Bombing Alt vs enemy shipping Question

[ny59giants]

Mike,
I'm using 11,000 for the 4e bombers on naval attack. Since 4e's were used for other missions (Oil/Resources/AF), I don't mind.

P.S. - Did you sink Boise yet??  [:D][:D][:D]

[donnie_1974_texas]

I really don't have much qualms with altitude of missions except for some of the ways the game models things, which I think is what Castor is saying raises some problems.

For example,

1) 4E bombers, honestly, they hit almost all the time even at 12-15K feet once they reach 70+ experience. I believe the reason is that the game treats each bomb individually for targetting purposes. Thus, they all get X% chance to hit. Yes, however, only one bomb is allowed to hit per level bomber - but, when you have so many on one plane one will probably hit. Reality is, I doubt too many B17s were going to make a dozen passes over a target to drop their bombs one at a time - they dropped sticks of bombs typically, especially on higher altitude missions (and 12-15K is really not high altitude compared to the levels they were flying at in Europe).

2) On 4E bombers and level bombers in general. They are able to destroy industry and airfields very easily. Either that or cost to repair is too expensive - cost to expand factories may be too cheap by the way (resulting in the Japanese player with good management being able to make tons of planes - all of course with the interchangeable Nak and Mit. engines...).

Maybe hitting industry and resources in the undeveloped SRA should be easier than in the middle of a crowded German city or in a highly disperesed Japanese homeland industry of small shops - but, probably not as easy as it is in WitP. 30-40 B17s in range of your resources and oil centers - say goodbye. With a good leader with high inspiration, morale will stay up despite losses.

3) Flak - yes, there is a gap for the larger caliber AA from 6000-9000 feet. There is not enough of the light AA modelled in the game. For example, Allied infantry brigades having no AA defense at all while Zeros strafe them mercilessly at 2000 feet...I think something would have shot back, MGs in particular. There are other problems with flak. I think it generally works OK with things like defending against ground attack (when its there) and city attack. The model is perhaps wrong on Port and Airfield attacks as the bombers tend to disable a lot of the flak guns in their strikes. Of course, the other big issue is that all the flak is assumed to be at all the places - not real accurate for a 60 mile hex...

Most of the above are fundamental issues in the model and there is not much that can be done outside of changing code.

Complaints? Yeah maybe. All in all though, it is a pretty good game with extraordinary detail and complexity. Not much out there like it.

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: spence

The complaints against "200 4E bombers attacking KB at 1000 ft" seem mostly to revolve around the idea that USAAF doctrine did not support/include/advocate such attacks. The problem as I see it is that IJN doctrine did not support/include/advocate bringing KB anywhere near a place that could base 200 4E bombers. If that meant surrendering 1000 miles of ocean to the Allies then that's what KB did.
They were raiders not stand up fighters for air supremacy and the IJN recognized that. The game enhances the ability of KB to perform in the latter role. If the IJN Player is going to "experiment" with rather unlikely air supremacy missions against large concentrations of Allied LBA he should be prepared for the possible consequences and not cry foul when the Allied Player refuses to play by the "historical" rules.

(The concept of asymmetric warfare where one side follows rules/conventions and the other is free to ignore them has no place in a game about WWII IMHO.)

ORIGINAL: spence

The complaints against "200 4E bombers attacking KB at 1000 ft" seem mostly to revolve around the idea that USAAF doctrine did not support/include/advocate such attacks. The problem as I see it is that IJN doctrine did not support/include/advocate bringing KB anywhere near a place that could base 200 4E bombers. If that meant surrendering 1000 miles of ocean to the Allies then that's what KB did.
They were raiders not stand up fighters for air supremacy and the IJN recognized that. The game enhances the ability of KB to perform in the latter role. If the IJN Player is going to "experiment" with rather unlikely air supremacy missions against large concentrations of Allied LBA he should be prepared for the possible consequences and not cry foul when the Allied Player refuses to play by the "historical" rules.

(The concept of asymmetric warfare where one side follows rules/conventions and the other is free to ignore them has no place in a game about WWII IMHO.)

everything you write is fine... though perhaps you should come away from "don´t bring KB within 1000 miles of any Allied base size 5 because 200 4Es. Don´t bring ANY ship in range of 14 hexes of an Allied base size 5 because EVERY day there are 200 4Es ready to strike at any target they want.

