WWII USAAF/USAF made the wrong choice in bomber making

[John Lansford]

Last night my Devastator TB's from Saratoga and Hornet got nearly as many bomb hits on 3 BB's (using 500 lb bombs) as the SBD squadrons did using 1000 lb bombs.  I counted about a dozen SBD hits on the ships, and the Devastators came in separately and got 8 more hits with 500 lb bombs.  I found that more than a little hard to believe since none of the 1000 lb bombs penetrated the BB's deck armor, so their maneuverability wasn't affected and only a few AA guns had been destroyed.

[Nikademus]

I seem to recall saying this to Mike once the last time the subject of those dasterdly level bombing Kates came up. [:D]


You should see those Vildebeasts and swordfishes pile on the hits. Darn Aussies.

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

I seem to recall saying this to Mike once the last time the subject of those dasterdly level bombing Kates came up. [:D] I am no more in favor of Devestators getting bomb hits from 27,500 feet than I am of Kates doing so! Either event is completely absurd. Two wrongs DO NOT make a right..., just a bigger wrong. Get 'em BOTH down to a rational altitude (10,000 feet or less) and a realistic accuracy. [8D]


You should see those Vildebeasts and swordfishes pile on the hits. Darn Aussies. The above goes for these as well! [:D]

[RevRick]

Foerever.

Steve, my friend, you have outdone yourself. You are the first person I have ever seen who was able to translate that word from the original Southern English to an internet forum.... and managed to add the requisite fourth syllable to a three syllable word to make it true Southern English...

Disclaimer: Don't anyone get their knickers in a twist, I am embedded deep in the South, and have been ever since my Mama bore me. Shalom, y'all.

[AW1Steve]

ORIGINAL: RevRick

Forever.

Steve, my friend, you have outdone yourself. You are the first person I have ever seen who was able to translate that word from the original Southern English to an internet forum.... and managed to add the requisite fourth syllable to a three syllable word to make it true Southern English...

Disclaimer: Don't anyone get their knickers in a twist, I am embedded deep in the South, and have been ever since my Mama bore me. Shalom, y'all.

As Bart Simpson used to say , "it's not there now!" "You can't prove I did it!". And even if it was there, it's gone NOW![:D]

Although I've spent most the last 25 years in the south , and it does say Jacksonville Florida on my drivers license , I still unfortunately speak with my Original native New England accent. I also can't spell, type or use English in an effective manner (as T just showed on The Thread). Sorry Rev, and thanks for keeping me honest. You should hear my wife though. Like me she has that weird accent that career service people pick up from having no real fixed address. But she has the unique ability to get "Ahyuh and Ya'all" in the same sentence![X(] And it sounds right! That's the weird part! [:D]

So as much as I might aspire to be a southerner (and I do. I readily do). I'm still just a carpet bagger. As we using to say when I was growing up in Maine, "if you weren't born here, your from away!" I'm from away......[:D]

[RevRick]

Hey, Steve. Are you in Jax.... I spent entirely too much time driving up either Beach or Atlantic to get back to the base down there...

Now, here I am in (or near) Savannah. Much prettier...

[seydlitz_slith]

Several comments here:

1. I seriously doubt that a Kate with a full bomb load could have made it to it's service ceiling given the limits of it's 1000 hp engine. I know in the "First Team" book the American flew the devastators very low because it could not fly very high while lugging a torpedo.

2. I do wonder about the bombing accuracy of some single engine level bomber units in the game. In my game as Japan, it is Jan 1942 and I noticed that one of my Ida units has a bombing accuracy of 72%. I also have a couple of Mary and another Ida unit that also have ratings over 50%. (On the bomber units there is text on the unit screen that says bombing accuracy= xx%). I wonder how that could be. Those are the guys that I am upgrading to Lily as fast as possible. It makes me wonder what the Kate unit was since I have noticed a direct correlation between this number and the performance of air units on bombing missions.

3. Walloc, shame on you for having that giant magnet at your airfield. It just attracted all of the bombs. Or maybe the Kates were using laser guided bombs and had spotters on the ground. Other than LGBs, the only other thing that could cause that type of damage was the old anti-runway pods that were fitted to NATO Tornadoes to take out runways in the event of a war.

4. Has anybody noticed that with advanced weather "on" that the weather is uniformly crappy in most places most of the time? I may be wrong but that has been my observation.

[AW1Steve]

ORIGINAL: RevRick

Hey, Steve. Are you in Jax.... I spent entirely too much time driving up either Beach or Atlantic to get back to the base down there...

Now, here I am in (or near) Savannah. Much prettier...

