Jap ASW forces

[Bradley7735]

ORIGINAL: Local Yokel


What, incidentally, were these “faulty doctrines” on which Japanese ASW is said to have been based, and where can I see this documented?

There was a politician who made a speech one day, saying that our (US) subs were doing great in the Pacific because the Japanese were setting their depth charges at 200 feet, and our subs were nice and safe at 350 feet.

That speech made quite a stir at the time, because a politician was announcing war time information that spies could use to help kill Americans. (as far as anyone knows, that information did not make it back to the Japanese, who continued to keep their depth charges shallow.)

There are many more examples of faulty doctrines if you read any submarine WWII book. But, not even knowing the depth of your enemy's submarines is pretty 'faulty' in any book.

I haven't read all the pages of this post, but the gist of the first post says that Japanese ASW is too good. Comparing it to US ASW is not really answering the original posters concerns. The US (and Brits) should perform better than the Japanese. But, by a margin of 5 or 6 %? I'm pretty sure the US sank more than 5 or 6% more Japanese subs through ASW in WWII. That still doesn't answer the question of whether the Japanese are too good at ASW, especially in 42.

1942 statistics:

US lost 7 subs. 3 S boats to grounding, 1 fleet in port and 3 fleet to enemy ASW countermeasures.
US subs sank 180 Japanese ships (Japanese records, not US records)

Japan lost 23 subs. 6 to US subs and 17 to other causes. (I don't know the exact number to ASW countermeasures.)
Japan subs sank far less than 180 ships, but did sink one more capital ship than the US did (two carriers and one cruiser (two being damaged prior to sub attacks) to Japan and 2 cruisers to US)

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Local Yokel

Posters on this thread have been whipping themselves into a lather of indignation about how frightfully unfair it is for the Japanese crews to have such an enormous advantage in ASW due to their high experience levels. I thought it might be a good idea to take a look at the game’s actual experience figures and see whether they bear out such a charge.

As at 7 December 1941, I gauged Japanese destroyer crews’ experience as averaging out at around 70 in daytime and 67 at night. I looked at US destroyer crews based at Pearl Harbor and conservatively assessed their average experience levels at 45 daytime and 35 night time. I really couldn’t be bothered to approach this methodically; I just scanned through the ships and formed an impression. You may come up with different figures, but I suspect they won’t be far adrift from mine.

Now, applying the multipliers laid out in section 6.4.4.1 of the manual, Japanese crews in 1942 have their experience ratings reduced for ASW purposes to 67% of the usual rating. Using my assessed figures, that translates to an average daytime experience level for ASW work of 46.9%, and 44.89% for night time work.

Conversely, Allied crews receive a pre-1944 multiplier of 114% of their daytime rating and 150% of their night time rating. Applied to the average figures I assessed for the US destroyer crews these multipliers produce a daytime experience rating for ASW work of 51.3% and 52.5% at night.

Well, fancy that! The US destroyer crews apparently enjoy an ASW experience level a few percentage points better than their IJN equivalents both day and night! I suggest that before people vent their spleen on the dreadfully ahistorical ASW experience advantage enjoyed by the Japanese in the game they should first check the data to see whether the figures back up their preconceptions.

What, incidentally, were these “faulty doctrines” on which Japanese ASW is said to have been based, and where can I see this documented?

Oh, and with regard to Cape Esperance, I’ve a notion the crew of USS Duncan may have had a few choice comments to make about quality of command and control, and target identification, (and perhaps accuracy too) so far as their own side was concerned. Especially target identification.

What you point out is that at game start the USN is just little a bit more than 10% better at ASW than the IJN. Does that seem realistic to you?

[spence]

Oh, and with regard to Cape Esperance, I’ve a notion the crew of USS Duncan may have had a few choice comments to make about quality of command and control, and target identification, (and perhaps accuracy too) so far as their own side was concerned. Especially target identification.

_____________________________

Yes USN C3 had a problem or two but the IJN Admiral Goto at that battle died with the words "Bakayaro, Bakayaro" on his lips because he thought his ships were being fired on by other IJN ships. Not realizing you're in a battle indicates a much bigger problem than the USN had that night. (The translation I've heard for Bakayaro is "Stupid Ba$tard$". Beyond that I only know how to say Yes and Thank You)

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: jackyo123

That's the main thrust of my initial post - subs are deadly in this game. If thats a deisgn decision, then fine - but the allied player gets the worst of it, since, AHISTORICALLY, the Jap player gets a 'boost' to his ASW forces (i.e - they perform BETTER than their historical counterparts) and the US player gets no boost, and possibly even a penalty, through artificially deflated captain scores.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: IF the IJN gets an ASW boost (and it's questionable given the analysis in this thread) the overall submarine war needs to be looked at--in game terms--as fundamentally skewed versus history by three HUGE, and mutually exclusive-- ahistoric factors.

