B-29 losses

Major Tom · Post by **Major Tom** » Wed Dec 06, 2000 9:29 pm

Actually, the only inconsistancies in the B-29 grouping is that we left out the 500th BG, 501st BG, 502nd BG and added the 333rd BG (which didn't exist according to that website).

We could replace the 333rd with one of the three, plus, utilize a vacant space to add another.

Maybe our arrival times have to be re-tweaked.

Also, you shouldn't be switching around your B-24 groups to B-29 using the auto or regular upgrade. Only the 19th BG ever served in the Pacific, from B-17's to B-24's to B-29's. All other B-29 groups were originally equipped with B-29's for their stay in the Pacific.

Maybe we should increase the starting number of planes per group, since, most of these were transferred from other regions instead of starting from scratch. Possibly start off some of the later groups at 14 planes each? This is much better than fooling with aircraft costs.

Paul Goodman · Post by **Paul Goodman** » Thu Dec 07, 2000 12:27 am

Major Tom,

What is the problem. I think the aircraft count is correct for a heavy bomb group; three squadrons of 12 aircraft each plus a few hangar queens. The entire problem, in my opinion, is the excess losses to AAA.

Paul

Major Tom · Post by **Major Tom** » Thu Dec 07, 2000 3:10 am

So, you are hoping that an upgrade in durability will result in these planes surviving AA and Interceptors? Possibly it could represent its ability to reach altitides that the Japanese cannot, BUT, to compensate, possibly lower the bomb capacity to represent its horrible accuracy (less bombs would land on target). How about this for a solution?

Of course, it will ALWAYS mean that B-29's will be flying at this high altitude when on offensive missions, resulting in a higher durability and lower bomb rate. I don't know how this durability change will affect losses of B-29 airfields being bombed or bombarded.

HQTANGO · Post by **HQTANGO** » Thu Dec 07, 2000 9:26 am

Well here is what I do.
Take iwo jima and okinawa by the mid 1944 and commence to reduce japan to gravel with b25 b24 Wellington B29s P61 P47 and P38J. ALso send in the Carriers lay off Toyko and have at it. I plan to defeat all of Japans industry before landing troops. I bypassed Phillipines altogether and now have most of the once great empire going hungry for lack of supply and falling in the dreadful ISO Base list.
Being in fighter range of Mainland Japan has done horrid damage to their air power. Of course you folks are talking history but thought I would add my two cents about the game

The B29s become less important when you have stock pile of 2000+ 25s and hundreds of Wellingtons hammering Japan during the day with highly skilled fighter escorts. Which I like the wellington a lot for a long range "light" bomber (range 7). It is very good for picking up the slack, and makes a decent anit-ship platform once crews are well trained.

[This message has been edited by HQTANGO (edited December 06, 2000).]

babyseal7 · Post by **babyseal7** » Thu Dec 07, 2000 9:49 am

Well, that's what everyone "ends up" doing. The B-29's are nice (when they're working) because you can hit the eastern cities while attacking the others from the west with your shorter range AC. Kinda nice to have those bases in the Mariana's working, and those massed B-29 strikes are excellent for running up a civilian body count for points.

The Wellington is the best bomber AC in the game IMO...does everything well.

Paul Goodman · Post by **Paul Goodman** » Fri Dec 08, 2000 2:54 am

Right, I think we all know how to defeat Japan in this game. Furthermore, the game Japanese surrenders before the B-29 campaign was even close to peaking historically. I think the real question is how do we make it more "historic."

Major Tom, the characteristic of the B-29 campaign is ever increasing bomb load. Frankly, I don't know how any of it compares to the game bomb load. The high altitude phase is characterized by very light combat losses, heavier operational losses, small bomb loads and only one really successful mission. I really think that the key is an increase in durability after the capture of Iwo Jima. Is this possible? What we do know is that 2400 B-29's made emergency landings on Iwo during the war, mostly simply for fuel, but many damaged.

