Strategic Bombing of Japan

[n01487477]

While many of these posts are an interesting read, from a game mechanics point of view: (and this is from the original WITP, so I'm not commenting on AE)

1. One concentrated Death Star raid can take out significant, if not all an industry in one raid & Multiple(2 or 3) 200~300 4EB raids on one city will devastate anything in a single day. Hit points are a vague reflection of meaningless when it comes to the combat report & actual results (usually much higher).
2. Industry Hit points seem to be similar to Airfield / port attacks, but the repair model is different.
3. The Allied strategic intelligence (read bombing interface), is almost like knowing your opponents password.
4. Unless you have concentrated Cap, smaller CAP does not make a significant difference to these large raids. And intelligence makes the Allied commanders job easy at picking weak targets. (Yes this has been changed for AE)
5. Allied 4EB suffer less from no recon flights on targets than the Japanese and flies more consistently.
6. In WITP at least, HI is the linchpin, take it out and the rest will fall, I know there is light and heavy Industry now, but saying that you can take out a whole cities industry in a day is frustrating and given point (6) too hard to get up running again afterwards.
7. The repair model is IMO flawed. 1000 supplies per repair (not expansion) point is just economically unrealistic (as is one day one repair point fixed), given that it is the same for expansion. I know Andrew Brown talked about this being reviewed later.

That's all I can think of at the moment ...

[edit] While I'm here why is there no dedicated thread on the economics side? This is very much a game of logistics ...

Giving more layers of complexity is a good thing IMO, cause the original stock is too easy for the Japanese as are many mods out there, but doing it without taking into full account the supply model and its extra requirements now might be problematic...
As I said before in another thread, has someone, a good Japanese economist like Mike Solli been employed to do some sandbox testing?

I know that modding will probably resolve most of these economic issues as they arise anyway.

Lastly, I PM'ed JW and YH about a flaw in the R&D model, but as yet have had no feedback.


--Damian--

[Charles2222]

ORIGINAL: mdiehl

I don't think the allies had a substantial record of intercepting raids from land bases in the PTO. Could they have done so effectively? To a degree, yes, if one takes the late war USN CAP defenses as an example. But nothing on the scale of the ETO I think. The basic limitation here is that the Pacific was just too big. Land bases in the PTO were for the most part too far apart from each other to provide the kind of mutual support that Germany used in the ETO.

I don't agree that UK interception was inferior but then we can't really know. It was superior in 1940 during the blitz to anything that Germany had going. By 1944, Germany had already seen four years of raids and a premium was placed on them to counter the massed bomber formations used by the USAAF. Since no other nation save Japan had to defend against those kinds of raids (and Japan defended against a well developed system with far less time overall to react to the raids than Germany had), we could simply note that the Germans reacted rather sensibly to a threat that most never had to face.

Japan *might have* if they'd been clever had lots of air attaches in Germany in 1942-e.1944 to study German air defenses but they didn't. It seems to have been a peculiar feature of the totalitarian states at the time that they all knew they had no lessons to learn from other nations.

Oh, I don't know, there were quite a few instances of them sharing technology and so forth, but probably the larger the impact, the more it was put to the side.

On thinking on the aerial radar aspect, I was thinking I bet somebody on here will chime in with how good the USA one was. Was it? Whether good or bad radar, or just ignored, we know of course of the PH one. If we could say the PH one was good, just how many bases in the Pacific did they place such devices? Did they put so many on ships that it was their first priority (which as things turned out would had been the first place they should had put them)? You would have to question just how good USA base radar was, but everybody and their dog seems to think it was so good, so if that were the case, you certainly could enter the USA into the argument, only problem is, especially with them, is that there was often no base very close to their bases to get additional airfield support (PH being an exception). Japan had much more of a need for radar however, but as I touched on before, that Japan didn't have a whole lot of use for radar, because there wasn't much of an interior to protect, unless you were defending against northern and southern raids coming that were crossing more land to hit their targets (in the central portion perhaps). Still, especially with a good number of bomber raids taking on lower altitudes, even just visual spotting was probably sufficient to get up opposition, but probably only after the target was hit. I am curious too, if IJ ever thought of putting up search planes with radio to try to help with spotting?

Also, though it might not help too much, would GB put much radar concentration in the Pacific? They certainly had enough bases in the beginning to use interceptors from other airfields, no matter how impractical it might had been. I guess if you really wanted to get technical, you would measure things such as the raid speed and altitude, any radar present, and the amount of ocean if front of the target (if you can assume there weren't ships with radios spotting for the airfields) to determine whether any more remote bases react to a raid. I think the germans and british had it worse than IJ too, in that they had to worry about multiple raids, such as feint raids, raids to knock out radar before the main raid, raids on airfields and all other sorts of tricks. I'm not even sure IJ had to deal with window and some of the other anti-radar tricks. I recall IJ junks used to report ship contacts via radio. Makes me wonder if they would report aerial activity, but then I suppose they weren't normally out far enough to be too much of a benefit there or wouldn't had been associated with helping the air force.

