Naval battles are borked

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: Bradley7735

Japan lost every BB surface fight they took part in. (First Guadalcanal was a slight win, but they still lost one of their two BB's that took part.)

And generally conceded that those early losses were all leadership issues, not crews. IJN BB commanders as opposed to CA and DD commanders were notoriously risk averse to their detriment.

Better to compare CA actions. Good leadership and the crew merits really stand out. IJN spotters beating USN to the punch and the Long Lances were punishing. Look at the list in Iron Bottom Sound from fall 42

[Bradley7735]

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

ORIGINAL: Bradley7735

Japan lost every BB surface fight they took part in. (First Guadalcanal was a slight win, but they still lost one of their two BB's that took part.)

And generally conceded that those early losses were all leadership issues, not crews. IJN BB commanders as opposed to CA and DD commanders were notoriously risk averse to their detriment.

Better to compare CA actions. Good leadership and the crew merits really stand out. IJN spotters beating USN to the punch and the Long Lances were punishing. Look at the list in Iron Bottom Sound from fall 42

14 US DD's, 6 US cruisers (some lost because the US had to fight BB's with CLAA's when they didn't really want to.)
7 IJN DD's, 1 Cruiser, 2 BB's

Yes, disadvantage to the US. But, point wise, about equal. The IJN was not some super human force. The vast majority of US defeats was due to poor leadership (certainly early 42 and Savo have leadership to blame). Not poorly trained ship crews. Once the US weeded out the poor leaders, fixed their torps, and knew what they faced (IJN torpedos), they rarely lost a fight.

[Sonny II]

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

SAIEW?  Sorry acronym confounded ...

S=Same
A=As
I=It
E=Ever
W=Was

We've been using 'round these parts for a couple of years, especially with regard to AE, when we want to say that some attribute of the game has not been changed since stock, day 01. (July 4th, 2004).

June 26, 2004.

[c_m_kwong]

I don't know if it is my fault...
Have played WitP for a while, and new to AE (only against AI, but I believe the battle engine is the same anyway in PBEM and AI games)

I am playing one of the mods and I have changed the name of some ships (that Constellation is a Lexington class)

I suppose carrier groups will form a defensive formation with carriers in the center...?




but then, shit happens, and all I can say is that destroyer's commander deserves one of the Mikado's daughters...

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: JWE

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl
You sure about this John? Falling objects accelerate at 32 feet per second per second (minus air resistance). And an AP shell weighing over a ton doesn't meet much air resistance. Add in that decks have much less armor than belts, and the results should be quite effective. Certainly the 12" CD Mortars with which these installations were studded depended on falling from high altitude to achieve penetration, as did AP bombs from Aircraft.

Yes, I think so. I did the advanced course at Sill. Got a reasonable idea about trajectories.

I bow to your knowledge of ballistics. My study has always been Military History. One thing that I have noticed consistently in heavy naval ordnance is that the ranges of the weapons mountings installed always seem to follow the development of plotting and range finding. The guns of even the 1880's could achieve very impressive ranges---but the mountings limited their actual elevation and range to distances where the fall of shot and corrections could be achieved.

When better means of spotting became available, virtually every BB of WW I vintage had it's mountings reworked to allow greater elevation and range. Many shore CD mountings underwent similar changes (though not all as the Washington Treaty limited the upgrades at places like Corregadore). So I have to believe that when the US Army designed and ordered those 16" guns with a range of over 49,000 yards they had good reason to expect them to be able to get hits at that range. Given budget limitations, why build a more expensive mounting unless it made the guns more effective?

[davbaker]

The same sort of thing happend to me with Yorktown.
Single destroyer snuck a torp & two shells into her and escaped without a scratch.
The 3 CA & 6DD must have been asleep.

Guess it must fall under !*@$ happens [:'(]

[JWE]

Mike, as you well know, I don't know squat about navy gunnery. I'm just trying to think in practical terms.

I mean, here I am with an AR-15; a real good gun with a ballistic range of 1200-1500 yards, but I'm not gonna pull down on any target unless it's inside 200 yards (preferably way inside). I wasn't no shooter, and even 200 yards was a bitch. But I wasn't that bad; I qualified after all.

Even snipers try to stay inside pb-2 and don't shoot at ballistic max. Getting a hit at range is an honest to gosh Vegas crap shot. The odds exist, but they sure ain't in your favor (at least not in mine).

[John Lansford]

I find it hard to believe the army didn't order those 49,000 yard range 16" guns without realizing they'd need fire control capable of directing them out to that range.  According to the book I read describing them, the directors on Oahu were all tied together and had the capability of seeing a lot further than the gun positions themselves.  Add that to the long, long distance between directors (there were some on Diamond Head and some west of Pearl Harbor that could triangulate on a target, feeding data to any gun firing on the target), and you've got some really long range, accurate CD positions that no sane ship commander would want to get near.

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: JWE

Mike, as you well know, I don't know squat about navy gunnery. I'm just trying to think in practical terms.

I mean, here I am with an AR-15; a real good gun with a ballistic range of 1200-1500 yards, but I'm not gonna pull down on any target unless it's inside 200 yards (preferably way inside). I wasn't no shooter, and even 200 yards was a bitch. But I wasn't that bad; I qualified after all.

Even snipers try to stay inside pb-2 and don't shoot at ballistic max. Getting a hit at range is an honest to gosh Vegas crap shot. The odds exist, but they sure ain't in your favor (at least not in mine).

I understand what you are saying..., but swap that AR-15 for a Barrett 50 and you can hit what you aim at at a much longer range. Why? Heavier round = less ballistic instability. British discovered in 1909 that a 13.5" with a heavier shell and a lower muzzle velocity was much more accurate than their preceeding 12'/50..., and their 15"/42 was one of the most accurate naval guns of the any era (and still holds the record for the longest hit achieved between two moving ships.)

Those 16" Rifles at Oahu were inherently quite accurate, especially with their extremely stable mountings. With the added advantage of prefigured correction tables for everything from wind speed, humidity, temperature, and tidal states; virtually all the "variables" could be removed. The advantage of being rooted to a particular piece of real estate for 20 years is that you can get to know the neighborhood very well. And exactly how to bring down effective fire on anything that is foolish enough to come into your range. That's why nothing ever did. Sorry John..., don't mean to be argumentative. But Coast Artillery is a life-long love of mine and I get frustrated that because it was so good at what it did there are virtually no examples of it in action. As Nelson said, "No sailor but a fool" attacks it.

[El Savior]

ORIGINAL: c_m_kwong

I suppose carrier groups will form a defensive formation with carriers in the center...?




but then, shit happens, and all I can say is that destroyer's commander deserves one of the Mikado's daughters...

Happened to me too. Single DD sunk Enterprise in transit middle of the Pacific. On several other occasions larger surface forces had managed to shell my carrier fleet too. But this is mostly my own fault. When you chase enemy bombardment fleets, it's easy to be on their return path.