The all seeing eye of Glen

[el cid again]

If they could be launched in the open ocean (as history and Chez both assures us is possible) then even a short radius recon around the sub would greatly extend the subs "line of sight" and thus the area sub could effectively search. Didn't the Germans go so far as to play around with "manned kites" towed behind subs to try and search a larger area?

Yes and Yes.

There are cases of Glens in the middle of the great gap between Oahu and the US Coast spotting ships effectively. BUT the Glens COULD NOT operate in even moderate seas. ONLY in very calm conditions could they land (takeoff is less a problem). The problems with such ops are that sometimes you don't know what the weather will be in future (when you land) - and sometimes you cannot find that tiny sub again! The glider idea was for subs. Surface ships did it sometimes - with kite baloons. Invented by the Russians before WWI - the very first "aircraft carrier" used baloon observers! Japan has kite baloons for observers in military service - in my mechanical games I allow players to put them on raiders. [We want student military officers to learn to think creatively].

[el cid again]

So the Glen has about half the range of the Jake acording to the stats (a little less than half) In the Game it has about half the range 4 hexes as aposed to 8 I beleave for the Jake. Each Hex in the Game is 60 NM, so it would take about 2.5 hours to fly out to the range limit, and 2.5 to fly back, takes 10 min to launch...

IF game stats were properly entered (they are in RHS) - the range of a Jake would be 21/7/5 hexes (transfer/extended/normal range). A Glen would be 9/3/2 hexes. This assumes no reserves and is not wholly realistic - these are optimistic values that risk losing the plane if there is a bad wind or combat. More realistic values would be 20/6/5 for Jake and
8/2/2 for Glen. In short - a Glen only is useful at a range of 2 hexes - in game terms. For technical reasons, in practice, it probably should only be used at one hex range - and historic missions virtually always were. I would not think the Glen was too severely limited if this were imposed - but I cannot imagine it being popular - and I followed Joes rule "follow the data"]

[el cid again]

The Radious of search is an abstracted represenatation of a likely are that the plane(s) will find a target in, presuming one is their to find. The more planes that are capable of flying the search mishion the greater the chance of suxcess, for the Glen, or say a Cruzer with a pair of float planes on board and set to 50%, your going to have a low probabality of finding a TF with a given radious at Max range, this is how the game work's, their not saying any one plane will search the whole area, it is a krap shoot, the variables are the same for all "Naval Searches".

While this is true for long range air searches - and more or less true for medium range ones - it is false for Glen! What matters with Glen is, first, altitude - you can see over a hundred nautical miles in clear conditions - and, second, you can go investigate what is that over there pretty fast.
A glen can see almost as far as it can go! [In practical operational terms its nominal radius is 120 nautical miles]

[el cid again]

So very true. Sector search was (and still is) the order of the day. Full circular searches would only be conducted by units (such as carriers) that have penetrated a defensive perimeter such as during the Doolittle raid or by units on islands that could be hit from any direction. ASW search from island bases is another situation I can think of where the enemy could be found anywhere.

Midway is a prime example of how sector searches were used on both sides. No one was looking "behind them" so to speak. They were putting all their resources ahead and to the sides to gain the earliest possible detection.

We could have 60 degree search sectors. I do it all the time in private games. Maybe this is an option for future work?

[el cid again]

As I previously pointed out the Glenn's range and speed are such that it could search with a fairly low POD (unless absolutely clear WX) to a radius of 1 hex during an AM or PM Air Phase.

Incorrect. The probability of detection is so high, if a plane missed anything I would consider shooting the observer. IF you bother to go flying at 500 feet you will begin to understand what you can see from the air you can not from a ship. You can also fly higher than this and get even more range (but lose the ability to spot a submerged submarine).
I took my daughter up in a plane at the aviation museum at Tillimook - the former airship station - and she spotted two whales before the season for them had begun. We simply circled a while - and they broached (because whales need to breathe) - so we could confirm it on film. You have a remarkably good chance of seeing a submerged submarine from the air in daylight without fog. An actual surface ship is fully visible to an observer on the surface to 8 nautical miles (navy training) - and hull down considerably more. If you put the observer 100 feet up - on a mast - you can see about 16 nautical miles well enough to call the fall of shot - and you can see mastheads much farther out. A plane extends these ranges by more than an order of magnitude - so that you can see a ship so far away you cannot identify it. In fact, if the ship is moving, you see the wake at truly vast distances.