1) USN subs do not need to refit for three weeks following a patrol. They can do 12-hour turn-arounds if undamaged. Their crews are robotic. Major system damage is fixed in 72-hours.
2) USN subs expend torpedoes in salvoes, even against targets that don't merit them. This is a DB issue, and may be altered in Patch 3, or can be altered at the player's whim in a new game by applying the new code found elsewhere in the forum. But until and unless that is done, the ratio of on-station versus transit time for USN subs is totally ahistoric.
3) USN subs don't commonly attack multiple merchant targets in the same launch. This was very usual in multi-ship convoys. Six forward tubes were expended against 2-3 targets, not one, as is the case in the game. The sub's sinking/damage risk versus tonnage result chances in RL was a very different ratio than in the game.

If IJN ASW effectiveness is "off" it's because it needs to be off. USN subs are on station a different amount of time than they really were. When they're on station they shoot at fewer targets and get prosecuted more per target. They spend far less time in port, but far more transiting. The IJN ASW therefore gets fewer kicks at the cat.

I think most players would prefer some kind of balance more than slavish adherence to history in one aspect of the game, when other, major, factors are hard-coded to be very ahistoric. If we ever get a WITP2 I hope refits and R&R, and historic tube management, are included. Until then, playing with ASW effectiveness variables is an attempt to steer around hard-coded game realities.

[xj900uk]

There was a politician who made a speech one day, saying that our (US) subs were doing great in the Pacific because the Japanese were setting their depth charges at 200 feet, and our subs were nice and safe at 350 feet.

That speech made quite a stir at the time, because a politician was announcing war time information that spies could use to help kill Americans. (as far as anyone knows, that information did not make it back to the Japanese, who continued to keep their depth charges shallow.)

Don't worry, it happens all the time.
Certainly more recently the biggest blunder occured during the Falklands war of '82 when the BBC announced that the Argentinian airforce were flying so low & releasing their bombs from as little as 50' the fuses (based on a propellor which winds into the charge as it flies through the air, so fusing the bomb) weren't activating properly. That was why so many ships were surviving being hit, or ended up with UXB's stuck in them.
For what it's worth, the Argentian Air Force heard this broadcast but didn't believe it (a cheap, telegraphed shabby trick! Nobody would make such a giveaway blunder like that!) and carried on incorrectly fusing their bombs throughout the entire campaign!

[mdiehl]

I wonder how one poster can know what another poster is reminded of?

Nih! Nih!

[mdiehl]

Oh, and with regard to Cape Esperance, I’ve a notion the crew of USS Duncan may have had a few choice comments to make about quality of command and control, and target identification, (and perhaps accuracy too) so far as their own side was concerned. Especially target identification.

I guess that means that IJN skippers were incompetent at torpedo attack because they torpedoed four of their own transports during the invasion of Java. They were also fundamentally incompetent at operating their ships. They had two collisions during the Battle of Midway.

Anyone else got a glib nonsequitur that needs to be shot down?

As to Japanese ASW doctrine, the Japanese maintained few ASW assets on the whole compared to the rest of their armaments. As Parshall and Tulley note, they were typically offensive minded.

Taking down submarines (which in Japanese doctrine, were typically mere screening/recon assets to be brought in after battles to up the attrition rate on enemy ships) was not a priority. As a result, Japanese ASW *doctrine* emphasized forcing submarines to dive long enough for Japanese surface forces to move along. Like early war USN doctrine, there was no emphasis on harrying a contact to its destruction. There was also a complete absence of ASW command and control of the sort that the USN learned from the RN and began to implement in the 3rd quarter of 1942.

Successful WW2 ASW was never fundamentally about the "experience" of the ship doing the attacking. It was about coordinating the ASW assets of groups of escorts and available air cover under a dedicated ASW officer, integrating multiple ship rfdf, radar, and ship reactions to identified potential targets. The Japanese never had much by way of active radar, never developed a useful ahead thrown ASW device, never developed ASW CaC for coordinating multiple assets. The consequence was that even at the end of the war when the Japanese wer so critically short on oil that they often would escort single tankers with multiple escorts, they typically failed to detect attacking American submarines until after the target was hit, and typically failed to sink American submarines in reaction to the loss of the ship they were escorting.

[jackyo123]

ORIGINAL: Local Yokel

Posters on this thread have been whipping themselves into a lather of indignation about how frightfully unfair it is for the Japanese crews to have such an enormous advantage in ASW due to their high experience levels. I thought it might be a good idea to take a look at the game’s actual experience figures and see whether they bear out such a charge.

