Some VERY PRELIMINARY testing of Strategic Bombing

[mlees]

In one of my me-vs-AI games, I captured Hokkaido and Sakhalin(spelling???). My 4 engined bombers flew from those bases bombing the cities in northern Honshu. They flew everyday. I think the range (from Okinawa or the Marianas) plays a big factor in fatigue and in frequency of flying (Probably based on fatigue as well.).

I know, I know, "Thank you Captain Obvious."

[Dereck]

One thing people have neglected to mention or glossed over is this:

When LeMay started the low level raids there were a few benefits which resulted for the B-29s:

1) Less engine wear since they didn't have to climb to 30,000 feet or so
2) Since they didn't have to climb to a higher altitude they had MORE fuel left which meant more range

And having the cabin pressurized was - despite whatever anybody else may think - much less fatiguing on the flight crew who could fly to and from the target in relative comfort in shirt sleeves had they wished and not have to wear heavy flight gear to keep warm nor constantly wear oxygen masks like with the other bombers of the time.

[Dereck]

ORIGINAL: mlees

In one of my me-vs-AI games, I captured Hokkaido and Sakhalin(spelling???). My 4 engined bombers flew from those bases bombing the cities in northern Honshu. They flew everyday. I think the range (from Okinawa or the Marianas) plays a big factor in fatigue.

Yes TOO much of a factor.

[AmiralLaurent]

About range, I made some tests and yes I was a bit too optimistic about fatigue recuperation. Raids will be flown rather every 4-6 days than every 3 days.

As for night bombing I had no problem with it. I didn't use manpower but target precise targets. I think manpower attacks are useful once most industry are damaged, so you may actually damage some. Manpower attack should only be flown by hundreds of B-29s to have a real effect.

I don't think fatigue is too high in the game. Yes the pilot may have a better time aboard B-29 but the navigator and flying engineer were as busy as ever. I agree that the pressurized and warmed aircraft was a big bonus compared to the other heavy bombers, and should be included. But these raids were 12-16 hours flying time, plus the briefing, plus the debriefing, plus checking the aircraft, plus everything a serviceman has to do, and then he had to sleep, eat and so on.
The real failure in simulation regarding this aspect is that WWII air units had far more pilots/crews than aircraft at any time, while in WITP you can only add a pilot to a unit if there is a free aircraft. And the unit employed only part of his strength (for example a 24-fighter squadron usual formation was of 12 aircraft), the end result being that each pilot flew usually only one or twice a week, but the unit may fly every day.

[AmiralLaurent]

By the way : fatigue increases roughly by 1 for every hex flown. so each hex flown in a raid, or LRCAP is + 2 (one hex outbound and one inbound) and each hex on a transit flight is + 1.

[Bradley7735]

ORIGINAL: AmiralLaurent
As for night bombing I had no problem with it. I didn't use manpower but target precise targets. I think manpower attacks are useful once most industry are damaged, so you may actually damage some. Manpower attack should only be flown by hundreds of B-29s to have a real effect.

I think you're right. I have targeted specific industries and can usually accomplish what I want when doing so.

I have never had success with manpower damaging or destroying entire cities, but I've tried with ~200 bombers. I'll wait to try again when I can field 500 or more bombers vs one city.

[ChezDaJez]

So here you have a B-29 taking exploding shell hits that cause depress. The crewman's account notably does not say "and we lost Sgt. Horniya when depress caused him to be sucked from the plane." It says the side blister and its crewman were gone. German shell hits were known to tear ball turrets from B-17s in the ETO, so I don't think the loss of a crewman when his observation blister disappears is necessarily germane to our discussion. The B-29 was taking multiple exploding shell hits. Under these circumstances a person would have to beg the question to conclude that depress cause the loss of the crewman.

The article I provided the link for indicated that the shells hit in the cockpit area and one scarred the armor on the copilot's seat. This was nowhere near the gunner's position. Obvious conclusion, he was blown out by explosive decompression. His guns were still there blasting away, it was just him and the blister itself gone. His seat was still there. Even if it was a shell hitting the blister, the resulting ED is what tossed him from the plane.

