Small/quick/simple idea how to restrict land based bomber torpedo attacks...

[JeffroK]

ORIGINAL: spence

It appears to me that after Butch OHare et al shot down a number of torpedo loaded betty during raid on Rabaul

Pretty sure those bombers had bombs, not torpedos.

to encourage the historic night time attack

I've hardly ever seen historic nighttime attack in this game. Maybe it's cause I've never played either PBEM or vs AI for more than a couple of turns in 1943-45 but from other posters that doesn't seem to be the case. My impression is that historic nighttime attacks don't occur. I'd like to see such attacks by both sides though.

From Bloody Shambles Vol II
A detachment of newer G4M, which had just arrived to supplement the G3Ms in 22 Air Flotilla's genzan Kokutai....(14-17 Feb)

When news of the American Aircraft carriers approach was received at Rabaul, an immediate strike was prepared and launched..... (20 Feb)

18 Bombers were readied initially, each armed with a paid of 250kg, since no torpedoes were yet available at Vunakanau (Rabaul)

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: Mogami

Hi, I think the "check for torpedo" like the 2000lb AP bomb is good for WITP but for WITP II I think nothing less then a complete ammo production and location system will solve all our problems.

I agree.

But I would also like that this chance (for both sides!) be increased with what player does (i.e. increased chance if he/she, for example, devotes his/hers special effort for such bases by placing more than required amount of supply).

Then we would have player actually affecting the odds with his/hers (special) effort instead of pure RND (i.e. dice roll).

IMHO a requirement like what I inially mentioned (5000 or 4000 or 3000 or 2000 or 1000 tons of supply for each torpedo carrying aircraft - this is just requirement the supply would not be spend) would suffice for that.

And, of course like I said many times, this would affect both sides (both had land based torpedo carrying bombers)!


Leo "Apollo11"

[el cid again]

Enlighten us about how the Japanese developed their version of the Bf109 into a long range torpedo bombe

No such creature. There was a long range German recon plane though...but it did not in the end get accepted. And the Germans modified a four engine plane for naval patrol for IJN - just too late to get it to Japan in time for the war. They had no similar requirement. Ironically, the plane ended up being used by the Germans - who didn't want it - and not by the Japanese - who did. There are many esoteric technologies - and a major fraction of them are related to aircraft - if you get into research. Possibly the most esoteric of all is a Japanese Army program to develop atomic powered aircraft. Unlike the Germans' - who contracted with the Post Office to do a study of the idea - the Japanese actually began active research - including a region wide search for - and exploitation of - atomic fuels. Since they didn't get such a plane it is tempting to ridicule the idea. But we spent 9 figure money on the idea after the war - when dollars were more than 10 times as valuable - trying to make airplanes, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and a "space cruiser" - of which only the last turned out to be feasible - but it used actual atom bombs as "fuel" - not reactors - and a treaty against bombs in space ended the program (now declassified and published in Project Orion - written by the son of the project lead physicist Freeman Dyson). Only an open mind permits understanding of evidence: when you already "know" things you cannot properly weigh it. Regretfully - there are still rules in place which prevent full disclosure of these matters - in spite of nominal legislation requireing "automatic downgrading" - and as late as 2005 a team assigned by ONI - including two national lab scientists and 6 others under the project manager - outfitted with the highest clearances and working on a White House Request For Information - were still prevented from getting their hands on documents actually extant. I know about it because the project manager was referred to me for help - since I can get at the same information via materials in Japan in many cases. If you really are interested in technical forinsic investigation of Japanese technology - and don't mind learning things you have always been told are far from the complete story - things might be done. But I don't think you are cut out for this sort of thing - which at times can get quite ugly. [I wrote a paper - which I will send you - documented to scholarly standards - for a historian writing for USNI - and he was threatened with being sued, not being published, and being "blacklisted" - if he dared use it: titled The Controversial Cargo of U-234, it was written with the help of a neighbor, a famous Oak Ridge Chemist, who returned to Oak Ridge to get records, and it was for Germany's Last Voyage to Japan - the story of U-234. The author capitulated, and the nature of the cargo, or its fate, are not in the book, however.] Just why Axis research - particularly atomic research - is so surpressed - is subject of heated discussion among those who try to get archiveal information? But those who try uniformly have stories to tell - stories those who have no experience find incredible.

[Drongo]

and a "space cruiser" - of which only the last turned out to be feasible -

...and don't forget they developed the wave motion gun to go with it.

Or am I mixing up my Japanese wartime history with my Japanese anime?