Not even a third of the planes should be ready for a strike! Yes, also 200 Betties can be stacked at one base. Yes also there shouldn´t be 200 ready... no doubt. But if you want to talk about USAAF heavy bombers and really think those should be ready 100% to either attack an airfield OR at the same time be ready to attack shipping at 100 or 1000 ft then you´re off, completely. Again, same goes for Japanese.

The difference is huge though. As Allied I´m having perhaps 700 (or even more??) 4Es in my game in late 43, while I have perhaps 300 Betties as Japanese, so stacking 200 Betties in one place is just nuts, as nuts as having 2000 assault points on Wake... Stacking 170 4Es in 4 places is perfect, now you rule all your fronts... Those 4Es just NEVER would have been used in the role you describe it, you are some kind of dreaming about the USAAF sinking the whole Japanese fleet with 4Es at 100 ft like on one of those propaganda paintings. This imagination is as FANTASTIC as is the game we play. As fantastic as thinking about Betties sinking the whole US fleet. Now you will tell me that Betties use torps! Yes, they do. And with torps they can sink BBs. Yes, they do. And this is the only advantage a Betty has over a B-24. Every other target (means ship) will be sunk by the B-24. In late 43 all have such a high exp. that they don´t use 500 lb bombs in 90% of the cases I have seen so far, which means 1000 lb bombs which penetrate everything - except BBs. Put 3 1000 lb bombs into a IJN carrier or cruiser, it´s at least as dangerous for the ship as 3 torps into a USN carrier or cruiser. With the difference that I will achieve far more hits with my 80+ exp. USAAF heavy bombers at 1000 ft. (as I have 3 or 4 times more of them, carrying 4x1000 lb bombs instead of 1 torp, so 4 die rolls instead of 1 - means a higher chance to hit). While they won´t hit 16 times more, they will devastate every TF - again, except BBs.

The 4Es are the NUMBER ONE factor in this game. It should be called 4E bombers playing fantasy in the Pacific. No completely off production model for the Japanese, no Japanese torpedoe bomber, no super duper torpedoe availability everywhere is nearly as effecting the game like the completely overmodelled 4E bombers. Don´t know how far you came in PBEM so far, though from late 42 on there is nothing as powerful as my 4E fleet. And I don´t even use them (except Navy 4Es) for attacks on ships. I´m using them to drop more bombs than the 8th dropped in Europe, while targetting jungle strips. Airfields and ports all get wiped out (I don´t even do ressource/HI/oil attacks on occupied bases). And still this bomber fleet is so powerful, there´s nothing that is even 10% as influencing my game.

So if you think that pilots trained for flying attacks on airfields, factories,... should achieve more hits on ships that were achieved on factory complexes in real life then be it. IMO there should have been a hardcoded difference between bomber squadrons, or bomber daitais, that makes some available for attacks on ships and some (or perhaps the majority) not available (or highly ineffective if allowed to attack ships).

Again, I´m not saying the Japanese side is modelled anywhere more realistic, though that doesn´t make the current situation of Allied 4Es bombing in formations of hundred+ bombers at 1000 ft against 500 25mm flak guns any better. I remember again Denisohns article about Allied bombers attacking "armed merchantmen" [:D] in the Bismarck sea. The B-25 complained about the heavy flak fire those "armed merchantmen" put up . Single Japanese merchants put up heavy flak fire??? Would love to see a 4E coming in at 1000 ft against an "AA undergunned" IJN cruiser or Battleship if single cruising "armed merchantmen" are not a target that is helpless it seems. And I bet even a 4E bomber in reality wouldn´t be happy if pumped full of 25mm ammunition... Can´t be really hard to hit such a BIG target at 1000 ft and I wonder what those 4E bombers in reality would have achieved if really going in against "KB" at 1000 ft. I bet they would have gone in level bombing at 10.000 ft+ and those 200 [:D] bombers would do a "car wash" on the carriers with a very, very low hit rate...

It´s not the same as the tests made with skip bombing against merchants...

