PT Boat Usefulness

[RhinoDad]

Does anyone have much use for allied PT Boats?

I do not have any luck with PT boats. This is early war ’41 to April ’42 it does not matter if they are at a port with aux ships or not. Nor does it matter if they are at a nearby port. Group of say 6 or more PT when encountering any number or type of Japanese ships, could be as small as 2 freighters or other small ships carrying troops or supplies the results are the same. It does not matter on enemy fleet size, the results are the same; PT boats run away. If Japanese have a PG or DD then occasionally one PT might be destroyed while fleeing.

Sequence is:
PT boat sights Japanese ships, combat is joined, PT boats get shot at for one round, then PT boats withdrawal from combat, often with no losses. However, they never launch torpedoes or engage with mg or 20mm cannon.

This is same result if landing is encountered and Japanese ships are surprised and attempting to get underway. Whatever range the battle starts at, the PT boats run with distance increasing until they can withdrawal. Given their purpose was to engage DD, TK, TP, gun boats, and supply vessels I would think when encountering them they might do something besides run. At least they would rapidly close at over 1,400 yrds/min.

I know that in reality it was considered a death sentence to serve on one, early on they often suffered from dud torpedoes and torpedo launch problems, as such the crews tended to still the torpedo fuel for trade and to numb themselves to the danger faced. As such they often only had one or two torpedoes ready for launch as the other 2 or 3 had no fuel. However, they generally did not run from combat and rather would attempt to close decisive torpedo range 500 to 1000 yrds while raking the targets decks, bridge with mg and cannon fire to suppress enemy fire, launch their torpedoes and then run. That is a close time of about 7 minutes. If the PT were carrying depth charges then they would try use those as well to attack enemy ships. Their small size and maneuverability often allowed them to successfully close. Destroyers would also be unable to bring main armament to bear at close range due to guns inability to depress enough.

In reality although somewhat inebriated the crews were known for their bravery and aggressiveness and met with some success. They did not see enemy ships, even destroyers which completely outclassed them, and run without even trying to get in close for a torpedo shot. That is how they had the success in interdicting enemy shipping. Many a surprised PT was rammed and sunk by fast escorts as they tried to start the un-running engines and get into a position for a torpedo run.

The torpedo malfunctions and unfueled torpedoes could easily be handled through game mechanics but why do they just run?

Is anyone else having success with them other than both disengaging and the occasional delay of the landing by a few days. Or the suspension of unloading of Japanese ships, only to resume again later in the day.

[Q-Ball]

Don't expect amazing results, but they serve several purposes.

1. To get best results, make sure TF has aggressive commander. I've had results that way vs. Transport TFs, but rarely against warships. They won't run if you do that.
2. The main purpose is to disrupt enemy movement; for example, if ships are bombarding a hex, they have to stop to engage the PT boats first. The risk for the IJN player is PTs might get a lucky hit, and might use enough OPS points to cause bombarding TF to linger too close in daylight, and be subject to air attack
3. They are disposable, so losses really don't matter much....this is one of the primary benefits
4. They can appear instantly in a base that threatened (provided supply is available)

Just don't have high expectations vs. DDs. Sometimes you get lucky though. Someone on here reported losing YAMATO to a PT via magazine explosion.

[GetAssista]

5. Moonless nights are your friend

[Sardaukar]

Their main use is to stop Bombardment TFs, often causing enemy to still be in range of land based air in the morning.

[RangerJoe]

Not just moonless nights, but overcast to stormy as well.

In one very famous game, the Yamato was sunk by ONE PT Boat Torpedo which set off a magazine. It must have been a pretty raunchy magazine with hot babes to do that. [X(]

In my current game, I have sunk a BB off Vigan as well as xAKs besides just damaging others. Don't ignore the .50 hits either as they can start fires that get out of control and sink the ship, which has also happened in my current game.

They also use up OPs points of the enemy TF which might leave them vulnerable to daylight bombing.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

Not just moonless nights, but overcast to stormy as well.