[juliet7bravo]

Yes, and the US had a program to outfit bats with incendiary bombs and drop them over Japan. Interesting, but no impact on the war. All in all, I'd have to say the bats were probably more viable than Japan's nuclear aspirations.

[mogami]

Hi, The main problem with the U-234 and it's cargo of yellow cake is after great expense and time Japan would have finished up with around 120 pounds of radioactive material.
The plan was to spread this over a portion of the USA by detonating a conventional device.
120 pounds in one concentation would have been a heath hazzard but spread it out and I doubt anyone would have known it had even been used.

Also I wonder if Japan had the electiricity to even enrich the yellowcake to get the 120 pounds. It would have been more hazzardous to place it in a suitcase and leave that in a locker in the lobby of the San Diego Greyhound station.

[el cid again]

...and don't forget they developed the wave motion gun to go with it.

Or am I mixing up my Japanese wartime history with my Japanese anime?

Well - they did develop a missile to home on AA gun shock waves! It worked too - but it was dropped in favor of a concept more like we use today. Imagine - even if we figured out how it worked - do you really want NOT to use your AA guns when under air attack?

[el cid again]

Hi, The main problem with the U-234 and it's cargo of yellow cake is after great expense and time Japan would have finished up with around 120 pounds of radioactive material.

Not sure how you know this?

The original documents available indicate it was all hot - and so was everything in that part of the submarine - so it was impossible to "find" it using geiger counters - and they called the loading officer (one Lt Phaff) to say which tubes it was in. [The submarine was an ex minelayer, and the mine tubes had been converted to carry cargo cannisters.] So - technically speaking - they started with all radioactive material.

But the existing documentation and eyewitnesses do NOT say it is yellowcake. That is an assumption. It is formally described by an Army inventory officer (one "Major Smith") as uranium oxide. That - in industry - might indicate yellow cake. But uranium oxide can come in a number of forms, and there are some contradictory indicators - including the actual labels on the containers themselves. There was a chemical analysis done at Oak Ridge - and I regard that as much better evidence than the documents and witness accounts - which are (as I said) contradictory. Provided only you believe that the analysis is not falsified.

I have a friend - and Army biologist trained in nuclear matters - who believes the evidence is best explained by radon gas. You don't get that with normal uranium oxide - you get that from radium. This may well have been radiological weapon material. A British nuclear researcher has found evidence of a German-Japanese agreement involving such material - and a rather remarkable American academic - working in German language materials he published (sometimes a page is 95% notes supporting only a few lines of text - and I read German) - seems to have found compelling evidence of a German "betatron" - a sort of cyclotron like beam machine - more suitable to produce material in quantity than a lab instrument (including diagrams and photographs).
Wether the material was for operational use or research is uncertain at this point, but the Japanese baloon bombing offensive was in fact a test of the delivery technology for use by a different wmd - anthrax vectored by fleas in ceramic bombs that would not kill the fleas - and there was a navy project to use baloons from submarine aircraft carriers - actually a mission staging up when, for whatever reason, it was decided Japan could not use wmd on US forces. [Several programs got aborted, including both army and navy CW ones, on orders from more than one place - including Imperial General HQ and IJA Chief of Staff Gen Sugiama]. But if you believe the diplomatic protocol signed in Dec 1944, Japan was to use German material to attack the USA - because winds move from West to East - probably San Francisco was the target - because that is one target the First Submarine Flotilla practiced for - the other being to hit the Gatun Lock gates with torpedos and bombs from M6A1s.

[el cid again]

The plan was to spread this over a portion of the USA by detonating a conventional device.
120 pounds in one concentation would have been a heath hazzard but spread it out and I doubt anyone would have known it had even been used.

My Army biologist agrees - even if it was 1200 pounds as we think - how many bombs could that charge? I managed to get EVERY US radiological bomb test report released - from a contractor (Bectel) - something an academic from UCAL had tried to do for decades without success. And I still have them. It appears RW weapons are not really WMD in the sense NW, CW and BW are - they are much more expensive per pound than NW and much less effective than BW or CW - not a great deal. But IF combined with incendiary bombs, they might do awful things to firefighters and others in the target area - who would not suspect this agent was present. [This was attempted in the first WTO bombing - using a chemical agent that turned to harmless powder - because the attackers didn't know their physics. But they TRIED to target firemen.]

[el cid again]

Also I wonder if Japan had the electiricity to even enrich the yellowcake to get the 120 pounds. It would have been more hazzardous to place it in a suitcase and leave that in a locker in the lobby of the San Diego Greyhound station

Here you are confused. You are thinking of trying to separate U-235 from natural uranium - and even if you did - it is not a radiological weapon agent. [You can eat it - not that it tastes good]. A RW weapon uses other things.