[Charles2222]

ORIGINAL: kaleun

And all this brings us to the final and most epic strategic bombing question:
Has there been any tweaking done to the atom bomb attack?
I just carried out what was reported as a successful Atomic attack on Tokyo (In my game with Halsey) ... And nothing happened![:@]

I thought when there was nothing, that was when the bomb hit? [&:][:D]

[kaleun]

I thought when there was nothing, that was when the bomb hit?

Exactly, there should be nothing[;)]

[DivePac88]

[8|][:D]

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: Japan

Well, you don't need to fly above the airfields, if im not incorrect in raids like the Schweinfurt raid Germany send aircraft based as much as 200 miles away from the Route of the Bombers, and 2 Groups who was longer away landed to refuel to be part of hitting them aigan on the return.

So, if you fly a huge formation within 180 miles from an Airbase... the Airbase should intercept you.

They are two completely different realities. In Europe, German radar detected the allied raids while they were over their bases in England slowly forming up hours before they actually headed into Germany. In the Pacific a raid was generally not detected until it was already at mission altitude and bearing down on its target at full speed.

Coast watchers sometimes gave an early warning indication, but they were not nearly as reliable as the system Germany had in Europe, and you certainly couldn't vector anything onto the raids they reported given the limited info they provided. At best they simply allowed fighters to reach high altitudes above their bases before the incoming raids arrived.

Trying to equate the realities of the air war over Germany to the realities of the air war in the pacific will lead to a complete fantasy scenario.

Germany not only detected incoming raids hours before they flew into German air space, they had an inter-locking network of radar and early warning stations all across Europe that kept track of a raid with accurate updates coming in every few minutes.

It was that kind of detailed and accurate information that gave them such a high level of control that allowed them to vector fighters from hundreds of miles away in and have any hope of actually intercepting the raids. In the Pacific it was very rare for fighters outside of the immediate combat area to ever get within a hundred miles of a raid and multi air group command vectoring was rarely, if ever, used.

Jim

[Japan]

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

ORIGINAL: Japan

Well, you don't need to fly above the airfields, if im not incorrect in raids like the Schweinfurt raid Germany send aircraft based as much as 200 miles away from the Route of the Bombers, and 2 Groups who was longer away landed to refuel to be part of hitting them aigan on the return.

So, if you fly a huge formation within 180 miles from an Airbase... the Airbase should intercept you.

They are two completely different realities. In Europe, German radar detected the allied raids while they were over their bases in England slowly forming up hours before they actually headed into Germany. In the Pacific a raid was generally not detected until it was already at mission altitude and bearing down on its target at full speed.

Coast watchers sometimes gave an early warning indication, but they were not nearly as reliable as the system Germany had in Europe, and you certainly couldn't vector anything onto the raids they reported given the limited info they provided. At best they simply allowed fighters to reach high altitudes above their bases before the incoming raids arrived.

Trying to equate the realities of the air war over Germany to the realities of the air war in the pacific will lead to a complete fantasy scenario.

Germany not only detected incoming raids hours before they flew into German air space, they had an inter-locking network of radar and early warning stations all across Europe that kept track of a raid with accurate updates coming in every few minutes.

It was that kind of detailed and accurate information that gave them such a high level of control that allowed them to vector fighters from hundreds of miles away in and have any hope of actually intercepting the raids. In the Pacific it was very rare for fighters outside of the immediate combat area to ever get within a hundred miles of a raid and multi air group command vectoring was rarely, if ever, used.

Jim

Ok, well of course i relize it's a difference between the Air war in Germany and the one in the Pacific,
I'm no expert on the Pacific war at all, but i understand that it is two different areas, and that the limitations of Japan realy is a huge factor.
Anyway Jim D Burns, thanks for the clerefication.