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: spence

Pretty sure a single plane is allowed a single hit by the routine, that is a B17 is not going to land a whole stick of bombs on a ship.

No plane is allowed to hit with more than one bomb. Though the higher the number of bombs, the higher the hit chance. Every bomb gets a die roll, which would mean that only one bomb is dropped every time, which would further mean a B-24, B-17 would do 8 attack runs. [8|] Hopefully (which I doubt) there is a difference between a medium bomber dropping bombs on ships and a heavy bomber...

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: donnie_1974_texas

I really don't have much qualms with altitude of missions except for some of the ways the game models things, which I think is what Castor is saying raises some problems.

For example,

1) 4E bombers, honestly, they hit almost all the time even at 12-15K feet once they reach 70+ experience. I believe the reason is that the game treats each bomb individually for targetting purposes. Thus, they all get X% chance to hit. Yes, however, only one bomb is allowed to hit per level bomber - but, when you have so many on one plane one will probably hit. Reality is, I doubt too many B17s were going to make a dozen passes over a target to drop their bombs one at a time - they dropped sticks of bombs typically, especially on higher altitude missions (and 12-15K is really not high altitude compared to the levels they were flying at in Europe).

2) On 4E bombers and level bombers in general. They are able to destroy industry and airfields very easily. Either that or cost to repair is too expensive - cost to expand factories may be too cheap by the way (resulting in the Japanese player with good management being able to make tons of planes - all of course with the interchangeable Nak and Mit. engines...).

Maybe hitting industry and resources in the undeveloped SRA should be easier than in the middle of a crowded German city or in a highly disperesed Japanese homeland industry of small shops - but, probably not as easy as it is in WitP. 30-40 B17s in range of your resources and oil centers - say goodbye. With a good leader with high inspiration, morale will stay up despite losses.

3) Flak - yes, there is a gap for the larger caliber AA from 6000-9000 feet. There is not enough of the light AA modelled in the game. For example, Allied infantry brigades having no AA defense at all while Zeros strafe them mercilessly at 2000 feet...I think something would have shot back, MGs in particular. There are other problems with flak. I think it generally works OK with things like defending against ground attack (when its there) and city attack. The model is perhaps wrong on Port and Airfield attacks as the bombers tend to disable a lot of the flak guns in their strikes. Of course, the other big issue is that all the flak is assumed to be at all the places - not real accurate for a 60 mile hex...

Most of the above are fundamental issues in the model and there is not much that can be done outside of changing code.

Complaints? Yeah maybe. All in all though, it is a pretty good game with extraordinary detail and complexity. Not much out there like it.

The stats show that a 4E bomber had about a 5% chance of getting a single hit on a warship in an individual attack.

[ChezDaJez]

Pretty sure a single plane is allowed a single hit by the routine, that is a B17 is not going to land a whole stick of bombs on a ship.

Don't know if that was a change in one of the later patches but I know that in v1.6 it was possible to obtain more hits vs ships than there were 4e bombers attacking.

I think the main thing with the 4e and Betty/Nell issue is for the players to reach a common ground on the use of these assets. Something on the order of 1 4e BG (48-64 aircraft)er base allowed to fly naval strike missions but must be above above 10k ft. No more than 2 Daitais of Bettys/Nells (54 aircraft) set to naval attack per base, etc... That keeps it reasonable and still allows for historical missions. I think this would force players to disperse their assets a bit more. Just a thought... As I said its up to the players in the game to decide, not anyone else.

Chez

[okami]