[el cid again]

As noted before by others the launch and recovery of these planes from the Subs was something that took very little time, 10 min was all that was required in one example above to get a Glen up and away.

Drilled IJN crews could assemble an aircraft in 6 minutes. Japanese submarines had a way to pre-warm up the engine too! The First Submarine Flotilla - operating four vessels with a two or three planes on each - bombers larger than the Glen and real high speed recon planes -
could surface, assemble, launch, and form up at altitude in 42 minutes.

[Brady]

Part of the problem, or rather just how WiTP seams to handel the range equation, is that while the glen may have a range of 4, it like many other planes will almost Never spot a TF on Naval Search at max range. My experance with these ingame is that they will with some certainity spot TF's at 2 hex range and closer with some ashurance 3 hex's it's gets prety chancy and Never I have I sean them spot anyhting at 4 hexes distant on a Naval search. Thats not to say it hasent happened, but it is rare indead.

I dont dispute that the ranges are wacked for many planes in WiTP, clearly they are, it would be nice to see them all tweaked.

[el cid again]

I dont dispute that the ranges are wacked for many planes in WiTP, clearly they are, it would be nice to see them all tweaked.

They are - in RHS. The planes have been available to test for some time.
A complete test file set releases to day to testers - and probably tuesday for everyone. There are lots of changes. Allied bombers in general are much longer legged - and Pete and Glen lost range. Whole missing categories of planes were added - including heavy transports, gliders, the first designed to purpose ASW plane in the world, submarine bombers and - if they are planes - blimps. [They do fly in real life - but not in code - or you might say they fly really low. Their patrol altitude was typically a few hundred feet - so this is not too far off. Code limits you to 24 hours of flying - and in some conditions Blimps can do better than that - they have fuel and they also can drift - and eventually we mastered long patrols. They only come on line slowly - there are 30 by 1945 and none when the war begins on the west coast. By Jan 1943 there are only 3 - so it is a slow start.] I gave the Q1W1 Lorna and blimps MAD gear too. [It took a long time to figure out what that means in code terms?]

[spence]

Incorrect. The probability of detection is so high, if a plane missed anything I would consider shooting the observer. IF you bother to go flying at 500 feet you will begin to understand what you can see from the air you can not from a ship. You can a

In point of fact I have flown on SEARCH MISSIONS looking for ships on the open sea with the aid of surface search radar to boot and it is you who is incorrect claiming a high POD for objects 30 miles either side of one's trackline. That is feasible but in the real world is wishful thinking.

[ChezDaJez]

In point of fact I have flown on SEARCH MISSIONS looking for ships on the open sea with the aid of surface search radar to boot and it is you who is incorrect claiming a high POD for objects 30 miles either side of one's trackline. That is feasible but in the real world is wishful thinking.

I agree with you, Spence. I've posted on this subject before.

The formula for the theoretical visual horizon is: 1.23 X SQRT(altitude in feet). So a plane flying at 500 feet has a visual horizon of 27.5 nm. But that is the theoretical range. The actual practical range is probably half that.

Plus other factors must be taken into account such as weather conditions and seastate. Then there is the size of the target. What time of day is it? Is the sun low on the horizon? Is the aircraft heading into the sun or away from it? An observer looking up sun may only have an effective visual range of 2-3 miles while the observer on the other side of the aircraft may be able to see 8-10 miles. Does the observer have binoculars? Two factors often overlooked is the amount of aircraft vibration and how long has the lookout been at his position. Current Navy lookout standards on the P-3 call for rotating the observer every 20-30 minutes, sooner on a bright day. Looking in the direction of the sun is a good way to get the equivalent of snow blindness.

The effect that seastate has on visual search cannot be over estimated. Just the presence of whitecaps greatly reduces the chances of detecting a smaller target and also helps breakup a ship's wake, making it less detectable unless the ship is steaming at 20+ knots.