In one very famous game, the Yamato was sunk by ONE PT Boat Torpedo which set off a magazine. It must have been a pretty raunchy magazine with hot babes to do that. [X(]

In my current game, I have sunk a BB off Vigan as well as xAKs besides just damaging others. Don't ignore the .50 hits either as they can start fires that get out of control and sink the ship, which has also happened in my current game.

They also use up OPs points of the enemy TF which might leave them vulnerable to daylight bombing.

And they can make the big enemy ships waste a lot of their bombardment ammo.

[Ambassador]

Using several small squadrons at the same place would also help, rather than fewer, bigger TF with 15-20 boats or more. You’re looking at maximizing the incoming TF’s DL, to increase the odds of surprising them.

They’ll also be more effective later, when they get radar sets.

[dcpollay]

I think your "run away" issue is likely having low-aggression commanders. As Q-ball said, swap out the task force commander if needed. And check them periodically; if the squadron suffers a sunken boat, you may lose that commander and he will be replaced by another bad one.

[mind_messing]

ORIGINAL: RhinoDad

Does anyone have much use for allied PT Boats?

I do not have any luck with PT boats. This is early war ’41 to April ’42 it does not matter if they are at a port with aux ships or not. Nor does it matter if they are at a nearby port. Group of say 6 or more PT when encountering any number or type of Japanese ships, could be as small as 2 freighters or other small ships carrying troops or supplies the results are the same. It does not matter on enemy fleet size, the results are the same; PT boats run away. If Japanese have a PG or DD then occasionally one PT might be destroyed while fleeing.

Sequence is:
PT boat sights Japanese ships, combat is joined, PT boats get shot at for one round, then PT boats withdrawal from combat, often with no losses. However, they never launch torpedoes or engage with mg or 20mm cannon.

This is same result if landing is encountered and Japanese ships are surprised and attempting to get underway. Whatever range the battle starts at, the PT boats run with distance increasing until they can withdrawal. Given their purpose was to engage DD, TK, TP, gun boats, and supply vessels I would think when encountering them they might do something besides run. At least they would rapidly close at over 1,400 yrds/min.

I know that in reality it was considered a death sentence to serve on one, early on they often suffered from dud torpedoes and torpedo launch problems, as such the crews tended to still the torpedo fuel for trade and to numb themselves to the danger faced. As such they often only had one or two torpedoes ready for launch as the other 2 or 3 had no fuel. However, they generally did not run from combat and rather would attempt to close decisive torpedo range 500 to 1000 yrds while raking the targets decks, bridge with mg and cannon fire to suppress enemy fire, launch their torpedoes and then run. That is a close time of about 7 minutes. If the PT were carrying depth charges then they would try use those as well to attack enemy ships. Their small size and maneuverability often allowed them to successfully close. Destroyers would also be unable to bring main armament to bear at close range due to guns inability to depress enough.

In reality although somewhat inebriated the crews were known for their bravery and aggressiveness and met with some success. They did not see enemy ships, even destroyers which completely outclassed them, and run without even trying to get in close for a torpedo shot. That is how they had the success in interdicting enemy shipping. Many a surprised PT was rammed and sunk by fast escorts as they tried to start the un-running engines and get into a position for a torpedo run.

The torpedo malfunctions and unfueled torpedoes could easily be handled through game mechanics but why do they just run?

Is anyone else having success with them other than both disengaging and the occasional delay of the landing by a few days. Or the suspension of unloading of Japanese ships, only to resume again later in the day.

Suggest:

1. Check ammo on TF. Even the most aggressive PT boat skipper will be reluctant to engage without any torpedoes or ammo.
2. Check TF Threat Tolerance setting.
3. Check TF commander aggressiveness.


My impression is that you're talking about the US PT boats that start at Luzon on Dec 7th? If so having low/no ammo seems the likely culprit.

