DBB-c a/c replacements

[Symon]

ORIGINAL: witpqs
Talking strictly out of my nether regions: 10% sounds good, but with the actual number being so low (135), how about 'rounding' it to 200?

This is more of a 'feel' than any calculation. On this one I think if a chance of being a little wrong, then make it more likely to be a little wrong in favor of Japan.

Just my thoughts. [8D]

Dude, I'm reminded of the old story; everyone has a nether hole, and they all smell as sweet; your's as same as mine. Got no issues with "rounding". The airteam put the dash 6 at 2/3 of actual production and that doesn't seen to frost anyone's balls. You are talking about 65 airframes. I think we can accommodate that.

Jeez, brush your teeth pal! And those eyebrows! Woof !!

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: Symon

38 squadrons enter the game equipped with SBD-3s,

Is it possible to give these 38 squadrons 4 or 5 extra reserve airframes? Might be an easier fix than worrying about the factory switch overproduction from the 4 model to the 5 model. Then again production ramped down historically late war due to how well the allies were doing. So it is more than justifiable to assume late war SBD's could/should far exceed historical production numbers since the game never has the allies doing near as well in the air war as they did historically. They'd have never ramped down production in the actual war if they did as badly as the allies do in most games.

Jim

[wdolson]

ORIGINAL: Symon

38 squadrons enter the game equipped with SBD-3s, for a total of roughly 395. LA has a production plant that makes 21/month for 18 months for a total of roughly 380. Grand total roughly 775. Actual production of dash 3s and 4s was roughly 1365. Shortfall of roughly 590 airframes. But one must factor in airframes used for training and reserve, so I’ll use an out-of-my-butt estimate of 135 (roughly 10%), leaving a shortfall of 455 airframes.

Bottom line, you don’t want to double up the LA production because it extends over to the dash 5s when the airframes upgrade. But there was a step-up in production with the expansion of the El Segundo plant. However, those production steps can’t be modeled too well. It was a simple seven month bump to the dash 3s (I don’t count the dash 4 as a separate airframe, because it was just a dash 3 on 24 volts with a few provisions for new toys; none of which is representable in-game).

The Babes solution would be 7 monthly “magic” convoys, each with roughly 50-60 SBD-3s for distribution to the pool. Think of it as an early Tulsa. Since dash 4 deliveries began in October, the first “magic” convoy arrives in November. Of course, they stop in May ’43 with the introduction of the dash 5. I think that would do the trick without getting too far outside the box. One would get 1160 ariframes out of a total of 1365 produced.

Considering the 135 held back for out-of-game reserve and training, that's a shortfall of only 205 airframes out of the historical production schedule. It works for me and it's simple, easy to implement, and doesn't dick with the stock production values.

Comments ?? JWE

From what I've read, almost all SBDs held back for training were obsolete versions. In 1943 new pilots learning to land on carriers on Lake Michigan were dropping battle weary SBD-2 and -3s into the lake. An SBD-3 that was a veteran of Midway was recovered from the lake.

Here are my numbers.

Model Start Date End Date Number Prod/Month Prod Game Notes
SBD-3 ? Oct-42 584 21 First 174 diverted from French order. According to the jim Baugher web site, a few were lost before the war, as early as Sept 1941.
SBD-4 Oct-42 Apr-43 780 111.4 0 Started arriving end of 1942, first production used Operation Torch. SBD-4 withdrawn from Atlantic soon after and SBD was not used in the Atlantic again until -5 was in production.
SBD-5 Feb-43 Apr-44 2965 197.67 21+67
A-24 168 SBD-3 Equivalent
A-24A Oct-42 Apr-43 170 SBD-4 Equivalent
A-24B Feb-43 Apr-44 615 SBD-5, 60 later returned to the Marines

Here is my analysis of SBD units arriving with -3/-4s. It was in an Excel spreadsheet.

