Aircraft Weapons, their Pro Allied slant in WiTP

[DuckofTindalos]

You'd have to define a Japanese Wildcat and a US Zero in the database editor, with the appropriate graphics, but there's no problem with it from a game mechanics PoV.

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: Terminus

You'd have to define a Japanese Wildcat and a US Zero in the database editor, with the appropriate graphics, but there's no problem with it from a game mechanics PoV.

Or you could just swap out the values...

[DuckofTindalos]

And make a Zero in Wildcat drag, and vice versa. That would work too, I suppose.

[mlees]

Well, it seems to me that the original poster was stating that he had preserved his airgroups into the late(r) war period, and was dissapointed with his kill ratio. So, he started tinkering with the weapon values to try to acheive a kill ratio that he felt was more realistic.

I have a couple questions with that:
1) There are many factors in game that decide combat results: Weather, leadership, fatigue, coordination, pilot experience, aircraft values, and I think I forgot some. But why did the OP pick weapons?

2) Since in real life the Japanese late-war airgroups were not nearly as effective as they might have been, at what point will the OP think that the air to air results are accurate? This seems a little subjective...

[Big B]

ORIGINAL: mlees

Well, it seems to me that the original poster was stating that he had preserved his airgroups into the late(r) war period, and was dissapointed with his kill ratio. So, he started tinkering with the weapon values to try to acheive a kill ratio that he felt was more realistic.

I have a couple questions with that:
1) There are many factors in game that decide combat results: Weather, leadership, fatigue, coordination, pilot experience, aircraft values, and I think I forgot some. But why did the OP pick weapons?

2) Since in real life the Japanese late-war airgroups were not nearly as effective as they might have been, at what point will the OP think that the air to air results are accurate? This seems a little subjective...

Very good points...but right now I find Terminus's reference to a Zero in Wildcat Drag too funny to think very serious about anything!

B

[DuckofTindalos]

Talking about planes in drag...

[mdiehl]

The "Aleutian Zero"

[the potemkin]

Cat in drag

[Big B]

Too good to be true!
Here it is folks!
Proof that it's the Pilot and not the plane
...notice that even giving the Japs the tough Gruman Hellcat and the Americans the flimsy Zero - It's still the Jap plane that's shot up and crashed![:D]

B

[treespider]

Back to the original posters line of thinking concerning weaponry...

" Hattori approached the B-17 on a curving trajectory and opened his attack with a frontal pass, concentrating fire on the bomber's left wing root and then diving beneath his target. his wingman followed suit. hattori now led his shotai around for a beam attack on the bomber, side slipping as he approached and straightening out just long enough to squeeze out a burst at the B-17 mid-section. As he crossed over the bomber he kicked rudder and threw his Rei-sen back into a skid. Glancing back he noticed Hashimoto's plane trailing a thin white stream of fuel from his wing. luckily there appeared to be no fire, but Hashimoto was out of the fight. Hattori signaled him to land and reminded himself to lecture Hashimoto later. this fellow was one of the newer replacement pilots. He had yet to learn what the more seasoned pilots all understood: That in combat, flying straight direction or making smooth turns would lead to a fiery death, especially since the 13mm guns of the enemy had a flatter trajectory and longer effective range than their own short barrelled 20mms....."


This is from a "hypothetical" account of a day in the life of an IJN Aviator.


I noticed range is a factor with aircraft weapons ...how accurately are they reflected in the game?

[Brausepaul]

@ treespider

Sorry, but this "account" can't be taken serious, it's fiction, isn't it? Who wrote it?

[Big B]

ORIGINAL: Brausepaul

@ treespider

Sorry, but this "account" can't be taken serious, it's fiction, isn't it? Who wrote it?

There is nothing particularly disingenuous about this:

especially since the 13mm guns of the enemy had a flatter trajectory and longer effective range than their own short barrelled 20mms....."

B

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: treespider


You misquoted him again he did not say that!. He said an 1100 mile round trip and you keep quoting him as say an 1100 mile trip. The last time I checked 565 plus 565 = 1130 miles pretty close to 1100.

Correct Treespider. It seems you have no trouble understanding printed text. Richard Frank's conclusion is pretty clear to me.