Paul

HQTANGO · Post by **HQTANGO** » Fri Dec 08, 2000 3:41 am

Paul you are not going to make it much more historic. If I wanted to watch a recording of WWII it would be rather boring, historic is hard to recreate and still have a "Game". Anyway I think it is dead point anyway, consider that in the game there is no way to gauge population morale and the bombing of infrastructure such as bridges railways etc. So making it historic is a task which is way above this game in its current DOS adaptation. And anyway everything I do that changes anything in the slightest bit (historically that is) changes the whole historic value of the game. Example changing production of Med. Bombers to all B25s ,which is not historically correct, and that change will make everything that happens beyond that change to unhistorical values. So recreating history is not going to happen to perfection with this or any platform. hehe

And oh on a side note I thought you were discussing the way to defeat Japan.

Ed Cogburn · Post by **Ed Cogburn** » Fri Dec 08, 2000 3:04 pm

Originally posted by HQTANGO:
Paul you are not going to make it much more historic.

Well, considering how unhistoric it is now, almost anything we do at this point would help, not hurt. Whatever we do, tinker with durability, raise B29 production, or tinker with combat routine to lower the AA kills, would be an improvement.

sethwrkr · Post by **sethwrkr** » Sat Dec 09, 2000 5:19 am

DUH...B29s were really not all that. They were lagely inefective until late in the war.

A beter supplied japan. IE one that uses air and escorts to protect convoys is going to be able to put up an unhistorically good fight against b29s. Notice that today heavy bombers are not the cornerstone of our offence.

Geez.

Seth

Major Tom · Post by **Major Tom** » Sat Dec 09, 2000 7:30 am

Try playing the Marianas scenario where virtually all Japanese air groups are at 20-30 Experience. You will slaughter the Home Islands with your B-29's. If they manage to get some Ki-45's or Ki-102's piloted by some good men then they can really put up a fight. However, these planes are vulnerable to enemy fighter planes. Take Iwo Jima and send in your CV TF's to knock out these fighters (as the US historically did) and your B-29's will get through.

Ed Cogburn · Post by **Ed Cogburn** » Sat Dec 09, 2000 3:21 pm

Originally posted by sethwrkr:
DUH...B29s were really not all that. They were lagely inefective until late in the war.

Duh, its the "late in the war" that we're talking about, after the US player has 15+ full strength B29 groups.

A beter supplied japan. IE one that uses air and escorts to protect convoys is going to be able to put up an unhistorically good fight against b29s. Notice that today heavy bombers are not the cornerstone of our offence.

This won't happen. Period. If the IJN used *every* single DD, PC, and DE (that come later) ship for convoy duty, it wouldn't change the outcome of the shipping war. Japan was hopelessly unprepared for this contest. They didn't have enough escorts, and didn't have the capacity to build more cargo ships and oil tankers than the USN submarine fleet sunk. Although it doesn't show up well in the game, by '45 the Japanese merchant fleet was essentially non-existant. They were reduced to using armed and armored barges to try to resupply outlying posts.

By the way, how does protecting the convoys help with the strategic bombing? It doesn't. Even with a good supply of resources from the very beginning, Japan's industry will grow very little, which means they can't replace the losses from P-51 and Hellcat fighters that the US player starts racking up in late '44. Without numerous, full strength, experienced, fighter groups, they have no chance to stop the B29 groups. Kamikazee pilots were an act of desperation to try to stem the tsuanami that was coming their way.

Geez.

Ditto.

Major Tom · Post by **Major Tom** » Sat Dec 09, 2000 9:48 pm

Check out my post on the IJAAF and IJNAF. High experience levels should cause your B-29's to be cut down.

With P-51 escorts from Iwo Jima, and Carrier Raids these fighters will be gradually cut down themselves. Allowing more and more B-29's to get through.

Stating that the IJN has no other chance than what history delt them is a falacy. If you relocate most of your H6K and H8K groups to the Japan-Sumatra region you will spot and kill more US subs. The IJNAF wasn't too keen about sending their aircraft on anti-sub duty, and perferred it to be scouting for the fleet. With more Recon groups, more sub groups will be spotted and avoided, along with an increase in the number of subs sunk.

