Carrier Aircraft Repairs

[Peleliu]

Playing as Japan...fairly new and haven't seen this issue addressed before:

I have been monitoring fatigue levels on my carrier aircraft for the last 3 turns. It does not matter if my groups are stood down or set to some percentage of rest, fatigue never seems to drop on the airframes. The TFs are at sea, weather is fine, no combat...but no maintenance. Glens on my subs and AV floatplanes seem to repair just fine at sea. Any ideas what I am doing wrong?

[Scott_USN]

Pretty sure they need to be taken out of service for repair, once they reach a certain fatigue level (don't know how it is decided) they are taken out of service to repair. Fatigue will actually go up if they are on CAP etc. You can see when they are taken out in the operations log.

[Scott_USN]

PBY-4 Catalina from VP-101 at Port Moresby grounded due to maintenance
P-39D Airacobra from 31st PG/40th PS at Vancouver grounded due to maintenance

PBY had 71 fatigue and will be out for 7 days

[Peleliu]

Thank you for the reply. I need to clarify the issue. My land based aircraft and float plane units on BBs, CAs, CSs, etc. will reduce airframe fatigue when I stand them down or they can't fly due to weather. The fatigue even drops if they are running missions, but have some percentage resting. Fatigue is also reduced when they are taken out of service for maintenance or repairs. My carrier aircraft, however, never seem to reduce airframe fatigue when resting or stood down (except those occasions when taken out of service for maintenance). All of the air groups are carrier trained and capable and the carriers are undamaged. The only way I can recover airframe fatigue is to fly the airgroups to a land base and park them there until fatigue drops...then of course they get more fatigue flying back to the carrier.

On a related note, isn't 30 days maintenance for a Mavis a little excessive? I discovered one of mine flying from Tokyo had 20ish fatigue and was out for a month. I would figure with all of the excess air support and base level in Tokyo of all places they could fix a plane faster than they could build one...

[Trugrit]

Carrier planes suffer a lot more stress than ground based air or float planes.
A lot of this is from short full speed take offs and the shock of deck landings.

I would say that 30 days is excessive but not unusual for the Japanese during the war.
They had problems getting spare parts.

The Japanese were not very good at maintenance during the war.

I’ll quote from the book Fire in the Sky The Air War in the South Pacific by Eric M. Bergerud, page 23:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/149 ... In_The_Sky

“...However whenever U.S. troops occupied Japanese air bases, they invariably found aircraft scattered about,
often with no obvious serious battle damage. A dramatic example of this is described by Fred Hitchcock,
a ground crewman in the U.S. Fifth Air Force."

"In 1945 we flew into Clark Field in the Philippines. One of our work details was to help clear the hundreds
of Jap planes that were scattered all over the base. They told us there were 1,100 planes and I believe it;
the number was staggering…. I’d say most of them had something like a spark plug missing, or a wheel off.
But the Japanese didn’t seem to have a coordinated salvage effort. I was on the detail that tried to reorganize
the mess. One plane might be lacking a carburetor when another one, a hundred yards away, had a carburetor.
But they never had the coordinated effort to pool the parts and get the maximum number of planes up.
When we raided the place their planes were so dispersed they couldn’t get their flights in the air fast
enough to do serious damage. Some were a mile or so from the runway. It was an unbelievable sight.”

I highly recommend his book, about 700 pages of in depth analysis of the air war and the planes and men.
A very good read with lots of first hand veteran accounts.

Is this not a great game?

[Scott_USN]

ORIGINAL: Peleliu

Thank you for the reply. I need to clarify the issue. My land based aircraft and float plane units on BBs, CAs, CSs, etc. will reduce airframe fatigue when I stand them down or they can't fly due to weather. The fatigue even drops if they are running missions, but have some percentage resting. Fatigue is also reduced when they are taken out of service for maintenance or repairs. My carrier aircraft, however, never seem to reduce airframe fatigue when resting or stood down (except those occasions when taken out of service for maintenance). All of the air groups are carrier trained and capable and the carriers are undamaged. The only way I can recover airframe fatigue is to fly the airgroups to a land base and park them there until fatigue drops...then of course they get more fatigue flying back to the carrier.

On a related note, isn't 30 days maintenance for a Mavis a little excessive? I discovered one of mine flying from Tokyo had 20ish fatigue and was out for a month. I would figure with all of the excess air support and base level in Tokyo of all places they could fix a plane faster than they could build one...

Ah I see what you are saying, you are right about standing them down according to the manual.

