Tosa Class....

[Nikademus]

The Ibuki's were originially scheduled to be built (before the war started, and before the idea of yet more carrier conversions)

Yes, the fact that they were not completed, along with a large % of the planned replacement program, emphasises how limited Japan's shipbuilding capacity was.

[LTCMTS]

A Word 2000 .doc with charts showing historical, unrestrained resources and some alternative US-Japanese battlelines. Again, for further comment and discussion.

[showboat1]

I don't know about early starts being feasibale for anything but fantasy playing using some loose historical facts (which I find really interesting for change of pace games), but perhaps a Pearl Harbor 1942 scenario might be feasable. Since the plans were in place and the construction timetable were known this might not be too hard to come up with. Again, its not an exact science, but it is interesting.

[LTCMTS]

I've posted on my web site, http://www.newnanbiz.net/msnyder/, a revised naval weapons list, including all speed/range combinations for torpedoes and a database for US, Japanese, British, Dutch, Soviet, French and Chilean capital ships using the ship classes data parameters. I'm still working on the other navies' battlelines, carriers and cruisers, coast defense weapons and artillery for the LCU spreadsheet, and aircraft and aerial weapons. This is pretty bland website, as I'm still learning my way around Front Page 2002 and I have a 3-5MB limit on the page. (If there's a problem reaching the page, just go back to newnanbiz.net and type in msnyder at the backslash. No I don't know why it works this way.)

[showboat1]

Dude, that's a butt load of different ship classes, including a lot of hypothetical classes. Are all of these included in the game.

[Admiral DadMan]

Originally posted by LTCMTS
I've posted on my web site, http://www.newnanbiz.net/msnyder/

There was an extraneous comma in the address that I've edited in the above quote.

Click away

[LTCMTS]

Thanks, I didn't notice that little comma infiltrate into the AO. Sorry, guys, I took another look at the CB&BB files, and I need to do some more work on the remarks section. No, I don't think this bunch will be in the WITP database. What I hope is they will eventually activate the edit function in the "unsupported" scenario editor to allow us to adjust and add weapons, ship classes and ships, among other data, now that the program is no longer as "hard wired" and DOS limited as Pacific War was, as anyone who used Novastar's hex editor came to realize. This database would provide a menu of options for players to experiment with, and hopefully, a starting point for their own research and data editing. When I finish the "battleline" and the "OOB" files, you can tie in the ship classes with the specific ships in a historical/ahistorical scenario, such as variations in Treaty limits, etc. You may notice that the light AA is missing from the database. I'll include that in the "OOB"s for each ship for the period in time the scenario represents. I also hope to put a page together showing the sources, which for naval history and warships runs over 200 volumes at this time. Since my wife made me give up drinking, guns, hi-fi top end stereo equipment,fast cars and loose women, I have too much time, though not as much money (thanks to her hobbies!) and I sink it into books and research, when I'm not at work.

[LTCMTS]

Just forgot, there was also this strange metamoph that the Army did over the last 30 years. I think I've done time in three different armies in time, four geographically and three functionally. Anyway, certain lifestyles previously encouraged, are now discouraged. Also, I haven't locked the spreadsheet. You're welcome to download it and anything else on the site, but please refrain from making changes without notification. Another note, all 18" torpedoes (even the US and British) were actually 17.7" (450mm). I have yet to discover why, when there was no standardization in the larger types, various navies used 19.9" (500mm), 21" (533mm), 21.7", 23.4", 24" and 24.5". The British 24.5" Mk.IC and 21" Mk.VIIC are the de-rated shale-oil and natural air versions. The oxygen enhanced versions had a higher performance, but were no longer in service by 1939. The US Mk.16 and Mk.17 torpedoes were hydrogen peroxide fueled, and had reached production break point, as the USN was funding the final construction on a fuel plant, when the war broke out in 1941. The Mk.16 later saw post war service, but the Mk.14 out-lived it. Finally, depicting the homing torpedoes introduced from 1943 and the powered mines, is difficult, except through giving them a very high effectiveness rating.

