Ridiculous

[RAM]

we'll end this discussion without any agreement on damages, combat results ,etc...

but from this moment we all know and must agree that Nikademus has a love-hate relationship with his banana...
as bad as it sounds [;)]. he first follows his banana's orders, then he makes clear that he wants noone coming close to it (look at his signature), and now all in a sudden he wants the banana dead...


I still don't know what or why are you talking about bananas but at least I've got a good laugh [:D]

[Hornblower]

Last night I pulled off a Midway. I used an old trick I used to use in SSI’s fighting steal vol3. namely putting my CV’s up in the north beyond the scouting radius of the japs. Then I hit them from where they aren’t looking. I’ve tried it before but they always- up till now- scouted me out. IJN sent 3 cv’s and 3 cvl’s with escorts south to once again pound the heck out of Lunga like they have for the last month. This time I was ready and willing to commit my CV’s. sara, lex, Big-E and Yorktown with 3 bb’s, 4 CLAA’s and CA’s DD’s as escort. Dawn arised and the IJN launched there strikes at Lunga, but nothing at the USN TF’s. I guess they were fixated at Lunga?? Well next thing I know my strike goes in against marginal CAP and Bang! When all was said and done, 2 cv’s, 2 cvl’s a CA and a few DD’s are at the bottom, with no ship losses to me- not so much as a scratch actually.

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: RAM

we'll end this discussion without any agreement on damages, combat results ,etc...

but from this moment we all know and must agree that Nikademus has a love-hate relationship with his banana...
as bad as it sounds [;)]. he first follows his banana's orders, then he makes clear that he wants noone coming close to it (look at his signature), and now all in a sudden he wants the banana dead...

hey....its Luskan's banana that i have the problem with. MY banana is doing just fine thank you.

[RAM]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus


hey....its Luskan's banana that i have the problem with.

This is getting worse...MUCH MUCH worse [:D][:D][:D]

[Williamb]

admit do find problem with the TBs on early US carriers.

Had the Lady Lex catch a retreating TF of 4 Japanese DDs and 2 APs.

Lex launched a escourt of a dozen Wildcats and about 20 SBDs. and not ONE torpedo bomber.

I had the cap of the Lex set to 60% and both the divebombers and torpedo bombers were at 40% naval search.

I have had several carrier strikes on sevarl targets have yet to see a single torpedo bomber get launched.

Dunno why that is.

[Xargun]

ORIGINAL: William Amos

admit do find problem with the TBs on early US carriers.

Had the Lady Lex catch a retreating TF of 4 Japanese DDs and 2 APs.

Lex launched a escourt of a dozen Wildcats and about 20 SBDs. and not ONE torpedo bomber.

I had the cap of the Lex set to 60% and both the divebombers and torpedo bombers were at 40% naval search.

I have had several carrier strikes on sevarl targets have yet to see a single torpedo bomber get launched.

Dunno why that is.

What range ? TBDs have a very short range... 2 hexes I believe.

Xargun

[Williamb]

Hmm was two or three hexes. Might have to recheck that.

I tend to avoid dragging my Carriers too close. Might be why Im not seeing them fly.

[Xargun]

ORIGINAL: William Amos

Hmm was two or three hexes. Might have to recheck that.

I tend to avoid dragging my Carriers too close. Might be why Im not seeing them fly.

US TBDs have a range of 2 (I think).. So if you're sitting 3 hexes away that is your problem.. Also, setting TBDs to search is a waste due to their short range.. Use them all for attack so maybe one or two torps will actually detonate.

Xargun

[Williamb]

OK thanks.

Was sort of a chance encounter anyway. The Japanese had been at wake Isle but started leaving when the US carriers approached

Think it was a Drive bomber search that caught them.

[rroberson]

ORIGINAL: Mogami

ORIGINAL: rroberson

My ships sank his lived to fight another day. In the famous battle of wake island...my two carriers caught three of his...he never knew I was there. I did a bit of damage to him, he countered striked and sank one of mine outright and heavily damaged the other one. A month later in the famous battle of midway same situation...I catch him ...he doesnt spot me, I get the first launch off...do a bit of damage, his counter strike sinks one of mine and leaves the other one burning.