As at 7 December 1941, I gauged Japanese destroyer crews’ experience as averaging out at around 70 in daytime and 67 at night. I looked at US destroyer crews based at Pearl Harbor and conservatively assessed their average experience levels at 45 daytime and 35 night time. I really couldn’t be bothered to approach this methodically; I just scanned through the ships and formed an impression. You may come up with different figures, but I suspect they won’t be far adrift from mine.

Now, applying the multipliers laid out in section 6.4.4.1 of the manual, Japanese crews in 1942 have their experience ratings reduced for ASW purposes to 67% of the usual rating. Using my assessed figures, that translates to an average daytime experience level for ASW work of 46.9%, and 44.89% for night time work.

Conversely, Allied crews receive a pre-1944 multiplier of 114% of their daytime rating and 150% of their night time rating. Applied to the average figures I assessed for the US destroyer crews these multipliers produce a daytime experience rating for ASW work of 51.3% and 52.5% at night.

Well, fancy that! The US destroyer crews apparently enjoy an ASW experience level a few percentage points better than their IJN equivalents both day and night! I suggest that before people vent their spleen on the dreadfully ahistorical ASW experience advantage enjoyed by the Japanese in the game they should first check the data to see whether the figures back up their preconceptions.

What, incidentally, were these “faulty doctrines” on which Japanese ASW is said to have been based, and where can I see this documented?

Oh, and with regard to Cape Esperance, I’ve a notion the crew of USS Duncan may have had a few choice comments to make about quality of command and control, and target identification, (and perhaps accuracy too) so far as their own side was concerned. Especially target identification.

i dont think crew experience is factoring in nearly as much as captain skills - the IJN captains have much higher naval and aggression ratings

[mdiehl]

Probably so. And since the whole suite of EXP and Ag ratings are basically just numbers that the designers pulled out of their rear ends it'd explain why so many people see so many weird results so often. EXP and aggression ratings should be named what they are "Unresearched fudge factors."

[Canoerebel]

ORIGINAL: mdiehl
Probably so. And since the whole suite of EXP and Ag ratings are basically just numbers that the designers pulled out of their rear ends it'd explain why so many people see so many weird results so often. EXP and aggression ratings should be named what they are "Unresearched fudge factors."

I understand your point, but don't be hard on the designers. Good gracious at the hours they spent designing the game. We know they did massive amounts of research into the littlest things. But they couldn't research everything - there's not the infinite amount of time that would be needed, some data just doesn't exist, and some stuff just has to be a subjective call.

[mdiehl]

If it couldn't be indexed to anything real it ought not to be in the game. The model is very complex. When you start adding wholly unresearched parameters of *course* it's going to be unstable. And it's not like the whole EXP thing hasn't been a known weakness since 1990 (which is when, as I recall, GGP came out). If you could produce a better consim by simplifying the model, why wouldn't you do it?

If you're stuck with EXP and AGG ratings, perhaps these should be completely unknown to both sides until a commander sees his first combat. Then randomly generate them from a lookup table. For the Japanese you could make them marginally better (say, 7%), statistically, at naval combat and substantially worse (say, 25%), statistically, at ASW, than the Allied skippers and commanders. Since there is only one EXP rating and one AGG rating, if a Japanese commander's first combat is as the commander of an ASW mission the Japanese player could have a high chance of getting a crappy EXP and AGG rating stuck next to his commanders. That'd encourage him to use his light surface units in their doctrinally preferred role... surface combat... rather than undoctrinally implementing convoy escort systems with his best commanders from the get go. It's clugey, but it'd do a good job taking the perfection out of Japanese player hindsight.

[Ikazuchi0585]

Probably so. And since the whole suite of EXP and Ag ratings are basically just numbers that the designers pulled out of their rear ends it'd explain why so many people see so many weird results so often. EXP and aggression ratings should be named what they are "Unresearched fudge factors."

and WITP AE should be named what it is. A Game.

:sarcasm on:
.. yeah how dare they add in EXP and aggression.. they obviously dont know a thing about making fun enjoyable historical WW2 games. They should have known exp and aggression would throw everything out of wack.
geez, what were they thinking?
:sarcasm off:

so now the game is broken due to exp and aggression?? funny
the game is fine. Sub game is challenging on both sides.. what's the matter with that?

[spence]

Pre-war the IJN did practice manuevers and gunnery and live torpedo firings in all sorts of weather. On the tactical level that stood them in good stead for fighting what their leadership anticipated as a final Tsushima style battle between the USN and the IJN. Also IJN commanders practiced a flexible variety of ship formations which allowed the torpedo carrying ships to function more effectively and aggressively. Again this enhanced their tactical acumen for "THE Decisive Battle".