There seems to be a deal of animosity over this topic. The game engine does not model the 4E bomber very well and there are players who wish to use this as a tactic. They will throw the Betty and the Nell over as arguement bate, to obfuscate the historical truth. And what is that truth... 1/ Of the 1,744,000 tons of warshipping sunk during the war only 55,000 tons was attributed to Army LBA(this includes all army planes of 1,2,or 4 engines). Of the 8.900,000 tons of merchant shipping only 10.2% was sunk by army LBA. In the game a single strike of 48 B-24's can and will sink more total tonnage than was sunk in the entire war. If you don't see this as a problem that needs to be addressed by houserules I suggest you take up knitting and leave wargaming to those of us who do. As for the Betty and the Nell they are first tac bombers and second they were trained specifically for strikes against shipping. Do they get torpedoes? Yes and for this they pay with the most pathetic loadout for any and every other use for a tac bomber. They suck at bombing airfields as this is based on the number of bombs dropped, they suck because unlike allied bombers they are not immune to flak(60% of all allied combat loses of aircraft in the Pacific were attributed to AA) Is that modelled in the game? No! As the Japanese you are lucky if you shoot down 1 in 200 aircraft with AA. I have just requested in another post for a scenario which models these and I will test it over the coming weeks. I hope it models these errors well.{USSBS was used for all of the facts pertaining to Japanese ship loses listed above. pg16-17 July 1 1946} As a historical wargamer I want to refight history and see if I can do better, I don't want a program making it so I can't not do better.
Andrew

[rtrapasso]

There is a big difference in what Allied bombers COULD do and what they DID do.

The IJN did not hazard major combat forces where they could be hammered with Allied 4 EB - when such situations developed (i.e. B-24s sinking shipping off China) - they went to extreme measures to rectify the situation (i.e. - one of the biggest offensives in China was directed to deny B-24s their airfields).

Players, of course, can do all kinds of strange stuff in the game and not suffer much in the way of consequences... like sail large surface task forces into range of *large* concentrations of Allied 4 EB (or 2 EB for that matter). Historically, the IJN avoided 4 EB concentrations, and when they tried challenging even 2 EB concentrations, very bad things happened (i.e. Bismarck Sea).

Don't complain on one hand about the wanting to "refight history", but refuse to suffer the consequences if you do something ahistorical.

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: herwin

ORIGINAL: donnie_1974_texas

I really don't have much qualms with altitude of missions except for some of the ways the game models things, which I think is what Castor is saying raises some problems.

For example,

1) 4E bombers, honestly, they hit almost all the time even at 12-15K feet once they reach 70+ experience. I believe the reason is that the game treats each bomb individually for targetting purposes. Thus, they all get X% chance to hit. Yes, however, only one bomb is allowed to hit per level bomber - but, when you have so many on one plane one will probably hit. Reality is, I doubt too many B17s were going to make a dozen passes over a target to drop their bombs one at a time - they dropped sticks of bombs typically, especially on higher altitude missions (and 12-15K is really not high altitude compared to the levels they were flying at in Europe).

2) On 4E bombers and level bombers in general. They are able to destroy industry and airfields very easily. Either that or cost to repair is too expensive - cost to expand factories may be too cheap by the way (resulting in the Japanese player with good management being able to make tons of planes - all of course with the interchangeable Nak and Mit. engines...).

Maybe hitting industry and resources in the undeveloped SRA should be easier than in the middle of a crowded German city or in a highly disperesed Japanese homeland industry of small shops - but, probably not as easy as it is in WitP. 30-40 B17s in range of your resources and oil centers - say goodbye. With a good leader with high inspiration, morale will stay up despite losses.

3) Flak - yes, there is a gap for the larger caliber AA from 6000-9000 feet. There is not enough of the light AA modelled in the game. For example, Allied infantry brigades having no AA defense at all while Zeros strafe them mercilessly at 2000 feet...I think something would have shot back, MGs in particular. There are other problems with flak. I think it generally works OK with things like defending against ground attack (when its there) and city attack. The model is perhaps wrong on Port and Airfield attacks as the bombers tend to disable a lot of the flak guns in their strikes. Of course, the other big issue is that all the flak is assumed to be at all the places - not real accurate for a 60 mile hex...

Most of the above are fundamental issues in the model and there is not much that can be done outside of changing code.

Complaints? Yeah maybe. All in all though, it is a pretty good game with extraordinary detail and complexity. Not much out there like it.

The stats show that a 4E bomber had about a 5% chance of getting a single hit on a warship in an individual attack.

Curiously, i just discovered in the Med (where Axis DID face massed B-17s), Allied pilots calculated that it took 28 tons of bombs to sink a merchantman... so, they would mass on a ship, drop (about) 56 tons of bombs, and generally (gleefully) watch the victim sink.

