Torpedo Ordnance

[FatR]

The main restricting factors on Japanese torpedo bombers in AE is that they seriously have about as much, if not less combat survivability than Dutch Falcons. (No, I'm not trying to joke or exaggerate. And the same applies to all starting Japanese bombers.) Unlike RL, they also aren't hard to intercept when flying high-altitude bombing missions, because CAP never fails to intercept in general, unless worn down by earlier attacks. I found, that the only way to slow down the attrition of irreplaceable pilot cadres (or to stop it under Patch 2, which seems to make maintaining the starting pilot quality actually possible) is to bomb only undefended/well-supressed targets and to launch naval attacks only in the areas where Allies have no air cover, or during large naval battles, when you can hope to put a torpedo into something big (and enemy, hopefully, is in disarray by the time Betties arrive).

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: FatR

The main restricting factors on Japanese torpedo bombers in AE is that they seriously have about as much, if not less combat survivability than Dutch Falcons. (No, I'm not trying to joke or exaggerate. And the same applies to all starting Japanese bombers.) Unlike RL, they also aren't hard to intercept when flying high-altitude bombing missions, because CAP never fails to intercept in general, unless worn down by earlier attacks. I found, that the only way to slow down the attrition of irreplaceable pilot cadres (or to stop it under Patch 2, which seems to make maintaining the starting pilot quality actually possible) is to bomb only undefended/well-supressed targets and to launch naval attacks only in the areas where Allies have no air cover, or during large naval battles, when you can hope to put a torpedo into something big (and enemy, hopefully, is in disarray by the time Betties arrive).

No Kidding! Just why did you think the Japanese Aircrews called their Betty's "Flying Cigars"? To get the very long ranges achieved with Bettys, Nells, and even Kates, they were lightly-built flying gascans. They were supposed to be "toast" when met by any serious opposition historically..., which is why the Zero was built with very long range (and similar weaknesses) to escort them! You can probably count their successes against targets with adequate CAP during the entire war on the thumbs of one hand... [8|]

[FatR]

ORIGINAL: michaelm

To train in torpedo bombing, put the torpedo-equipped group on training with a secondary mission of naval attack.
To improve low level skills, set the altitude to 100' with the appropriate secondary mission and it will train in the low level bombing.

Actually, before Patch 2 you need to set altitude to 100 if you want to train NavT. Under Patch 2, you need to set a group on using torpedoes.

[John Lansford]

There are now Bettys flying out of Timor against my Darwin supply TF's.  Last night 14 of them got past my CAP and sank 3 transports, with 5 torpedo hits.  That's a hit rate of over 35%, pretty good against merchant ships even with fighter escorts.  Lautern is a size 5 base so the stacking/supply penalties aren't applicable, but I was still surprised by their accuracy.

[FatR]

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

No Kidding! Just why did you think the Japanese Aircrews called their Betty's "Flying Cigars"?

I think there might be another reason for this particular nickname. Just look at photos of G4M.

To get the very long ranges achieved with Bettys, Nells, and even Kates, they were lightly-built flying gascans. They were supposed to be "toast" when met by any serious opposition historically..., which is why the Zero was built with very long range (and similar weaknesses) to escort them! You can probably count their successes against targets with adequate CAP during the entire war on the thumbs of one hand... [8|]

No WW II bombers could fly attack missions against targets with adequate CAP (at heights that allowed to hit anything smaller than a city) without taking prohibitive losses. That's why Allied bomber offensive against Germany only succeeded at imposing acceptable rate of attrition on Luftwaffe after appearance of long-range escorts. And in fact, until late in the war, G4M fared quite well, except on long-range, low-altitude, small-group (importance of never actually having sufficient numbers of combat-ready planes for the task during Guadalcal and Solomons campaigns cannot be underestimated - the biggest Betty torpedo attacks at Guadalcanal consisted of only about two dozen planes) torpedo attacks against large well-protected convoys and task forces.

If we want to talk about history, about 20 Betties were lost during the entire conquest of DEI, including sinking of Force Z, bombing of Singapore, demolishing of multiple Allied airfields and weeks of ground-pounding at Bataan. Just try to achieve this in the game. My total grand campaign loss figure for G4M is 114 by late March of 1942, including 37 a2a and 32 flak. Even though I was relatively restrained with them after the first month. Even after raising durability for Netties by 4 through the editor, to keep it on par with other large 2E bombers. So, don't try to justify their extreme in-game fragility by history. I suspect (and this is not meant as a criticism, BTW) that making Japanese LBA relatively deadly in its attacks, but fragile, and Allied their opposite, was made for the reasons of overall play balance.