If as the IJN, you put all your old DD's (Mutsuki, Kamikaze, etc) at Nagoya you will drastically increase your anti-submarine force. Historically, the IJN used these ships as fleet vessels, or transport ships.

babyseal7 · Post by **babyseal7** » Sat Dec 09, 2000 11:12 pm

That's correct, but the problem is the unhistorical number of B-29's getting whacked by AA fire...NOT by fighters. You could pull all the Jp. fighters out, and still probably lose enough B-29's to unhistorically deplete your air wings. That's why I was saying to increase the durability*, and decrease the cannon rating of the B-29. Then they're tougher, but more vulnerable to dedicated well armed Jap bomber interceptors...if they've managed to keep enough industrial capacity to build'em.

*Note: durability rating is factored in when the AI "rolls the dice" to determine whether an AC is hit/damaged/destroyed by AA fire.

As it is, the B-29 has a lower durability rating than a B-17...which just wasn't so. If you give the original B-29 arrivals a very low experience rating, and then steadily increase the ratings (and AC available) of the arrivals it'll help keep the B-29 fairly useless until they were historically brought "on-line".

[This message has been edited by babyseal7 (edited December 10, 2000).]

Ed Cogburn · Post by **Ed Cogburn** » Sun Dec 10, 2000 1:37 pm

Originally posted by Major Tom:
Check out my post on the IJAAF and IJNAF. High experience levels should cause your B-29's to be cut down.

With P-51 escorts from Iwo Jima, and Carrier Raids these fighters will be gradually cut down themselves. Allowing more and more B-29's to get through.

Exactly, the end result is inevitable as I said. You can change the timing of the end result by taking drastic measures to forestall it, but the end result will still be the one we all see, in the game, and historically.

Stating that the IJN has no other chance than what history delt them is a falacy.

You just disagreed with this above. Nothing the Japanese player can do can change the inevitable outcome. The Pacific theator, like the eastern front of the European theator, is an example of the ultimate war of attrition.

If you relocate most of your H6K and H8K groups to the Japan-Sumatra region you will spot and kill more US subs. The IJNAF wasn't too keen about sending their aircraft on anti-sub duty, and perferred it to be scouting for the fleet. With more Recon groups, more sub groups will be spotted and avoided, along with an increase in the number of subs sunk.

Did I mention that the US could produce Gato/Balao/Tench subs faster than the Japanese could sink them, just like the US was able to build Liberty/Victory ships faster than the Japanese AND German sub fleets could sink them?

The subs will still make an impact. It may take them longer, but they will achieve the same end result. The Japanese did not have an adequate ASW doctrine, they severely lacked good escort vessels, never mind cargo ships themselves. They were never able to close the gap, as they got better at killing subs, US subs got better at surviving ASW attacks. Major losses of US subs only began at the end when US subs were stationed close to the Japanese homeland (in easy range of ASW patrols and often in shallow waters) to form a submarine blockade of Japan.

If as the IJN, you put all your old DD's (Mutsuki, Kamikaze, etc) at Nagoya you will drastically increase your anti-submarine force. Historically, the IJN used these ships as fleet vessels, or transport ships.

My experience doing this, it just means you lose them faster. At first it helps, but once the Gato/Balao get good torps and deeper depth they just bleed Japan's DD ship classes dry. This also means IJN TFs for the rest of the war are weaker because of the absence of DD escorts, and who knows what that might end up doing. And imagine how the US could have countered this had Japan used all its DDs on convoy defense. They would have likely accelerated production of subs early on if the resistence were higher than it historically was.

Look at the numbers. The US built more than 200 subs (Gato/Balao/Tench) during the war, not counting existing subs and allies, and could easily have built more, if losses had been heavier. Japan only built about 30 destroyers in that time, and probably couldn't have built more, as their ship-building capacity was at its breaking point already. That is the essential point. The US had the industry to outproduce anybody in nearly every category (except perhaps the Soviets in producing tanks). Japan could never produce enough DDs to offset US's ability to produce subs, or produce enough cargo ships to offset losses to US subs.

Paul Goodman · Post by **Paul Goodman** » Sun Dec 10, 2000 9:18 pm

Obviously we are all looking at the same grand strategy, whether by strategic air attack, submarine warfare, or interdiction with tactical aircraft of the Japanese merchant fleet. Shut down of the Japanese economy.

