Operational losses in Pacific War

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: Cutman

Another issue that the game does not take into account is that it is very difficult even today to get all of the aircraft up in a squadron of 12-24 aircraft even in a combat zone. The percentage that most squadrons have to maintain in combat is normally 90 percent. This changes by the type of aircraft. Some types even today run as low as 60-70 percent. You have to assume that it was almost the same back then. Just about every unit has a certain amount of hanger queens that cannot get fixed for months and the game allows you build up to 100 percent way to often. A lot of you have been in and know about this. How often where all of the vehicles up and running in the Bn Motor Transport (MT) lot? I have never seen it. Maybe there should be a few aircraft based on percentages and size of the airfield. That rarely ever get fixed. By the way I do not know anything about WWII aviation maintenace I am just saying that this is realty in the military.

New guy that never post so do not slam me hard ![:D]


Cutman

No reason to slam you. Your logic makes sense, coincides perfectly with my reading of WWII history. And now that I've patted you on the back and bucked up your old ego . . . go tell Gary. [:D]

[Cutman]

That would give us another delay on 1.5 so I do not know about e-mailing Gary! On a more serious note there is another thread that discusses on how the game moves too fast and maybe some of the issues with that is how many aircraft where actually operational for each Squadron VS WITP maybe a part of that. I will post on that thread. Thanks for not hammering on the new guy.
Cutman

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: Cutman

That would give us another delay on 1.5 so I do not know about e-mailing Gary! On a more serious note there is another thread that discusses on how the game moves too fast and maybe some of the issues with that is how many aircraft where actually operational for each Squadron VS WITP maybe a part of that. I will post on that thread. Thanks for not hammering on the new guy.
Cutman

Please do post there. That's another serious problem which has been assiduously ignored by the developers.

[mogami]

Hi, We don't use hammers around here we beat you with a fish Oh wait there is a hammer (never mind)

I think the game moves so fast because the people who play this game are a bunch of maniacs.[X(]

I think we need more OP points. OP points for LBA and for LCU and for surface ships. Can't move without them. Can only stay on the ground or in the hex (defending) or in port unless Op are used. Give each player so many per turn.

[Cutman]

Mogami,

Yeh, I agree with that because it takes an a lot of planning to move even 1 aviation unit and some of thethreads I have read has people moving hundreds of aircraft in 1 day and then having them fly the next.

I do think that you could do this with a few squadrons though. Did you bring this up when testing?

Cutman

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: Cutman

Mogami,

Yeh, I agree with that because it takes an a lot of planning to move even 1 aviation unit and some of thethreads I have read has people moving hundreds of aircraft in 1 day and then having them fly the next.

No, then after these transfers they fly the same day! [:D]

[Cutman]

Yeh,

After trying to invade PM during a game as USN my 1st opponent did this with almost 200 bettys into LAE and Rabaul. I lost all 6 carriers and now its a house rule. I am not a ALLIED fanboy though because both sides can do it.

Cutman

[AmiralLaurent]

ORIGINAL: Tristanjohn

ORIGINAL: Cutman

Mogami,

Yeh, I agree with that because it takes an a lot of planning to move even 1 aviation unit and some of thethreads I have read has people moving hundreds of aircraft in 1 day and then having them fly the next.

No, then after these transfers they fly the same day! [:D]

I use this feature to simulate the way most units were operating in dangerous areas. A safe rear base and a forward base used for refuelling and landing when damaged. I have units resting in rear bases move them for a mission, taht is flown the next day, and then retired them to the rear base the next day.

The distance between the base is short (some hexes) and I have no problem with that. Fatigue is not high, so pilots are still efficient.

Yes you can move a bomber units 30 hexes and have them fly the next day but they will be highly tired and far less efficient.

My main concern with the mobility of planes in WITP is that Chinese mechanics used to repair Soviet planes are fully able to repair American-planes flown by British crews.

[tabpub]

I had always thought that a more "elegant" solution would not to have tied the capacity of a location just to the "airfield" size.

Each hex would still be rated for its ability to have airbases, with the addition that non base hexes would have some ability to have aircraft there (wait a minute and it might make more sense in a bit...), such as open terrain or cultivated (as I remember, most fighters could work off a level field if they had to).

The main arbiter would be the presence of the base units and support personnel in the hex and the amount of time that they were there.
Examples:
Clear type terrain and 30 aviation support = level 1 as we have it now
Clear type terrain and 150 AV, 50 engineers and the unit sat in build mode for a 2 week period = level 4 equivilent
Above would gain a level every 2 + X weeks, X= the difference between the next level and 4, so going from a 6 to a 7 would take 5 weeks.
The presence of additional engineering assets would shorten the periods somewhat.
Then maintainance would be based on keeping say 3/4 of what was required to build it there. So, losses from air/naval/ground combat to the support troops would be what caused the base to degrade.

