Shipboard AA Performance

[aprezto]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Nope.

And BTW, there is only so much that pilot skill can do when in the attack phase against ship AA.

Have to agree. While I can buy a small amount of increased survivability by training better attack angles and such. There is just no way a pilot defence ability should be able to allow them to dodge a supersonic, invisible flak round.
My reading of what the defence attribute is trying to emulate is a pilot's ability to dodge attacking fighters; they are visible and their trajectory is able to be extrapolated - hence you could 'dodge' them or fight them off with defensive armaments.
This argument has no grounds against an incoming AAA round. You are in the realms of luck.
By requirement, an attacking divebomber, and even more: torpedo bomber, must fly a predictable track in order to hit their target. A higher trained bomber pilot is actually likely to do this 'better'. More predictable = easy to hit.

[vonTirpitz]

One aspect of these discussions that would seem to be of critical importance yet rarely mentioned and often overlooked, is the experience of the crew on the ships.

I would have expected that it is a fairly important factor on how effectively AA is used. A green crew on a well armed ship would be more dangerous to themselves than the enemy.

As I expected, it does.

I created a relatively nondescript USN task force with a battleship, 2 CLAA and 4 Fletcher DDs and stuck it near a Japanese base in the Buccaneer Scenario (late 1943).



The IJN airgroups nearby were set to naval attack with 20% searching. The only edited difference between the first two tests and the last two is that the USN TF ship experience were all increased from 25 to 90.

Granted, the only way I am currently aware of to increase ship experience is to sail around and/or get shot at but it does seem to be an important aspect of this thread topic IMHO. In all likelihood, the leader ratings also play a role. If time allows I may double or triple up the number of ships in the TF to see how effectively that would increase the number of kills and damaged aircraft.

Also note that the higher crew experience did not decrease AA accuracy in bad weather.




Experience 25 Test Run 1

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Afternoon Air attack on TF, near Great Nicobar at 43,67

Weather in hex: Partial cloud

Raid detected at 120 NM, estimated altitude 16,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 45 minutes

Japanese aircraft
A6M5 Zero x 9
G3M3 Nell x 10



No Japanese losses

Allied Ships
BB Indiana



Aircraft Attacking:
10 x G3M3 Nell bombing from 10000 feet
Naval Attack: 2 x 250 kg SAP Bomb, 4 x 60 kg GP Bomb



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Afternoon Air attack on TF, near Great Nicobar at 43,67

Weather in hex: Partial cloud

Raid detected at 80 NM, estimated altitude 8,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 34 minutes

Japanese aircraft
A6M5 Zero x 9
B5N2 Kate x 13



Japanese aircraft losses
B5N2 Kate: 1 destroyed, 3 damaged

Allied Ships
BB Indiana, Bomb hits 9, on fire



Aircraft Attacking:
13 x B5N2 Kate bombing from 5000 feet
Naval Attack: 2 x 250 kg SAP Bomb

Heavy smoke from fires obscuring BB Indiana

Experience 25 Test Run 2

AFTER ACTION REPORTS FOR Oct 18, 43
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morning Air attack on TF, near Great Nicobar at 43,67

Weather in hex: Severe storms

Raid detected at 120 NM, estimated altitude 19,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 45 minutes

Japanese aircraft
A6M5 Zero x 18
G3M3 Nell x 10



Japanese aircraft losses
G3M3 Nell: 1 damaged

Allied Ships
BB Indiana



Aircraft Attacking:
10 x G3M3 Nell bombing from 15000 feet
Naval Attack: 2 x 250 kg SAP Bomb, 4 x 60 kg GP Bomb



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morning Air attack on TF, near Great Nicobar at 43,67

Weather in hex: Severe storms

Raid detected at 80 NM, estimated altitude 9,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 34 minutes

Japanese aircraft
B5N2 Kate x 15



No Japanese losses

Allied Ships
BB Indiana, Bomb hits 6, on fire



Aircraft Attacking:
15 x B5N2 Kate bombing from 5000 feet
Naval Attack: 2 x 250 kg SAP Bomb