[Sardaukar]

ORIGINAL: FatR

No WW II bombers could fly attack missions against targets with adequate CAP (at heights that allowed to hit anything smaller than a city) without taking prohibitive losses. That's why Allied bomber offensive against Germany only succeeded at imposing acceptable rate of attrition on Luftwaffe after appearance of long-range escorts. And in fact, until late in the war, G4M fared quite well, except on long-range, low-altitude, small-group (importance of never actually having sufficient numbers of combat-ready planes for the task during Guadalcal and Solomons campaigns cannot be underestimated - the biggest Betty torpedo attacks at Guadalcanal consisted of only about two dozen planes) torpedo attacks against large well-protected convoys and task forces.

If we want to talk about history, about 20 Betties were lost during the entire conquest of DEI, including sinking of Force Z, bombing of Singapore, demolishing of multiple Allied airfields and weeks of ground-pounding at Bataan. Just try to achieve this in the game. My total grand campaign loss figure for G4M is 114 by late March of 1942, including 37 a2a and 32 flak. Even though I was relatively restrained with them after the first month. Even after raising durability for Netties by 4 through the editor, to keep it on par with other large 2E bombers. So, don't try to justify their extreme in-game fragility by history. I suspect (and this is not meant as a criticism, BTW) that making Japanese LBA relatively deadly in its attacks, but fragile, and Allied their opposite, was made for the reasons of overall play balance.

"Flying Cigar" changed quickly to "Flying Cigarette Lighter"...for obvious reasons.

US medium bombers flew regularly unescorted missions against for example Rabaul, even when there was large amount of fighters operating from there. Of course they preferred escort, but could and did fly attack missions against defended Japanese bases with reasonable loss rates. Heavy bombers like B-17 and B-24 did that even more. This is at least what "Fire in the Sky" says.

Factors in this was Zero's and other Japanese fighters' inadequate armament and structural weakness to be good bomber interceptors. This was augmented by US bombers being very sturdy in comparison.

Betty was created as "Super Nell", to be able to assist IJN Kido Butai carrier force in "decisive battle" and was thus given extraordinary range. Tradeoff, of course, with tragic consequences to IJN bomber crews. Also, it's range was so high that it outranged Zero. This made it's outstanding range quite useless, since Betty did not have much chance to survive against fighter defense. They would have been better off having comparable range with Zero and use more armour, self-sealing tanks and better defensive armament. As it was, Betty (and Nell) was horribly vulnerable to fighters and AA.

There are good quotes in "Fire in the Sky" from Japanese IJNAF officers, how B-17 and B-24 caused unsolved problem to IJNAF in Rabaul. they just did not have right tools to counter heavy bomber formations, especially with fighter escort. And Rabaul was probably best defended IJN/IJA base in aerial sense..and it was where IJN land based forces virtually ceased to be viable fighting force in late 1943.

[spence]

The problem is not so much the availability of torpedoes to feed the Nettys but rather a gross overstatement of the ability of even excellent torpedo bomber aircrew to hit a target.

In real life the KB sent 40 torpedo bombers against Pearl Harbor. With NO fighter opposition and negligible flak the 40 bombers scored 20 or 21 hits (or, if you credit a midget sub with one; 19 or 20 hits). That approximates 50% hits against unmoving targets under ideal circumstances. AE quite consistently provides around 80% hits for torpedo armed bombers in the PH attack.

(AE also allows the KB to increase the number of torpedo-armed planes in the certain knowledge that no anti-torpedo nets are in place: certainty not available to the planners of the attack. Additionally all ships are subject to torpedo hits because mooring inboard or sitting in drydock etc are not accounted for at all).

I'll admit to not having a day to day count of torpedo armed sorties by the units of the KB but from battle accounts it appears that the KB's Kates scored 14 hits in the remainder of 1941 and all of 1942: 7 hits on 3 different US CVs and 7 more hits on the USS Meredith. That is not all that much better than the TBDs/TBFs of the USN.