But THE Decisive Battle was not the least bit revolutionary in the context of naval warfare. It was to be fought and ultimately decided by the GUNLINE of battleships in DAYLIGHT. "All that other stuff" the IJN did they did solely to even the odds between the USN and IJN BBs for that final clash. As it turned out "all that other stuff" was what actually transpired.

The methods by which "all that other stuff" was accomplished is called Doctrine. The IJN and USN differed in pre-war doctrine in many areas and IJN Doctrine was superior in some but the USN was superior in others. Doctrinal differences have not been well represented in AE or any of its predecessors. Frankly the game feels like it ascribes late war USN doctrines to the IJN at the start and then allow the USN (Allies) slowly catch up while at the same time sort of allowing the Allies to outproduce Japan. It might well be that tweaking won't fix the problems of this underlying premise. But I certainly thank the Developers for trying. It is a fun game.

[mdiehl]

sarcasm on:
.. yeah how dare they add in EXP and aggression.. they obviously dont know a thing about making fun enjoyable historical WW2 games. They should have known exp and aggression would throw everything out of wack.
geez, what were they thinking?
:sarcasm off:

so now the game is broken due to exp and aggression?? funny
the game is fine. Sub game is challenging on both sides.. what's the matter with that?

The US developed nukes in 1945. How come they can't have the 17 they were ready to make by Nov 1945? How come they can't have them in 1943? While we're at it, since we've got unreasearched fudge factors masking as something real, how come we don't have USN radar guided suicide sharks with limpet mines strapped to their dorsal fins? That'd be "fun," wouldn't it?

[AW1Steve]

ORIGINAL: mdiehl

sarcasm on:
.. yeah how dare they add in EXP and aggression.. they obviously dont know a thing about making fun enjoyable historical WW2 games. They should have known exp and aggression would throw everything out of wack.
geez, what were they thinking?
:sarcasm off:

so now the game is broken due to exp and aggression?? funny
the game is fine. Sub game is challenging on both sides.. what's the matter with that?

The US developed nukes in 1945. How come they can't have the 17 they were ready to make by Nov 1945? How come they can't have them in 1943? While we're at it, since we've got unreasearched fudge factors masking as something real, how come we don't have USN radar guided suicide sharks with limpet mines strapped to their dorsal fins? That'd be "fun," wouldn't it?

And laser beams on their heads too! Ohhhh! That sounds like fun! [:D]

[Mynok]

I think most players would prefer some kind of balance more than slavish adherence to history in one aspect of the game, when other, major, factors are hard-coded to be very ahistoric. If we ever get a WITP2 I hope refits and R&R, and historic tube management, are included. Until then, playing with ASW effectiveness variables is an attempt to steer around hard-coded game realities.

Amen. Sanest post (in a pool of very few) I've seen on this thread so far.

[Monter_Trismegistos]

ORIGINAL: mdiehl
When you consider Balikpapan, [...] they look like idiots with respect to command and control, target identification, and accuracy.

You are talking about Americans right? 4 destroyers against few patrol ships, probably with just mobilized crews, and bunch of civilian vessels. 48 torpedoes on board and just few merchants sunk - this is your example of brilliant US action? For gods sake - those destroyers has lost themselves, their formation got broken, and had problems with hitting static targets. Who are idiots?

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: AW1Steve


And laser beams on their heads too! Ohhhh! That sounds like fun! [:D]

I call Don Knotts.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Mynok

I think most players would prefer some kind of balance more than slavish adherence to history in one aspect of the game, when other, major, factors are hard-coded to be very ahistoric. If we ever get a WITP2 I hope refits and R&R, and historic tube management, are included. Until then, playing with ASW effectiveness variables is an attempt to steer around hard-coded game realities.

Amen. Sanest post (in a pool of very few) I've seen on this thread so far.

Thanks. I keep on this tune, even though the archetypes in Canoerebel's funny OP seem to disagree. You HAVE to take a bit of a 30,000 ft. view of the game, and especially remember what the devs set out to do. It wasn't to write WITP2. It was to fix, as much as possible, WITP while running on its base code. As we've all grown more familiar with it in the past months, that sense of awe that existed here in September has turned to a great deal of carping and micro-sniping.

In September I was carping about airborne ASW being "wrong." It probably still is in an historical, statistical sense. But it works in the total fabric of the game. It's balanced just fine. I can influence it in a number of ways, from plane selection, to training, to basing, to search sectors, to altitude, to fatigue management. It helps the skimmers find targets. They do enough prosecutions to keep the other side honest. It works well enough in the total game.