To reitterate Mr Frank's conclusions on the air campaign:

"What did account for this result [Lunga campaign] was their [the Japanese] fundemental error of negligently or recklessly accepting battle under serious handicaps. In the fore of these was the lack of airbase closer to Guadalcanal than Rabaul, or later Buka. The 565 miles seperating the Japanese aviators from their objective introduced a series of impediments. First, it halved teh Zero escort by precluding the use of the Model32 Zeros. Second, the long time consuming flights impelled the Japanese into a routine of operations that simplified the defender's tasks. Third, the long hauls created excessive wear on aircraft and crews that subtly wore away their numbers and *combat effectiveness* Fourth, it turned many damaged aircraft into outright losses-together with their crews

I dont know about you but "Long Haul" to be includes the whole trip, not just on the way down. The above are Mr Frank's conclusions, not mine. As i said, it seems pretty clear to me that the Japanese were fighting under serious handicaps that aided the defenders and influenced the numbers. Readers of course are free to judge for themselves. I do recommend the book highly

In listing the decisive factors from the American side, there is no mention of pilots who 'couldn't get their nightly sleep' leading them to be bleary eyed exhausted men sitting in their cockpits unready to fight.

Had the Japanese not saddled themselves with these handicaps, the campaign might have gone quite differently and would have influenced the numbers that are being stripped out of the book. How much so is up to debate of course. As for the numbers i listed for F4F vs A6M losses, I'd already mentioned how i came to the numbers. I went through both of Lundstrom's volumes, which i retain in my posession, and recorded the losses on a page by page basis. The numbers i listed only contain kills generated by either fighter aircraft against each other. Good for recalling information...bad for reselling value...my history books tend to be crammed with my own penned notes. [;)]

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: Brausepaul

@ treespider

Sorry, but this "account" can't be taken serious, it's fiction, isn't it? Who wrote it?

This is from the Osprey book:

Imperial Japanese Aviator 1937-45 by Osamu Tagaya

In the chapter The Imperial Japanese Naval Aviator in Combat....p54

[Brausepaul]

ORIGINAL: treespider

This is from the Osprey book:

Imperial Japanese Aviator 1937-45 by Osamu Tagaya

In the chapter The Imperial Japanese Naval Aviator in Combat....p54

The author being Japanese might make the statement more trustworthy, but if I did understand you correctly, it's still a fictious story. If I write a hypothetical account about a German fighter pilot with a sentance like the one you highlighted the sentence wouldn't still be a self-evident eternal truth.

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: treespider

I noticed range is a factor with aircraft weapons ...how accurately are they reflected in the game?

Range can be very important in determining a kill vs a damaged hit. I dont think its as vital a factor in fighter vs fighter combat as it is with bomber combat based on my observations. To give you a good idea of it's impact though, there is an easy example:

UV used to contain a undocumented features that made any aircraft with a DUR value above 40 immune to attacks from Range 1 or 2. I believe it was there originally to help bombers survive better. The rule was eventually removed because it made medium bombers too immune to enemy fighters. Once the rule was removed, and fighters could make attacks at Range 1 or 2, the degree of damage (represented in '******'s in the game) and kills increased.

So range is important in the fire calcuations. the Acc rating influences the ratio of damage/kill as well, as does EXP, size and 'effect' rating of the gun device

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: Brausepaul

ORIGINAL: treespider

This is from the Osprey book:

Imperial Japanese Aviator 1937-45 by Osamu Tagaya

In the chapter The Imperial Japanese Naval Aviator in Combat....p54

The author being Japanese might make the statement more trustworthy, but if I did understand you correctly, it's still a fictious story. If I write a hypothetical account about a German fighter pilot with a sentance like the one you highlighted the sentence wouldn't still be a self-evident eternal truth.

I was just using the quote to raise the question about range. Not to suggest that the 20mm was shorter ranged than the .50 caliber it may very well be...I do not know. In any event, shouldn't the effective range also be factored into any potential discussion about the lethality of a particular weapon system?

[doktorblood]

Long range shooting in aerial combat wasn't too common. Wing mounted guns were "harmonized" to concentrate fire at a specific range...the "sweet spot" was usually set per the pilot preference. RAF pilots liked to get close, like 150 yards. Normal people liked it sighted somewhere between 250-400 yards. Most fighters carried enough ammo for only a few seconds of fire and pilots were trained not to "spray and pray", but fire only when the picture was right.

Aircraft with the guns mounted in the nose could take some longer shots. I read an account of a P-38 getting a kill at 8000 yards.

[Nikademus]

Ironically I have an account by a P40 driver who said much the same, in that he feared the Oscar more than the Zero because the centerline armament made it easier for them to hose their aircraft and possibly bring it down.

