Tristanjohn wrote:As for
Vincennes: if she loosed her 8" rifles at the attack (and mind you I don't doubt she did--I imagine there were Marine officers firing their side weapons at the Japanese
) it would likely have been when the planes maneuvered on their NE-SW swing from around the tip of Florida into Nggela Channel. I don't know but that must be seven or eight miles anyway. You might do a search on
Vincennes and see if that ship's history gives a detailed account of this particular action.
I was of the understanding that you were the one who had already referenced the "ship logs, sailor diaries, analysis of track charts and so on".
The Vincennes only started firing her 8" batteries as the first of the low flying G4Ms came into full view about 2-3 miles away. She was screening the main body of transports as stated. The main body of transports (and the Vincennes) were well to the SW of the eastern tip of Florida. Aircraft flying at 20-50 ft would not have been trackable at 7-8 miles. At the range she did engage, she had a very clear line of fire on the bombers as they approached/passed by.
The point I'm driving at overall is that a ship's AA armament is mainly placed to either side so unless that ship's beam is pointed directly at an attack not all of the guns could possibly be brought to bear. Turner in fact endeavored to do this, but how many ships not part of his transport flock managed to do so, and to what degree of coordination, is also unknown to me. I think it's safe to say that a percentage of the AA present for this battle was not able to engage at one time or another due to a host of reasons.
After the Bettys began their final run into the convoy at levels from 25-50 feet off the water there is no possibility that more than a fraction of the AA technically available to the convoy and its escort could have been a factor. You apparently do see and accept this conclusion. Yes?
I don't see it as a major determining factor as to the result.
As I understand it,
The G4Ms were flying at 20-50 feet at the time they crossed the Florida Islands. The main body of the transports were some distance away, manuevering in what was to become known as Iron Bottom Sound. Almost the whole time from when the Japanese first appeared at wavetop height to when they left for home, they were under heavy AA fire. First by the ships around Tulagi, then by the warships screening the transports on their attacked quarter, followed by the transports themselves and then finally by the ships of the western screen (as the surviving bombers exited).
The bombers altitude gave them scant protection from the AA fire of ships along the initial flight path, the final approach and then the exit. These were where the majority of bombers were downed (or effectively downed from damage), rather than in the relatively crowded area of the transport main body (where I agree that tracking and firing were difficult). Many of those bombers that did reach the transports before crashing had already been doomed by earlier fire from the escorts.
I'd suggest you go read those logs, diaries, etc. That way you may understand just how effective the ships with relatively clear fields of fire were on low flying bombers passing close by at near wavetop height. I would expect you would then be less concerned with how the AA from the main body of transports was affected.
What we don't know (perhaps you do if you've hung around the boards long enough and Mike or somebody got into it) is how AA is modelled exactly inside UV. Do the AA numbers we can see for individual ships represent some discounted total averaged defensive fire potentiality? Beats me. For a game of this scale anything's possible, though it's a better bet if AA is discounted to a "working average" this would reflect more an attack on a convoy "at sea" with planes all around taking this "collective fire."
My guess is that whatever these numbers want to say, for the purposes of our test it's odds on that the USN will have more effective flak than it actually enjoyed historically. How that might affect the test result is also anyone's guess.
Perhaps if you'd just conduct the test, you'd be one step closer to seeing exactly what those test results for the UV model would be in these circumstances.
Remember, your claim is that UV gives unreasonable results when the events of 8th August '42 are run through its model. You are yet to even finalise a test which show these results. How the internal workings of UV would produce these results is currently irrelevent.
The historical event indicates sufficient ships with good fields of fire were able to effectively engage and destroy the majority of the Japanese bombers. That should at least equate to whatever general assumptions back the internal UV model in its dealing of a Japanese torpedo attack on a well defended TF. Set up the situation and let the model do the rest.
To represent the TF from 8th August, I think you could safely include all involved cruisers (which excludes the San Juan) and take your pick of the destroyers from scenarios starting invasion/bombardment/surface combat TFs. There should be no reason worry about putting in all 15 transports from the X-Ray group as the historical 20-30 G4Ms will only result in a max of about 10 ships being targeted in UV and the number of transports present does not influence torpedo accuracy against an individual ship.
Based on that, 6 cruisers + 9 destroyers + 10 transports should give a TF that well represents the event for UV.
As suggested in a previous post, one thing I would add to your test for representing the historical situation is the sailing of the Allied transports in an empty condition. That way they will be considered by the model to be at sea (not stopped and unloading) if attacked at Lunga.
Good Luck.