I have a modest proposal. Maybe it belongs in its own thread. But here goes:

For anyone who thinks ASW is wrong, ahistoric, borked, pick your poison, go into your sunk ships list and count how many ships--by each side--have been sunk by subs. Correlate to in-game date. Then we can at least see how these two arenas balance with history. USN subs sank over 1000 Japanese ships. I took a quick look (I'll count if others will), and I doubt I have 500 sinkings by December 10, 1943. I've been super-aggressive with my boats, very ahistoric in where I send them, and how damaged I let them go out. I know the track won't be linear given dud rates, but I'm going to be hard pressed to reach historic totals. OTOH, the "super-powered Japanese ASW" has sunk about a dozen boats to date. Yeah, AI, etc. But still . . .

And a quesiton for those who want the IJN to never, or nearly never, fire at escorts. If the sub is bingo fuel tomorrow, and a KV shows up, should the CO shoot at it? How about two days fuel? What parameters would you give the coders if you were doing the system analysis for them? Under what exact conditions should a sub shoot at an escort? Different for each side? (Historically, the USN began going after escorts on purpose in mid-1944. See USS Harder.) Do the players think there should be parallel code bases for the two sub fleets? (Not that this will happen.) Is the issue that they shoot at all, or is the issue that they hit escorts too often? I suspect that code is easier to alter than firing-decision code. Ecorts should be hard to hit for several reasons, primarily short waterlines, fast spins, and more lookouts per ton than merchants. But I sure don't know how to tell a coder how to tweak any of those to be "historic" (Were Canuck lookouts better than guys from Brooklyn?), let alone how to do it and not break something else--like have that I-boat use those four fish on a tanker day after tomorrow that "should have" lived if only that KV had died.

It's not an easy quesiton. But in all of these micro-portions of the PTO, I think it's important to always consider the game balance first. You can't willy-nilly change an area that always pushes against another hard-coded area without causing more trouble than you started with.

[mdiehl]

You are talking about Americans right? 4 destroyers against few patrol ships, probably with just mobilized crews, and bunch of civilian vessels. 48 torpedoes on board and just few merchants sunk - this is your example of brilliant US action? For gods sake - those destroyers has lost themselves, their formation got broken, and had problems with hitting static targets. Who are idiots?

Spoken like a guy who knows nothing about the subject.

Four transports sunk, 1 patrol escort sunk.

The Japanese opposition were IJN Naka (a Sendai class CL with four torps and 7 5" guns that had been in service since 1925, and Desron 4 (Minegumo, Natsugumo, Asagumo, and Yamagumo). Not counting the CL and DDs, the Japanese patrol craft escorting carried 14 4.7" guns against the USN's 16 5" guns. At the time of the attack the targets were obscured by dense billowing smoke from the oil refineries that the NEI army units had sabotaged. Morison suspects that a good portion of the torp shots were duds or ran aground in shoal water.

In all of this, the IJN save for ONE patrol craft failed to ascertain the nature of the threat. Their reaction was Desron 4 led by Naka charging off into the open sea, having failed to spot the USN DDs, even after they opened fire with deck guns.

The lessons here are many for any with the intelligence to read them objectively. If every Japanese ship was manned by experts at night warfare and seasoned crews, it follows that circumstances of the battle such as visibility, preparedness for battle, and standing orders had alot more to do with the outcome of surface engagements than "EXP" or "AGG" -- be they bogus ratings like the ones in the game or indexed to anything real. Balikpapan shares alot in common with Savo Island. In both instances the defenders were standing down after a day of invasion support, with tired crews, lack of timely information on the kind of nearby enemy threats, ambiguous standing orders, and uncertainty as to the nature of the attack as it developed.

Not sure what you mean by "those DDs lost themselves." They made three firing passes with torpedoes in formation, broke into separate engaging units when ordered to open up with deck guns, and easily regrouped after clearing the battle area. If they'd been IJN DDs making that engagement with the same results in 1942, you and most of the JFBs would trumpet the Battle of Balikpapan as another emblemic example of Japanese superior surface combat. And if those American DDs had been armed with Type 93s (or had late war USN radar or torpedoes), the results would have been far worse for the Japanese.

American DD skippers and crews knew EXACTLY what to do with torpedoes when not tied to a gun line. Most of the crews were highly experienced by training, and almost no one got promoted to command a Desron in the USN at any time in the interwar period without exemplifying good knowledge of tactics and a penchant for bringing the enemy to battle.

Bring up another myth, I'm enjoying dispelling them.