EDIT: Average bomb load for a B-17 in Europe was around 2.5 tons - so there would be about 24 planes (i am guessing) to do this... of course, with the shorter distances involved, it may have been 1/2 this. And to actually drop the "average" 28 tons of bombs, it was probably 6-12 aircraft.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

There is a big difference in what Allied bombers COULD do and what they DID do.

Agreed. What I want is historical capabilities. These will only yield historical results if you carry out the same actions as done in WWII.

[donnie_1974_texas]

Most interesting on the to hit stats. 28 tons of bombs is approximately 120 500-lb bombs. I would think if 5% hit then, well, that would be about 6 bomb hits which on a merchant ship would almost certainly sink her.

Not quite that way in WitP. Agree on all counts about historicity, etc. on the 4e bombers. Interestingly enough, I am running a 1945 scenario head to head to test some of these things. It turns out if the bombers are flown more historically then things actually play out not so bad. For example, 360 B29s bombed Tokyo resources with no fighter opposition at extended range. Damaged 200 of the 900 resources, lost 5 planes to Ops and about 40 damaged to Flak. Resource damage may be a little high, but, not bad off.

Ran again but created additional flak in Hammamatsu. Placed about 480 75 and 105 mm guns there for Japan. No fighters. Flew the B29s at 15,000 feet. Raid of 188 planes. Combat report showed 4 destroyed by flak, real loss in the aircraft losses screen was actually about 40 with the four bomber groups only mustering about 80 undamaged aircraft for the next day.

Problem - well, set them on city attack again for the next day and almost all 80 planes flew again even though morale was down in the teens. I think the issues are really:

1) you think after flying 1,200 miles, bombing, returning 1,200 miles that any plane is going to be ready to go out the next day on any more than a maybe recon, scouting missions. high tempo ops don't affect bomber availability enough. Long range is not taken into account - That was probably a 12-16 hour mission from breifing, to flight, to return, etc.

2) flak - if I bomb the airfield, well, it's all disabled and then the next day's strikes don't get hurt at all by it.

3) diminishing returns on strategic strikes should be more pronounced - damage 200 of 900 resources on day 1 - OK, day 2 strikes - not as many. The last 30-50% of industry should be pretty hard to kill.

B29 bombers on port attack - 20 hexes (normal range) roughly - Dacca to Hainan. About 30 ships in port. Bombers strike at 25,000 feet. 122 planes - 28 hits. Seems about right, once again - this was a port strike, no fighter opposition, limited flak, and merchant/aux targets in the port. Expect to get hurt if you park your boats like this.

I think the problems with the models lie more on the extremes which, interestingly enough, is where most players seem to play.

[Dili]

Pretty sure a single plane is allowed a single hit by the routine, that is a B17 is not going to land a whole stick of bombs on a ship.

 

Don't know if that was a change in one of the later patches but I know that in v1.6 it was possible to obtain more hits vs ships than there were 4e bombers attacking.

 
Anyone know if this was fixed?
 
 

Curiously, i just discovered in the Med (where Axis DID face massed B-17s), Allied pilots calculated that it took 28 tons of bombs to sink a merchantman... so, they would mass on a ship, drop (about) 56 tons of bombs, and generally (gleefully) watch the victim sink.

 
I am interested where you get that info since i am in making a WITM40. From my reading big 4E mostly attacked against harbours seldom open sea - and i wonder the economics rationale behind attacking a sole merchant with 20-40 4E -, against convoys would be more justified. Btw against harbours the result wasnt very good at least against Italian BBs in Harbour at least a couple times escaped damage by 4E's.
 
Another problem is that there is not bomb duds. I am not sure if the game allows them despite having the editor space to fill like in torpedos.
For example the British GP bombs(100-500lb) were a crap in 1940/41 had a 10-15% failure rate.
 
I will also have to model Ploesti raids and historically the 4E dont get a good picture in it despite a big not moving target.

[rtrapasso]

I am interested where you get that info since i am in making a WITM40. From my reading big 4E mostly attacked against harbours seldom open sea - and i wonder the economics rationale behind attacking a sole merchant with 20-40 4E -, against convoys would be more justified. Btw against harbours the result wasnt very good at least against Italian BBs in Harbour at least a couple times escaped damage by 4E's.

