an informal poll, if I may......

[JohnDillworth]

Noting VT ( proximity ) did not shoot down as much as conventional and all 3" and 5" combined easily beaten by 20mm with 40mm being the real killers.

I think the 5 inch in general had a rate of fire issue. Also the doctrine did not immediately allow for the appearance of kamikazes. I think I read that they were not initially firing at maximum range and were waiting for them to get in closer. As to the 40mm; they were ripping out the 20mm and replacing them with 40mm as fast as they could. I also heard of a a 40mm proximity fuse but have been unable to verify.

[JohnDillworth]

The actual AA guns were thourougly researched for the device lists. They should be as accurate as any other weapon device. If they are shooting at an airplane I'd expect they (in total as a group) would perform about as well against history as any other sort of weapon in the OOB. If the Flak Loss numbers seem low, I would doubt it's because of the flak weapons themselves.

I agree, it's not the weapon. I believe it is something in the AA coding. the more engines, the greater chance of flack hits. TB and DB have a higher chance of being hit but not as high as multi engine. single engine fighters have little to no chance of being hit. All this makes sense until you hit the kamikaze era. In this case it seems like fighters are still immune to flack and we know this was not the case.
BTW, Nicks are fighters but they get hit by flack much more than signle engine fighthers.
Is there any developer that could comment on the AA routines?
thanks

[JeffroK]

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/rep ... index.html

A good yarn on USN AAA training & combat

[JohnDillworth]

A good yarn on USN AAA training & combat

thanks,
Well now I know what kind of ammo is being stored in the opening screens of WITP AE:

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: JeffK

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/rep ... index.html

A good yarn on USN AAA training & combat

Many's the fine day I spent on the beach at Dam Neck as a child in the 1960s. Still in use then, but also training SLBM crews and other missileers. One of the finest beaches in Tidewater, and only accessible to military and dependents.

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: bklooste
To tell if its right you need historic figures.

Take a look at this pdf to get a tally for war loss totals. It covers all navy and marine air force units that saw front line duty for the entire war.

Look at page 14 of the pdf table 1, which lists these totals:

Total action sorties flown: 284,073
Losses to AAA: 1,982
Losses to enemy aircraft: 907
Operational losses: 1,345
Losses on other flights (non-combat related flights): 3,045
Losses on Ship or ground: 1,313

Total airframes lost during war: 8,592

As you can see, the big killer when it came to enemy fire was flak, by a ratio greater than 2-1 over enemy air to air kills.

Japanese flak was nowhere near as effective as allied flak (though as we can see it was still very deadly), so you could probably assume Japan lost about twice or more airframes in total to flak than the allies did on a percentage basis.

Jim

[bklooste]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58


Just a thought, maybe nothing:

The actual AA guns were thourougly researched for the device lists. They should be as accurate as any other weapon device. If they are shooting at an airplane I'd expect they (in total as a group) would perform about as well against history as any other sort of weapon in the OOB. If the Flak Loss numbers seem low, I would doubt it's because of the flak weapons themselves.

I think your forgetting overall modes , for AA and ASW the game has overall mods. What they do is play tests some games and see how close it is and then multiply it by a modifier to represent doctrine.. You can see this in ASW where Japan cant hit anything and then when 43 hits around the same day those devices start working better. The same happens with AA ( hence 1941 Japan AA has a very bad mod) . It even may apply to other things. Anyway it is true for ASW ( as its in the manual) and i believe its true for other things as well. The game does not try to tactically simmulate what happened just the result.

[bklooste]

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth

Noting VT ( proximity ) did not shoot down as much as conventional and all 3" and 5" combined easily beaten by 20mm with 40mm being the real killers.

I think the 5 inch in general had a rate of fire issue. Also the doctrine did not immediately allow for the appearance of kamikazes. I think I read that they were not initially firing at maximum range and were waiting for them to get in closer. As to the 40mm; they were ripping out the 20mm and replacing them with 40mm as fast as they could. I also heard of a a 40mm proximity fuse but have been unable to verify.

No prox fuse on the 40mm ,the 3" ( ~75mm) were designed as these were the smallest guns than can hold a prox fuse.

WIth the 20mm the SOuth Dak at Santa Cruz shot down about 20 planes one day the majority were 20mm , the problem with the 20mm was it was revenge weapon and the purpose of AA is not to shoot down planes but to protect the ship and the 20mm couldnt do that .