Hi, Don't take the order you see strikes occur as anything. If he didn't see you he would not launch a strike at all. I think the USN dive bombers are as good as Japanese at start. (1000lb bomb versus 500lb bomb) But USN torpedo planes don't count and early in game the USN CV are understrength in fighters. So more enemy bombers get through your CAP and fewer of your bombers get through his CAP. Had the Japanese been caught by surprise (with airgroups set to bomb Midway) you would have cleaned up.

So the problem is number of torpedo hits. His divebombers will not sink USN CV outright very often. 2xUSN CV=30 torpedo planes. range of 2 hexes. 3xIJN CV=60+ torpedo planes range of 4 with torpedo 5 with bomb.

Around Mid 42 USN torpedo plane increases range to that of divebombers.

I guess my take is the superiorty of his weapons systems I dont mind....early in the war his torpedos "should" clean up. My assumption (wrongly) was if my carriers slipped up on him without him knowing i was there...my first strike should of put him out of business....1000 lbs are nothing to sneeze at...his return strikes would get their hits in...but there should of been a burning carrier or 3 to return too...not fully functioning flight decks as was the case.

[John B]

Yes, its the range factor with the TBDs. I've only seen them in action once so far (by July 42) and they didn't hit anything. The good news however is that by the same date the Wildcat F4Fs on the CVs are cutting swathes through the land-based Zeros and Bettys.

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Tristanjohn,

ORIGINAL: Tristanjohn
But that's just the point, Erik. It matters not what you think or I think or somebody else thinks, for history is the only and absolute judge of what was possible and unless WitP was designed to be kind of fantasic prism through which we might reinterpret history then historical results need to be the norm, not some rarity which pleases one opinion or the other.

Put another way, given Japanese and American actions at Midway the result was not so hard to believe, and while I understand why, at this scale, the game cannot hope to model all of the myriad detail which went into realizing that result, at the least the game model ought to recognize and make an effort to emulate that historical result. As with UV, this is apparently not the case before us.

Just to clarify what might have been unclear in my comments - I actually think Midway is quite unusual and I meant that if you ran the battle 50 times, I'd expect to see the historical results perhaps once or twice. The rest would be much closer to an even exchange. Any number of analyses I've read indicate that by all measurements, Midway was a fluke (a very good fluke for the US, but still).

Regards,

- Erik

I've read that the US Naval war college regularly runs simulations of Midway, and they claim they have never been able to reproduce the historical results...

[BlackVoid]

The model is not bad, maybe it needs some tweaking.
What is totally not modelled is always the morale of the people and the leaders on both sides. Also hindsight is... There are no unknown weapon capavilities, etc...

Even before Midway the japanese made the big mistake that they did not send suffient force to the Coral Sea. Midway was bad intel + bad luck + bad decision to attack that close to PH and again with too little.

After that, the allies managed to take the initiative and break the enemies morale at Guadalcanal. If the japanese are more confident in themselves and conduct the operation against Guadalcanal with overwhelming force they could have won it. The US had only a few CVs in the area. Instead they committed themselves to little more than harassing attacks and lost totally. After Midway their morale was broken. (It is also possible and beneficial to break the morale of your PBEM opponent. When he no longer believes he can win, he had lost. )

These are the factors for which it is totally impossible to accurately model a war in a game (especially if 2 people are playing it). Capabilities are modelled not events. The events are shaped by the players.

[Dunedain]

rtrapasso: That's because Midway was a case of Divine intervention. By all rights,
the U.S. should have gotten crushed at Midway. But then suddenly the Jap scout plane's radio
doesn't work, so he can't warn the Jap commander that U.S. carriers are in the area,
then U.S. dive bombers arrive with immaculate timing to hit the Jap carriers right as
the Jap fighters have gone low to hit our torpedo bombers, then the dive bombers
deliver multiple hits on the Jap carriers, and even with loose ordnance lying about
leading to truly devastating effect.

It's been noted by military historians that such an utterly incredible timing of events
is almost beyond belief. They don't call it the "Miracle at Midway" for nothing...

[juliet7bravo]

Or, as Nimitz put it; "Shot full of luck".

Flip side...it was solid intel that put them there, leadership that took advantage of the situation, leadership that had the moral courage to exploit the situation (unlike the IJN who brought everything that floated) and the professionalism of the aircrews that made the attacks. With corresponding poor intel, poor leadership, and bad judgement on the opposing side.