This is from An Army at Dawn : The War in North Africa, 1942-1943
(Liberation Trilogy) by Atkinson, Rick.

i am listening to a recording, so i can't give you a page number, but it is towards the end describing Allied attacks on Axis shipping trying supply Tunisia.

[Dili]

Thanks rtrapasso . I have found the diary of USAAF at http://paul.rutgers.edu/~mcgrew/wwii/usaf/html/ 
 
Another problem with big bombing is that if the  leader navigation -or pathfinders- is right a good bombing can be disastrous against a target but if it is not all of them can fail. So the variations can be extreme: an obliterated target or a just one or two bombs in some factory parking and in practice zero damage. The discussions about Norden bomb sight and the use of Radar Mapping are a good indication of problems of 4E against Europe.
 
http://www.vectorsite.net/ttwiz_04.html#m2
 
"After the Battle of Britain, RAF Bomber Command began to ramp up night attacks against German cities. Unfortunately, although Bomber Command reported grand results from the raids, an independent analysis based on daylight air reconnaissance performed in the summer of 1940 showed that half the bombs fell on open country. Only one bomb in ten actually hit the intended target."
 
 
 
http://www.vectorsite.net/ttwiz_05.html#m1
 
Spacialist Liberators with radars:
 
"The first aircraft carrying preproduction LABs, modified Consolidated Liberators known as "Snoopers", reached service in the South Pacific in August 1943. They used LAB with the new SCR-717 radar, and the system proved extremely effective, with bombers roaring in on Japanese ships in the night at a few hundred meters and blowing them out of the water. Said one Snooper pilot: "We flew in the dark most of the time and we'd attack at about eight hundred or a thousand feet, and you couldn't miss at that altitude, you know."
 

[Barb]

I think the main thing in effectiveness of any bombers, 4E, 2E, Bettys, and all around (like sinking the KB after 200 4E bombers strike) is hard to resolve.
Because behind all this, the responsibility is in the man sitting in front of the PC. A2A is bloody.. but how many air combats with hundreds of planes occured in history over one place?
When the player puts unhistorical numbers in one place, what will do the other? He will put more and more numbers to outnumber the other.
So instead of two US carriers contra 2 japanese carriers battle, the only battle aviable in WITP is KB vs TF57...
So it is with the planes. Do you want to bomb something? Why do you try it historicaly with weeks of air raids of 30 bombers escorted by 20 fighters against some airfiled, when you could clear it with one strike with 200 bombers escorted by 150 fighters?
In reality each day there was many missions, many fights here and there with squadron, group sized units. Players are instead using whole Air army.
I have seen this in my PBEM in China. My "enemy" was bombing one airfield with 150 bombers and 200 oscars as escorts. what can I do against? Only to mass my fighters in parity or to outnumber his.

So i think it is not a problem of a game (duds were among any type of ammuniton, bombers were more or less efficient in different altitudes....), but mainly a problem of players.

[Dili]

Yes. And more planes increase the chances that many will not hit the target while increasing the chance the one will hit.

[spence]

The ability to easily put together a strike against a mobile target is indeed something of a problem with the WITP engine but the ability of (I really hate to say it) the KB to put 100 fighters in the air which intercept every strike is also a problem when compared to KB's actual ability to defend itself. That is really what made it vulnerable. Its doctrine and organization was entirely devoted to the launching offensive strikes. If, as at Midway, the enemy launched first it was in a pickle. The real "Miracle at Midway" was that it took so long for the Americans to approach on 2 different axises with multiple squadrons. It was certainly not the intent of Adm Spruance/Fletcher that their squadrons attack one at a time the way things occurred for the first 3 hours. Since KB is given capabilities it never possessed (Midway actually constitutes the one and only time that KB ever attempted to establish air supremacy for a subsequent invasion) it really "deserves" to face difficulties it never faced (4Es at low altitude) for the exact same reason.

[Dili]

"Midway actually constitutes the one and only time that KB ever attempted to establish air supremacy for a subsequent invasion"
 
That's first time i heard something like that...

[Barb]

Maybe he wanted to say "Only KB was attempting to establish air supermacy for subsequent invasion." Without any LBA in range.

