Air Transport OPS losses (latest beta)

[AlbertN]

T23 of .14Beta (Nov 23, 1941)

What do we got, 98 Transports lost total?

Is that a fair comparison, though? 1.02.20 fixed a bug where transports OPS losses formula was missing a factor. Which means before that the transport losses were less than they should have been.

The point that is trying to being made is about OPs losses.

An absolute number of losses signifies nothing (unless someone is blatantly climbing mirrors).

Summer '41 situations:

If for 10 turns 100 Ju52 with '41 pilots fly from Berlin to Warsaw in fair weather, each turn, 3 times a turn, (so 3 flights a week going by the cargo the ship, each air supply mission is 1 flight) how many should be the losses? (My answer is maybe 1 at top and that is being generous).
If for 10 turns 100 Ju52 with '41 pilots fly from Safe Base to Front Line base, each turn, 3 times a turn; but 2 times out of 3 they get intercepted (but they've adequate escorts), how many should be the losses?
If for 10 turns 100 Ju52 with '41 pilots fly from Safe Base to Pocket Airbase under enemy artillery fire and strafing missions, crossing over enemy ring of AA guns, being intercepted (but they've so-so escorts), in bad weather, how many should be the losses? (This is probably what was Stalingrad scenario) ... how many will be losses? [Here we've the answer - at least on Wikipedia. ~50%, but that is the sum of all factors. ~10% were destroyed on the ground by overrunning airfields from where airplanes operated. So ~40% were destroyed between intercepts, flak, bad weather, frozen / battered airfields; pratically OPs and Enemy Action. But that is in the most adverse conditions possible ever.]



Now that's where things change. Enemy action losses are a thing. A plane crashing out of the blue just because it took off - another.

DarkHorse provided a bucket of saves so that's good.

[Stamb]

any news here from a dev team?
Soviets also suffer pretty high ops losses for a transport planes

for example flying ~40 planes from Vyazma to Smolensk and seeing 2 planes lost due to an ops losses with a perfect weather, 0 mileage traveled, 0 interception is just very strange

[Denniss]

remember the engines of this time were not very reliable and many aircraft were hard to manage with just one engine or with 2 of 3.
Most of the engine issues resulted in aborted mission but a failure on take-off was deadly. engine-out upon landing approach was equally dangerous

[AlbertN]

remember the engines of this time were not very reliable and many aircraft were hard to manage with just one engine or with 2 of 3.
Most of the engine issues resulted in aborted mission but a failure on take-off was deadly. engine-out upon landing approach was equally dangerous

I do not go by 'designing by crumble-counting type of data but by historical feel.

I could be entirely wrong BUT even a 1% chance of dieing because 'engine failure' means that ... 1 plane out of 100 (and 1 pilot out of 100) is to pratically die.
Or that over ~3 months of war if one flies -1- time per day, they've a mathematical certainness to be death.
Simply no one would enlist as a pilot IF that was the approach.

Right now over a turn of a week ... how many times a Ju52 flies? 2 prolly.
Ontop of that they have a 5-20% chance to crash in fine weather and even more in blizzard.

There should be a 0.001% chance of losing 1 airplane due to pure 'travelling' in fair or even rain or something like that.

At this stage I am even worried to see what happens with 'rebases' or other type of business where airplanes just flight without any type of enemy action.

At take off if an engine does not start - sure aborted mission or maybe it was a minor problem.
On return? Truly why an engine -out of the blue- has a problem? It can happen but it is extremely rare.
On the other hand IF the plane was subject to enemy action or fire - directly to the engine or else - and crashes on landing, that is another tale. But I underline and reiterate, enemy action.

[DarkHorse2]

remember the engines of this time were not very reliable and many aircraft were hard to manage with just one engine or with 2 of 3.
Most of the engine issues resulted in aborted mission but a failure on take-off was deadly. engine-out upon landing approach was equally dangerous

At take off if an engine does not start - sure aborted mission or maybe it was a minor problem.
On return? Truly why an engine -out of the blue- has a problem? It can happen but it is extremely rare.
On the other hand IF the plane was subject to enemy action or fire - directly to the engine or else - and crashes on landing, that is another tale. But I underline and reiterate, enemy action.

In this case, the Ju52 3m has 3 engines.

I remember, previously, that the Air Transport unit would degrade during the turn as each flight caused more aircraft to become damaged.

This seemed fine. But somewhere along the lines, somebody thought that an OPS death rate of approximately 5% AC per flight was more appropriate. (I have also noticed, that you can reduce the death rate by flying extreme reduced ranges - Air Transport ranges already nerfed to begin with - but you cannot fully utilize the nerfed ranges either or the Ju52 just self-destructs.)

However, it does feel like, the OPS death rate, at least, got toned down a bit in the most recent beta.

[jasonbroomer]

remember the engines of this time were not very reliable and many aircraft were hard to manage with just one engine or with 2 of 3.
Most of the engine issues resulted in aborted mission but a failure on take-off was deadly. engine-out upon landing approach was equally dangerous

I do not go by 'designing by crumble-counting type of data but by historical feel.

I could be entirely wrong BUT even a 1% chance of dieing because 'engine failure' means that ... 1 plane out of 100 (and 1 pilot out of 100) is to pratically die.
Or that over ~3 months of war if one flies -1- time per day, they've a mathematical certainness to be death.
Simply no one would enlist as a pilot IF that was the approach.

Right now over a turn of a week ... how many times a Ju52 flies? 2 prolly.
Ontop of that they have a 5-20% chance to crash in fine weather and even more in blizzard.

There should be a 0.001% chance of losing 1 airplane due to pure 'travelling' in fair or even rain or something like that.

At this stage I am even worried to see what happens with 'rebases' or other type of business where airplanes just flight without any type of enemy action.

At take off if an engine does not start - sure aborted mission or maybe it was a minor problem.
On return? Truly why an engine -out of the blue- has a problem? It can happen but it is extremely rare.
On the other hand IF the plane was subject to enemy action or fire - directly to the engine or else - and crashes on landing, that is another tale. But I underline and reiterate, enemy action.

How many pilots actually die? I agree operational losses appear high, but I don’t monos what the definition of operational losses is.

I haven’t studied the issue but my feeling is that few pilots actually die (I.e.) catastrophic failure but many issues cause an operational loss, many of which are fixed in subsequent weeks.

This is based on some loose observations

[Stamb]

just 20% planes lost due to an ops losses in perfect weather without enemy fighters/AA

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[Denniss]

6/41 flying with superb quality pilots killing themselves ?

[Stamb]

i dont know what is 6/41 but pilots exp is pretty good, except for a couple of pilots

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[ncc1701e]

6/41 is June 1941. Inexperienced pilots killing themselves at takeoff, at landing or in an air collision. Which experience level to reach to avoid this? I don’t know.

[Stamb]

i have one theory that random function that wite 2 is using is bugged and is producing too big deviation as it was with chances to kill HQ leaders during displacement (for people who remember what was going on)

as in some missions i lose 0 planes and then i can lose 20% as i showed above

also i do not know if wite 2 is simulating ops losses per plane model or is just using general formula
as from a quick search it appears that li 2 were pretty reliable planes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisunov_Li-2
which is copy of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_DC-3

[ncc1701e]

Which altitude are you flying? Seems to be a factor also for operational losses.

[Stamb]

actually altitude for transport planes is random from mission to mission, notice that they are from the same air command and same units

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