Experience 90 Test Run 1

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Afternoon Air attack on TF, near Great Nicobar at 43,67

Weather in hex: Light rain

Raid detected at 120 NM, estimated altitude 20,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 45 minutes

Japanese aircraft
A6M5 Zero x 9
G3M3 Nell x 10



Japanese aircraft losses
G3M3 Nell: 2 damaged

Allied Ships
BB Indiana



Aircraft Attacking:
10 x G3M3 Nell bombing from 15000 feet
Naval Attack: 2 x 250 kg SAP Bomb, 4 x 60 kg GP Bomb



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Afternoon Air attack on TF, near Great Nicobar at 43,67

Weather in hex: Light rain

Raid detected at 80 NM, estimated altitude 5,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 34 minutes

Japanese aircraft
A6M5 Zero x 9
B5N2 Kate x 13



Japanese aircraft losses
B5N2 Kate: 1 destroyed, 7 damaged

Allied Ships
BB Indiana, Bomb hits 6



Aircraft Attacking:
13 x B5N2 Kate bombing from 5000 feet
Naval Attack: 2 x 250 kg SAP Bomb

Experience 90 Test Run 2

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Afternoon Air attack on TF, near Great Nicobar at 43,67

Weather in hex: Heavy rain

Raid detected at 120 NM, estimated altitude 19,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 45 minutes

Japanese aircraft
A6M5 Zero x 9
G3M3 Nell x 10



Japanese aircraft losses
G3M3 Nell: 1 destroyed, 2 damaged

Allied Ships
BB Indiana



Aircraft Attacking:
10 x G3M3 Nell bombing from 15000 feet
Naval Attack: 2 x 250 kg SAP Bomb, 4 x 60 kg GP Bomb



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Afternoon Air attack on TF, near Great Nicobar at 43,67

Weather in hex: Heavy rain

Raid detected at 80 NM, estimated altitude 9,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 34 minutes

Japanese aircraft
A6M5 Zero x 9
B5N2 Kate x 15



Japanese aircraft losses
B5N2 Kate: 12 damaged

Allied Ships
BB Indiana, Bomb hits 3



Aircraft Attacking:
15 x B5N2 Kate bombing from 5000 feet
Naval Attack: 2 x 250 kg SAP Bomb

[vonTirpitz]

Here are the results from tripling the number of ships and reducing all of the ship experience levels to 75 (a little more reasonable I think)

AFTER ACTION REPORTS FOR Oct 18, 43
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morning Air attack on TF, near Great Nicobar at 43,67

Weather in hex: Light rain

Raid detected at 120 NM, estimated altitude 16,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 45 minutes

Japanese aircraft
A6M5 Zero x 9
G3M3 Nell x 10



Japanese aircraft losses
G3M3 Nell: 8 damaged

Allied Ships
BB Massachusetts
BB Alabama



Aircraft Attacking:
10 x G3M3 Nell bombing from 15000 feet
Naval Attack: 2 x 250 kg SAP Bomb, 4 x 60 kg GP Bomb



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morning Air attack on TF, near Great Nicobar at 43,67

Weather in hex: Light rain

Raid detected at 80 NM, estimated altitude 8,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 34 minutes

Japanese aircraft
A6M5 Zero x 9
B5N2 Kate x 13



Japanese aircraft losses
B5N2 Kate: 3 destroyed, 9 damaged

Allied Ships
BB Alabama, Bomb hits 3
BB Massachusetts, Bomb hits 1
CLAA Oakland



Aircraft Attacking:
11 x B5N2 Kate bombing from 5000 feet
Naval Attack: 2 x 250 kg SAP Bomb

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Afternoon Air attack on TF, near Great Nicobar at 43,67

Weather in hex: Severe storms

Raid detected at 120 NM, estimated altitude 16,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 45 minutes