Alas no, Rev.[:(] Although I am retired from the USN , my wife is still active duty, so I'm still a slave to the whims of the Pentagon. Right now , I'm living in Alexandria Virginia (although I do plan to go to JAX in a couple of months for a quick road trip). And the High muckety-mucks of BuPers is telling us to expect to transfer to Offutt AFB in the spring (Crazy place to send a sailor--NEBRASKA?) [X(]

And I do agree that Savannha is much prettier than JAX. In fact it's down right beautiful in places. But Florida is where we intend to retire, either in JAX or if I can convince the boss(my spouse) Pensacola. Either would suit me just fine. [:)]

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: seydlitz
4. Has anybody noticed that with advanced weather "on" that the weather is uniformly crappy in most places most of the time? I may be wrong but that has been my observation.

Always has been..., since the game was released. In 2by3's original design, the percentage chance of wet weather drying out was too low..., so things get wetter but never dry out. To the best of my knowledge this has never been corrected.

[joliverlay]

From an article in Air Force Magazine about the 8th USAAF attempts to develop precision bombing. Even with the Nordon Bombsight the article says:

"Bombing accuracy was terrible. The average circular error in 1943 was 1,200 feet, meaning that only 16 percent of the bombs fell within 1,000 feet of the aiming point. "Rather than dropping bombs into pickle barrels, Eighth Air Force bombardiers were having trouble hitting the broad side of a barn," said historian McFarland."

The problem is with the altitude, not the flyers. Circular error probability for bombing drops off greatly as altitude increases. The eventual solution was carpet bombing.

As to an earlier report of the majority of Japanese bombs hitting within the primeter of an airfield (was it Clark?) early in the war...how big was the airfield, and how high were the bombers?

Because of the length of time it takes the bombs to fall 20,000+ feet even a small error in calculation of the velocity of the aircraft can cause a large error for level bombers; for torpedo bombers this situation (at high altitude) would be much worse. They are not equiped for high altitude bombing. So how could they do substantially better?

[PaxMondo]

As I read this as a first tim eread, I wonder about the FOW.  We're looking at the in game report and saying 133 [or whatever] hits, but those are "reported" hits, not actual.  We know the air field got 'flattened', but how many hits does that take?  No where near 133 from my experience.  This isn't that big of a field, overstacked on top of that.  Something like 50 or less hits would flatten, maybe way less than 50 given the overstacking.  In the GUA scenario, I've flattened Lunga with 30 Betty's in just two days (1 sortie/day).  So a level 2 airfield only needed about 30 or 40 'reported' hits to flatten.
 
The discussion about the 27,000 ft performance of the Kate is valid, but a 500 lb bomb load isn't that much.  It isn't a +1000 lb torpedo.  So "maybe". 
 
My thought: post your result up in the tech forum with a save and let them look at it.  If that is the worst thing that happens in your game, you'll probably win. 
 
I had 2 KAte torps, 8 VAl bomb hits, 3 hits by the Yamato and the CV enterprise was still getting away hiding in Tulagi.  She tried to sneak away and I managed to sink her only by sending a CA and 6 DD's on a desperate chase that caught her with 6 more hits and 3 torps.  I didn't think she would ever sink.  Granted, all reported hits.  I would love to have seen the action from the other side.  Most of my 'hits' must have been misses.  FOW in this game is great.

[Walloc]

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

As I read this as a first tim eread, I wonder about the FOW.  We're looking at the in game report and saying 133 [or whatever] hits, but those are "reported" hits, not actual.  We know the air field got 'flattened', but how many hits does that take?  No where near 133 from my experience.  This isn't that big of a field, overstacked on top of that.  Something like 50 or less hits would flatten, maybe way less than 50 given the overstacking.  In the GUA scenario, I've flattened Lunga with 30 Betty's in just two days (1 sortie/day).  So a level 2 airfield only needed about 30 or 40 'reported' hits to flatten.

The discussion about the 27,000 ft performance of the Kate is valid, but a 500 lb bomb load isn't that much.  It isn't a +1000 lb torpedo.  So "maybe". 

My thought: post your result up in the tech forum with a save and let them look at it.  If that is the worst thing that happens in your game, you'll probably win. 

I had 2 KAte torps, 8 VAl bomb hits, 3 hits by the Yamato and the CV enterprise was still getting away hiding in Tulagi.  She tried to sneak away and I managed to sink her only by sending a CA and 6 DD's on a desperate chase that caught her with 6 more hits and 3 torps.  I didn't think she would ever sink.  Granted, all reported hits.  I would love to have seen the action from the other side.  Most of my 'hits' must have been misses.  FOW in this game is great.

They have looked at it and responce is every thing is working correctly. Its just a "fluke".

Btw how would overstacking affect the number of bomb hits it takes to take out the actual airstrip or service facilities?