But IF Japan wanted to separate U-235 they had plenty of power - a project near Hungnam Korea - hydro power. You heard of just one of the dams - Chosen Reservior of USMC fame. These are the most efficient hydro plants in the world - because they have huge static heads - the pipes run for a vast distance and there are many hundreds of feet of head - making the turbines very efficient. It makes more power than TVA. Called Konan by the Japanese, this area was run by a strange billionaire named Nogouchi- an industrilist - he was a Navy Rear Admiral (for the power the rank gives) and the military governor of NE Korea (don't cross this guy there - he is second only to God). Imprisoned as a First Class war criminal, he was able to buy his freedom with hundreds of thousands of dollars of radium (burried in the yard of the famous Col Tsuji, who was in hiding in SE Asia) - and by offering contacts in China. I have a rather good biography - but only in Japanese. Anyway, he began making heavy water at Konan soon after fission was discovered, and gave Japan the worlds largest heavy water plant and inventory (secret from us - we had no idea) during the war. With this, you don't need to separate U-235 to make a reactor - you can just use natural uranium - it is better than graphite - you get a smaller reactor. In fact, the problem is heavy water is expensive - more expensive than separated U-235 to reactor grade. He also built Japans only uranium refinery there - although Japan also had the ancient one at Shanghai - used for the pottery industry (uranium makes a pigment). It appears Japan designed a good separator - one we felt unqualified to attempt - a centrafuge. It was better than the German design (since the war it has become standard, though) - it used air bearings. We aso captured more of these than we did the German model - so clearly Japan had made some effort to master separation technology for something (that is - not everything was to use natural uranium fuel and heavy water moderator). The other technology there involves thorim - it is very hard to understand - the term reported by Korea historians is "thorium bomb." This does not make much sense in terms of bombs we know about - but it appears the British also had such a concept - and developed it secretly because they didn't trust the Americans to share the uranium bomb. [They were right- we did refuse to share it - in violation of wartime deals giving us a jump start with British help]. Problem is - the thorium bomb is not a very good military weapon - it might be a good terrorist weapon though. That may explain the hyper secrecy about both Japanese and British projects - both of which allegedly were tested during the war (the British in Australia - this getting back to us because it was on the land of a rancher who was a US citizen - and he made a secret report to a US consol - who had no idea what he was reporting - making him a good source). Since the report was not part of any nuclear project - it never got classified the way other things did - and it gives us information not otherwise available. But officials in US and Australia and Canada all say the British "thorium bomb" existed - so I am no longer sure a Japanese one is as "impossible" as I long believed.

[mogami]

Hi, I was not thinking about a reactor. I was thinking about a weapon.
1200 lbs of yellow cake at 77 percent purity would yeild 1200x.77=924 lbs of material that has a .72 weapons usable content.
The USA found more economical methods other then centerufuge to seperate the material.

If Japan had so much capacity why does the U-234 U-234 even become more then a foot note? (why did they need it?) (I am assuming your billionaire admiral got his radium from the waste of uranium processing)(but why would they then need to use heavy water in their reactor?)

Never mind. (Consider how much more damage Godzilla would do if it was Japan that used the bomb?)

Thorium is a better fuel. there is 3 times as much on earth and where only .7% of uranium can be used almost 100 percent of mined Thorium can be used (40 percent more fuel for the same amount of material) As far a bombs go it might be better. Th-232 is not fissile but after absorbing neutrons it becomes U-233 which is. (with a higher neutron yield then U-235 or Pu-239)


In a few more years everyone on earth will know and love Thorium

[pasternakski]

Put it in a torpedo and sling it under a Nell. Decide how to limit the number of Nells carrying nuclear weapons.

Then, this discussion might be relevant to the thread's topic.

Might be.

Of course, I'm a flaming jerk and have no business suggesting that a moderator might be engaging in prohibited conduct on the forums.

By the way, I still think Leo's idea has considerable merit, particularly as it can be put into effect in WitP, not WitP - Return of the King.

[mogami]

Hi, I feel chastised. [X(]
I think the topic has been covered well enough.
I'll let Apollo write the poll questions and post it.