UnitNumber Name Probable Version in Real World Type AircraftType ReadyCraft DamagedCraft
1696 VS-2 SBD-3 7 487 17 1
1702 VS-3 SBD-3 7 487 19 0
1703 VB-3 SBD-3 7 487 18 0
1708 VS-5 SBD-3 7 487 17 3
1709 VB-5 SBD-3 7 487 18 0
1731 VB-9 SBD-3 7 487 18 0
1761 VB-16 SBD-3 7 487 36 0
1776 VS-71 SBD-3 7 487 16 0
1777 VS-72 SBD-3 7 487 15 0
2217 VRF-1B SBD-3 5 487 24 0
2221 VRF-3B SBD-3 5 487 24 0
2225 VRF-5B SBD-3 5 487 24 0
2625 VMSB-242 SBD-3 7 487 0 2
246 6

1676 VC-26 SBD-4 7 487 9 0
1677 VC-28 SBD-4 7 487 9 0
2575 VMSB-133 SBD-4 7 487 0 24
2576 VMSB-134 SBD-4 7 487 0 24
2622 VMSB-235 SBD-4 7 487 0 18
2623 VMSB-236 SBD-4 7 487 0 18
2630 VMSB-245 SBD-4 7 487 0 24
2646 VMSB-331 SBD-4 7 487 19 0
2647 VMSB-332 SBD-4 7 487 24 0
2649 VMSB-341 SBD-4 7 487 21 0
2693 SB Det 1 SBD-4 7 487 2 7
84 115

In short 246 + 6 damaged would arrive as -3s and 84 + 115 damaged would arrive as -4s.

The spreadsheet is available to anyone who wants it.

You got 38 squadrons and I only found 24 (I think this was from stock). I may have missed some. I didn't include 4 Marine SBD units that were markets 9999.

PBY production is also off in game. The -5 was discontinued at the end of 1942 in favor of more -5A production, but the -5 and -5A continue production in close to equal numbers for the entire war. The USN got a handful of -5s in 1944 that were diverted from a British order, but that's the only -5s they got after 1942.

Bill

[wdolson]

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns
Is it possible to give these 38 squadrons 4 or 5 extra reserve airframes? Might be an easier fix than worrying about the factory switch overproduction from the 4 model to the 5 model. Then again production ramped down historically late war due to how well the allies were doing. So it is more than justifiable to assume late war SBD's could/should far exceed historical production numbers since the game never has the allies doing near as well in the air war as they did historically. They'd have never ramped down production in the actual war if they did as badly as the allies do in most games.

Jim

Against a human opponent, that may be true. Humans usually do much better than historical against the AI.

Bill

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: Alfred

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

Just a small follow up question:

You say it is a buildrate and should not be subject to variation. In this case I wonder why the total ammount of airframes is only 5 at the beginning of August. Shouldn´t it be 12 by then?

Even a build rate is still subject to the daily odds of x/30. However, unlike factory production, it is not subject to the other vagaries such as factory turned off, or lack of inputs or combat damage etc. As such, the build rate is a much more stable number than the factory production rate.

Any aircraft model whose build rate is less than 5 can often see very sluggish delivery. This is often see in models with only a monthly build rate of 2 such as the Allied dirigible and the British night fighter.

Alfred

Thanks for the clarification Alfred!

[Symon]

ORIGINAL: wdolson
Here are my numbers.

PBY production is also off in game. The -5 was discontinued at the end of 1942 in favor of more -5A production, but the -5 and -5A continue production in close to equal numbers for the entire war. The USN got a handful of -5s in 1944 that were diverted from a British order, but that's the only -5s they got after 1942.

Bill

Thank you Bill. This is doable. Got a pm with some suggestions that look real good. When I saw the answer, it was like a Homer Simpson moment, Du'oh. Even answers Jim Burns' concerns about getting too fancy. You know me; keep it simple, stupid.