[Moltrey]

I will usually run the Brit MTBs out of Hong Kong to Iba in the Philippines. Form a British MTB-only TF and then split the US ones in two TFs. As said, replace any low Aggression Skippers and then try like hell to organize a night action on Vigan and the other invasion targets.
I also try to send some US S-boat class subs with Agg COs in the area too, as they might "muddy the waters" a bit and could even get lucky with their Mk10 torpedoes.
Worth a shot!

[RangerJoe]

ORIGINAL: dcpollay

I think your "run away" issue is likely having low-aggression commanders. As Q-ball said, swap out the task force commander if needed. And check them periodically; if the squadron suffers a sunken boat, you may lose that commander and he will be replaced by another bad one.

Actually, have a TF commander that is not also a PT Boat skipper if you need to. That way you won't lose the commander unless you lose the entire TF.

[RhinoDad]

Thank you for the replies. Will try replacing the commanders as suggested. Will also try using two groups of 3 rather that 6. Sounds like you are getting better results, more along the lines of what would be expected. Hopefully, now they will act less like TV episodes of McHale’s Navy.

FYI – They were fully fueled and armed. Did not matter if day night, cloudy or moonless. That only meant that they had farther to run. Even started out at 1000 and was feeling lucky. Oh, well guess the commanders were more interested in watching phosphorescent wakes than burning Japanese ships.

Some of the engagements were from the PT boats out of Manila, but they were fully armed and sailing out of well supplied base on day 3. Little too early to be low on supply, have damaged bases, or be wondering if dugout would be needing the boats for a lift out. Best results were from British boats moved out of Hong Kong. One or two tended to at least fire MG at freighters while running. One of these actually did fire a torpedo. But at 1000 would figure at least of few would have fired their weapons or launched torpedoes.

Thanks again for the helpful advise.

[RhinoDad]

Also just giving latest official patch a go. So many great changes from vanilla and 1st patch I had been playing on previously. Still trying to figure out how to take advantage of all the changes. It is bigger than moving from Witp to AE. Yes, It has been many years since giving it a go. This gaffer is having a blast having a go of it again.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: RhinoDad

Thank you for the replies. Will try replacing the commanders as suggested. Will also try using two groups of 3 rather that 6. Sounds like you are getting better results, more along the lines of what would be expected. Hopefully, now they will act less like TV episodes of McHale’s Navy.

FYI – They were fully fueled and armed. Did not matter if day night, cloudy or moonless. That only meant that they had farther to run. Even started out at 1000 and was feeling lucky. Oh, well guess the commanders were more interested in watching phosphorescent wakes than burning Japanese ships.

Some of the engagements were from the PT boats out of Manila, but they were fully armed and sailing out of well supplied base on day 3. Little too early to be low on supply, have damaged bases, or be wondering if dugout would be needing the boats for a lift out. Best results were from British boats moved out of Hong Kong. One or two tended to at least fire MG at freighters while running. One of these actually did fire a torpedo. But at 1000 would figure at least of few would have fired their weapons or launched torpedoes.

Thanks again for the helpful advise.

Don't put too much emphasis on the range for torpedo attack. 1000 yards is not so great if you are behind the target ship trying to flee from you. Even broadside to the target, it has the chance to turn away. Ideal position is off the bow of the target with a PT boat on each side of the bow for a hammer and anvil attack.
PTs also did not stay in tight formation during an attack since that would allow concentration of enemy defensive fire. Each boat maneuvered independently while trying to keep the lead boat in sight. So a coordinated launch of torps would not be the norm. I am not sure, but from what I have seen of my PT attacks playing out in the animation, the game has abstracted this kind of attack fairly well - PTs rarely got good shots at targets.

[Leandros]

What I find is a flaw in the game is that quite often destroyers open fire, and destroy, the small, fast-running PTs at 10.000 yards in direct hits. Even fire torpdoes at them.
Otherwise, much good advice here - particularly using the best skippers available. Damaged enemy ships are also liable to be hit by a PT torpedo. I recently had the experience to sink (claimed, anyway) an enemy cruiser that way.