As far as catastrophic goes, it absolutely could be at 30000+ feet. A man who can't get oxygen loses consciousness in seconds. That's pretty catastrophic. A man who is incapacitated due the airborne equivalent of the bends is pretty catastrophic too. Any incapacitating injury is catastrophic. Was this type of injury a routine cause of ED? Probably not but the higher you are, the worse the effects.

Don't believe ED can cause aircraft to come apart? Ever heard of the Dehavilland Comets? You know the ones that broke apart due to explosive decompression caused by cracks around a window during the 50's. They were at altitudes between 30000 and 40000 feet. As far as no "documented" cases of ED bringing down a superfort, I don't suppose there would be any unless someone survived it. All an outsider would know, assuming they saw it happen, was that the plane blew or fell apart, cause unknown.

I've had many a "ride" in hyperbaric chamber during my aircrew career along with countless lectures on the effects of explosive decompression plus I've actually experienced the effects of rapid decompression. I think my knowledge base concerning ED is probably a bit more than yours.

Chez

[madmickey]

The size of the hole has to be significant to bring down a plane due to ED. The window blew out on the Comets. The Aloha 737 lost the top half of 25 feet fuselage and landed. Payne Stewart plane had a slow small hole decompression that caused HYPOXIA. The pilot if they realize it was decompressing would put the plane in a dive, I do not know if the overhead oxygen mask system was working.

“U.S. Air Force pilots reported that the cockpit windows were obscured by frost. The conditions of the windows are consistent with a loss of pressurization and a subsequent rapid drop of temperature. It is likely that the pilots and occupants may have lost consciousness due to hypoxia, or a lack of oxygen. Between the last communication between the aircraft and air traffic control and the aircraft's final descent, the aircraft was reportedly flying as high as 45,000 feet.
http://www.airsafe.com/stewart.htm

[AmiralLaurent]

I think that the risk of explosive decompression can be viewed as catastrophic in peacetime, and considered as unimportant in WWII. Japanese AA fire, unreliable engine, navigation hazard, attacks or ramming by interceptors, air collisions were all for more important dangers. I think the better flying conditions probably reduced the crew fatigue and so reduced the accidents on the return leg/landing. Also if there is an explosive decompression you may lost a crew, but 8th Air Force lost tens of men dead during the war to lack of oxygen in unpressurized bombers.

[AmiralLaurent]

To return to the original subject, I am bombing NW Australia with Betties/Nells in one of my current PBEM games and in two raids (78 and 19 bombers) scored 88 points, so almost one point per bomber. And Japanese bombers can't compare with B-29s.

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: Feinder

Some VERY preliminary testing on Strategic Bombing.

The tests on "strat bombing" that I have seen thus far, were "somewhat limited". So I decided to start running some tests myself. I haven't set up my formal test plan (as a dev, yes I actually am anal enough to formally write one up).

I was just dinkering around last night, just to see if I could establish some areas of "potential interest". I ran about 20 missions with B-29s and B-24s against various city targets in Tokyo. Varying size groups, and varying targets. No fighters to intercept. I haven't botherd to nuke the Flak yet, I'll get to that. My initial observations, in no particular order:

1. I couldn't kill manpower. You can bomb manpower, and get oodles of manpower hits (I think the most I got was like 135). While it does start fires, out of all my missions, manpower was never damaged or destroyed.

2. I could start fires. With about 120 manpower hits, the fire levels were about 4000.

3. The fires DID -damage- several other industries in the hex. I don't think they were DESTROYED tho, I'll have to retest tho.

4. However, not all other industries were damaged by the fires. I noticed that the engine/aircraft production numbers were still pristine. It could be that :
a. These facilities COULD be damaged by fires, but the random chance that these facilities were never damaged, did occur. I don't think this is all that likely.
b. These facilities can NOT be damaged by fires. Possible. I need to test more.
c. These facilities are too far down the list of facilities to be damaged. Sounds peculiar, I'll explain. The physical order of he facilities, seemed to reflect their damage to a degree (similar to LCU losses, the first takes the most damage). In my test case, the engines and aircraft factories were the last listed, and the damage stopped at "armament factories". This either means that
c1- You've got to do a LOT more damage, to damage your way down the list to actually hurt the aircraft prodcution. Or
c2- The aircraft prodcution cannot be hurt by fires, because either
c2a - It never looks aircraft production at all or
c2b - It never looks at the index that is aircraft production (so it might be hit it were litterally located farther up the list). Perhaps the "list of damagable industries" for fire damage is 6 items long, but if a city has 10 industries, the last 4 are never hit.