[spence]

"Midway actually constitutes the one and only time that KB ever attempted to establish air supremacy for a subsequent invasion"

That's first time i heard something like that...

Below is the TROM from Combined Fleet of HIJMS AKAGI

7 December 1941:
Two strike waves launched against Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. AKAGI's torpedo planes are instrumental in sinking the battleships USS OKLAHOMAand WEST VIRGINIA. Nagumo orders a withdrawal following recovery of the second attack wave.

23 December 1941:
Return with KAGA, SHOKAKU and ZUIKAKU to Hashirajima.

25 December 1941:
Arrive at Kure.

5 January 1942:
Carrier Striking Force (Car Divs 1, 5) departed Hashirajima, shifting over to Iwakuni.

8 January 1942:
Depart Iwakuni for Truk.14 January 1942:
Arrive at Truk.

17 January:
Departs Truk as part of the attack forces for the invasion of Rabaul and itsenvirons. Sorties with Crudiv 8.

20-22 January 1942:
Carried out air strikes against Rabaul, Kavieng, and Rabaul (again on the 22nd), respectively.

27 January 1942:
Returned to Truk.

1 February 1942:
Departs Truk in an attempt to catch the enemy carrier force thatattacked the Marshall Islands.

8 February 1942:
Arrives at Palau, having abandoned the pursuit of the American fleet.

15 February 1942:
Departs Palau with KAGA, CarDiv 2, and Crudiv 8, screened by DesRon 1 for the attacks on Davao and Port Darwin, Australia.

19 February:
Raid on Port Darwin launched. Sunk or damaged 9 ships, including the U.S. destroyer PEARY, and 18 aircraft destroyed.

21 February 1942:
Arrives at Staring Bay.

25 February 1942:
Departs Staring Bay with the Striking Force to cover the invasion of Java.

9 March 1942:
Return to Staring Bay after the fall of Java.

26 March-23 April:
Striking Force (less KAGA) departs Staring Bay with BatDiv 3, Crudiv 8, and DesRon 1 for "Operation C" ---the raid into the Indian Ocean. Strikes launched againstRoyal Navy bases at Columbo and Trincomalee, Ceylon. Important sinkings include the light carrier HMS HERMES and cruisers HMS CORNWALL and HMS DORSETSHIRE.

19 April 1942:
Less CarDiv 5, which detaches with screen to head for New Guinea for "Operation MO" (Battleof the Coral Sea) operations, the AKAGI and Striking Force departs Mako in high speed attempted pursuit of the "Doolittle Raiders" - carriers USSHORNET and ENTERPRISE, which have just struck the Tokyo Bay area with aircraft on the 18th.

22 April 1942:
Return to Hashirajima.

25 May 1942:
Departed Hashirajima as flagship of VADM Nagumo's Carrier Striking Force (CarDivs 1,2). CarDiv 5 unable to participate, due to damage to SHOKAKU and aircraft losses to ZUIKAKU suffered at Coral Sea on 8 May.

4 June 1942:
Launched strikes against Midway Island. Subsequently engaged and attacked by numerous enemy land and carrier-based aircraft. At 1026 attacked by three aircraft from U.S.S. ENTERPRISE (CV-6). One direct hit is scored amidships in the vicinity of the island, starting a fire in the hangars, a second rips through the fantail and explodes under the port quarter, while the third is a near-miss port-side forward. (Note 2). Although normally the damage would have been moderate, the vessel is currently engaged in preparing a strike,with the result that the single bomb hit induce explosions among armed and fueled aircraft within hangars and start a raging aviation gasoline fire. Since she was in a maximum turn at the time, AKAGI's rudder is damaged, and soon jams at 20 degrees to port, leaving her going in wide circles. Unable to command the fleet from her now, at 1046 VADM Nagumo Chuichi transferred flag first to NOWAKI, then to NAGARA. AKAGI's engines work erratically, with the ship starting and stopping, but she goes dead in the water for good at 1350. By 1600 all non-essential personnel have left the ship, though Captain Aoki and a damage control party remain aboard. The vessel burns through the evening and next night, but remains afloat.

5 June 1942:
Sunk: Scuttled

Pretty much a string of raids.