Japanese aircraft
G3M3 Nell x 8



Japanese aircraft losses
G3M3 Nell: 1 destroyed, 5 damaged

Allied Ships
BB Massachusetts
BB Indiana



Aircraft Attacking:
7 x G3M3 Nell bombing from 15000 feet
Naval Attack: 2 x 250 kg SAP Bomb, 4 x 60 kg GP Bomb



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Afternoon Air attack on TF, near Great Nicobar at 43,67

Weather in hex: Severe storms

Raid detected at 80 NM, estimated altitude 5,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 34 minutes

Japanese aircraft
A6M5 Zero x 18
B5N2 Kate x 7



Japanese aircraft losses
B5N2 Kate: 1 destroyed, 3 damaged

Allied Ships
BB Indiana
BB Alabama



Aircraft Attacking:
6 x B5N2 Kate bombing from 5000 feet
Naval Attack: 2 x 250 kg SAP Bomb

[witpqs]

Von Tirpitz,

What was the pilot skill set in these tests?

[vonTirpitz]

All of the air assets are as Andy has them in his Buccaneer Scenario. I think I have v3 loaded but it might still be v2. The only thing I did was dock the IJN TF into port so it wouldn't get involved in the testing. So for all practical purposes the only "known" variables I played with for each test was the number and experience of the USN ships. The weather varied from test to test but that was expected.

I think there is also value in the results knowing that all of the raids bombed from the same altitudes. Hope it helps.

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Von Tirpitz,

What was the pilot skill set in these tests?

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: FatR

ORIGINAL: witpqs
You fail to understand. Capabilities. Not results.

I'm afraid it is you who fail to understand. You have failed to manage your war effort in a way that produces historical ñorrelation of capabilities, including possible size of Japanese strikes (extremely important for AAA effectiveness), pilots quality and coordination of strikes (influenced by availability of quality air group commanders).

have you ever read a book about the war? WWII, not WWI. And have you ever read about how the percentage was of aircraft shot down by flak? Obviously not.

[castor troy]

good to see that AA gets better with increased exp, problem is you can´t train ships so if you don´t get attacked they don´t train. Yeah, they train until somewhere around 50, but that´s obviously not enough to make Allied capitol ships bristling with flak a flak platform they should be. Noone says they should be killers in 42 but the major TFs that are sailing around in late 43-44 should have a decent flak as this is what they had in real life. Heck, ppl are even using BIGGER TFs with more flak than it would have been done in real life and still can´t take down 50% of real life kills with flak.

[FatR]

ORIGINAL: castor troy
have you ever read a book about the war? WWII, not WWI. And have you ever read about how the percentage was of aircraft shot down by flak? Obviously not.

Can you put your money where your whining mouth is and kindly enlighten us about the percentage of Japanese aircraft lost to flak during the two combat events that can serve as the only RL points of comparison for large carrier battles late in the war:
1)Counterattack against Task Group 50.3 on 11 November 1943.
2)Marianas Turkey Shoot.

Sources of information that do not use Japanese sources to verify claims do not count, of course.

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: FatR

ORIGINAL: castor troy
have you ever read a book about the war? WWII, not WWI. And have you ever read about how the percentage was of aircraft shot down by flak? Obviously not.

Can you put your money where your whining mouth is and kindly enlighten us about the percentage of Japanese aircraft lost to flak during the two combat events that can serve as the only RL points of comparison for large carrier battles late in the war:
1)Counterattack against Task Group 50.3 on 11 November 1943.
2)Marianas Turkey Shoot.





Sources of information that do not use Japanese sources to verify claims do not count, of course.

going from memory, the Hellcat pilots claimed more aircraft shot down in the Mariana´s than the Japanese even had and flak accounted for around 40 in total. 40 would be around 10% of what was launched against the Allied but 40 sure is a high percentage of what REACHED the Allied ships (after being taken on by the Hellcats) and this is what is the difference to the game. What reaches the ships usually doesn´t have to fear the flak.

lol, no need to tell you anything after this comment! Show me one instance that shows two sides coming up with the same claims. Side a: we shot down 50 aircraft, side b: we lost 50 aircraft. Have you lost any seriousness?

