bombardments

[madmickey]

Mongo the Japs send out a couple of Battleship at a time. They hide their CV in Paulu. The lack of aggressiveness in AI is a problem.

[mongo]

I noticed that. I've played it a couple of times and it worked a little different each time.

Both times the IJN sent out a surface TF (Yamato, Musashi, and a couple other BBs).

The difference came in what I hit. If I invaded Saipan first, the CVs came out after me. If I invaded Tinian first, they sat in Palau.

May be the AI not able to respond to unusual scenarios, or just dumb luck.

[gdpsnake]

I don't recall bombardments lasting continuously for three days by BB's, at least not as the 'standard.' Usually they opened up in advance of an assault in conjuction with air power while troops embarked and headed to shore. Afterwards, some remained on station for offshore artillery support but not usually for weeks on end.

Imagine the enemy response to say, D-Day if we bombarded for several days with a huge fleet and gave that kind of advance warning to the Germans. Talk about a lack of surprise.

I also think the futility of WW1 bombards on the battlefield provided some lessons to WW2 commanders about the ability for accurate or devestation shock value other than keeping the enemy heads in prepared positions to protect the assaulting troops a bit longer and to use up hugh stores of ammo moving dirt around. In many cases, huge bombardments were counterproductive like the carpet bombings in France against the Germans that were quite effective but also churned up the terrain so badly as to prevent effective movement through the area.

I think most naval bombardment had little effect on defenders overall especially in a game of this scale. Besides, it's not the casualties that eventually aid you but the effect on fatique and disruption in game terms.

And in the real world- think of the HE ammo expenditure! The ships had to be and were loaded up with HE at the expense of being able to more effectively engage in surface combat. Not to mention the refit time for the guns after such use. Gun tubes and rifling don't last forever. If you used the BB's in that role for too long it's back to the refit yards for six months!

I would agree, however, that a bombardment mission SHOULD load the ships out with MORE HE ammo and the player might get the option to choose a bombardment value? A percentage to, say, use 50% in this bombard. And a bombard TF should REMAIN a bombard TF unless changed by the player (And a bombard TF should get a penalty in surface combat in terms of staying power and effectiveness due to the reduced stores of ammo.)

As a last word and I can't remember exactly, but didn't planned prolonged bombardment missions usually have ammo replenishment and support ships in the TF or nearby in a 'replenishment tf?"

[madmickey]

Mongo I only tried the Tinian approach. Which is the weaker land force. I loose out on combat preparation but it works well. Historically I think it may have been difficult to do.

[mongo]

I can deal with the lack of combat prep for the results too.

it's a touch gamey, but it keeps more of my boys alive [:)]

Once you have Tinian, you just play connect-the-dots to your favorite islands on screen...

[madmickey]

Mongo
I may change my objective on 1945 opening invasion from Lingayen to Marcelino, did you see what a mess the troop loading was for this scenario. I wanted to play an easy full scenario but the initial setup is extremely weird.

[LargeSlowTarget]

I remember from my readings that after the lessons learned at Tarawa, pre-invasion bombardments in the Pacific did last for several days, with BBs taking turns firing and replenishing ammo from AE ships.

Maybe we need two different kinds of bombardment missions - one hit-and-run affair under cover of darkness in order to chew up airfields (with varying success), and another pre-invasion preparation bombardment of slow, deliberate and well-aimed fire during daylight and lasting for a number of days, concentrating against forticiations and troops.

[Sardaukar]

Has anyone tried to add AE ship into bombardment TF ? I don't have the game yet, so donno if it's possible. Maybe some sort of replenishment TF...but can the big 15"-16" stuff be replaced on sea ? Would open interesting possibilities for extended bombardment...like 4 BB, 4 CA and 2 AEs in TF. Might not be good for the AE if CD artillery has reach to match CAs

Cheers,

M.S.

[tsimmonds]

I believe you can only load 5" and smaller ammo at sea.

[mongo]

I believe that AEs only do the at-sea replenish in 45 and 46.

Also, it will only replenish 5" ammo and below.

[Pier5]

According to the rule book, the AE's can only replenish the secondary ammunition, 5" on down. This may change late in the war, seems like I remember something about that.

I have trouble identifying how long bombardments actually lasted, but I KNOW it was three days for Kwajalein. I don't think they looked like the ones we see in films, except for the final phase in which the bombardment peaked, then lifted for the final air attacks, which were gigantic (600 aircraft late in the war), then resumed during the approach of the landing craft. I think they were very methodical, identifying targets and destroying them with pinpoint battleship fire. Then shifting to area barrage in the final phase. In addition, targets were bombed heavily for weeks prior to an invasion. So far as I can tell, this kind of bombing in WitP doesn't do much for suppressing CD capability. I don't think we are talking weeks here for bombardment, but I think we are talking about 3-5 days. I'm certain the old battleships loaded a much higher ratio of HE to AP relative to the fast battleships, which no doubt loaded mostly AP.

I'm not sure exactly what's right here, but I know what we have now isn't it.

Pier5

[Mr.Frag]

Pier ... which are you saying is wrong: the AE or the Bombardment or both?

[gts2096]

ORIGINAL: Pier5

According to the rule book, the AE's can only replenish the secondary ammunition, 5" on down. This may change late in the war, seems like I remember something about that.

Pier5

just read this again this morning in the manual p.187

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: Pier5

According to the rule book, the AE's can only replenish the secondary ammunition, 5" on down. This may change late in the war, seems like I remember something about that.

I have trouble identifying how long bombardments actually lasted, but I KNOW it was three days for Kwajalein. I don't think they looked like the ones we see in films, except for the final phase in which the bombardment peaked, then lifted for the final air attacks, which were gigantic (600 aircraft late in the war), then resumed during the approach of the landing craft. I think they were very methodical, identifying targets and destroying them with pinpoint battleship fire. Then shifting to area barrage in the final phase. In addition, targets were bombed heavily for weeks prior to an invasion. So far as I can tell, this kind of bombing in WitP doesn't do much for suppressing CD capability. I don't think we are talking weeks here for bombardment, but I think we are talking about 3-5 days. I'm certain the old battleships loaded a much higher ratio of HE to AP relative to the fast battleships, which no doubt loaded mostly AP.

I'm not sure exactly what's right here, but I know what we have now isn't it.

Pier5

A great "rule of thumb" for figuring the load out of main calibre ammo on virtually all
warships is to figure out how many shells each main gun can fire in one hour and then
multiply by the number of guns. You will be amazed at how often this is within a few
shells of the actual load-out. One hour seems to have been the yardstick for figuring
ammunition storage.

Long bambardments such as some players have described were never done at the
max fate-of-fire, and rarely involved entire broadsides. Which meant a ship might
only fire off 6-10% of it's ammo an hour at "spotted" targets. Night bombardment
Missions such as the Japs ran at Guadalcanal rarely lasted more than 60-90 minutes,
and were done at much higher rates of fire against area targets.

[Mr.Frag]

A great "rule of thumb" for figuring the load out of main calibre ammo on virtually all
warships is to figure out how many shells each main gun can fire in one hour and then
multiply by the number of guns. You will be amazed at how often this is within a few
shells of the actual load-out. One hour seems to have been the yardstick for figuring
ammunition storage.

Quite true Mike and thats not the only reason for it.

A BB firing its guns in anger for that length of time will have so many things damaged from the shock effects of the recoil that it will be in danger of sinking itself [;)]

Couple this to the wear and tear on the barrels themselves and realistically, you'll be in for a major refit after a fight.

I pushed for self SYS damage to naval battles/bombardment a long time ago as a way of fitting this in, it just never made the list of what got put into the game.