5. Firestorms. According to the manual, the max firestorm is 40 million. On an "average" run of 120 hits, I acheived about 4000 fires. To get the fires up to 40 million, I'd need to get 4000 hits (less 10% per turn according to manual, as they are put out). FWIW, I don't all of the bomber squadrons in WitP could achieve that... :^)

6. At 4000 fires, several of the industries in the list were damaged (not DESTROYED), by about 10%.

7. The target selection of attacking bombers, showed the exact status of the industry (wheras the hover was not accurate).

8. It appears that an industry "hit" was either
a. By plane. Each plane could "hit" the target. 39 hits, meant that 39 planes got hits. This is what I believe is the case.
b. By individual bomb. Doubt it. This would mean that each B-29 could inflict 40 hits on the target. I tested vs. HI, Resources, and Manpower, and never got more hits than bombers, so I doubt it. I can further test this by increasing the payload to 100x 500# bombs each, and see how many hits/damage I get.
c. By ordinance type. Haven't tested this. I want to see if a group of B-29s carrying 40x #250 pound bombs each, scores the fewer actual damage points than a group of B-29s carrying 40x 500# bounds. I -believe- that it might be somting like a 250# bomb might do 1 damage point, and the 500# bomb might 2 do damage points per hit (altho maybe not that linear).

10. I want to further test my theory of "by plane". I want to change the payload of the B-24s to carry 10x 500# bombs. Have 20 B-29s attack (total of 20 x 40 x 500# bombs). Record the hits/damage. Then have 80 B-24s attack (total of 10 x 80 x 500# bombs). My theory is that more hits and damage will be scored, because it's by PLANE, not by payload.

Regards,
-F-

Have you, perhaps, read my test thread (11/11/2005):

"Comprehensive City bombing testing WitP v1.77 (B-29's vs. Manpower)..."

tm.asp?m=987147&mpage=1


In it I did some very heavy damage with B-29's just with single strikes (I didn't fly follow-up strikes) and I did get manpower damage (and other industry damage even though I only targeted manpower)...


Leo "Apollo11"

[Feinder]

Yes, I had seen that Apollo. But I think we reached different damage assesements.

We -did- score comperable numbers of manpower hits, and numbers of fires. However, that's just dressing. Manpower hits and "fires" number really mean nothing tangible. The actual damage to all the other industries (ie. Heavy Industry and Resources), is what is REALLY important, and the results were "marginal" (as recorded in my own tests). It's the "damage to everything else" that is the whole reason to bomb manpower in the first place. I would bet if you went back to check the collatteral damage to all other industries, there wouldn't be all that much considering effort expended. And the jury is still out whether manpower hits can even damage aircraft and engine factories at all (which is your real target, besides points).

We both ran the similar scenario(s). We both concluded that more bombers means more fires, and more fires is more damage. Yay.

But, "Who cares about getting 320 manpower hits and 18000 fires, when it only does 70 damage to Heavy Industry, and 24 Resources." Much better to simply target the Heavy Industry and Resources directly, and blow them up much more efficiently.

In an ideal situation (and ours pretty much was), yes, lots of manpower hits will drive the fires up, doing collateral damage (possibly comperable to direct bombing), and even possibly score permanant kills vs. the facilties. But...

The "the flaw in the plan" is that we both reran the scenario constantly, for the same day. Yes we clobbered our target (unopposed) for one instance in time. The problem being that, you can't fly those missions at the pace to actually jack the fires up to do "substantial" damage. EVERY DAY, FIRES ARE REDUCED TO ~1% OF THEIR ORIGINAL VALUE. You cannot SUSTAIN and inflame fires sufficiently over a period of days because the fires go down fairly quickly, and because fatigue either prohits you from flying (or kills you).

To illustate. Let's take your MOST SUCCESSFUL mission, by nearly 400 B-29s (which by the way is pretty close to ALL the B-29s in the entire game).