Kind regards,

Rasmus

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: joliverlay

From an article in Air Force Magazine about the 8th USAAF attempts to develop precision bombing. Even with the Nordon Bombsight the article says:

"Bombing accuracy was terrible. The average circular error in 1943 was 1,200 feet, meaning that only 16 percent of the bombs fell within 1,000 feet of the aiming point. "Rather than dropping bombs into pickle barrels, Eighth Air Force bombardiers were having trouble hitting the broad side of a barn," said historian McFarland."

The problem is with the altitude, not the flyers.

Actually, a major portion of the problem was that in Texas, where they trained, each bomber bombed individually. In Europe, where they fought, they were trying to bomb as a formation. Only the "lead bombardier" even got a chance to think he was "on target".

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

The pilots were probably high exp and that´s the reason the game enabled them to hit that much. Surely not realistic but don´t blame the game, blame the one that sent them in at max altitude. Wouldn´t 20.000 ft have been better? But then, in PBEM you want to limit your losses as much and soon the gamer turns out to do whatever possible to limit his losses, thus going in at max alt if this gives him excellent result and low losses. Unfortunately the game can´t prevent everything that seems strange.

Actually, it should be possible in this case. The game already has additional penalties for Heavy, 4-engined, high-altitude Bombers operating from low altitudes to improve accuracy..., they get hit by a lot more flak and fatigue.

So if low-altitude, single-engined, light bombers try to operate at very high altitudes to escape flak and CAP, why can't the game penalize their bombing accuracy? What's so hard about that? [8D]

[xj900uk]

It's also worth noting that in the Leyte Gulf operation, when Kurita's surface force surprised Taffy-3 and missed a sitting target,  most of the American CVE's were hit multiple times by 8", 14", 16" and even 18" shells.  however as the Japs had the fuzes all set for AP,  they were passing clean through the flimsy unarmoured hanger walls and straight out the other side without exploding.  In the end the US only lost one CVE,  the Gambier Bay,  and that was sunk by a determined Jap destroyer and loads of near misses from the bigger guns springing open the ships seams...

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: Walloc




They have looked at it and responce is every thing is working correctly. Its just a "fluke".

Btw how would overstacking affect the number of bomb hits it takes to take out the actual airstrip or service facilities?


Kind regards,

Rasmus

Only that the manual says that overstacking will exacerbate damage. It doesn't say how. So it might include runway damage. I guess if the planes have to be parked along the runway and get hit, they would make extra damage? Reaching here.

I went back and looked at a couple of saves of mine, and I shellacked Lunga pretty bad with just 36 Bettie's. But Lunga was badly overstacked on groups at the time (15 groups, but most were just 1 or 2 plane), and just somewhat overstacked on engines (had about 75) on a level 2 strip. So, maybe that overstack helped on that Betty raid. Almost be nice if they added in some text clues on the combat report. Something like "additional damage done when overcrowded a/c exploded on runway", something like that to tell you that there was bonus damage associated with overstack.

Just my thoughts....

[xj900uk]

Agreed.  Beatties carry such a naff surface bomb load they shouldn't be able to do that much damage to airfields (I think 1 or 2 x 250 kg bombload) unless it was because the planes were so poorly overstacked and disbursed.  The Beatty's great strength (if that!) was it's amazingly long range & double-torpedo load,  which could be deadly against unarmoured and un-CAP'ed surface shipping

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: xj900uk

Agreed. Beatties carry such a naff surface bomb load they shouldn't be able to do that much damage to airfields (I think 1 or 2 x 250 kg bombload) unless it was because the planes were so poorly overstacked and disbursed. The Beatty's great strength (if that!) was it's amazingly long range & double-torpedo load, which could be deadly against unarmoured and un-CAP'ed surface shipping

"double-torpedo load"? You are certainly correct about the amazingly long range..., but a Betty's weapons loadout was was approximately 2,000 lbs. One torpedo or the equivalent weight in bombs. [;)]

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: xj900uk

Agreed.  Beatties carry such a naff surface bomb load they shouldn't be able to do that much damage to airfields (I think 1 or 2 x 250 kg bombload) unless it was because the planes were so poorly overstacked and disbursed.  The Beatty's great strength (if that!) was it's amazingly long range & double-torpedo load,  which could be deadly against unarmoured and un-CAP'ed surface shipping

where did you get that from? The Betty couldn´t carry two torpedoes, they carried one. Bomb load was something like 2200lb which isn´t 1 or 2 250kg bombs either. But it isn´t a B-29 used for a tactial attack on an airfield.


edit: as expected on this forum, there´s always a faster one... [:D]

[Nikademus]

somebody on the Internet is wrong! Fetch the cape and mask......google at the ready.

[:'(]