[LTCMTS]

The reason for the importance of indicating the use of TORPEX warheads comes into play with the Yamato class. Garzke and Dulin have made the point about the weak armor joint at the junction of the main and lower side armor belts. The point to be made is that the Japanese designed the side protection system (SPS) to resist a 400kg (880lb) TNT warhead. When the Yamato and Musashi were hit by Mk.14's in 1944, the warheads were Torpex, giving an equivalent of 965lbs of TNT. Obviously, the SPS should not be expected to perform successfully when overmatched by the torpedo's warhead. Later, when attacked by VTB's, both ships were overwhelmed by Mk.13's with Torpex warheads giving an equivalence of 900lb of TNT. I updated the remarks, added two new classes, and adjusted the main guns of the British capital ships to represent the difference between the use of the 4 crh, 1920lb shell and the 6 crh, 1938lb shell. To be really accurate, I need to adjust the Richelieu in 1943, when her main guns were rebored to use British 15" ammunition.

[TIMJOT]

Originally posted by Mike Scholl

KAIGUN is describing events in a world where the Washington
Treaty was reality.., but without the Treaty, the logic falls apart.
A 10,000 ton 8" Cruiser is too damned big and expensive to
be a torpedo foltilla flagship! By definition, those need to be
expendible. A 10,000 ton ship would have trouble making the
speeds necessary to keep up with the new destroyers (36 kts
would be a minimum design speed) without sacrificing guns and
armor. An it's size would make it a tempting target for those
screens it was to "blast through".

Mike

Actually no. The needs as described in "Kaigun" of *both* flottilla leaders and a ship capable of blasting through a battlelines screen predated the treaty. I think you misunderstood. It was the CL Tatsuta and her cousins that were conceived as fullfilling the Flottilla leader role. The Type A cruiser was seen as fullfilling the "blasting" role. And yes they were seen as "expendable" if it would ensured the success of the all important night torpedo attack by the DDs. They were suppose to be tempting targets. So as to divert attention away from the DDs.

Perhaps the BCs could have fullfilled the type A role, but it seems extemely unlikely given the IJN's steadfast belief in the "N squared" law of naval gunnery. It seems to me to be counter productive to sacrifice your precious big gun ships when the object is to attrite the opposeing forces big guns to a point of parity or better.

[panda124c]

So what happens if Japan desided not to attack Pearl Harbor in an attempt to keep America out of the war.

[Mike Scholl]

Originally posted by pbear
So what happens if Japan desided not to attack Pearl Harbor in an attempt to keep America out of the war.

THE GAME IS REALLY BORING?

[Heeward]

Interesting Thread...

Two thing to consider:

One A lack of bases in the pacific, these weren't developed until the early - to late thirties by Japan, and other than Singapore, until the late thirties by the IJN.

Two the British Fleet would be making a major appearance, as the situation in Europe has not developed.

[Dunedain]

I hope WitP will include such an alternate history play option. No carriers and lots
of battleships and cruisers mixing it up for control of the seas. Much fun!

Bring the brits in the mix as well, the more the merrier. Will be great to
see how their various ship classes match up against the japs.

[LTCMTS]

First, on the British. After WWI, ADM Jellicoe made a trip to SEA for the IDC. His report stated that the British would need a major fleet base able to hold and support the battle fleet (20 BB/CB), should conflict with Japan become a possibility. This became British grand strategy for SEA and the basis of Australian and New Zealand security. It was from this report that the base at Singapore derived its origin. With the lapse of the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of 1902 after the Washington Treaty and the Five Power and Nine Power Treaties, Japan became a very threat to British interests in Asia. The problem for the British, and one they were never able to resolve, was that the Washington Treaty structure left them without the force structure to handle both a European and Asian crisis. In the 1920's, this was not much of a problem. Britain could field 15 BB/CBs to Japan's 10 without placing her interests in Europe or the Middle East in jeopardy. But with the increase in tension in Asia from 1932 and Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany's rise in Europe in the 1930's, the British were hoist on a fork, unable to cover either theater with sufficient force. In the end, the British would have to choose between the Middle East and India or their position in SEA. And without a Treaty or defense plan with France, the NEI and the US, there would never be sufficient force to secure that position. The British could only hope that the Japanese would be deterred from committing major forces to SEA by the prescence of the US. It is possible, however, that a British-French-Soviet (and Italian participation or neutrality) entente in 1938 would have offset German air, ground and sea forces in Europe enough to allow the dispatch a fleet, say 10-11 BB/CBs and 3-4 CVs with sufficient air and ground assets, or even a mix with the French, to secure the British, French and Dutch position in SEA.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was not the only provocation for a war with the US. The original Japanese strategy was an assault and conquest of the Philippines and the US Pacific islands. The Japanese considered Pearl Harbor too tough a nut to take on (at least until Shokaku and Zuikaku became available) in concert with US forces in the Western Pacific. The Philippines were US territory defended by US forces and an attack there would be a sufficient caus belli. The unanswered question is whether the US would have gone to war at all, if the Japanese had by-passed and ignored the Philippines in their drive for SEA. After all, their objectives were the oil in the NEI and the resources in French Indo-China, Thailand and Malaya. The Japanese evidently thought they needed Philippine bases to support their strategy and that the US would not stand by as the British-French-Dutch position in SEA dissolved and Japan gained resources she needed for a future war with the US. Historically, the Japanese actually completed their occupation and conquest of French Indo-China, Malaya and the NEI without having occupied the Philippines. It is possible they could have chosen this path and then executed their original war plan for attritional action and final battle in the Marianas if the US did finally intervene. Another scenario would have been a Japanese attack on the NEI through the Philippines which would have provoked a straight up "Orange Plan" war.