Chez

[von Beanie]

I will admit to abusing the submarine-based search capability because the game allows for it [:(]. No one has mentioned that if you play a game with Player Defined Upgrades you can change the Glens to Alfs to extend the sub-based search range to 7 hexes. Careful placing of the subs at key places gives a pretty complete picture of what's coming and going. In fact, I make the changes to the search planes on all ships (CAs and BBs).

On the other hand, there's no land-based intelligence at the ports themselves. Spies were always a real concern, and could report the arrival and departure of task forces, as well as which ships were present in a port. So although I'm abusing the sub-based searches, I'm confident the overall intelligence picture is reasonably realistic.

Any overhaul of the search capabilities should take this method of abuse into consideration also.

[Mike Solli]

Someone once posted something that was quite interesting to do with the Glens. He suggested putting them on cruisers to give a surface force the "signature" of a sub. When the bad guys send an ASW force to investigate, the cruiser force would blow them out of the water.[:D]

I never tried this myself but it does seem pretty devious.[:D]

[el cid again]

In point of fact I have flown on SEARCH MISSIONS looking for ships on the open sea with the aid of surface search radar to boot and it is you who is incorrect claiming a high POD for objects 30 miles either side of one's trackline. That is feasible but in the real world is wishful thinking.

OK. Feel free to disagree. I admit AMERICANS won't spot very often in THIS age (WWII is different).

When Elat was sunk by Styx missiles (in 1967) her lookouts spotted them inbound - the enemy never even left port to attack the destroyer at sea.
I was assigned to solve the problem of detecting and engaging, which was hard, becuse our search radar could not see missiles (they are too small) and we had no confidence American observers would either. But CNO at the time believed (correctly as it turned out) that we could detect the missiles radars - they needed to find a moving target - and often the radars of the unit which would fire the missiles - IF we learned to "think passively" (which is almost as un-American as being a diligent observer).

Even so, I trained special observers to WWII era Japanese standards, although we didn't have as good optics, we nearly did. I feared missiles guided by infra red (they were in fact made but not given to North Viet Nam - something I didn't want to depend on) - so I wanted a backup system. I have a British attitude (master the basics) - so we fielded even .50 cal MGs in the AAA role (found to still matter as late as 1982) - and regular mortars to help with distributing chaff (before chaff rockets were yet invented).

I will rephrase: IF I trained the observer, and the weather is good, and he failed to detect any surface vessel bigger than a small craft, I would consider shooting him. I expect him to spot even an airplane without fail at 50 miles - never mind a ship.

There is, however, something you were not taught (which I got from Saburo Sakai) - a visual trick called "focus on infinity." Frankly I didn't believe in it - but as a young sailor I visited an observatory (at Meadowbrook Hall) where an astronomer was teaching elementary school children. I asked him about it - and he taught us all - even children - how it works - so we could see STARS in daylight. If you cannot see a first magnitude star EVERY TIME there is one over the horizon in clear conditions, you will indeed not spot ships or planes at 30, 50 or even 100 miles. But people I train can and will.

[el cid again]

The formula for the theoretical visual horizon is: 1.23 X SQRT(altitude in feet). So a plane flying at 500 feet has a visual horizon of 27.5 nm. But that is the theoretical range. The actual practical range is probably half that.

This is incorrect - in the sense the formula cannot be right - it is a useful rule of thumb for close in ranges. The USN does not teach this in this way - they make you memorize points in the function - and how to know where these points are.

News flash: The Earth is almost a sphere (very little distortion). So a linear function of altitude will not yield range. In fact, as you gain altitude, you gain range much faster than at a linear rate.

As a radar and countermeasures guy I got to do this sort of thing a good deal - because radar signals are almost like light (they actually bend slightly in some cases - but we pretend they are like light even then).
Further, I would always track everything in my neighborhood, by every means possible. I would have radar plot a track and then see if I (or an operator) could track entirely WITHOUT radar - single station passive detection INCLUDING ranging. To do that I had to use a German formula (published in a US technical intelligence document) which permits you to calculate range for altitude of the emitter (= observer if visual). I got to the point I could track an aircraft WITHOUT using radar and be within 10% of its real range - doing the calculations in my head in an era before calculators or computers like we have now. So trust me on this: the function is wrong. The earth really is curved, and range is not a linear function of observer altitude.