In one raid, you started 30,000 fires. Unfortunately, there is no record of how much collateral damage was done. I believe you when you say ~10%, but I'm sure that's to a very limited number of the low-indexed facilities (you probably did 10% to HI and Res, but probably little or nothing to anything else). But in 12 hours, the fires are 10% of their original value, they're now 3000. And in another 12 hours, they're down to another 10%, at 300.

You start the next day 300 fires.

But you can't bomb the next day, because your fatigue at the end of the mission was 40s (or in the case of your shorter range mission, probably in the 30s). If you -do- launch at 30 fatigue, your certainly NOT going to get anywhere close to those 400 bombers to launch. And you're Ops losses will be higher, and you end the day with fatigue hovering near 50. So you stand down.

The fires are now out the following morning.

You rested, so your fatigue is in the 20s. Do you launch? Again, you're not getting 400 bombers off the ground (my money would be on ~250). If you launch with 250, you're not going to get 30000 fires. And you're going to take losess and fatigue.

Let's say you rest again, because it doesn't matter anyway, since the fires are out.

Your fatigue is now 10ish, you CAN launch close to 400 bombers again, but you're back where you started with the fires (or lack thereof).

From comparing the results of both our our tests, I would conclude it's better to not waste the effort bombing manpower, and simply bomb what you REALLY want to kill, which is the plane and engine factories.

Regards,
-F-

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: Feinder

Yes, I had seen that Apollo. But I think we reached different damage assesements.

We -did- score comperable numbers of manpower hits, and numbers of fires. However, that's just dressing. Manpower hits and "fires" number really mean nothing tangible. The actual damage to all the other industries (ie. Heavy Industry and Resources), is what is REALLY important, and the results were "marginal" (as recorded in my own tests). It's the "damage to everything else" that is the whole reason to bomb manpower in the first place. I would bet if you went back to check the collatteral damage to all other industries, there wouldn't be all that much considering effort expended. And the jury is still out whether manpower hits can even damage aircraft and engine factories at all (which is your real target, besides points).

We both ran the similar scenario(s). We both concluded that more bombers means more fires, and more fires is more damage. Yay.

But, "Who cares about getting 320 manpower hits and 18000 fires, when it only does 70 damage to Heavy Industry, and 24 Resources." Much better to simply target the Heavy Industry and Resources directly, and blow them up much more efficiently.

In an ideal situation (and ours pretty much was), yes, lots of manpower hits will drive the fires up, doing collateral damage (possibly comperable to direct bombing), and even possibly score permanant kills vs. the facilties. But...

The "the flaw in the plan" is that we both reran the scenario constantly, for the same day. Yes we clobbered our target (unopposed) for one instance in time. The problem being that, you can't fly those missions at the pace to actually jack the fires up to do "substantial" damage. EVERY DAY, FIRES ARE REDUCED TO ~1% OF THEIR ORIGINAL VALUE. You cannot SUSTAIN and inflame fires sufficiently over a period of days because the fires go down fairly quickly, and because fatigue either prohits you from flying (or kills you).

To illustate. Let's take your MOST SUCCESSFUL mission, by nearly 400 B-29s (which by the way is pretty close to ALL the B-29s in the entire game).

In one raid, you started 30,000 fires. But in 12 hours, the fires are 10% of their original value, they're now 3000. And in another 12 hours, they're down to another 10%, at 300.

You start the next day 300 fires.

But you can't bomb the next day, because your fatigue at the end of the mission was 40s (or in the case of your shorter range mission, probably in the 30s). If you -do- launch at 30 fatigue, your certainly NOT going to get anywhere close to those 400 bombers to launch. And you're Ops losses will be higher, and you end the day with fatigue hovering near 50. So you stand down.

The fires are now out the following morning.

You rested, so your fatigue is in the 20s. Do you launch? Again, you're not getting 400 bombers off the ground (my money would be on ~250). If you launch with 250, you're not going to get 30000 fires. And you're going to take losess and fatigue.

Let's say you rest again, because it doesn't matter anyway, since the fires are out.

Your fatigue is now 10ish, you CAN launch close to 400 bombers again, but you're back where you started with the fires (or lack thereof).

From comparing the results of both our our tests, I would conclude it's better to not waste the effort bombing manpower, and simply bomb what you REALLY want to kill, which is the plane and engine factories.