"Solution to excessive Torpedo use in WITP"

1. Supply
2. special handling
3. Count and track torpedos (including training)

"Of course, I'm a flaming jerk and have no business suggesting that a moderator might be engaging in prohibited conduct on the forums"

unlike some I would pee on you if you were on fire. (buddy)

[ChezDaJez]

The other technology there involves thorim - it is very hard to understand - the term reported by Korea historians is "thorium bomb." This does not make much sense in terms of bombs we know about - but it appears the British also had such a concept - and developed it secretly because they didn't trust the Americans to share the uranium bomb. [They were right- we did refuse to share it - in violation of wartime deals giving us a jump start with British help]. Problem is - the thorium bomb is not a very good military weapon - it might be a good terrorist weapon though. That may explain the hyper secrecy about both Japanese and British projects - both of which allegedly were tested during the war (the British in Australia - this getting back to us because it was on the land of a rancher who was a US citizen - and he made a secret report to a US consol - who had no idea what he was reporting - making him a good source). Since the report was not part of any nuclear project - it never got classified the way other things did - and it gives us information not otherwise available. But officials in US and Australia and Canada all say the British "thorium bomb" existed - so I am no longer sure a Japanese one is as "impossible" as I long believed.

The problem with thorium is that you need a reactor to turn it into fissionable U-233. While thorium is 3 times more abundant on earth than is uranium and does have some attactive features for bomb making (including greater reactivity and smaller critical sphere requirements), it also has some very substantial problems that are very difficult to overcome.

The first is that U-232 is almost always produced inconjunction with U-233 and cannot be separated from it. U-232 emits very powerful gamma rays (thallium-208). This would produce a very serious radiation poisoning risk for anyone working with the material. These gamma rays are twice as powerful as those produced by plutonium and have a much longer half-life. This would also make the concealment of a "thorium" bomb quite difficult as its gamma rays could be easily detected. That alone greatly reduces it risk of being used as a terrorist weapon.

The second is that it is much easier to produce plutonium-239 in the type of natural uranium reactor required to produce U-233 from thorium (but which also allows the greatest concentration of thallium-208). If a country possesses a reactor capable of making enriched uranium (which is the best kind for producing U-233), it is already capable of turning natural uranium into U-235. U-233 can be produced using a cyclotron but the output of usable U-233 is so miniscule that it would take years to produce enough to make one bomb. This is probably why no country, through military or civilian means, has produced enough U-233 to make a viable bomb. There are so many other easier ways to do so.

Nishina, Japan's leading atomic scientist, also grossly under estimated the amount of time required to achieve critical mass by an order of ten. It's doubtful whether such a weapon would have actually been able to detonate with any substantial reaction.

While I have no doubt that Germany and Japan were researching nuclear weapons, it is my opinion that neither, by themselves, were capable of doing so prior to 1950. And of course the war ended well before then. Japan's difficulty in making a bomb wasn't so much a lack of scientific knowledge as it was a lack of infrastructure (reactors) and materials (U-233, U-235) capable of supporting a viable bomb-making program.

BTW, there are some people who insist that Japan actually exploded a thorium bomb off the coast of Korea on 10 Aug 45. Assuming they had the capability, this makes absolutely no sense to me. I would think it would be far more likely that they would have used it against the invading Red Army.

Bottom line is that Japan was years away from developing an atomic bomb of any type.

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: Mogami

Hi, I feel chastised. [X(]
I think the topic has been covered well enough.
I'll let Apollo write the poll questions and post it.

"Solution to excessive Torpedo use in WITP"

1. Supply
2. special handling
3. Count and track torpedos (including training)

"Of course, I'm a flaming jerk and have no business suggesting that a moderator might be engaging in prohibited conduct on the forums"

unlike some I would pee on you if you were on fire. (buddy)

OK... OK... OK... here we go...


"Mogami" can you create a poll with following options and explanayory text:


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Solution to excessive Torpedo use in WITP (from land bases)"

1) NO CHANGE OF CODE - Everything is OK as it is!
2) SMALL CHANGE OF CODE - Supply requirement (x tonns of supply required for each aircraft carrying torpedo on strike)
3) SMALL CHANGE OF CODE - Special handling of torpedo (like 1000 lb AP bombs for Allies)
4) BIG CHNAGE OF CODE - Count and track torpedos (including training)


Explanation:

#1
Everything is OK as it is and no change in WitP is needed regarding torpedo use from land bases.


#2
What if we require x tons of supply (1000 / 2000 / 3000 / 4000 / 5000 for example - we can adjust the number easily) for _EACH_ bomber to carry torpedo instead of bombs on "Naval Attack"?

This supply would _NOT_ be consumed - it would only be requirement.

That way we give player a chance to maintain bases with land based torpedo capability if he/she wants but it also pressure him/her to really put a lot of effort (in supply) to enable it!

With this for small/quick/simple way we would easily stop unrealistic usage of large number of torpedo capable bombers based on land and make those attack exception and not a rule (especially in those cases where players off-load CV/CVE/CVL to land base and then conduct massive torpedo strikes).