[Hard Sarge]

in reply to Charles

In BTR, for example, you had seperate railroads you could target, and until you damaged that infrastructure to a grand overall degree, there was no cut in production.

no, if you hit the RR's around the factories, you will cut the production, you can break the supply lines, and the path the "game" uses to transport oil/fuel/parts

the hassle is, it don't show up in the factory lists as damage, you just don't get the parts to make the planes, or change the oil into fuel

if I remember correctly, there are 3 main RR's based on the Rhur, you break them, you hurt all the production going into and out of the Rhur

but..., once hurt or broken, the game will start figuring out how much it can truck out or in

that is all stuff you don't really see, just how the points works out, you really need to have a debugger running during the turn, to see it all happening

there is also a overall damage that will happen, if you are able to break the Transport system

for WitP, I would have to think you got to ask, what time frame are you asking about ? by the end of the war, Japan was pretty much a wasteland, with very few targets left to hit, in Germany, they had underground and out in the woods, and other odd factory set ups, but maining they were worthless, they couldn't get to where they were needed, a lot of 262s sat in the woods ad never flew

[Hard Sarge]

again for the ETO

the Germens were able to tell a raid was coming, before the bombers even started to take off, Radio detection picked them up, when the pilots got into there planes and started there check lists and were getting ready, they all turned on there radios and did a click test, to be sure the radio worked

even though they mantained radio silence, the radio check would be "heard" you would have say 300-900 bombers all hitting the transmit key in a very short time, that was enough to get the alert orders started on the other side

(OT, but a story I always liked, the US always thought the Germens had spies on every base, even though the English claimed that they had captured/turned every Germen spy, the US didn't believe it, the Germens always seemed to "know" what was going on

one of the top LW interagators, was sitting in his office, and a P-38 Recon plane had been shot down, and they were able to get to the film, and while working the film, there was a photo of a B-17 sitting in front of a hanger, so they blew it up and gave it to this guy as a photo to hang in his office, so he gets done hanging this new fancy photo, when the door opens and some new POWs are ushered in, and the one just stares at the photo with his mouth hanging open, when he is able to get this guy to talk, he says, that is my plane, you got a picture of my plane hanging on your wall, he just smiles and says, well, yea, nice isn't it, but the pilot just looks at him, and says, I only got the plane yesterday, how did you get a picture of it ????)

[spence]

I recall IJ junks used to report ship contacts via radio. Makes me wonder if they would report aerial activity, but then I suppose they weren't normally out far enough to be too much of a benefit there or wouldn't had been associated with helping the air force.

Actually one of the benefits of taking Iwo Jima was that the USN could stage patrol bombers from there to suppress (sink) the picket/patrol/fishing boats that Japan had operating across its Southern approaches.

[John Lansford]

Comparing the air campaign against Germany vs the one against Japan is like comparing apples and rocks.

Germany had a sophisticated, layered air defense system composed of long range radar sites, short range radar sites, air defense coordinators, dedicated interceptor squadrons that attacked any bombers in their area or "box", and tens of thousands of radar directed AA guns.  Their cities were heavily industrialized and the industries themselves were located in specific areas within them, and the buildings were primarily made of steel and stone.

Japan had local defense squadrons, rudimentary radar installations, and some anti aircraft guns.  A lot of their industry was dispersed through the residential part of their cities, which were made of wood and highly flammable.  They had no way to detect incoming bomber formations reliably (patrol ships and Iwo Jima was about it) and no fighter coordination at all to direct planes to the bomber stream.

Speer's description of the air campaign's effect on German industrial production simply cannot be extended to how strategic bombing would affect Japan; the two are too different to go past anything but the most basic of conclusions.

[Charles2222]

ORIGINAL: Hard Sarge

in reply to Charles

In BTR, for example, you had seperate railroads you could target, and until you damaged that infrastructure to a grand overall degree, there was no cut in production.

no, if you hit the RR's around the factories, you will cut the production, you can break the supply lines, and the path the "game" uses to transport oil/fuel/parts

the hassle is, it don't show up in the factory lists as damage, you just don't get the parts to make the planes, or change the oil into fuel

if I remember correctly, there are 3 main RR's based on the Rhur, you break them, you hurt all the production going into and out of the Rhur

but..., once hurt or broken, the game will start figuring out how much it can truck out or in

that is all stuff you don't really see, just how the points works out, you really need to have a debugger running during the turn, to see it all happening

there is also a overall damage that will happen, if you are able to break the Transport system

for WitP, I would have to think you got to ask, what time frame are you asking about ? by the end of the war, Japan was pretty much a wasteland, with very few targets left to hit, in Germany, they had underground and out in the woods, and other odd factory set ups, but maining they were worthless, they couldn't get to where they were needed, a lot of 262s sat in the woods ad never flew

We can all understand how if a certain area isn't repaired, as railroad was so easily repaired, and continually bombed, those areas would roughly be cut off, excepting truck delivery, but it seems you're suggesting that BTR had it in place, but was so well hidden you had to actually think that it might work and try it to find out, as opposed to the game having any hint of any such thing.