Ahh, forget what I said in any thread/post to you, senseless anyway. You obviously think that losses to flak in WWII were only 5% of total losses as this is what usually comes up in the game. In games that have gotten further than laughable May 42 as you tend to quote your game that has gone oh so very far. Boy, don´t get me started, I rather keep my mouth just closed.[8|]

For the record: flak is realistic and it´s working very well. geeekk

[FatR]

So, you do not, in fact, know, what the losses from flak in such situation should be historically. You don't even want to know and explicitly dismiss all the serious research on the air aspect of the Pacific War ever. That's all anyone needs to know about the credibility of your position.

[castor troy]

just for my friend, you want to read about the losses of the USN, I can´t offer you a version in Japanese, wonder if you would be able to read it. You will be perhaps amazed that the US lost around 4 times more marine dive and torpedo bombers to FLAK than they lost to enemy fighters.

http://www.history.navy.mil/download/nasc.pdf

[Sardaukar]

If we generalize a lot, we could take guidance of historical capabilities from f.ex.:

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

Although the burden of ship defense against enemy air attacks fell largely upon our own carrier and land-based aircraft, approximately 7,600-7,800 enemy planes came within shipboard AA. range during the 45 months of the war.

Of these, an estimated 2,773, or 36 percent, were shot down by naval and merchant ships. In addition to these, the enemy expended 314 planes and pilots in suicide crashes on ships.

This is average for whole war and percentage was raising throughout the war.

Suicide attempts Hits on ships Damaging near misses Nondamaging misses AA successes Ships sunk
October 42 17 (40%) 6 (14%) 19 (46%) 25 (60%) 3
November 76 28 (37%) 12 (16%) 36 (47%) 48 (63%) 2
December 111 34 (31%) 17 (15%) 60 (54%) 77 (69%) 11
January 97 41 (42%) 22 (23%) 34 (35%) 56 (58%) 3
February 17 8 (47%) 2 (12%) 7 (41%) 9 (53%) 1
March 35 11 (31%) 7 (20%) 17 (49%) 24 (69%) 1
April 354 87 (25%) 62 (16%) 215 (60%) 267 (75%) 13
May 214 72 (34%) 31 (14%) 111 (52%) 142 (66%) 8
June 40 12 (30%) 7 (17%) 21 (53%) 28 (70%) 3
July 4 2 (50%) 2 (50%) 0 0 2 (50%) 1
August 9 2 (22%) 2 (22%) 5 (.56%) 7 (78%) 0
Total 999 314 (31%) 160 (16%) 525 (53%) 685 (68%) 46

From October 44 to August 45, AAA shot down or damaged 53-78% of kamikaze attackers that had got past fighters. I think we are quite far from that sort of performance in AE.

[Sardaukar]

And from same source:

Non-Suicide Attacks
Although the number of non-suicide planes which attacked ships in the Okinawa campaign rose to unprecedented magnitude, they accomplished very little damage to our ships. The 1,234 such planes fired at by AA. sank no ships, damaged 24 of them. Two hundred sixty-two, or 21 percent of the planes were destroyed by AA. fire as compared with 15 percent of non-suicide planes destroyed in the Philippines. Table II details the results of non-suicide attacks at Okinawa. The failure of this type of attack is even more striking than the decrease in the effectiveness of suicide attacks.


This is more like it is in AE right now. Problem is that while only 21% of non-suicide attack planes were shot down, only 1.4% of those attacks resulted hit on ships. This is lot higher in AE.

Related to this:

The "kills" listed in the foregoing table occurred within sight of the ships being attacked. The 5,500 planes not shot down immediately were so harassed by antiaircraft gunfire that comparatively few were able to carry out their missions successfully. Damage to ships caused by enemy planes is outlined later in this chapter.

[castor troy]

AA was lethal (Allied), it just isn´t as popular as reading reports about a couple of fighter pilots that became aces. Just read the reports of Allied bomber pilots reporting severe flak fire from Japanese ships in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, or in the attacks on Rabaul. And this is just nothing compared to the "super task forces" that are created by Allied PBEM players in the game in late 43 or even later. I dare to say that Japanese flak fire in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea is just laughable compared to a late war USN CV TF.