[Le Ricain]

Playing Allied vs AI - Nov 1, 1942

Allied

A2A - 1,985
Ground - 308
Flak - 179
Ops - 1,457

Total - 3,926

JAP

A2A - 4,118
Ground - 213
Flak - 415
Ops - 1,628

Total - 6,374

[bklooste]

Pitty it includes ytaining and the actions in the med and against the germans
 
 
Losses to AAA: 1,982
Losses to enemy aircraft: 907
Operational losses: 1,345
Losses on other flights (non-combat related flights): 3,045
Losses on Ship or ground: 1,313
 
Assuming all losseses were in the Pacific ( big if as it also includes training  ) we would have ( by adding in the air force)
 
2494 lost
942 A2A 37%
546 AA ( only 6 in 42) 22%
1006 Other (ops) 40%
 
 
AA Losses   2924 .. (25%)
Losses to enemy air  1849  (16%)
Other   6709   (58%)
Total   11492
 

Japanese flak was nowhere near as effective as allied flak (though as we can see it was still very deadly), so you could probably assume Japan lost about twice or more airframes in total to flak than the allies did on a percentage basis.

 
However the 42 figure we have from the IJN Japan does not indicate this loosing 10% from Flak and i doubt the IJAAF would have a much  higher %.  I also think the US figures while usefull to compare US AA losses are skewed to compare to Japan because after mid 43 Japanese fighters contested the battle less and hence Flak losses predominate after this point. Since US CAP was highly effective throughout the war you wouldnt see this ratio change

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth

If the ops losses include flack losses than maybe the numbers make sense. Looks like anything with 2 engines or more are way more susceptible to flack. Fighters are, for all practical purposes, immune (last game I finished I had 6,600 Oscars lost, 6 to flack). Single engine attack aircraft are somewhere in between.
I think allied naval flack is way under powered. Recently, in April 45 I was raiding around the home Islands. Got hit with 400+ aircraft. Fighters got 130, flack got 0. All kinds of high powered CV's BB's and CA's with a total AA value combined of 4,0000 + and they did not shoot down a single plane. I believe this was because I was attacked by mostly kamikaze fighters and as mentioned above, they are immune.
I'm trying to figure out if there is any value in even putting BB's and CA's in carrier task forces. If they provide so little AA value the only point is that they might act as targets

Just a thought, maybe nothing:

The actual AA guns were thourougly researched for the device lists. They should be as accurate as any other weapon device. If they are shooting at an airplane I'd expect they (in total as a group) would perform about as well against history as any other sort of weapon in the OOB. If the Flak Loss numbers seem low, I would doubt it's because of the flak weapons themselves.

I wonder if what may be ahistorical is the detection ranges with later-war afloat radar (I often see 120 miles or so), and the CAP ranges the game allows. If I set CAP with drop tanks to eight hexes, is that realistic? Were CAP asets released to go out that far, when they had no on-board radar? Is that the orbit circumference, or the max react circumference? Is that an incoming react range, or a max pursuit range? My impression of WWII CAPs was they kept the majority of the planes within eyesight of the TF. Not 100+ miles out.

If detection is ahistoricaly distant, and CAP is allowed to leave the vicinity of the TF to intercept--by hundreds of miles perhaps--is it any wonder that fewer than historical incoming get into AA ranges measured in thousands of yards? Especiallly if a serious CAP attack can cause the whole enemy formation to abort and go home?

Measuring Total Aircraft in attacks against flak losses, and Total Losses by flak are different calculations of course, and certainly in a large raid lots of incoming do get into weapons release range, but I wonder if, in total, the results being discussed are more a sensor and C&C artifact than really a flak performance artifact.

your cap will never go out 8 hexes (unless you set it to LRCAP). Max leaking Cap is three hexes, but most of the ac will stay in the hex they´re based when being on Cap.

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: Kwik E Mart

ORIGINAL: crsutton

ORIGINAL: Kwik E Mart

i wonder how many of the op losses are caused by planes not making it home due to damage from flak...or is this even modelled...

Quite a lot.

then maybe nothing is broke...

Possibly, but not likely...

Even given an easily created test case where losses were well known (29 IJN aircraft lost to all causes, but mostly flak)... try running the results a few times and see what you get...

IF the results are "historical", by running a set of first day turns, you should get a spread of results with some losses greater than 29, some less than 29, but more or less centered on 29. They might report the losses as coming from different causes (since the AE model might not have the same accounting method as the different navies used), but still the AVERAGE losses should be somewhere around 29. It might say 5 are due to flak and 24 are OP losses due to accounting methods, but still it should be averaging around 29 if the model is relatively historically accurate.

This is not the case is the set of results i ran, but perhaps i was doing something incorrectly. i never got more than 5 IJN aircraft lost in the PH raid (5 or 6 trials). So even if the flak losses were put into the "op losses" column, something is not quite right. If the model is accurate, you might get SOMETIMES where there were only 5 ac lost, but you should also get times when there were >30.

If someone has different results, i'd be interested to know.

BTW: As to the real life effectiveness of AA during the late war: the only eyewitness i know that i had personally talked to was an AA gunner on a 40 mm battery (as part of his duties) on an APA. He was present at the Battle of Okinawa, and said that anything that flew near an aircraft carrier during an attack would be pretty much doomed... and that the aircraft carrier attracted the attackers like crazy... (he also allowed how he didn't want to have his ship anywhere near them).