Now this thread is not about the KBs Kates. It's about IJN LBA. The ability of the Nettys to score torpedo hits is similarly overstated. AE serves up the PoW and Repulse on a golden platter in the GC game (It's at least "bronze" platter). IRL, after the Nettys had their way with those ships they never made a similarly effective torpedo attack against warships during the entire course of the war. They appear to have suffered some availability problems during the DEI campaign since they never made another torpedo attack. They had their chances at the end of the Singapore Campaign but appear not to have wasted any expensive torpedoes on the merchies fleeing the falling fortress. A typical AE attack would have 6 Nettys attack a pair of freighters and score 4-5 hits. Just too many hits is the problem.

[FatR]

ORIGINAL: Sardaukar

"Flying Cigar" changed quickly to "Flying Cigarette Lighter"...for obvious reasons.

US medium bombers flew regularly unescorted missions against for example Rabaul, even when there was large amount of fighters operating from there. Of course they preferred escort, but could and did fly attack missions against defended Japanese bases with reasonable loss rates. Heavy bombers like B-17 and B-24 did that even more. This is at least what "Fire in the Sky" says.

On what page? Because, somehow, it was necessary to put fighter airfield within short range of Rabaul to attack it successfully, as sending unescorted bombers at altitudes was way too costly (night bombings and high-altitude raids allowed survival, but rarely allowed doing real harm). This goes both for medium and heavy bombers. And in fact Fire in the Sky explicitly mentions, on p. 648, that until January 1944 (when attrition began to tell), attacks on Rabaul were supposed to include two fighters per bomber.

ORIGINAL: Sardaukar
Betty was created as "Super Nell", to be able to assist IJN Kido Butai carrier force in "decisive battle" and was thus given extraordinary range. Tradeoff, of course, with tragic consequences to IJN bomber crews. Also, it's range was so high that it outranged Zero. This made it's outstanding range quite useless, since Betty did not have much chance to survive against fighter defense. They would have been better off having comparable range with Zero and use more armour, self-sealing tanks and better defensive armament. As it was, Betty (and Nell) was horribly vulnerable to fighters and AA.

And yet, its survival rate somehow was generally great for the first half of 1942, and pretty decent even later, except in the conditions I outlined above. Until Allied air superiority became overwhelming, anyway. Defensive armament of Betties was pretty heavy for most of its times (up to 4x20mm by late war), although improvements often were slow to appear in mass production, and I don't see how Japanese could possibly improve it, without magically improving their weapon industry. As about the range, Betties needed it, because IJN could not allow special searchplanes, at least not in adequate numbers. I'm not informed enough to tell, whether some of it was really extraneous. Betty construction was very durable and the only real (although major) vulnerability was fuel tanks. Their main problem was in the fact that Japanese command too often sent them to missions where no WW II bomber could have fared well (at least with the numbers Japanese had in RL).

ORIGINAL: Sardaukar
There are good quotes in "Fire in the Sky" from Japanese IJNAF officers, how B-17 and B-24 caused unsolved problem to IJNAF in Rabaul. they just did not have right tools to counter heavy bomber formations, especially with fighter escort.

Fire in the Sky does not provide much Japanese viewpoint, and I don't remember these quotes, so, please, page numbers again? And anyway, the main problem Japanese were unable to solve is called "Allied numerical superiority". Fire in the Sky tends to gloss over it. But, you know, the biggest Betty airfield attack in South Pacific consisted of 44 planes, while formations of 60+ bombers (with 200 or more sorties per day overall) were standard for major Allied raids by second half of 1943.

ORIGINAL: Sardaukar
And Rabaul was probably best defended IJN/IJA base in aerial sense..and it was where IJN land based forces virtually ceased to be viable fighting force in late 1943.

In February 1944. And the real deathblow was the destruction of Truk, which not only stripped Rabaul of new planes to maintain the battle of attrition, but also made defending it essentially meaningless.

[spence]

IIRC the aircrew called them "Ronsons". The shape of the hull of a Betty might be roughly similar to a cigar but hardly to a cigarette lighter. I think the analogy the aircrew had in mind is that the aircraft "lit up" easily.

When, after sinking the PoW and Repulse, did the Nettys ever accomplish anything remotely as significant. They had a good day. It was not the norm. Torpedo bombers get too many hits.