I'm also using the weeklys off the Navy site as, I believe, Timtom did. Not far different. Solution is not quite as simple for Stock as it is for Babes, but shouldn't take much to make it work, if somebody wants to fiddle with it for their stock games. Will retro-fit it into BabesLite so there will be a quasi-stock, fully AI playable, version around somewhere. JWE

[Skyros]

ORIGINAL: Symon

ORIGINAL: wdolson
Here are my numbers.

PBY production is also off in game. The -5 was discontinued at the end of 1942 in favor of more -5A production, but the -5 and -5A continue production in close to equal numbers for the entire war. The USN got a handful of -5s in 1944 that were diverted from a British order, but that's the only -5s they got after 1942.

Bill

Thank you Bill. This is doable. Got a pm with some suggestions that look real good. When I saw the answer, it was like a Homer Simpson moment, Du'oh. Even answers Jim Burns' concerns about getting too fancy. You know me; keep it simple, stupid.

I'm also using the weeklys off the Navy site as, I believe, Timtom did. Not far different. Solution is not quite as simple for Stock as it is for Babes, but shouldn't take much to make it work, if somebody wants to fiddle with it for their stock games. Will retro-fit it into BabesLite so there will be a quasi-stock, fully AI playable, version around somewhere. JWE

Awesome. Thanks for all you do JWE.

[packerpete]

I have nothing to base this on but I think a considerable round up should be in order to account for the squadrons on the Ranger and I would assume all the other units in the atlantic as well. Just a thought. http://www.history.navy.mil/index.html The link is not working for me at the moment though. And before anyone asks, yes I did read Mr. Wdolson's response above. I cannot believe the squadrons assigned to the Ranger or her replacement/rotational squadrons just gave up their aircraft.

[wdolson]

The Ranger went into the yards for an overhaul after Torch and didn't have an airgroup for most of the rest of her career. The only time I can find where she did have an air group after Torch was when she participated in Operation Leader in October 1943. The picture on the Wikipedia page for Leader shows an SBD-5.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Leader

Shortly after Leader, Air Group 4 was converted to Essex class strength, given up to date aircraft and was put aboard the Bunker Hill, later transferring to the Essex. The Ranger was designated a training carrier in January 1944 and was transferred to the Pacific that year where she trained pilots off the California coast and occasionally was used as an aircraft ferry between the West Coast and Hawaii.

Bill

[Rob Brennan UK]

Seems I kicked a veritable hornets nest of fact finding wasp-like insects.

Hank - see my signature for why I'm incapable of being accurate in typing [:)]

Thanks all for being the self same great group of guys I remember from wayyyy back, now I'm getting forum hooked once again.
Thought I had kicked that habit ( seems i was just in denial ).

Although DC-2/3 doesn't really matter much is was irksome , and i really appreciate the answers. Oddly next turn we had 3 in
the pools ?? go figure !

TTFN

[packerpete]

Thank you sir. Link still is not working. I knew the Ranger went in the yard sometime in there too. What about all the out the way Caribbean bases? Puerto Rico? I know they mainly had patrol aircraft but I would have thought that a small strike component would have been made available in the area. Or was that the Army's job?

[wdolson]

Wikipedia isn't working for you? The link works for me.

After Operation Leader, the Ranger operated near Iceland for a little while then went back to the US for an overhaul in early 1943.

As for the Caribbean, nobody was too concerned about surface threats. German commerce raiding ended after the Bismarck, though the Tirpitz stayed positioned where it could go commerce raiding which tied down a lot of the Home Fleet to oppose her.

The USN had inland patrol squadrons which looked for sub threats near shore. The game has a bunch of them, they start out with Kingfishers and have weird squadron designations. They all change to VS squadrons in 1943 and they can upgrade to SBDs. The USN also had some of these squadrons in the Caribbean. They only upgraded to SBDs when the SBD supply became plentiful, which was after introduction of the -5.

I think just about every -4 ever built operated in the Pacific at some point in its career minus a few lost during Operation Torch and a few lost in accidents.

Bill