15,000 feet, the squadron shifted from Vs to echelon. At this point each pilot took interval on the Dauntless ahead of him, reduced throtle and extended dive brakes. In a standard dive-bombing approach, the aircraft descended at 70 to 75 degrees to the vertical at some 240 knots. From 'pushover' to release altitude - usually 1500 to 2000 feet - the dive took 30 to 35 seconds.
(paragraphs omitted - discussed use of rear seat guns during dive and bomb types.)
After release, the pilot retracted the dive brakes, as the SBD would not easily maintain level flight with the brakes extended. Pullout was often left as late as possible so as to reduce exposure to enemy anti-aircraft and a high-speed jinking run was made to the pre-briefed rendezvous point."

And - related to the original topic of this thread:
1.2 ASW fixes seem very good. In a trial game, now in September, I've only had one SC sunk by I-boats. Score is:
Submarines sunk - 5 (all U.S.)
ASW Vessels Sunk - 1 (U.S.)
Other vessels Sunk by SS - 7 (6 Japanese and 1 Allied - all transports)

Land based Naval attacks are much more realistic - good job here too.

The B-17 repair rate fix over did it. Using Airfield attack at 31,000 feet (Port Moresby to Lea) with 2 Heavy Bombardment Squadrons I find it takes about a month to repair the damage from 1-2 days attacks. Another squadron whose altitude I forgot to raise from 10,000 dropped to 2 ready and 10 damaged on July 15th. Withdrew to Cooktown and set to training - as of September 9th is 7 Ready and 5 damaged (the damaged aircraft are still at Port Moresby). Note that I moved 2 new squadrons to Port Moresby when I withdrew the first, so the number of damaged B-17 at Port Moresby was always high.

Don Bowen

----------------------------
The stock market is easy. You buy stocks and, when they go up, you sell them. If they don't go up, don't buy them.

-- Will Rogers

[seydlitz_slith]

Since the discussion regarding the Damage to the Mogami & Mikuma came up, I pulled out my copy of "Japanese Cruisers of the Pacific War" by Lacroix & Wells. This 882 page book is the most detailed work available in english print covering the WW2 Japanese Cruisers. It devotes 67 pages to the Mogami class alone.
According to pg 487-488...

The damage at Midway to the Mikuma was as follows:
0930am-hit by at least 5 bombs from the 2nd attack wave of 31 SBDs. Hits were:
1. No.3 turret, causing damage to the bridge where several people were killed or injured including Captain Sakiyama.

2. Two bombs hit starboard forward engine room.

3. Two bombs hit port Aft engine room.

The engine room hits brought Mikuma to a halt and started heavy fires in the torpedo room. The fires ignited the torpedoes, which exploded about 1058, wrecking the ship.Commander Takashima, the 2nd in command gave the order to abandon the ship.

Mikuma was not hit in the 1st or 3rd attack waves.
After the 3rd attack wave, Mogami, and 2 DDs rescued about 240 survivors from Mikuma and abandoned the drifting ship. After staying afloat all day, the wreck sank at an unknown hour during the night. The famous Pictures of the wrecked and burning Mikuma were made by two SBDS of VB-6 from the Enterprise in the afternoon, well after she had been abandoned.

650 men were lost.

If you look at the picture, you can tell that the most severe damage was from the torpedo explosion.

Mikumas damage from the collision with Mogami was above the waterline on the port side below the bridge. Other than trailing oil, the damage did not impair fighting ability or maneuverability.

Mogami:
The Mogami's bow was bent 90 degrees to port back to the number 1 turret from the collision, and the section of the ship from the bow to the #1 turret was flooded up ot the middle deck level making forward movement impossible. The bow section was, therefore, cut away, and after emergency repairs the Mogami was able to make 12 kts. (The collision was at 2318 hrs on June 5th.) By dawn on June 7th, she was able to make 14 kts.

The first wave of 26 SBDS attacked at 0645am on the 7th.
Mogami was hit twice.
1. 1 hit on No. 5 turret which penetrated and killed the turret crew.

2. 1 hit on the aircraft deck which started fires in the torpedo room below. Luckily the torpedoes had been jettisoned after the collision, and the fire was extinguished within an hour.

The second wave of 31 SBDs at 0930am on the 7th.
Mogami is hit twice.
1. 1 bomb hit amidships on the aircraft deck.
2. 1 bomb hit forward of the bridge.
Both hits caused medium damage.

The third wave of 24 SBDs at 1145am on the 7th.
Mogami is hit once.
1. 1 bomb scores a direct hit on the aircraft deck. This damaged the escape hatches of the engine rooms and killed the men fighting fires inside.

Yet, even after taking 5 hits, with casualties of 9 officers, 81 enlisted men killed and 101 people wounded, Mogami was still able to steam under her own power well enough to catch up to the invasion force by 0400am on June 8, and was able to rejoin sentai 7 an hour later. She reached Truk on the 14th.

It is important to note that even after the damage she sustained, she was able to work to take survivors off of the Mikuma.

For what it's worth,
Suzuya was lost on oct 25, 1944 in the following manner:
0735am attacked by 10 TBMs from TG77.4.3. This attack resulted in a near miss by a bomb on the port side aft. The damage put the port outboard propeller shaft out of order reducing speed to 20kts.
At 1050 she was attacked by 30 aircraft from TG 77.4.3. This attack resulted in a near miss from a bomb on the starboard side amidships. Since the no.1 (starboard forward) torpedo tubes were loaded, the near miss ignited the torpedoes in the tubes. The detonating torpedoes started heavy fires that were fought unsuccessfully because additional torpedoes started to explode at 1100. This resulted in the destruction of both aft (no.3 & 4) HA gun mounts and damage to the starboard engine room as well as stbd aft boiler room No.7. The ship became unmaneuverable.