This affects both sides and it is not one side penalty!


#3
Create change for torpedoes similar to exising rule for Allied 1000 lb AP bomb.

This is more-or-less RND (i.e. dice roll) and thus it does not allow player to affect it.


#4
Complete and huge rewrite of code that allows individual tracking of ammunition (IMHO thsi is a "pipe dream" that woudl never happen and it is only possible, evetually, for WitP II).


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Leo "Apollo11"

[wild_Willie2]

I would have no problem with the torp routine changed a bit, but could we then INCREASE the damage of the japanese 250 KG AP bomb?. As it stands now, ships (especially AK/AP) are WAY to resistant against bombs, modifying the torp routine would leave the japanese player with NO effective shipkiller.....

[el cid again]

Hi, I was not thinking about a reactor. I was thinking about a weapon.
1200 lbs of yellow cake at 77 percent purity would yeild 1200x.77=924 lbs of material that has a .72 weapons usable content.

I understand - really I do. This is why I said you are confused:
the radioactive material in regular yellowcake is U-235 (neglecting trace elements). It is NOT radiological weapon material - you cannot make a radiological weapon with it. Really you cannot. Also, you are confusing chemical purity and isotope purity. A statement that the material is 77% pure means the material is 77% uranium. There is no way for that all to be U-235 - and most people think it was natural uranium. If it was - it would only be 0.3% U-235 - or 0.3% of 77% by weight. But it wasn't.
That is, the physical evidence is that the material, the containers, and everything near them was hot. It does not matter how pure it is - even submarine reactor fuel (which is more highly enriched than weapons fuel) is not hot - and you can handle it safely - UNLESS there is a critical mass. And IF there is a critical mass you get an atomic explosion of some kind. [Don't do it just right you get a "fizzile" - the average yield = 60 tons - enough to ruin your whole day - more than any non-nuclear weapon ever made. Do it right you get something like 10 to 20 thousand tons of yield.] IF this was radiological weapon material, it was not normal industrial yellowcake with natural unanium oxide. There are several possibilities - but that is not one of them. IF all you have is normal yellowcake - you have only a very small amount of U-235 - not enough for a bomb or a reactor - not even close. Now if it was highly enriched U-235, it might be very useful for such things - but it would not then be hot in the sense that terrified Manhattan Project Scientists - including Oppi - who was present when the containers were opened - by a German - in case they were booby trapped!

[el cid again]

The USA found more economical methods other then centerufuge to seperate the material.

No it did not. Because there is no method more efficient. It only rejected it as beyond our capability in the era. It is now the standard method used in the world because it IS the most efficient. It took a long time to get our diffusion system working - same thing happened in the USSR - and again in China. It is anything but efficient.

[el cid again]

If Japan had so much capacity why does the U-234 U-234 even become more then a foot note? (why did they need it?) (I am assuming your billionaire admiral got his radium from the waste of uranium processing)(but why would they then need to use heavy water in their reactor?)

First big problem: East (and South) Asia is poor in uranium. Not so poor in Thorium - explaining Japanese - and present day Indian - interest in it.
So fuel supply was always a big problem for Japan. It was a big problem for us - and we had a head start - getting half the richest ore ever found.
[Ore from Shinklobwe was the richest ever mined - as much as 42% uranium - when good ores in all other mines are around 2% and ores as low as 0.2 or 0.3% are sometimes economic to mine. There were 2000 metric tons of this ore - and Union Minere du Hout Katanga - which had a monopoly on radium - sent half to Europe and half to New York - to INSURE an atomic bomb race between Germany and the USA - so the company could profit! We went to Africa in 1942 to get the "tailings" of their mine - well over 10,000 tons of material that was 18 to 26% uranium - many times richer than produced by any other mine in the world - then or since. Japan CONSIDERED a raid to get that same ore - FYI !! But we got it - and they did not - and even so it was hard to get enough to make just one uranium bomb. Which is why we didn't test it - if we tested it we would have none at all to use!]

[el cid again]

Never mind. (Consider how much more damage Godzilla would do if it was Japan that used the bomb?)

If Japan had used an atom bomb - or hit the US with biological weapons as Gen Ichii wanted to - I believe we might have exterminated all life in Japan - even including Koreans and US prisoners! [We know numbers of both died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki - and no one has ever expressed the slightest qualms about that - which I find surprising - but there it is. As it was Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthou wanted to ban industry in Japan - meaning there must be starvation until the population was vastly smaller. Starvation did orrur - and went on for some time - until we decided we wanted Japan as an ally against the Russians. The wife of Saburo Sakai died of starvation as late as 1948.]