Of course, this is just rambling and the product is already "on the shelf" so to speak, but just thinking out loud and perhaps something like this would be done in the future in a different product. Or not....it's late and I'm [>:]

[Mike Scholl]

TABPUB....Actually this IS available in the game now, as base hexes are rated for the maximum size that can be built there. The real problem is that many of these numbers in the game are total BS, as they've been warped to try and allow for the stupidity of a basing system determining the aircraft that can be supported by base size---instead of requiring more support and space for larger A/C. If a Betty required twice the base space and maintenence of a Zero, and a B-17 three times as much, you could control the
number of A/C at a base in a historical manner and not need to put bizarrely oversized bases on the map just to squeeze a bad design choice into the system.

[bradfordkay]

Mike, I agree with the idea of increasing both support cost and base utilization cost for multi-engined aircraft, but I think that we do still need the rule that aircraft of a cerain size need to be used on bases of a certain size. There are some locations that just will not support an airstrip of the size required for the larger aircraft. However, I would reduce that size requirement for some of them (base size requirement), as so far it seems (I believe that this is part of your argument) that the increased size requirement has had the effect of allowing way too many aircraft to be based on many of these bases. If we had the limiting factor be the number of engines, this would go a long way towards taking care of the problem.

I'm not holding my breath...

[Cutman]

Admiral L,

I agree totally with the abilty to shift 3-4 squadrons or grps to conduct missions, because this was done all of the time historically. Fighter squadrons would move overnight all of the time to provide better escort or range to targets and then go to the home base after the mission was over. What I do not agree with is the ability to fly 100s of aircraft (2 and 4 engine) to a base and fly 2 Naval attacks the same day. I know that it eats up morale badly, but it should be a huge mechanical issue to not just OPs losses. Now they just get damaged by the enemy due to flying the mission and I think we need to really look at this better. Especiallly earlier in the war.

Cutman

[Tristanjohn]

Here are the operational losses incurred through 18 June 1942 in our PBEM game.

As you can see, Allied operational losses come to just over 10% while Japanese losses are going on 24%.

[Cap Mandrake]

I wouldn't be so quick to discount the possibility of bombers relocating in emergencies, then flying mission quickly. I believe I am correct in saying that the ground echelons of the air units are represented in an abstract fashion by "air support" units in the land units.

Here is a summary of US 5th AAF activity from Dec 17-22, 1941:

Wednesday 17 December 1941
B-17's, evacuating Luzon, begin arriving at Batchelor Field near Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia. Captain Floyd J Pell arrives in Australia to begin arrangements for the use of Australian facilities by the Far East Air Force.


Friday 19 December 1941
The air echelon of the 93d Bombardment Squadron (Heavy), 19th Bombardment Group (Heavy) transfers from Clark Field, Luzon to Batchelor Field near Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia with B-17's. The ground echelon is attached to the 5th Interceptor Command (Provisional) and will fight as infantry on Luzon and Mindanao Islands in the Philippines.


Saturday 20 December 1941
The air echelon of the 30th Bombardment Squadron (Heavy), 19th Bombardment Group (Heavy), transfers from Clark Field, Luzon to Batchelor Field near Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia with B-17's. The ground echelon is reassigned to the 5th Interceptor Command (Provisional) and will fight as infantry in the Philippines.


Monday 22 December 1941
9 B-17's from Batchelor Field near Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia, attack shipping in Davao Bay, Mindanao Island and land at Del Monte on Mindanao Island. HQ 7th Bombardment Group (Heavy) and the ground echelon of it's 9th, 11th and 22d Bombardment Squadrons (Heavy) and attached 88th Reconnaissance Squadron (Heavy) arrive at Brisbane, Australia from the US. The air echelons of the 9th and 11th are enroute from the US to Australia with B-17's; the air echelons of the 22d and 88th are operating from Hickam Field, Oahu, Territory of Hawaii until 5 January 1942 and 10 February 1942 respectively with B-17's. The 16th, 17th and 91st Bombardment Squadrons (Light), 27th Bombardment Group (Light) transfer from Ft William McKinley to Lipa Airfield, San Fernando and San Marceleno, Luzon respectively without aircraft.

Note that moderate-sized B-17 raids are launched from Darwin using planes emergently evacuated from the PI within 5 days of a US officer being flown in to coordinate with the Australians. Some of the planes were being ferried to Darwin 2 days before the raid. Note also that ground echelon components of air groups were arriving in Brisbane all the way from the US within 2 weeks of the start of the war [X(] The fighter groups were also being ferried about with alacrity.