[Gilbert]

ORIGINAL: spence


When, after sinking the PoW and Repulse, did the Nettys ever accomplish anything remotely as significant. They had a good day. It was not the norm. Torpedo bombers get too many hits.

Answer is yes. Look at the battle of Rennel Island wher CA Chicago was sunk by them.
Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Rennell_Island

Regards
Gilbert

[Zacktar]

ORIGINAL: spence

When, after sinking the PoW and Repulse, did the Nettys ever accomplish anything remotely as significant.

I've been meaning to ask this question myself, particularly concerning their roles as torpedo bombers. I think that stock WITP and especially UV gave these machines far too much credit as terrors of the waves that they never were in the actual war.

[Zacktar]

ORIGINAL: Gilbert

Look at the battle of Rennel Island wher CA Chicago was sunk by them.
Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Rennell_Island

Regards
Gilbert

I hadn't remembered that one, but if I'm reading that page correctly it looks like that was a night attack (assisted by flares and floatlights, it says, although I'm not sure that 19:38 would be night in that area, even in January) that still involved significant losses to the attackers.

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

ORIGINAL: michaelm

A Command Hq (with sufficient supply) can act as an Air Hq for torpedo supply purposes if no Air Hq is in range.


Plus you need the supply available at the base:
for AF 4+, you 2 times (or 1 time with an air/command hq present) base's required supply
for AF 3, you 5 times (or 1 time with a air/command hq present) base's required supply
for AF 2, you 6 times (or 2 times with a air/command hq present) base's required supply
for AF 1, you 7 times (or 3 times with a air/command hq present) base's required supply

In the GUAD scenario, my Emily's are not able to arm TORPS at Truk. I have 3 HQ's plus 17K supplies against a requirement of 3.7K at a 7(4) air base. Based upon the above, I should be able to arm TORPS correct? What am I missing here?

Thanks.

Bump. Anyone have any info/insights/data?

Thanks.

[FatR]

The second attack was an unescorted attack by daylight and against a target with fighter cover, and that's when most casualties happened. Overall, Betties launched very few daylight torpedo attacks, IIRC only 8 for the entire war, partially because there simply were too few Betties and daylight torpedo attacks in RL circumstances (long range, no supporting planes to supress flak from the ships) were rightfully seen as highly risky. All but two happened in highly unfavorable circumstances (a long-range attack by a small group of attacking planes, enemy CAP, strong flak from massed ships). In these attacks (not counting PoW and Repulse), they sank one cruiser and one destroyer, plus one or two transports. They proved quite vulnerable to flak, but that was a common result for torpedo bombers in general.

In AE, you can outproduce RL Japan by leaps and bounds. In RL, slightly more than 2400 Betties was built, most of them relatibely late in the war, and past the time of successful Japanese attacks. In AE you start the game building 1.37 G4M per day, that's sligtly less than 14 every ten days or about 500 per year; not counting possible expansions and eventual switching of G3M production. With more Netties available, there naturally will be more attacks, and these attacks will be larger, more effective

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl
...To get the very long ranges achieved with Bettys, Nells, and even Kates, they were lightly-built flying gascans...

I seem to recall reading somewhere two things about JAP air production.

1. they had limited success with engine development (as did most nations) and so they had essentially 2 or 3 good engines.

2. there original engine designs were focused around (to some extent) fuel usage. this limited their output in horsepower.

Think about the Merlin. Early war about 600hp, by war end +2000hp.

Nak HA-35 - 1100 take off, 1000 hp @20,000 ft

Double the power is a big deal in aircraft performance.

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: John Lansford

There are now Bettys flying out of Timor against my Darwin supply TF's.  Last night 14 of them got past my CAP and sank 3 transports, with 5 torpedo hits.  That's a hit rate of over 35%, pretty good against merchant ships even with fighter escorts.  Lautern is a size 5 base so the stacking/supply penalties aren't applicable, but I was still surprised by their accuracy.

High but not unrealistic.

[ChezDaJez]

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl
...To get the very long ranges achieved with Bettys, Nells, and even Kates, they were lightly-built flying gascans...

I seem to recall reading somewhere two things about JAP air production.

1. they had limited success with engine development (as did most nations) and so they had essentially 2 or 3 good engines.

2. there original engine designs were focused around (to some extent) fuel usage. this limited their output in horsepower.

Think about the Merlin. Early war about 600hp, by war end +2000hp.