Naturally as time passed in the Pacific, more of Japan was a wasteland, but as far as I know WITP doesn't allow RR targeting, so it's rather pointless anyway
to think it terms of cutting off an area via means of attacking specific RR hexes which don't exist during the whole course of the game. In BTR at least that wasn't the case, but it was a more detailed look at subdoing a territory through aerial attack. It is rather a bit of a shock, I'm sure, for the Luftwaffe player who was unaware of such a provision, to have that end up happening to him, as I bet he has no way to conuter it, like you might had seen in real life, such as concentrating RR repair crews to the area. Yes, I know, there was some sort of repair mechanism in place in the game, but nothing that could counter getting so specific as hitting three lousy RR hexes.

[Charles2222]

ORIGINAL: spence

I recall IJ junks used to report ship contacts via radio. Makes me wonder if they would report aerial activity, but then I suppose they weren't normally out far enough to be too much of a benefit there or wouldn't had been associated with helping the air force.

Actually one of the benefits of taking Iwo Jima was that the USN could stage patrol bombers from there to suppress (sink) the picket/patrol/fishing boats that Japan had operating across its Southern approaches.

Naturally that time would come sooner or later, but what you say may tend to indicate it wasn't already being done via CVTF's or subs.

[AirGriff]

ORIGINAL: Charles_22

ORIGINAL: Hard Sarge

in reply to Charles

In BTR, for example, you had seperate railroads you could target, and until you damaged that infrastructure to a grand overall degree, there was no cut in production.

no, if you hit the RR's around the factories, you will cut the production, you can break the supply lines, and the path the "game" uses to transport oil/fuel/parts

the hassle is, it don't show up in the factory lists as damage, you just don't get the parts to make the planes, or change the oil into fuel

if I remember correctly, there are 3 main RR's based on the Rhur, you break them, you hurt all the production going into and out of the Rhur

but..., once hurt or broken, the game will start figuring out how much it can truck out or in

that is all stuff you don't really see, just how the points works out, you really need to have a debugger running during the turn, to see it all happening

there is also a overall damage that will happen, if you are able to break the Transport system

for WitP, I would have to think you got to ask, what time frame are you asking about ? by the end of the war, Japan was pretty much a wasteland, with very few targets left to hit, in Germany, they had underground and out in the woods, and other odd factory set ups, but maining they were worthless, they couldn't get to where they were needed, a lot of 262s sat in the woods ad never flew

We can all understand how if a certain area isn't repaired, as railroad was so easily repaired, and continually bombed, those areas would roughly be cut off, excepting truck delivery, but it seems you're suggesting that BTR had it in place, but was so well hidden you had to actually think that it might work and try it to find out, as opposed to the game having any hint of any such thing.

Naturally as time passed in the Pacific, more of Japan was a wasteland, but as far as I know WITP doesn't allow RR targeting, so it's rather pointless anyway
to think it terms of cutting off an area via means of attacking specific RR hexes which don't exist during the whole course of the game. In BTR at least that wasn't the case, but it was a more detailed look at subdoing a territory through aerial attack. It is rather a bit of a shock, I'm sure, for the Luftwaffe player who was unaware of such a provision, to have that end up happening to him, as I bet he has no way to conuter it, like you might had seen in real life, such as concentrating RR repair crews to the area. Yes, I know, there was some sort of repair mechanism in place in the game, but nothing that could counter getting so specific as hitting three lousy RR hexes.

I think what Hard Sarge was trying to say was that hitting HI and the other infrastructure targets doesn't mean you're just hitting the physical factory buildings, but all the infrastructure that that factory needs and supplies within the 60 mile hex. Without a doubt it is a broad brush, but this is primarily a strategic level game aimed at combat operations rather than strategic bombing. If you want the level of detail you're talking about regarding strategic bombing then that's a game within a game. It would be fun, no doubt, but it would be cumbersome and probably not as interesting as BTR with all its depth and color. I think it's better to focus on taking/defending real estate and all the operational planning that goes with that than practically doubling the complexity of the game for the last 6-18 months of a 4 to 5 year game time frame.

That said, this discussion makes me think it would be pretty interesting to see a BTR scenario for the Japanese theatre.

[88l71]

From the Strategic Bombing Survey (you can find it on the web, just use google) the AAF hadn't really begun going after transportation yet at the end of the war, though air dropped mines were shutting down the inter-island transport network.

Germany also had a large number of good bomber interceptors, and were going against B-17's, which were much less capable in performance or defensive capability than the B-29's.