I would say the game does a very good job of modeling the evacuation of US air groups from the PI. I doubt the game mission planning routine would get off a raid bigger than 9 planes from Darwin if you sent 3 or 4 beat up B-17 groups down there in 2 days without suficient ground support or an air HQ.

BTW...here is the link to the chronology of the 5th AAF month by month (very interesting..especially the sections on the use of B-17's for solo naval recon and attack)

http://www.kensmen.com/

[Tristanjohn]

Good link, thanks.

There should be accomodation made for planes that stage on the way to bombing raids, as this was done on and off throughout the war by both sides, more, I think, by the Americans than the Japanese, though the latter made use of it a lot during the Solomons campaign. But this staging needs to be figured according to how many planes are involved and where these planes do this staging. As it stands, the game mechanics don't model staging very well, something I asked for a couple of years ago.

[tabpub]

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

TABPUB....Actually this IS available in the game now, as base hexes are rated for the maximum size that can be built there. The real problem is that many of these numbers in the game are total BS, as they've been warped to try and allow for the stupidity of a basing system determining the aircraft that can be supported by base size---instead of requiring more support and space for larger A/C. If a Betty required twice the base space and maintenence of a Zero, and a B-17 three times as much, you could control the
number of A/C at a base in a historical manner and not need to put bizarrely oversized bases on the map just to squeeze a bad design choice into the system.

I was tired when I wrote the post that you refer to. After re-reading it, I realize that I only wrote 1/2 of what I wanted to. And yes, as you allude, it was in reference to maintainance/support for the planes. Something on the order of using range, bombload and perhaps some other factors to determine support requirements. In addition, removal of the 250 panacea; air units should only get support from base units of their nationality (I recently saw a AAR with Chinese bombers in Trincomalee).

But, the main point on anything was to note base anything on what was "on the map". Clark Field is nothing without the ground support for aircraft. But, conversely, if I had enough base equipment, construction equipment and supplies, I could build a base anywhere that was feasible; but, we are hard coded to the map.

<sighs>

[racndoc]

PBEM GAME 2-24-43 Aircraft losses

Allies

A2A: 4321 66.7%
OPER: 1406 21.7%
Ground: 400 6.0%
Flak: 352 5.0%

Total: 6479 446/mo


Japan

A2A: 3380 56%
OPER: 890 14.8%
Ground: 1392 23%
Flak: 314 5%

Total: 5976 412/mo

[Bombur]

We have exact (or nearly so) records of our own losses. For instance, at this link you can read a survey on USAAF activities in the war for all theaters: Army Air Forces Statistical Digest

And so on.

-I couldn´t find your link will try again latter. But the USA survey concluded that USA losses were about 60% of total losses, just like the Japanese ones. So it would be reasonable to assume that (1) non combat losses were probably high to both sides and (2)the WiTP model seems not to account for non comabt losses

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: Bombur

We have exact (or nearly so) records of our own losses. For instance, at this link you can read a survey on USAAF activities in the war for all theaters: Army Air Forces Statistical Digest

And so on.

-I couldn´t find your link will try again latter. But the USA survey concluded that USA losses were about 60% of total losses, just like the Japanese ones. So it would be reasonable to assume that (1) non combat losses were probably high to both sides and (2)the WiTP model seems not to account for non comabt losses

Operational losses were high for the US. They were probably even higher for the Japanese due to several factors, but the exact percentage will never be known since the Japanese didn't list many of their losses as operational but rather tended to chalk these up to combat.

And yes, the game model isn't close to reflecting the actual figures. One reason for that is that the air model is too bloody, and another is it doesn't take into consideration wear and tear on planes, wedded to its refusal to even try and get the day-to-day support of aircraft correct plus the generic nature of supply and the overabundance of this stuff negates any possible attempt to simulate the very real historical problem of having the right airplane parts where they were needed on a timely basis.

All in all, the game isn't close to having it right.

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: Bombur

We have exact (or nearly so) records of our own losses. For instance, at this link you can read a survey on USAAF activities in the war for all theaters: Army Air Forces Statistical Digest

And so on.

-I couldn´t find your link will try again latter. But the USA survey concluded that USA losses were about 60% of total losses, just like the Japanese ones. So it would be reasonable to assume that (1) non combat losses were probably high to both sides and (2)the WiTP model seems not to account for non comabt losses

You don't need to "find it." Just click on the BIG BOLD LETTERS. [;)]