At 1200 the fires detonated the remaining torpedoes, and the ammunition of No. 1 & 2 (both fwd) HA-gun mounts started to explode, setting the whole ship ablaze.

The ship was abandoned at 1300. 620 of the crew were rescued by the escorting DDs. The ship sank at 1320.
source was pg 498.

Conclusion:
At least in the case of the Mogami class, the deck protection vs bombs were adequate. However, the vulnerability of the torpedo mounts to bomb damage/ fire damage is what resulted in the loss of both Mikuma & Suzyua.

If it is worthwhile, I can look up any other Jap Cruiser related specifics in this book if this will contribute to the topic being discussed.

Regards,
Don

[doomonyou]

so than according to what you posted the cruisers could be destroyed by bombs. I would think that if the surviving was a little less lucky, it would have been blown to hell too. Just happened that thier torpedoes were dumped and that the turret hits set off no ammo. If one of the bombs had hit a little differently it sounds quite likely that the fires (or resulting secondaries) would have destoryed the ship. it can't be both ways. The Japanese ships can't have wickedly powerful huge torpedoes that are dumped overboard everytime an SBD is spotted.

All in all, I do not think that the bomb damage is so terrible...

[seydlitz_slith]

My issue with the bomb damage seems to be more of the messages saying that the armor is penetrated, followed by internal explosions, etc.

This is probably the issue that others are having.

You can do severe damage without penetrating (evidence the Suzyua loss).

However, in the game, I see a lot more armor penetration messages from bomb hits on ships that were built with protecton from penetration. Perhaps additional damage messages could be added to the game to account for heavy non-penetrating damage, but there are some cases where bombs are penetrating where they shouldn't (with regularity).

Don

[wpurdom]

The fine post by seydlitz provides far more information than is in Morrison and, I think, clarifies the appropriate distinctions between damage to CA's vs. BB's. I find Nikademus's excellent postings on penetration of armor entirely persuasive on the issue of HE bomb damage to BB's. I think seydlitz's post shows that the CA's are an entirely separate issue. If the sort of damage actually inflicted by bombs on CA's are most closely modelled by penetrating hits in the game's model, then bombs should penetrate CA armor, even if that is not the actual mechanism through which the fires, explosions of torpedoes, and destruction of turrets is actually being caused.
We can't expect the programers to provide 15 different mechanisms for calculating damage depending on the type of weapon used. Torpedoes vs. non-torpedoes I presume are modelled in the game, and such a distinction does seem necessary to me.

[wpurdom]

Anybody have any detailed information on bomb damage to US CA's by bombs or HE shells? (Damage to US ships at Cape Esperance and 1st Guadalcanal involved HE ammunition - the San Francisco, in particular, was pretty heavily damaged by the HE ammo but did not sink).

[seydlitz_slith]

According to pp320-321 of U.S. Crujisers by Friedman (Naval Institute Press, 1984, 496 pages):

[begin quote]

The experience of the San Francisco, another New Orleans clas cruiser, is in sharp contrast to that of her three sister ships. She survived massive gunfire damage in the battle of Guadalcanal, on the night of 12-13 November 1942, against a Japanese force that included two 14-in gun battle cruisers. That evening she had already survived a Japanese torpedo bomber crashing into her after control stations, which started a severe fire and destroyed the after 8-in gun controls. Later she took about forty-five hits, most of them from the 5.5-in secondary batteris of the battle cruisers but two of them from 14-in guns. Structural damage was limited, because the Japanese had been using special bombardment rounds destined not for surfaced action but for Henderson Field. Moreover, although over twenty fires were started, they were promptly brought under control. At the end of the battle, she still had use of two of her three 8-in gun turrets, and five of her eight 5-in AA guns, although in the absence of splinter protection their crews had suffered badly. That is not to say that the ship escaped lightly. Peppered by fragments, she was without any means of exterior communications, and many of her electrical circuits, particularly aft, were cut. Among the 189 casualties were the admiral, his staff, the captain, and the executive officer.

Possibly the greatest difference between the damage done to the San Francisco and her three less fortunate sisters can be attributed to the fact that airplanes and other inflammables had been stripped from the San Francisco's hangar. Fortunately, her fire mains and engineering plant remained intact; none of the Japanese shell, not even the 14-in type, was armor piercing, and at short range all of the hits were well above the waterline because of ricochets and the tendency of short-bombardment shells to explode when they struck the water. From a design point of view it is interesting to note that neither the captain nor the admiral availed himself of the San Francisco's conning tower, which, incidentally, remained undamaged throughout.

[end quote]

My comments: Like the Mogami at Midway, the San Fran may have been lucky in having been hit by the torpedo plane earlier that day. Because of that, much of the flammable material had already been burned or jettisoned....in the same way Mogami was saved from the fate of Mikuma & Suzyua because the earlier collision had lead to the crew to jettison the torpedoes from the mounts, meaning that they were not there to burn and explode when she was hit by bombs in the later air attacks.

If anyone can come up with good cases to check involving either US or Japanese ships, I can look up the info as I have a good reference library on hand.

regards,
Don