My impression is that with the Matrix version, submarines are not nearly as effective as they used to be. Therefore, air attack is necessary to shut down the Japanese economy. This should be doable with B-29 attacks, but is not. This is absolutely due to the excessive AAA losses, which I think can be correctely simply by a change is durability.

I and I rather imagine, most everyone else, cuts through the central Pacific, capture the Marshalls, the Marianas, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and Formosa (Taiwan). From Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and Formosa, B-25's, A-26's, P-38J's and Avengers set to NI seal off Japan and surrender is close at hand. At this point, the Fifth (Third) Fleet can effectively anchor off of Osaka and eliminate what Japanese air and sea power remains. A very large supply level and replenish TF's on Iwo Jima are necessary. I personally don't attack the Phillipines except by numerous aircraft carrier attacks to reduce the quality of the squadrons there. Too many LCU's there to successfully attack and too difficult to supply through the Kamikaze attacks.

Paul

Major Tom · Post by **Major Tom** » Sun Dec 10, 2000 10:45 pm

Well, neither the durability of the B-29, or any submarine statistics were changed from the original, nor was anything changed regarding submarine warfare other than TF's not requiring to use set paths (thereby most probably be less contacts made). This requires the USN player to place more attention on the areas that the Subs are locating in, or, relegate it to the Computer to take care of.

Modifications to the v2.2 patch COULD include...

Increasing durability of the B-29 (although it is the same durability as the original released)

Increasing the number of later USN Submarine groups (each group would contain less subs, but, there will be more groups to cover larger areas)

Of course, these changes could bring about an entire new wack of problems.

Ed Cogburn · Post by **Ed Cogburn** » Mon Dec 11, 2000 9:11 pm

Originally posted by Major Tom:
Well, neither the durability of the B-29, or any submarine statistics were changed from the original, nor was anything changed regarding submarine warfare other than TF's not requiring to use set paths (thereby most probably be less contacts made).

Hmm, I think the original PAC didn't represent the impact of USN subs adequately, so if they're now getting fewer contacts, then that's a problem.

This requires the USN player to place more attention on the areas that the Subs are locating in, or, relegate it to the Computer to take care of.

Does the Computer still put groups in stupid places? If that routine hasn't been improved, then leaving it up to the computer isn't much of an option.

Modifications to the v2.2 patch COULD include...

Increasing durability of the B-29 (although it is the same durability as the original released)

Increasing the number of later USN Submarine groups (each group would contain less subs, but, there will be more groups to cover larger areas)

Of course, these changes could bring about an entire new wack of problems.

I still believe a tweak to the combat routine to reduce flak losses to heavy bombers is a better way of dealing with this problem. No matter what the durability is of the plane, the combat routine almost always removes at least one plane per mission due to flak. We can't represent high altitude versus low altitude bombing, so we need a kind of middle ground where flak losses due occur but not as often as they do now.

On the assumption, which may be wrong, that only heavy bombers routinely use high altitude bombing, we can restrict the tweak to heavy bombers only, which will make it unlikely to have a deleterious effect on the rest of the game.

Or I could be completely stupid here!

Paul Dyer · Post by **Paul Dyer** » Tue Dec 12, 2000 10:13 am

I'll echo the comments of Ed and Paul G. here. Seems to me the strength of Pacwar is that it has a good blend of historical accuracy versus letting you run the war the way you want it. This is because the balance of factors is pretty much right, sea vs air power, the potency of CV TF's, logistics, rising allied capability etc. IMHO the genius of Gary Grigsby was to package these into a game that was fun to play, but that also produces a conflict true to the spirit of 1941-45.

Of course with extensive gameplay a few things always come up that could do with tweaking. For my money B-29 losses to AA and allied sub potency are clearly in this camp. I'd prefer to put a positive spin on it - given the complexity of the game if this is the most we can find to complain about the simulation is pretty damm good.