Regards,
-F-

OK.

BTW, I simply forgot to check (I didn't even expect it - better to say) the damages to other industries before my last run.

When I did check it it appeared that with biggest raids (400 B-29's) there were significant damage to other objects (Heavy Industry, Resources, Oil) ranging from 5% - 10% - 20%.

Those percentages (although with big B-29 numbers) show that damaging Japanese cities is possible on serious level in optimal environment!

I suspect that with 100 and 200 B-29's the damege to Heavy Industry, Resources and Oil would scale down appropriately (and would be 5% and 10%).

I concur that fires were lower than expected and best run I ever had was 30000.


Leo "Apollo11"

[Feinder]

To be honest with you, while the manual matches the results (that fires are reduced TO 10% every 12 hours (a net reduction TO 1% at end of day), I'm thinking that might actually supposed to have been

Fires are reduced BY 10% every 12 hours.

With the existing rules, in the case of 30,000 fires, the fires by the next day are only 300.
But with reduced BY 10% every 12 hours, the fires would still be 24,300.

You actually -could- fly missions every four days, be able to stack fire damage, and not kill yourself from the fatigue model. After four days, the fires (starting at 30,000), would be 12,915.

Dunno tho. Maybe that's too powerful. Maybe not poweful enough. Maybe that really wasn't the intent. But I'd say that about 30,000 fires is about the max you're ever gonna get in your happiest of days in WitP. We used ALL the B-29s in game, un-opposed to get that result.

But realisticly in game, you're gonna be getting 150 fighters oppsing you. You figure the B-29s SHOULD be able to fly unescorted (air-to-air losses against B-29s were the LOWEST number of losses behind Ops and Flak). The B-29s won't be escorted until you have at least Marcus (I believe), and you NEED to be hurting Japan's economy before then (they certainly were historically). How many of those B-29s are gonna get thru (not many, according to my PBEM game with Ollie). More have to survive flak. Let's put it this way, if Ollie sent 400 B-29s (unescored) vs Tokyo, he be lucky to get 100 thru (see other thread for B-29 losses opposed). That's maybe 10,000 fires. And now he can't fly for at least 4 days. In the current model, he does marginal damage, and fires are gone in 2 days.

Again, I'm just wondering if the model SHOULD actually say "reduced BY 10% per 12 hours." In the 10,000 fires model, he'll still have ~3500 fires burning to come back to on the 4th day.

-F-

[mdiehl]

The article I provided the link for indicated that the shells hit in the cockpit area and one scarred the armor on the copilot's seat. This was nowhere near the gunner's position. Obvious conclusion, he was blown out by explosive decompression. His guns were still there blasting away, it was just him and the blister itself gone. His seat was still there. Even if it was a shell hitting the blister, the resulting ED is what tossed him from the plane.

I disagree that the obvious conclusion was explosive decompression for three reasons. First, as noted before, the B-29 crew compartment was divided into three sections. A shell hit in the cabin would be unlikely to even affect the gun op-port blister in the aft section. The are of greatest potential impact owing to greatest pressure differential would be in the vicinity of the shell hit forward. Second, a B-29 is a big plane, I very much doubt that a shell hit in the cockpit area could cause sufficient rapid pressure drop to damage anything in the aft section, even if all the compartment seals were open. Finally, damage from a cockpit hit would not cause backpressure on the observation blister. It would cause a pressure differential that, if it were capable of inflicting THAT MUCH structural damage on an observation blister, would push the blister and the gunner INTO the plane rather than draw them out. If *anyone* was going to be "sucked out of the plane" it should have been in the forward crew compartment in the vicinity of the hit.

Now, you *could* get a crewmember sucked out the hole of a missing blister but only if a 20mm shell struck in the immediate vicinity of the observation blister. You'd have to hit something really important, probably the blister itself, to cause the crewman to be sucked through it. And the crewman would have to be unable to grasp anything and would have to hit that blister REALLY HARD. I doubt very much that you could knock one of those things off a B-29 even if had a sledge and a good breakfast beforehand.