Any escorted cargo or troop transport are very hard to get near.

Fred

[Alfred]

ORIGINAL: RhinoDad

Does anyone have much use for allied PT Boats?

I do not have any luck with PT boats. This is early war ’41 to April ’42 it does not matter if they are at a port with aux ships or not. Nor does it matter if they are at a nearby port. Group of say 6 or more PT when encountering any number or type of Japanese ships, could be as small as 2 freighters or other small ships carrying troops or supplies the results are the same. It does not matter on enemy fleet size, the results are the same; PT boats run away. If Japanese have a PG or DD then occasionally one PT might be destroyed while fleeing.

Sequence is:
PT boat sights Japanese ships, combat is joined, PT boats get shot at for one round, then PT boats withdrawal from combat, often with no losses. However, they never launch torpedoes or engage with mg or 20mm cannon.

This is same result if landing is encountered and Japanese ships are surprised and attempting to get underway. Whatever range the battle starts at, the PT boats run with distance increasing until they can withdrawal. Given their purpose was to engage DD, TK, TP, gun boats, and supply vessels I would think when encountering them they might do something besides run. At least they would rapidly close at over 1,400 yrds/min.

I know that in reality it was considered a death sentence to serve on one, early on they often suffered from dud torpedoes and torpedo launch problems, as such the crews tended to still the torpedo fuel for trade and to numb themselves to the danger faced. As such they often only had one or two torpedoes ready for launch as the other 2 or 3 had no fuel. However, they generally did not run from combat and rather would attempt to close decisive torpedo range 500 to 1000 yrds while raking the targets decks, bridge with mg and cannon fire to suppress enemy fire, launch their torpedoes and then run. That is a close time of about 7 minutes. If the PT were carrying depth charges then they would try use those as well to attack enemy ships. Their small size and maneuverability often allowed them to successfully close. Destroyers would also be unable to bring main armament to bear at close range due to guns inability to depress enough.

In reality although somewhat inebriated the crews were known for their bravery and aggressiveness and met with some success. They did not see enemy ships, even destroyers which completely outclassed them, and run without even trying to get in close for a torpedo shot. That is how they had the success in interdicting enemy shipping. Many a surprised PT was rammed and sunk by fast escorts as they tried to start the un-running engines and get into a position for a torpedo run.

The torpedo malfunctions and unfueled torpedoes could easily be handled through game mechanics but why do they just run?

Is anyone else having success with them other than both disengaging and the occasional delay of the landing by a few days. Or the suspension of unloading of Japanese ships, only to resume again later in the day.

Two obvious deficiencies.

1. You are not handling your PTs at all correctly.

2. The typical mistake of approaching AE with preconceived ideas of how it should play rather than accepting how it plays.

Copy the relevant text of the Combat Report and paste into a post. That won't provide all the necessary facts to properly explain your mistakes but it does provide a start. To date no relevant hard data about exactly what you are doing has been provided and consequently all the advice tendered to date is speculative.

AE is a game full of abstractions. It is always fatal to expect your own subjective interpretation of the historical record to be slavishly incorporated into the game code. There is simply no substitute to learning how the game handles the historical capabilities and outcomes. Historical outliers cannot be incorporated into game code.

Alfred

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: Alfred
....

AE is a game full of abstractions. It is always fatal to expect your own subjective interpretation of the historical record to be slavishly incorporated into the game code. There is simply no substitute to learning how the game handles the historical capabilities and outcomes. Historical outliers cannot be incorporated into game code.

Alfred

However, the opposite can be quite helpful for me to keep the game realistic: when you see an outcome, puzzle out how in the context of the era (1940's, not 2020's) how this came about.