Major Tom: on the subs, how accurate is the Jap mercantile OB? I haven't seen this discussed on any of the various boards. The last two full campaigns I've kept detailed records of all losses, manually loading the weekly results into an excel file. When looking at the sub campaign I always found 1/. The US lost more subs than historically, and 2/. The Japs still had more merchant capacity at the end of the war; this wasn't really constraining them. So the conclusion seemed that the game needed tweaking in the subs favour. However, when looking at the stats I found that my subs had actually sunk *more* Jap ships than historically (move over Charles Lockwood), and that the ratio of subs lost/ships sunk was almost exactly right. So this leaves me thinking the Jap merchant fleet must be too big (I guess it is a bit abstract anyway).

I guess some of these comments should really be on the WITP forum.

Ed Cogburn · Post by **Ed Cogburn** » Tue Dec 12, 2000 1:33 pm

Originally posted by Paul Dyer:

I guess some of these comments should really be on the WITP forum.

You're dead on Paul! Post the last two paragraphs from your message to the WitP forum in separate posts. Maybe we can get a comment on how they are going to implement the B29 strategic bombing campaign and the sub war (assuming they're still monitoring the WitP forum; its been kinda dead for awhile now).

Major Tom · Post by **Major Tom** » Tue Dec 12, 2000 9:27 pm

I think that it would be pretty impossible now to implement AA changes. It will take a lot of time and effort to see if this can be changed in order to affect only one type of aircraft. Bases have been extremely abstracted, expecially home bases (West Coast and Home Islands). Instead of one single city, they are actally representing multiple cities. Plus, all airfields and ports are at the 9 level, so this is why you are getting so many AA casualties.

Regarding the USN sub war...

In my records, I had around 1 000 IJN Merchant ships sunk by US subs alone, plus another 1 000 sunk by all other causes. For the next release, I decreased IJN sub groups (ie the number of submarine wolfpacks) by 2, I also decreased British by 1, and the Dutch by 1, and added 4 sub wolfpacks to the USN. I also beefed up the USN so that each of its Gato subpacks have 8 subs in them (Gato and Balao are now one class). The problem was, that there are only a set number of spaces dedicated for subs, and these were all taken.

(Note: the subs in the groups removed were not lost, just transferred to other groups)

What resulted, instead of the original and modified PacWar giving the USN 90 Gato class subs to work with (barring ship pool reinforcements) they have 145 Gato class subs to work with. 50% more.

I playtested the OBC41 until mid 1943 (when the Submarines started to have an affect) and IJN and USN/Allied Merchant losses were equal (ie. around 150 lost each). This includes all the Allies MCS lost by Japanese air attack in the first 6 months (around 100 vessels lost). I can only imagine the destruction in 1944 when Allied bases were closer to IJN shipping routes.

Also, IJN sub losses were around 30, with USN sub losses at around 10. This all by June 1943.

In 1943, an average of 200 000t of Japanese merchant shipping was sunk per month (historically). I averaged aroun 45 IJN Merchants sunk per month (since the smallest MCS was 3000t [30 capacity] around 135 000t [minimum] were being sunk in early 1943). I remember one turn in parcticular where 23 IJN MCS were sunk, 1 DE and 2 Tankers. This all in early 1943. The IJN tended to have less kills.

When using the original, and the Matrix release patch, the Allies usually lost WAY more MCS than the Japanese. On one test run, they had around 300 Allied MCS kills with only losing around 200 MCS by 1944. Now, with less IJN subgroups out there they are killing less Allied MCS, and with more USN subgroups with more subs in them they are killing more IJN MCS.

I also slightly increased the durability of the Gato, to simulate its ability to dive to deep depths.

I also totally redid the IJN merchant fleet. Actually, it was almost 50% smaller than it should have been. The MCS fleet should have equalled around 5 500 000t of ships, but, in PacWar they only got around 3 000 000t. The Tanker fleet, however, was drastically overated. Historically, they had 600 000t, but in the game they had 950 000t!! So, what I did was decrease the number of tankers, and increase the number of MCS. This didn't really affect the game that much, as, without a lot of fuel less MCS could be expended for convoy duty. Gradually, the Japanese supply situation does start to collapse.

[This message has been edited by Major Tom (edited December 12, 2000).]