[mdiehl]

Joe Foss was interviewed by MSoft about WW2 fighting in general. Lots of interesting stuff in that interview. I'll provide the link. I've selected some of the text pertaining to life at Henderson Field... ya'll "know" of course by now that Lunga was the garden party spot of the Pacific War where pilots had long lazy afternoons with tea and mixed drinks and night time was pure refreshing sleep.

http://www.microsoft.com/games/combatfs ... s_foss.asp

On being strafed and bombed...

They could see everything, you know. And they strafed, and there's nothing we could do. Absolutely we were pinned down, and the anti-aircraft weren't that good, and I can imagine it could make you nervous if you're under that kind of blitz. You wouldn't want to stand up there and man your gun too well, because it wasn't too safe.

There was no safe place on the island there. And [the Japanese] thought, in both cases, that they could come in on there, but they'd have gotten a good reception of course. Then they better have some tough bozos leading the attack, but they really thought they had us at that time.

...

On accelerated deterioration of F4F engines under the conditions...

We couldn't, number one, start back on the ground. If the airplane was shot up, you aren't going to go anyplace, and those guys fixed those suckers so that they would go. They would have to change the engine, which in those days only lasted 70-some hours, because you were flying full throttle and on take-off and anytime the plane was running it would suck that coral into the tank, and that would just like filing the cylinders, your piston rings and all would go out in a hurry.

...

On not typically having positional advantage over the Zeroes even with coastwatcher warning (why I call it a "meeting engagement" rather than a "handicapped zero")

Yeah. You see, on a scramble, you go full speed. Altitude advantage was the name of the game. And if you didn't get up there they were coming down on you, and they did. We went at it day after day, where they had the advantage…. The only thing we had to let us know they were coming was the coast watchers up the line. See, there's a great story about that. There's a book called The Coast Watchers. Ever read that?

...

Other stuff..

My CO, Major Davis, Duke Davis flew the same day he was wounded in the morning, and he flew that same day. He got hit on the side of the face, the right arm, and the right leg a little bit. The shrapnel was dug out and he had all this swelling, and taped up face, and here he was went right back up in combat, the same day.

...

On ammo load out for the .50cal

I think that the biggest problem was that I had at least, and I think a lot of others have the same thing, we shot out of range. The airplane looked bigger, and if you shot at a Zero out of range, on a deflection shot, he was gone. He just saw those tracers, see, we loaded one tracer, one armor piercing and two incendiary. Any way you wanted to load.

More from a WW2 interview. Again, note that the F4Fs did not typically have positional advantage even with cw warning and radar.

http://www.microsoft.com/games/combatfs ... artime.asp

So whenever we'd see about six [Japanese] planes that seemed to want to engage us, we were quite sure they had plenty of high cover. If the fighting was on even terms, they weren't at all anxious to engage us. But whenever they had the long end of the deal, they were anxious to engage. Along with the bombers there would be six to eight more Zeros. They'd fly to the rear and above, about 3,000 feet above the bombers, doing loops and slow rolls, to slow them down so they could stay with the bombers. They were usually up around 30,000 feet. Then there were another six just prowling around. You never could tell where they were; they would circle wide and try to come in from the opposite direction.

When I got there, we seemed to be getting off late. The [Japanese] got wise to the fact that if they made a circle and came in over the mountains we couldn't pick them up on the Radar as soon as we used to when they came right down the channel. With the mountain interference on the Radar we hadn't quite enough warning to make it up there. On several occasions I reached the same altitude as the bombers, a bad situation. We didn't have time to climb into a position to get a pass at the bombers. Sometimes my outfit made a parallel run to the bombing formation but couldn't gain a bit on them; we stayed right there just out of range. Their gunners would be shooting at us while Zeros stayed up and didn't seem to want to come down. Finally they could come down, and then we'd get to fight the Zeros. One reason why my squadron had [a] lot of Zeros to its credit is that we always wanted to get into a scrap. When there was nothing else around, we always went after the Zeros, if they didn't come after us.

[JAPANESE] TACTICS
They have a rather unusual way in their attacks. The leader always shies around; his wing mate flies back far enough so you can hit him off without the leader's ever knowing it. They fly more or less in a column -- the wing man is supposed to stay with that leader. How he does it I don't know. When you stay 200 or 300 yards behind your leader and try to follow him, you've really got something on your hands. The wing man has a tough time of it. I talked to some of the Japanese through an interpreter, some of the Japanese pilots, and they'd always shake their heads about following their leader, and talk about their heads going around and around. I see their point.