7.4.2.7.1 MAINTENANCE
In addition to a repair state, there is also a ‘maintenance’ state. This is usually representative
of non-combat causes (like overhaul, accident, etc) for a plane being stood down. As well as
combat damage, planes gain fatigue from use, strain on the airframe, lack of maintenance, etc.
When enough fatigue points have been gained, the plane will be automatically stood down for
maintenance. A message will be displayed on the screen and in Ops Report when this occurs.
Fatigue can be minimized by periodically standing down the group, as this will cause any
planes that require repair to be worked on. Repairing also removes some fatigue points as the
mechanics will do some needed maintenance at that time. But expect the group to eventually
lose planes to maintenance.

Sounds like they do repair them when not operational. Or should.

[Scott_USN]

ORIGINAL: Trugrit


Carrier planes suffer a lot more stress than ground based air or float planes.
A lot of this is from short full speed take offs and the shock of deck landings.

I would say that 30 days is excessive but not unusual for the Japanese during the war.
They had problems getting spare parts.

The Japanese were not very good at maintenance during the war.

I’ll quote from the book Fire in the Sky The Air War in the South Pacific by Eric M. Bergerud, page 23:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/149 ... In_The_Sky

“...However whenever U.S. troops occupied Japanese air bases, they invariably found aircraft scattered about,
often with no obvious serious battle damage. A dramatic example of this is described by Fred Hitchcock,
a ground crewman in the U.S. Fifth Air Force."

"In 1945 we flew into Clark Field in the Philippines. One of our work details was to help clear the hundreds
of Jap planes that were scattered all over the base. They told us there were 1,100 planes and I believe it;
the number was staggering…. I’d say most of them had something like a spark plug missing, or a wheel off.
But the Japanese didn’t seem to have a coordinated salvage effort. I was on the detail that tried to reorganize
the mess. One plane might be lacking a carburetor when another one, a hundred yards away, had a carburetor.
But they never had the coordinated effort to pool the parts and get the maximum number of planes up.
When we raided the place their planes were so dispersed they couldn’t get their flights in the air fast
enough to do serious damage. Some were a mile or so from the runway. It was an unbelievable sight.”

I highly recommend his book, about 700 pages of in depth analysis of the air war and the planes and men.
A very good read with lots of first hand veteran accounts.

Is this not a great game?

That is interesting that they would not salvage parts. I wonder if it was a lack of mechanics or just very poor leadership.

Of course I have read several times in books by vets that "recon salvaging" as in stealing a part from a neighboring units truck or jeep etc was not unheard of. In the book Edson's Raiders: The 1st Marine Raider Battalion in World War II, they stole a bunch of stuff from the Army troops landing. Totally off subject but I think Americans and Australians were just used to putting old cars together and such and maybe scavenging parts is just natural.

[RangerJoe]

If you rebase the air unit to another base on the same rail line, for some reason the maintenance delay is usually reduced.

[rustysi]

The only way I can recover airframe fatigue is to fly the airgroups to a land base and park them there until fatigue drops

Yup, CV aircraft fatigue is something of a tough nut in the game, IRL too. Best way to deal with if that I've found is to periodically base them ashore.

[Ian R]

Upgrading also helps.

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

If you rebase the air unit to another base on the same rail line, for some reason the maintenance delay is usually reduced.

Likely by the transit time.
Getting an image in my head of a flat bed rail car swarming with aircraft mechanics.
Poor bastards don't even get to sleep on the train ride.

[GetAssista]

Airframe fatigue was certainly not an issue in my games against Allied AI. I ran CV groups constantly for the first half of 42 without ever disbanding them in ports, only briefly stopping for taking in replacements and refueling/rearming.

When fatigue mounts for the particular airframe, it is taken off for maintanance and fatigue is zeroed. It happens when fatigue reaches somewhere around high double digits. Before the maintenance happens, fatigue can only increase because no maintenance work is done for the airframes that are in a ready/damaged roster. If you want to force maintenance (and you have PDU ON and sufficient pools) you can do a double upgrade while in port: upgrade the group to some other model, then upgrade back the same turn. But then, I never had a need for that in the AI game, fatigue stayed in check for my CV airgroups. Reserve airframes might help with that - it seems that switch to maintenance occures more readily when reserve airframes are present.

[RangerJoe]

You may also be able to get work done on the air frames if the units REST.

[rustysi]

Reserve airframes might help with that - it seems that switch to maintenance occures more readily when reserve airframes are present.

This may lead to trouble on CV's. As the A/C are swapped into maintenance mode, 'spares' are swapped into the group. Now all are counted for CV capacity, too many and you have a CV that won't conduct ops.