And then if you are talking about shells hitting the blister, it's entirely possible that the shell itself destroyed the blister and killed the crewman, allowing modest pressure differential to just drag the dead or incapacitated man from the plane. "Catastrophic" for the crewman sure. Then again, flak and shells were also catstrophic for the crewmembers they hit. Catastrophic for the plane? Nope.

And of course the crew members do not even state that the man or the turret were lost to explosive decompress. So if you believe sudden decompress took out the blister and its crewman you have to (1) ignore the basic known physics of fluid dynamics, (2) assume, contrary to all evidence, that the B-29 was a fragile machine in which rather modest pressure changes could rip off huge pieces of the machine, and (3) ignore the fact that an interceptor was shooting up the bomber with explosive shells.

In the universe in which I work, there is a concept called "parismony" that is also known as "Occam's razor" that makes one of our conclusions preferable over the other.

As far as catastrophic goes, it absolutely could be at 30000+ feet. A man who can't get oxygen loses consciousness in seconds. That's pretty catastrophic. A man who is incapacitated due the airborne equivalent of the bends is pretty catastrophic too. Any incapacitating injury is catastrophic. Was this type of injury a routine cause of ED? Probably not but the higher you are, the worse the effects.

A *mild case* of "the bends" yes. I'm not saying that it is not uncomfortable. But in the many and numerous cases of B-29s taking battle damage while pressurized, there are no credible accounts of an aircraft being lost or substantially impaired as a result. In most cases there was more than adequate time to righ into the oxy line system or the emergency oxy bottles.

Possibly one of the reasons why sudden decompress is not a thing that most B-29 histories talk about is the tendency to keep the cabin press comfortable but lower than 1 atmosphere in some planes, or in others to put the crew on the oxy lines when entering the combat zone.

Don't believe ED can cause aircraft to come apart? Ever heard of the Dehavilland Comets? You know the ones that broke apart due to explosive decompression caused by cracks around a window during the 50's.

I didn't say sudden decomp could not be catastrophic. I said it was by the Army medical tests and by the documented experiences of B-29 crews in combat not a big problem and I meant (and mean) to say directly that it was exceedingly unlikely to have a catastrophic effect on a B-29. Taking one down still required a substantial shell hit in a critical space. A few punctures in a pressurized part of a B-29 would simply have never been sufficient by themselves to cause catastrophic damage resulting in the loss of the plane. If for other reasons the forward crew were incapacitated by wounds you could lose a plane, but you're not EVER going to see a Goldfinger effect where a 20mm round holes a pressurized part of a B29 and have the ship beark up. It would not have happened.

I know alot about the Comets. Sudden decompress was an initiating factor for the crashes. The underlying cause was poor design. The Comets sacrificed a lot of structural integrity of the airframe by using passenger windows that were (a) much too large, and (b) too numerous for an aircraft of that size. The Comet was no B-29 for ruggedness. Not by half. Indeed, the Comets basically "popped" on their own without any external source of damage. They were just a lousy design. Thats why Comets crashed from decompression and 707s flew without popping, and why 737s have had huge decompressions and kept on going.

All an outsider would know, assuming they saw it happen, was that the plane blew or fell apart, cause unknown.

True (maybe) but if it were a serious problem I guarantee you'd read in the various histories about lots of grousing from B-29 crews about really frightening experiences along the lines of "it was a near thing, touch and go really" among the ships that took damage while pressurized. Such accounts aren't there. Instead you read (as in the 40th BG account) that the pilot put on his oxygen mask or words to that effect. The documented record of serious aircrew problems with battle damage in pressurized compartments simply does not exist.

I've had many a "ride" in hyperbaric chamber during my aircrew career along with countless lectures on the effects of explosive decompression plus I've actually experienced the effects of rapid decompression. I think my knowledge base concerning ED is probably a bit more than yours.

I don't think your knowledge base is sufficient to allow you to speak with any authority on this matter. By your training you are capable of recognizing the symptoms and knowing how to react. That does not make you an expert on decompression, an expert on internal medicine, or more qualified to read the Army's medical tests in re effects of decompression on aircrews. Nor does it make you better able to judge the durability of B-29s. You've had to work real hard to craft one ambiguous case of a observation blister coming off of a B-29 into an 'obvious case of ED' even though the account says nothing about ED (just decompression and lots of paper blowing around forward) and even though the conclusion is highly suspect under the circumstances.