Nak HA-35 - 1100 take off, 1000 hp @20,000 ft

Double the power is a big deal in aircraft performance.

Their engines also weren't necessarily designed for fuel economy, rather they were engineered for decreased weight and radius. On average, the Japanese engines were considerably smaller in size and displacement than their allied counterparts. Their excellent economy came in part due to the lightness of their aircraft and to the Japanese figuring out a way to lean out the fuel mixture without tearing up the engine.

Most of their radials were pretty good especially the early war ones like the Sakai 12 and 21. Their early designs were based largely on licensed technology sold or given by various allied countries including the U.S. Unfortunately for the Japanese, they were cut off from these primary sources once they started the war and immediately began to lag behind the technological curve. This was especially evident in the development of reliable turbo and superchargers. Allied horsepower increases were due in a large part to superior induction technology and larger displacements. Japanese HP was limited more from smaller displacements and lower octane fuel, 90 octane IIRC, plus troublesome superchargers.

As the war progressed, the Japanese did design several good radial engines but the lack of strategic materials and increasingly poor assembly quality led to severe maintenance issues in the field. The Japanese never did field a reliable inline engine. The Ha-40 by Kawasaki was a near identical copy of the DB-601 used in the Me-109 and other German aircraft but it failed in Japan because of the lack of chromium required for the crankshafts and other vital parts. It also failed because Japanese mechanics had scant training on it and extremely limited access to spare parts. The Ha-140 was an attempt to improve the HP and reliability of the Ha-40 but was even worse than the engine it was supposed to replace.

Chez


Edited to correct typo- DB-601 vice DB-901

[FatR]

The Japanese had two biggest, crippling problems with their aircraft production program, but reliance on foreign technology was not among them (Ki-61's heavily derivative was an exception by that time, and even then, it featured significant improvements over DB-601 and Bf-109E). The first was lack of unification and attempts to push too many new and revolutionary designs in production. Only USA, and, to a much, much lesser extent, Britain, had enough industrial power to pull off switching to new, significantly different plane designs during the war. Both Germany and USSR ended up producing two main lines of fighters (one mass-produced fighther type with inline engine, and another with radial engine), with every new mass-produced model being a direct derivative of a model already in mass production; USSR also ended the war with the improved versions of the bombers and attack planes that already were in production or close to production at the beginning (Germany introduced a few radical new designs during the war, but modifications of old types remained the workhorces of Luftwaffe). Japanese tried to introduce radically new designs, and build radically different fighters for different purposes (they wanted specialized interceptors, that had nothing in common with general purpose fighters, and so on).

The second problem, partially stemming from the first, was the widening gap between design and mass production/actual use in the field. Only Nakajima managed to invent fighters it was actually capable of buiding in numbers and keep passably reliable (before being screwed by material shortages, of course). Other major manufacturers created fighter designs which proved to be too revolutionary for Japanese aircraft plants and airfield services, such as Ki-61, J2M, N1K. As a result, they arrived too late and/or never arrived in real numbers and/or or were highly unreliable in the field. At the same time, new modifications of A6M/Ki-43 weren't paid enough attention and appeared too slowly. Japanese bombers suffered less from reliability problems, but new models still tended to arrive on the frontlines too late, because industry struggled with with putting radically new and too advanced planes in mass production (both B6N and D4Y suffered from that). Of course, shortages of strategical materials (and eventually just about everything) late in the war made the situation much worse.

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

ORIGINAL: michaelm

A Command Hq (with sufficient supply) can act as an Air Hq for torpedo supply purposes if no Air Hq is in range.


Plus you need the supply available at the base:
for AF 4+, you 2 times (or 1 time with an air/command hq present) base's required supply
for AF 3, you 5 times (or 1 time with a air/command hq present) base's required supply
for AF 2, you 6 times (or 2 times with a air/command hq present) base's required supply
for AF 1, you 7 times (or 3 times with a air/command hq present) base's required supply

In the GUAD scenario, my Emily's are not able to arm TORPS at Truk. I have 3 HQ's plus 17K supplies against a requirement of 3.7K at a 7(4) air base. Based upon the above, I should be able to arm TORPS correct? What am I missing here?

Thanks.

Bump. Anyone have any info/insights/data?

Thanks.

Another shameless bump. still looking for insight here.

[PaxMondo]

Bump.  Help?