Without luck and "Divine Intervention" though, it very easily could have been 2 USN carriers sunk with little or no damage to the IJN.

[Dunedain]

It's been my experience that there's no such thing as luck. Once you go beyond a certain point
of "highly unlikely", you enter another area...

[juliet7bravo]

TANSTAAFL.

When the rubber met the road, the USN did almost everything important right, the IJN did almost everything important wrong.

God helps those who help themselves <shrug>.

[Mike Scholl]

MIDWAY was not all that unlikely. The Japanese advanced with an overly complicated plan
and forces divided all over the Pacific. The whole thing depended on everything coming
together just the way they predicted and the Americans neatly cooperating by seeing each
piece at just the right time to be lured into doing the wrong thing. The thought that the US
might be reading their codes and act according to it's own best interests was not even con-
sidered.

The Americans countered by sneakily taking advantage of that code-breaking to make every
one of the Japanese assumptions a failacy. With good planning, they managed to get three
CV's and Midway's airgroups all in range of an understrength Kido Butai all at the same time,
and without the Japanese spotting or knowing about it. Luck certainly played a role, but had
the Japanese launched a really strong scouting effort instead of the penny-pinching effort they
made one catapault screw-up wouldn't have mattered. Had they brought a truely "combined
fleet" they would have had the assets to do the job right. Had they not pre-planned everything
down to the last minute, they might have had a more flexible outlook and been better prepared
for a suprise. As it was, they stepped on their own d--ks in about every concievable manner
and deserved the beating they got. Both sides made their own luck, and most of what the Japs
made for themselves was of the BAD variety.

[mogami]

Hi, Dispite all the advance warning and intell at Midway where the USN had 3 CV the strike that did in the Japanese was an unescorted (for all practical purpose in WITP terms) strike from just a fraction of the available CV aircraft.
I think WITP/UV sometimes makes it too hard to damage enemy CV since CAP is more effective in the game that it appears to have been in actual practice.
Midway was a series of disjointed US strikes that still got the job done. The IJN response was from 1 CV and it scored hits with 2 strikes. (These strikes slowed the Yorktown down enough for IJN sub to finish the job)
I shudder to think what might have happend if Nagumo had just kept the reserve aircraft armed for counter strike and had been able to launch. It would have been a 100+ plane strike. (And his CV would have been less vunerable when USN strike arrived. )
You really can't do a Midway battle in WITP without one of the players setting his groups to missions other then Naval Strike and then being caught by enemy CV.

[hithere]

You really can't do a Midway battle in WITP without one of the players setting his groups to missions other then Naval Strike and then being caught by enemy CV.

THANK YOU!!! i have said it a few times but glad to see someone important say it...a Midway battle IS possible, IF you do what in essence, the Japanese player did. The problem is that in WITP, you don't have to put on either navel attack or ground attack. you can do a naval attack with a secondary of ground. because of this, i don't think that you will ever have a Midway battle. No one will limit their attack type, esp with knowledge of what could happen. That said, since this game does 24 hour turns...there is no other way to do this...if the game did 4 hour turns it would be better..but then how long would it take

As for the subject of this post i have 2 things to say
1) sorry but i have to say you kinda got what you desearved (no, i can't spell, but you know what I mean [:)] ) no commander would sacrifice his/her forces like that, esp in the US, with basically no hope of the golden rule : to inflict equal or greater damage on the enemy. yes...you did appear to get screwed (can i say screwed?) with the bombers and such that may have allowed you to possibly meet the golden rule, but the possiblity of your loss was much greater than the possiblity to inflicting damage. it would be bad to lose PM, but not as bad as 2 carriers. the Japanese will have to keep PM supplied and such, it may even help you by not loseing transports and stuff and building up your other bases. then also...at that point, Japan would of had to divide up his carrier force to protect PM.

2) personally...i never put my CAP more than 40% to 50% when going against Japanese carriers. that helps the strike inflict more damage, (which is your only hope) and the extra few fighters over my CV's never really seem to stop a strike anyway. this is pre 43 ofcourse.

the preceding is the opinion of the author and may not reflect the opinion of the author