[FatR]

Sardaukar, your second quote is pretty interesting. However, there is a world of difference between RL Okinawa and the battle in which witpqs got his head handed to him.

First of all, most attacks in the Okinawa campaign were performed by small groups of aircraft and often by single aircraft. Small, fragmented strikes are naturally easier to repel by AAA (both in terms of planes shot down and prevention of damage to one's own ships) than huge and coordinated ones, which prevent concentration of fire on a few targets at a time.

Note, that the battle in question prominently features the effect of mass. Take day 1. In the initial morning raid 278 planes broke through to American ships and scored 30 hits. In the initial afternoon raid 291 planes reached ships and scored 44 hits. The secondary morning raids achieved 1 hit from 19 planes and the secondary afternon raid 1 hit from 36 planes, both on cripples. Remnant raids hit nothing. Also, while this might be a fluke, as far as I can see disproportionally many losses to AA fire happened during the first passes of each raid.
Also note, that the overall hit rate of 76 bombs and torpedoes from almost 650 planes (about 11,7%) is not at all awesome, even though these planes were flown by crack crews. The main reason why Japanese won is almost 650 attack planes breaking through to the ships (and this happened primarily due to strategic, operational and tactical mismanagement on the Allied part, plus, it must be admitted, some amount of bad luck). I'm frankly disturbed by the perspective of developers possibly introducing changes in the game model on the basis of this battle. The game should not be changed to compensate for such things.

Second, pilots quality. Someone said here it doesn't matter against AA, but this is all sorts of wrong. CnG had airgroups of quality never achieved by Japanese in the real war - a core of pre-war aces that had plenty of time and opportunity to study reports from the frontlines and adapt late-war anti-AA methods, such as making dives in groups of three and nine, instead of one by one - while still capable of attacking with both accuracy and determination. Still led by experienced commanders, and having the above-mentioned benefit of a massive strike, they by all rights should be more efficient in evading and suppressing (by quickly scoring disabling hits) enemy TFs' flak.

Third, planes quality. Alot of planes expended at Okinawa were obsolete models, compared to what CnG fielded.

[Puhis]

My theory that belongs to me is as follows.

This game can't handle well this kind of massive airstrikes. On obvious reason is AA ammo usage, but there are other things too, for example most of the battles seem to be very bloody, and massive battles are massively bloody, and damages reduce AA effectiveness of ships.

[FatR]

Yes, this might well be the case. If what happened can be attributed to any deficiency in the game, then this deficiency is the relative ease of creating uber strike waves. Which makes carrier battles both bloody and swingy, as far as I can tell from AARs. If one side lucks out and launches a fully cohesive strike in good weather, even a stronger enemy stands a good chance of taking huge losses.

And maybe Japanese industry being too robust, although I didn't follow CnG AAR from the beginning and don't know if SRA was taken intact (which might somewhat justify increased production) or suffered significant damage (in which case Japanese production IS too robust, or maybe has too big allowance for player mistakes).

[witpqs]

FatR, I did not say pilot quality doesn't matter. I said there are limits to what pilot quality can do versus the AA of the target (and meaning ships close to the target). The levels of pilot quality you are describing are already well past the point of no additional returns. There are no aerial ninja tricks to avoid supersonic projectiles in this sort of AA.

[CapAndGown]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

FatR, I did not say pilot quality doesn't matter. I said there are limits to what pilot quality can do versus the AA of the target (and meaning ships close to the target). The levels of pilot quality you are describing are already well past the point of no additional returns. There are no aerial ninja tricks to avoid supersonic projectiles in this sort of AA.

Ahh, but that's where you are wrong: my pilots are ninjas of the sky![:'(]

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: cap_and_gown

my pilots are ninjas of the sky![:'(]

[:D]

(I wish I had time to find a good .jpg for that! [:D])