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: bklooste

This surprised me a lot.

The AAORG (AA Operational Research Group) report, covering a four month period Oct44-Jan45 (approx 123 days) lists the numbers of AAA claims by weapon type as follows:

5in-common.........22
5in-VT................17

3in-common...........5.5
3in-VT.................0.5

40mm...............115.5

1.1in...................0.5
20mm................78.5

50cal..................5.5
30cal..................2.0

Noting VT ( proximity ) did not shoot down as much as conventional and all 3" and 5" combined easily beaten by 20mm with 40mm being the real killers.

The problem with this is that the 5" AA using VT shells could and did fire out to points were visual claims on kills could not be made, so might be undercounted. The close in kills might have several batteries firing at the same aircraft, and get overcounted. Apparently 3 and 4 to 1 overclaims by AA gunners were not uncommon (so fighter pilots weren't the only ones who were overoptimistic).

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: bklooste
Assuming all losseses were in the Pacific ( big if as it also includes training  ) we would have ( by adding in the air force)

The document tracks all front line pacific units that saw action in the pacific. The term 'action sortie' refers to missions flown that saw some form of hostile action in the Pacific. A breakdown by the different theater’s the figures are tabulated from (South, Southwest, Central and North) is tracked in table 18.

Jim

[minnowguy]

ORIGINAL: JeffK

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/rep ... index.html

A good yarn on USN AAA training & combat

That was a great read. Thanks for the link!

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: bklooste

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58


Just a thought, maybe nothing:

The actual AA guns were thourougly researched for the device lists. They should be as accurate as any other weapon device. If they are shooting at an airplane I'd expect they (in total as a group) would perform about as well against history as any other sort of weapon in the OOB. If the Flak Loss numbers seem low, I would doubt it's because of the flak weapons themselves.

I think your forgetting overall modes , for AA and ASW the game has overall mods. What they do is play tests some games and see how close it is and then multiply it by a modifier to represent doctrine.. You can see this in ASW where Japan cant hit anything and then when 43 hits around the same day those devices start working better. The same happens with AA ( hence 1941 Japan AA has a very bad mod) . It even may apply to other things. Anyway it is true for ASW ( as its in the manual) and i believe its true for other things as well. The game does not try to tactically simmulate what happened just the result.

That'sa good point, and I have seen that with ASW.

But, boiling down my longer, more tortured-syntax post--maybe you don't see historical flak losses because engagements aren't taking place at historical flak ranges. The CAP is getting them in the outer air battle zones, not overhead.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

your cap will never go out 8 hexes (unless you set it to LRCAP). Max leaking Cap is three hexes, but most of the ac will stay in the hex they´re based when being on Cap.

7.4.1 says two hexes--maybe, if a bunch of checks are made. Still that's 80 miles, and flak ranges are thousands of yards.

7.4.1 begs the question--why can the player set CAP at 8--or 10 with drop tanks in some models--if two hexes is the important figure?

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

This is not the case is the set of results i ran, but perhaps i was doing something incorrectly. i never got more than 5 IJN aircraft lost in the PH raid (5 or 6 trials). So even if the flak losses were put into the "op losses" column, something is not quite right. If the model is accurate, you might get SOMETIMES where there were only 5 ac lost, but you should also get times when there were >30.

You make a good point. I'd also make the point that in my last PH attack phase against the AI, I lost five (5) total casualties aside from ship crews (actual attack had hundreds, on the bases and in Honolulu), and about 40 planes destroyed on the ground at the Oahu air fields (actual numbers in the attack 188 destroyed, 159 damaged, give or take.)

It's a game. It has randoms.

You of course can play as you want, but you might have more fun if you stopped replaying December 7 over and over and got into a campaign. Over the course of the war many things even out. Just a suggestion.

[pompack]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

ORIGINAL: castor troy

your cap will never go out 8 hexes (unless you set it to LRCAP). Max leaking Cap is three hexes, but most of the ac will stay in the hex they´re based when being on Cap.

7.4.1 says two hexes--maybe, if a bunch of checks are made. Still that's 80 miles, and flak ranges are thousands of yards.

7.4.1 begs the question--why can the player set CAP at 8--or 10 with drop tanks in some models--if two hexes is the important figure?

Because you don't set CAP to 8 or 10, you set the mission (escort, sweep, etc) to 8 or 10. As to drop tanks, I have found that for a given number of a/c with a given CAP percentage more a/c seem to intercept if you have selected drop tanks.

[racndoc]

My PBEM is currently at 11/16/43. AC losses are as follows:

ALLIED AC:

SORTIES: 2975165
A2A: 2772
DOF: 902
FLAK: 1047
OPS: 3568


JAPANESE AC:

SORTIES: 1802828
A2A: 3693
DOF: 798
FLAK: 408
OPS: 3135


Here is a screenshot of my top AC losses by model......the SBDs in particular started dying like flies from attacking IJN CAs or BBs after 1/1/43: