NON-PH Openings

[rustysi]

I remember seeing messages like 'Sub below depth charge pattern'

Seen when the Japanese player is using vessels with the type 95 depth charge as these have a rather limited depth capability.

[rustysi]

Almost all of mine are hauling stuff around almost all of the time.

I'm in a scen1 AI game and this is my experience too. Don't have tons of boats sitting around doing nothing.

[Erkki]

ORIGINAL: rustysi

Almost all of mine are hauling stuff around almost all of the time.

I'm in a scen1 AI game and this is my experience too. Don't have tons of boats sitting around doing nothing.

Same thing here. Theres never enough good xAKs....

I think part of the "problem" of Allied subs achieving slightly less than historically also includes both sides being more organized than in real war, and that theres less reasons to not load and unload at safe locations instead of right next to where the cargo is needed(such as no need to drop resources directly at Kobe, Nagoya or Tokyo as they can be just unloaded somewhere on Kuyshu because the railway links have such a high capacity, even across the straits between Kuyshu and Honshu). As a result, the traffic occurs geographically in a smaller area and is easier to protect.

[Feltan]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

ORIGINAL: wdolson

And as Feltan pointed out, the tonnage totals in the real war include a lot of small boats/ships that are not included in the game OOB.

And as I pointed out, the JANAC data I linked to disposes of this theory. It's incorrect.

On this point Bullwinkle is quite correct. I had not read through the JANAC report in over 10 years. While patrol reports will include the smaller vessels, the JANAC report generally does not.

Regards,
Feltan

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Feltan

ORIGINAL: witpqs

I partly agree. It's likely that Japan could have done better IRL, how much better is a valid question. The limitation of the game engine is that if a Japanese player pursues a strategy of great commitment to air ASW, once they have a large force of pilots with (to the best of my knowledge) >70 ASW skill, they start hitting and sinking subs at wholly unrealistic rates. It becomes as though they have guided weapons from several decades later. In a WITP (not AE, but I think the air ASW model did not change) PBM playing as Allies, in October '43 my opponent's air ASW electron guys got ramped up to the point where I had to pull all subs out of IJ waters. Forget about patrolling anywhere under IJ air cover, even passing by in transit several hexes away from an IJ base resulted in an almost guaranteed kill of the sub at that point. Kudos to my opponent for figuring out that strategy and implementing it well.

Now, while we would all love to see every limitation of the game engine improved and this one would be no exception, I am not meaning to imply that it is something that can be improved within the practical limits of support. I simply realize that it is a limitation, and in playing the game I have to account for it (whatever side I am playing).

How does this relate to the IRL comparison made above? It's the other part of "partly agree". I do agree that Japan could likely have done better, but I disagree that AE will give a valid idea of just how much better they could have done. I think in AE the Empire can do much better on ASW that it could have IRL.

All IMO and my own observations, of course.

witpqs,

Indeed, the question is how much better Japan could have done.

I am curious, the situation you describe -- where submarines fall prey to skilled ASW aircraft -- sounds similar to the problem faced by U-boats in the Atlantic. The U-boats had to revert to the mid-Atlantic gap once the UK had sufficient airborne ASW resources deployed in both the home islands and in Canada. Was the situation you faced worse than that faced by the Germans?

The October '43 date is interesting too. The largest killer of U-boats in '44 and '45 was radar equipped aircraft. However, the 10cm radar didn't get widely deployed until the very end of '43 and early '44. The earlier 1.7m radar was much less effective against U-boats. We can't expect Japan to have such technological advances as Bullwinkle pointed out earlier; however, by October '43 the technology employed by the Allies in the Atlantic was not so advanced as to be out-of-reach of the Japanese -- convoys, visual observation by aircraft, sonar and depth charges still ruled in Oct'43 in the Atlantic.

So, if we consider the Atlantic the "worst case" for submarine warfare and best for ASW -- is it unreasonable to postulate that the Japanese could have (emphasis on could) made the home waters around Japan as unfriendly to Allied submarines as the Brits made their home waters unfriendly to U-boats? Were the US submarines somehow immune to such tactics? IRL, the US submarine campaign in the Pacific didn't really ramp up until '43 with Lockwood sacking numerous cautious skippers, and the Japanese ASW effort lagged even further behind -- but it didn't need to as your opponent apparently grasped.

I would not expect the wholesale slaughter of US submarines a likely or even possible outcome similar to the fate of the U-boat campaign; Japan simply didn't have the technology or industrial capacity. The effectiveness of Allied ASW at the end of '43 seems to be the terminal possibility for potential Japanese ASW effectiveness -- and the Allies in late '43 were not too shabby.

Regards,
Feltan

Sorry - I missed this post in the rush of RL over the past couple of days.

"Was the situation you faced worse than that faced by the Germans?"

Oh, yes. Far worse. Basically guaranteed kills simply by proximity!

As far as what Japan could have done with a better strategy, they did not have the technology that the Allies had in the Atlantic vs Germany. There were other aspects of the situation different IRL too, of course, but in a game exploring what-if you could argue about which what-ifs to allow or not. They clearly could have done better with a different strategy, although it is a what-if in terms of what strategy they could have achieved given their internal politics and other factors.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: witpqs


As far as what Japan could have done with a better strategy, they did not have the technology that the Allies had in the Atlantic vs Germany. There were other aspects of the situation different IRL too, of course, but in a game exploring what-if you could argue about which what-ifs to allow or not. They clearly could have done better with a different strategy, although it is a what-if in terms of what strategy they could have achieved given their internal politics and other factors.

Here is where I wish Symon were still around.

The Pacific's geometry is wholly different than the Atlantic's ASW-wise. In the Atlantic there was a mid-ocean gap that could not be covered from the Azores, et al in the critical phase of the BOTA; jeep carriers were developed for this in part. But as I said the Atlantic was pretty much a straight-line, point-to-point convoy problem. The Allies used mass and mass escorts to ram the convoys through. The Germans used mass and wolfpacks and shore direction to try to maximize their assets against this relatively simple ( versus the PTO) model.

The Japanese had a radically different problem. Distances vast compared to the Atlantic. Not point-to-point on the production side, but highly atomized. Not even hub & spoke to the garrisons. No one with a straight face would claim they had the capacity at any level to field a large force of CVEs to take air cover along on the trip to the Marshalls or Marianas. Whatever ASW they were going to have had to go along in the form of surface ships.

But they didn't have those either in the quantity, and most importantly form, they needed. What did they need? Not converted fishing boats or light 10-12 knot merchants (we see in game too.) Why? As I said before, the night end-around attack. A USN fleet boat at flank in a low sea state could do 20-knots on the surface for days. With surface search radar from mid-1942 onward. The geometry is simple. Detect, move to 10-ish NM, track, and run forward along the track to attack position. Wait there off the track for the convoy to amble along. Hours to chart the zig system and prepare. At the sub's choice of time and place attack on the surface, running in at flank to 1500 yards or so--3/4 mile in pitch darkness--to shoot, and then evade on the surface, possibly diving in mid-evasion if there were multiple escorts in cooperative positions. Many of the damage reports I linked to came during this post-attack evasion, submerged. Some of that we see in the game too, but often the attack was on the converted merchant acting as a PB and not the fat xAKs it was escorting.

To defend the night end-around an escort force needs several things. 1) Speed in excess of 20 knots. 2) Working radar operated by trained men 3) A cooperative doctrine among escorts present to guard both sides of the track as well as a system to assign "chasers" and "herders" after it is clear a sub is present and hunting. Japan never developed any of these.

A 20-plus-kt. escort in the era was pretty hard. Reciprocating engines could get to 20-kts--subs had diesels--but they were not off-the-shelf chuggers. The USN had tremendous problems getting its sub diesels "there", and one class of wartime sub never did get its engines really working. Japan did not have the industry to rapidly crank out those engines with so many other forces in their defense establishment vying for the resources. The only alternative to diesels would be turbines, which is an order of magnitude more difficult, expensive, and training-intense in a small ASW corvette or patrol frigate.

Radar? In those quantities and designed to work in a vessel that small, with a high AC power need, a highly-placed mast that added stability concerns, and again, trained men to operate and repair at sea was beyond Japan's capacity. If they had only needed to escort to 5-6 ports they could have made it work by using real DDs. But in 1942-44 they needed to go to hundreds of locations on the outbound side. I have in the past posted links to post-war Allied technical analysis of IJN electronics, primarily sonars. They were primitive by comparison to ours, and that was in 1945. To design, build, and maintain with training and spare parts several hundred new radars would have been infeasible.

Training? Seemingly the easiest of the three issues I listed, but still very difficult. The Japanese war machine struggled to find enough recruits with basic mechanical knowledge to fix tanks and trucks. There wasn't a big, domestic pool of teens with electronic or even electrical basics. But if they had found the engines, built the hulls, produced the radars they might have been able to get over the training hump. Might.

I know I sound like a broken record on the sub war in the game. But it's not like quibbling over drop tanks. The sub campaign was a tent-pole of the Allied effort. On balance it was more important to winning than anything carriers did, as radical an idea as that is around here. I have always assumed GG and the Originals nerfed it either because they didn't understand it, or more likely because it was so devastating and few players would tackle Japan if it were true. And I don't wish it were true. I just wish it were closer. A lot of players come here saying they "don't know much about the Pacific war." After playing AE they think it was necessary for the USN to send raiding parties of Fletchers deep into the Japanese lines to commerce raid. They think Japan could ever have mounted an air ASW campaign hundreds of miles out to sea, and damage scores of fleet submarines per year, sending them home. They don't know there were a total of 110 non-fatal attacks on subs in the entire war. They think subs were mainly useful for detecting passing carriers, off to win the war.

I know things won't change in the EXE. I'm just sayin'. I saw some of those WWII sub men when I was a boy. They'd come over to our navy housing apartment to see my dad when we lived at Pearl Harbor in 1960-61 and he was chief sonarman in USS Bluegill. (Which sank an IJN light cruiser from tubes I actually saw and touched.) This is a bit more real to me than to most players I guess. Anyway, Moose out.

[Canoerebel]

I've been gone from AE for nearly two years now, and still miss it. But I still roam the forums, reading threads like this one, enjoying the collective wisdom of the Forum. Good stuff.

After my two year retirement/hiatus/sabbatical (whatever it is), I have this perspective on AE. I don't think the ground game is anything like the actual ground war (Japanese armies marching across the Owen Stanleys; Allied tanks moving through the Burma jungles; Japan running amock in China). I don't think the war at sea is anything like the actual war at sea (Death Stars; neutered Allied sub campaign; John Cochran taking the KB for pleasure cruises around Oz); I don't think the air war is anything like the actual air war (attrition favoring Japan; Netties and torps an uber weapon closing off entires seas; both sides moving groups half way around the world in two days and then striking en masse).

Some of the things I did gain: (1) a much better feel for the immense complexity of logistics and planning (holy cow!); (2) a better idea of the need for patience and caution (why admirals sweat bullets when doing things like sending Hornet adventuring up north in April '42); (3) super-ramped-up awareness of geography; (4) a spectacular game that while not really like the actual war nevertheless resembles the actual war and allows players to improvise magestically; and (5) stunningly competitive and fun challenge.

[witpqs]

Well put, both of you guys!

CR - when do you git yer self back on the AAR bicycle? [:)]

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

I've been gone from AE for nearly two years now, and still miss it. But I still roam the forums, reading threads like this one, enjoying the collective wisdom of the Forum. Good stuff.

After my two year retirement/hiatus/sabbatical (whatever it is), I have this perspective on AE. I don't think the ground game is anything like the actual ground war (Japanese armies marching across the Owen Stanleys; Allied tanks moving through the Burma jungles; Japan running amock in China). I don't think the war at sea is anything like the actual war at sea (Death Stars; neutered Allied sub campaign; John Cochran taking the KB for pleasure cruises around Oz); I don't think the air war is anything like the actual air war (attrition favoring Japan; Netties and torps an uber weapon closing off entires seas; both sides moving groups half way around the world in two days and then striking en masse).

Some of the things I did gain: (1) a much better feel for the immense complexity of logistics and planning (holy cow!); (2) a better idea of the need for patience and caution (why admirals sweat bullets when doing things like sending Hornet adventuring up north in April '42); (3) super-ramped-up awareness of geography; (4) a spectacular game that while not really like the actual war nevertheless resembles the actual war and allows players to improvise magestically; and (5) stunningly competitive and fun challenge.

Excellent points. Especially the geography.

BTW, Word-Boy--a hiatus is wholly unlike a retirement. [8D] Dr. Freud would make note of this. [:'(]

[Canoerebel]

I don't have any near-term plans to return to AE, but there is one possibility in the longterm I'm chewing over, though I haven't approached the possible opponent to see if he'd even be interested; he might not be and, even if he is, I don't think circumstances would allow it for many months or longer. (Well, there is one other possibility - if Nemo shows up and issues an invitation, I think I'd bite; but I'm not expecting that to happen.)

Speaking of long lost folks like Nemo, what's become of Greyjoy of late?

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

I don't have any near-term plans to return to AE, but there is one possibility in the longterm I'm chewing over, though I haven't approached the possible opponent to see if he'd even be interested; he might not be and, even if he is, I don't think circumstances would allow it for many months or longer. (Well, there is one other possibility - if Nemo shows up and issues an invitation, I think I'd bite; but I'm not expecting that to happen.)

Speaking of long lost folks like Nemo, what's become of Greyjoy of late?

His dad had a stroke and has been in a coma. He hasn't updated in a while.

[Barb]

Few things a Japanese player can do to improve "allied silent service" experience:
1) Do not use medium bombers on the ASW, only Float and Patrol planes (at least unless they have MAD)
2) Do not sail convoys larger than 5-10 ships - actually using several 5 ship convoys on CS trip would simulate heavy traffic on shipping lanes
3) Use only 2-3 escorts on 5-10 ship convoys
4) Sail some ships independently
5) In troop convoys use minimum lift for a division size unit - 3-6 big fast transports can carry a division... yet when one is sunk ...

- this way the patrolling submarines would get many more contacts => many more attacks => many more kills => less air interference

This would certainly get the allied submarine force a new importance, yet it would ruin Japanese player (as in reality). And I doubt anyone likes to have his ships being sunk.