If decompression were a problem "worthy of modeling in a strategic game" you'd find a strong documentary record of B-29 aircrew complaints. Such a record does not exist.

[anarchyintheuk]

OT but during the extensive testing after the Comet disasters, DeHaviland (and BOAC?) turned over their findings to Boeing concerning metal fatigue and explosive decompression. I don't know whether or not that led to any design changes for the 707 or if Boeing had a quid pro quo, but it's pretty amazing for a competing company to do that.

[Dereck]

ORIGINAL: Feinder

To be honest with you, while the manual matches the results (that fires are reduced TO 10% every 12 hours (a net reduction TO 1% at end of day), I'm thinking that might actually supposed to have been

Fires are reduced BY 10% every 12 hours.

With the existing rules, in the case of 30,000 fires, the fires by the next day are only 300.
But with reduced BY 10% every 12 hours, the fires would still be 24,300.

You actually -could- fly missions every four days, be able to stack fire damage, and not kill yourself from the fatigue model. After four days, the fires (starting at 30,000), would be 12,915.

Dunno tho. Maybe that's too powerful. Maybe not poweful enough. Maybe that really wasn't the intent. But I'd say that about 30,000 fires is about the max you're ever gonna get in your happiest of days in WitP. We used ALL the B-29s in game, un-opposed to get that result.

But realisticly in game, you're gonna be getting 150 fighters oppsing you. You figure the B-29s SHOULD be able to fly unescorted (air-to-air losses against B-29s were the LOWEST number of losses behind Ops and Flak). The B-29s won't be escorted until you have at least Marcus (I believe), and you NEED to be hurting Japan's economy before then (they certainly were historically). How many of those B-29s are gonna get thru (not many, according to my PBEM game with Ollie). More have to survive flak. Let's put it this way, if Ollie sent 400 B-29s (unescored) vs Tokyo, he be lucky to get 100 thru (see other thread for B-29 losses opposed). That's maybe 10,000 fires. And now he can't fly for at least 4 days. In the current model, he does marginal damage, and fires are gone in 2 days.

Again, I'm just wondering if the model SHOULD actually say "reduced BY 10% per 12 hours." In the 10,000 fires model, he'll still have ~3500 fires burning to come back to on the 4th day.

-F-

Feinder ... try this type of test which is what I've been doing to bomb Japan daily:

I have 5 1/3 BG at Saipan, Tinian and 1 squadron at Guam.

Each day I only have 2 whole groups and 2 squadrons bombing (which equates to a possible 128 planes) while all the other planes rest. That way I SHOULD be able to constantly fly 128 planes over a target every day. I was never able to get big fires going or even sustained since they'd be put out by the time the next days raid came. You would have thought bombing every day there would have been a build-up of fires but it wasn't the case.

I've given up on manpower bombing since until I restart a new game with a better bomb specifically for the B-29 it's worthless.

[AmiralLaurent]

ORIGINAL: anarchyintheuk

OT but during the extensive testing after the Comet disasters, DeHaviland (and BOAC?) turned over their findings to Boeing concerning metal fatigue and explosive decompression. I don't know whether or not that led to any design changes for the 707 or if Boeing had a quid pro quo, but it's pretty amazing for a competing company to do that.

It's common practice in the aeronautic industry to share accident reports between companies. I suppose this is imposed by the international regulation.

About fifteen years ago I was in a Boeing 747 that landed on London with 2 burning engines (nobody among the passengers noticed everything during the flight, except that the crew seemed a bit nervous). We evacuated the plane by the safety ramp (english term ?) and all. Some days ago I was working for Airbus and I was able to read the full accident report.

I don't know for the other companies, but in Airbus at the times (1995-1996) any aircraft accident in the world, Boeing, Airbus or something else, was at once announced to the employees.

[AmiralLaurent]

Fire reduced by 10% for 12 hours is just ridiculous. Even the firestorms in Hamburg, Tokyo or Dresden were mostly over the day after. I think some hundred of fires remaining from the previous day may be sufficient.

Maybe they are enough to increase the damaged done by a night raid, as more bombers will find the target.

[Feinder]

Got you PM Admiral. Will send you test scenario with instructions when I get home in a few hours.

-F-