Remember 2 things about this game to help you moving forward.
1. There are now millions of play hours on it. it is a rock solid game.
2. There are NO bugs in this game. There are only features; almost all of which are historically accurate in the context of the 1940's. Those few which are not (historically accurate) are still features of this game. The latter list is quite small, rarely seen more than a couple of times per game (and since a game takes several real life years to complete many never even notice). Memory leakage is the only one you as a player can control by being sure to re-start the game engine often when playing against the AI. Often means once per day at least; most experienced players restart for each new turn particularly as a GC ages and the save file size grows. PBEM players by nature generally restart the game for every turn, so they rarely (if ever) experience memory leakage issues.

[Randy Stead]

Speaking of PT boats and Dugout Doug; is his evacuation from Corregidor a part of the game? Are commanders from cut off garrisons evacuated in-game, or is it handled abstractly, much like my recent post about how gear gets to the rear?

While here, one other "historical outlier" I would like to mention: Can you pull off airborne assassinations such as what happened to Yamamoto? Do commanders get bumped off by in-game events like air raids? I remember many years ago when playing War in Russia, a Soviet commander, I think it was Vatutin, gets assassinated by Ukrainian nationalist partisans, as happened in real life.

I have seen nothing in the manual about the above two. I also wondered if you could do the Doolittle Raid, but reading carefully I think the game allows it, as I read about planes that can take off from, but cannot land on, aircraft carriers. Do AE players pull off stunts like the Doolittle Raid?

[alimentary]

With respect to the Doolittle Raid, I believe I remember seeing it mentioned many years back as something that would have been more work to allow in the engine than it would have been worth in terms of game play.

While you can indeed load land-based aircraft on a carrier and launch (but not recover) them, this launch can only be done in the context of a transfer mission. You can transfer them to a land base. You cannot perform any sort of attack mission while the squadron is based on the carrier.

There is no such thing as "shuttle bombing" where a plane launches from one place, attacks and then performs a planned landing at another. All strike missions launch and return to the same base or ship.

In some circumstances, you can get a similar effect. If your carrier is sunk (or damaged to the point where flight operations are not possible) while your aircraft are aloft on a mission then the planes will be reassigned to another carrier and will land there.

You can also sometimes perform a transfer in the morning and get off an attack mission from the new base in the afternoon. I have not experimented to determine how often or in what circumstances this effort will succeed.

[Ambassador]

ORIGINAL: alimentary

With respect to the Doolittle Raid, I believe I remember seeing it mentioned many years back as something that would have been more work to allow in the engine than it would have been worth in terms of game play.

While you can indeed load land-based aircraft on a carrier and launch (but not recover) them, this launch can only be done in the context of a transfer mission. You can transfer them to a land base. You cannot perform any sort of attack mission while the squadron is based on the carrier.

There is no such thing as "shuttle bombing" where a plane launches from one place, attacks and then performs a planned landing at another. All strike missions launch and return to the same base or ship.

In some circumstances, you can get a similar effect. If your carrier is sunk (or damaged to the point where flight operations are not possible) while your aircraft are aloft on a mission then the planes will be reassigned to another carrier and will land there.

You can also sometimes perform a transfer in the morning and get off an attack mission from the new base in the afternoon. I have not experimented to determine how often or in what circumstances this effort will succeed.

Manual, section 7.0.1.1.1.
Only fighters, fighter-bombers, dive bombers and torpedo-bombers may be loaded on a CV.* If they’re land-based models, i.e. not Carrier Capable (nor Trained), they can only be loaded from port (not flown to), and will only be able to be flown off from the CV for a transfer.

They will also, most probably, prevent any operation from the carrier, as each non-Carrier Capable aircraft counts as four.

Level Bombers can’t be loaded on a CV (you can check it at the start of the Downfall scenario if you want).


* I believe it can be modded and it really depends more on the Carrier Capable quality, as there are Carrier Capable Recon aircrafts (F6F-5P). So, if you want to mod a Carrier Capable B-25 to reproduce (imperfectly) the Doolittle Raid, it would work. More or less. Rather less, as they’d have to land on the carrier after the strike. And you wouldn’t be limited to a single strike. And perhaps you’d have to make the B-25 DB or TB (even without a torpedo payload). More hassle than the utility would warrant indeed.