[rtrapasso]

For some time, some folks have been harping on "aircraft interceptions" between bases... can anyone actually give any evidence where this occurred in significant numbers by the Japanese (or shoot, even the Allies) in the Pacific Theater during the war?? The only ones i know about were on Guadalcanal by the Allies, and most of the successful interceptions actually depended on coast watchers more than the radar (coast watchers gave more lead time) and even then, the interceptions occurred mainly within a few miles of the base.

i've only found isolated examples by a few planes on occasion where they (the Japanese) actually SAW planes by chance and attacked away from a base ... from what i've read, most Japanese took radios out of their fighter planes to improve performance , which sort of defeats the idea of vectoring in aircraft to make an interception. Some "leader" aircraft retained radios, but making subordinates follow hand signals, etc. was more than a little problematic.

Perhaps i am unaware of large scale interceptions, but:
1) Most US city bombing occurred at night, and there were barely any night fighters available.

2) The city bombing/firestorm model is broken in the game (not sure what AE will do with it) which gives the Japanese a non-historic advantage in the game.

Unless someone can show where the events that are proposed to be modeled actually happened (i.e. - interceptions of formations more than 60 miles from a base, or 45 miles for AE), should we even be debating the question of how to implement something like this??

[Japan]

I think the conclution is that it did not happand by the Japanese.

[engineer]

Another point is the basic WitP bombing campaign is like a 1943 European campaign insofar as your target allocation is the basic factory/general heavy industry/mine/oil field selection.  The attackers had some key advantages in the Pacific:
- More flammable targets
- More rugged terrain making transportation nodes relatively more important. 
- Approach over ocean so early warning and coordinated air defense was more difficult
- Bombers with greater bomb loads
 
The disadvantages included distance and logistics to the bases. 
 
German war production fell off a cliff in 1945 because of the cumulative effect of conquests and the bombing campaign on transport and fuel.  Factories worked off their inventories and then there nothing left to work with.  I'm not sure how the last few months faired in the Pacific War wrt to Japanese war production. 
 
Perhaps a different question gets to what-if's like the Northrup B-35.   Historically, the decision was to go slow on that plane in 1943 after Midway, the victory on Guadalcanal, and the early success with jets that made the plane obsolete in a war that would likely be over before it could be deployed.  Consequently the first prototype didn't fly until 1946 and the problems never really were ironed out.  However, in WitP, the Japanese can conquer Pearl Harbor, the Kido Butai might vanquish the American carriers in 1942, so on New Year's day 1943, the only prospect for hitting Japan might be a bomber that lifts off from Alaska to hit the Home Islands.  It would still be a pretty herculean task to get even a few dozen planes deployed by a 3/31/46 end-date, but it's not beyond belief (at least to me). 
 

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: Japan

I think the conclution is that it did not happand by the Japanese.

The question then comes down to : did it happen with the Allies?

IF you are talking about air interceptions resulting from picket DDs around carrier groups: in game, this would be essentially LR-CAP function.

If folks are talking about interceptions well away from ANY Allied ships (no pickets, etc., or for purposes of the game - more than 60 miles from a target) then: i think it didn't happen for all intents and purposes... if it did, i would like to see some examples.

And remember: all of this is highly abstracted in the game... as i have pointed out, the bombing routine of "CAP fights escorts... CAP fights bombers... flak shoots at bombers... bomber drop bombs" is highly abstracted: fighters did not stop attacking bombers after they had hit at their targets, nor did flak stop shooting. The interception in the target hex by fighters can be thought of as a convenient game abstraction/representation.

[Feinder]

There are two parts to strat bombing.  The bombers, and the economy they’re trying to destroy.
 
No slam on those that have posted previously, but my concern is that most players (myself included), have never even played a PBEM game from 12-07-41 into 1945.  That being the case, the objective call is that most people don't even know the long-term effects, or lack thereof, of strat bombing in WitP.  It’s mostly just theory and conjecture.  We can offer our current in-game experiences, but frankly, most folks only know their side of the coin, and they certainly don’t know the true long term impact.  You really need to look at PBEM games that have run the whole course, an compare where an Allied player focused on strat bombing, and one that didn’t.  And a Japanese player focused on expanding their economy, and one that simply kept things running but didn’t expand substantially.
 
Firing up a 1945 scenario, and testing the effects of strat bombing in that campaign, yields a very different outcome from a PBEM where a player is allowed to carefully cultivate production and build large reserves of HI points etc, in full anticipation of getting smacked in 1945 (potentially to the point where the effects of strat bombing in 1945 are minimized because of substantial reserves).
 
My concern is that, has the real issue of the accuracy (or lack thereof) of the production model been addressed?  You have to improve the accuracy the *BOTH* elements in tandem, or all you do is bork the system even more.
 
-F-