[Heeward]

Sorry I meant:


One A lack of bases in the pacific, these weren't developed until the early - to late thirties by Japan, and other than Singapore, until the late thirties by the US and England.



The earlier in the thirties the larger the British commitment, as the German threat has not risen. The French can contain the Italians with some help by the Mediterranean Fleet. After 1938 with the final annexation of Czechoslovakia, I would expect to see only token forces in the way of CV / BB / BC until the war actually starts.

[LTCMTS]

As a further thought consider:

In 1914, the Dutch finalized a plan for a fleet of 9 BBs (25,000 tons, 8-14"). This plan was never executed because the Dutch shipbuilding industrial base was unable to build such ships by themselves and all the other major naval powers were too busy fighting WWI (the lead design in the competition was evidently a German design). In 1938-39, the Dutch reviewed their defense policy and determined they needed three CBs for the NEI. Their reasoning was that any Japanese invasion of the NEI would be resisted by other powers in concert with the Dutch, so that the NEI would face only detachments from the IJN, centered on heavy cruisers. They settled on a native design, after consulting the Germans and Italians, ordered from Dutch shipyards, with the first ship probably reaching IOC in 1944. As it was, with the concentration of the RN on Europe and the neutralization of the USN at Pearl Harbor, the IJN was able to detach heavy units such as the Kongo CBs to the NEI/SEA. If we transpose this strategy for the NEI backwards to the 1920's, or even 1919, we can see an alternate to the 1914 plan. So, now you have three paths, the historical, in which the Dutch never deployed capital ships to the NEI, or they built or had built some number of ships (up to 9) similar in characteristics to the 1914 plan (but more probably a CB rather than a BB) or they bought uncompleted German CBs/BBs in 1919-20 at a cheaper price to meet the plans' requirements. This would give them 0-2 Sachsens and 0-4 Mackensens available in 1939-41. The existence of such a force would ceratinly have complicated the IJN's plans for SEA.

[LTCMTS]