[pauk]

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

Someone once posted something that was quite interesting to do with the Glens. He suggested putting them on cruisers to give a surface force the "signature" of a sub. When the bad guys send an ASW force to investigate, the cruiser force would blow them out of the water.[:D]

I never tried this myself but it does seem pretty devious.[:D]

[:D]... but there is no need for such action. you can achive the same with keeping sub equipped glenn and SC TF in sam hex. And you would avoid complaints about being gamey[;)]

[el cid again]

Plus other factors must be taken into account such as weather conditions and seastate.

Here we agree. This likely is in code now. If it isn't, we need to be fair - all observers get the same ability on both sides.

[el cid again]

An observer looking up sun may only have an effective visual range of 2-3 miles while the observer on the other side of the aircraft may be able to see 8-10 miles.

US Navy teaches a SURFACE observer (not even on the masthead) has 100% visibility for 8 nautical (not statute) miles. If you really only can see ships at 8-10 miles from an airplane - you are not doing as well as real observers can from the masthead (oops - surface!).

For a sense of actual line of sight distances, go look at a very high frequency surface search radar. For practial purposes, its beams travel line of sight. You will spot every ship within 16 nautical miles, and probably even periscopes and rafts within 8, unless it is rough weather.
You will spot large ships well in excess of 30 nautical miles - and I have seen islands with mountains at 75. IF surface search radar can see it - I can take you outside and put glasses on that bearing - and you will see it too - unless inhibited by fog or haze. If you are trained in diligent human visual search technique, you will spot the target without knowing it was there, from the radar. This mattered to me - I like to sail with radar OFF - because a smart enemy listens for radar signals. And even with it on - I wanted backup detection: the radar can go down - or be a casualty - or not be able to see a small target - like a missile head on. I trained observers to spot the missile too small for radar detection - and I expect observers so trained to report. I don't leave it to change - I make them practice.

[el cid again]

The effect that seastate has on visual search cannot be over estimated. Just the presence of whitecaps greatly reduces the chances of detecting a smaller target and also helps breakup a ship's wake, making it less detectable unless the ship is steaming at 20+ knots.

This is quite true. The nightmare case is trying to spot in conditions like the South Atlantic with winter approaching (as in the Falklands War) - or where I live - in the Gulf of Alaska - which is as rough as the North Atlantic (waves 40 feet are not rare). But warships do not (or should not) pull their lookouts in heavy weather - they are still useful. However, I admit only the Japanese navy (in our day as well as WWII) actually goes to sea to train in really bad weather.

[el cid again]

I will admit to abusing the submarine-based search capability because the game allows for it . No one has mentioned that if you play a game with Player Defined Upgrades you can change the Glens to Alfs to extend the sub-based search range to 7 hexes. Careful placing of the subs at key places gives a pretty complete picture of what's coming and going. In fact, I make the changes to the search planes on all ships (CAs and BBs).

I don't like house rules - but this is plain wrong. ONLY a big sub could operate bigger seaplanes - and then they have to wait for a sub plane - like the M6A1 - which real world was intended for the game role you describe by Adm Yamamoto. [He insisted on building type AM and the I-400 types for this role - the attack ability was a secondary mission]. But they had to expand a Type B sub to make the AM able to handle a larger plane. Glens may not be restricted by code, but should be by common sense.

[Mike Solli]

ORIGINAL: pauk

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

Someone once posted something that was quite interesting to do with the Glens. He suggested putting them on cruisers to give a surface force the "signature" of a sub. When the bad guys send an ASW force to investigate, the cruiser force would blow them out of the water.[:D]

I never tried this myself but it does seem pretty devious.[:D]

[:D]... but there is no need for such action. you can achive the same with keeping sub equipped glenn and SC TF in sam hex. And you would avoid complaints about being gamey[;)]

Now that sounds like something I may try.....