The US when it first acquired the Philippines and began to consider war with Japan, recognized the importance of Manilla Bay as a western naval base. The basic plan was for the fleet to sail to Manilla and then sally forth for the climactic battle with the IJN somewhere between the Philippines and Japan. For this reason, a major investment was made in coastal defense for Manilla Bay. After 1905-06, the US realized that the Japanese could, with the initiative, land a force too large enough to conquer the Philippines and, probably, capture Manilla Bay before the Navy could arrive. The result was a series of risky, precipitous plans for the Navy to assembly off Pearl Harbor from its bases on the West Coast and the Atlantic and sail directly to Manilla Bay. After WWI, with the rise of airpower, the western base shifted to the south to Duagilas, with the base to be set up by the fleet train. This fact alone would have precluded further investment in the Manilla Bay defenses, if the provisions of the Washington Naval, the Four Power and Nine Power Treaties, which forbid the building or improvement of bases in the western Pacific. With the Treaties, Japan acquired the Mandates, and by the 1930's, the USN recognized that any counter attack to recover the Philippines would have to fight its way through those Pacific islands. Pearl Harbor gained importance as the jump point for such an offensive (it also wasn't covered by the Treaties). For a while Guam was offered as a "western arsenal", but initially the Treaties and then its exposed position and its faults as a fleet base finally eliminated it. So when war came in 1941, the primary USN base in the Pacific (and nearest naval base to the Philippines) was Pearl Harbor. The lack of a western base drove the USN's fixation on oil fuel, fuel loads, cruising range, and the improvements of refueling at sea and technological impact of high pressure/temperature engineering plants.
As far as the IJN was concerned, its initial strategies up until the 1920s did not require naval bases outside the home islands. They expected to eventually capture and use Manilla Bay, but expected the final battle to be near enough to their home bases to not need any others. With the acquisition of the Mandates and further development of an "attrition" strategy for meeting the USN, the Japanese needed bases further forward, and Truk met this requirement. Until the late 1930's, however, the IJN abided (mostly) to the Treaties, and did not make major improvements to Truk. With the successes in 1941, the IJN acquired Hong Kong, Singapore and Manilla Bay. Unfortunately, none of these bases really fit into the war the IJN waged, being to far from the main theaters in the south-west and central Pacific, though they did provide bases for guarding the flank against British raids. The IJN never had an equivalent of Pearl Harbor far enough forward to really support their ops in the Pacific and never developed the Fleet Train that would allow the USN to operate successfully from forward bases such as Ulithi and Eniwetok.
The British initially used Hong Kong as a forward base, but its increased vulnerability and the impact of the Treaties made it expendable. The British concentrated their resources on Singapore. Between Singapore and Alexandria were a number of smaller bases in the Indian Ocean, such as Aden, Trincomalee and others, but none were capable of sustaining a major fleet operation and all were vulnerable to raids by surface and air units, as demonstrated by the IJN in 1942. Singapore's design was finalized by 1925, but financial and political constraints restricted its completion in the late 1930's (in fact, technically, the base was never finished)
Failure to push engineering plant technology, resulting in short ranged ships and the lack of an effective fleet train made bases an important factor in Japanese and British strategic planning.
As food for though, what if the US had included the Caroline Islands in its acquisition of the Philippines, which would have put Truk Island under US control from 1899.
Finally, the discussion on bases and warship ranges should point up what a victory the concept of "standard" displacement in the Washington Treaty represented for the USN. With fuel and RFW excluded from displacement, the USN could be sure of designing and building warships with equivalent military characteristics to the other major powers without having to sacrifice displacement for fuel for range to gun power, stability or protection.

[LTCMTS]

If WITP is going to allow alternative production planning for the players, how will this be handled? On a straight tonnage basis, you could conceivably trade a 45,000 ton Iowa and a 27,000 ton Alaska for a Montana, or 20 2,500 ton DEs or 4 11,250 ton CVEs for a 45,000 ton Iowa. The problem is that ship steel wouldn't be the limitation. Take the case of trading 20 DEs for an Iowa. Ceratinly the ship steel and possible the engineering plant production (if the DEs are steam driven turbine powered) could be adjusted, but what about gun and mounting production (heavy guns vs light guns, mountings were complex and barrel production always seemed to outrun mountings), fire control systems and armor, production of which would involve steel, but the need for specific quality and cementing the thicknesses needed would not be easy and armor requirements would impact the need in other programs like tanks. Then there is the decision cycle. By the time the US was producing maximum capacity for DEs, CVEs and other escorts, the need was past and the Battle for the North Atlantic (at least temporarily) won. Most DE's completed in late '44 and in '45 and the entire Casablanca (Kaiser built) class of CVEs could be considered as excess to strategic requirements) yet the production system could not be adjusted, as the raw materiels, the tools, the subcontractors and the assembly yards were locked into a cycle that could not easily be redirected to other projects. Or you build a F5F-1 for every 2 Wildcats? Or transition from P-40E/F to P-60A instead of P-40K/L/M and N at .8 P-60A for each P-40 historically built after the P-40E/F?

[elcid]

The 16 inch guns for the Tosa were made. Three sets (six tubes) were mounted in army mountings (using navy turret gear in the main) on Aki, Iki and the Korean coast near Pusan - each twin mount supported by an entire brigade including two infantry battalions, light coast defense batteries, aa batteries, engineers and support troops. The mounts were concealed from the air and credited with being the most sophisticated coast defense guns ever deployed. These guns were emplaced because the guns were already made when Tosa was cancelled.

By the way, the guns come from Muroran, an industrial city virtually a heavy steel arsenal, on Hokkaido, not from Kure. All very heavy Japanese tubes come from Muroran Arsenal.