B-17's

[juliet7bravo]

Test Parameters; (FOW off)

PM; 9AF/9port, 50K supply/50K fuel 500 support/500 Av points including air HQ

Rabaul; 9AF/9port, 50K supply/50K fuel 500 support/500 Av points including air HQ. 6 x "standard" SNLF AA Bn. (4 x 75mm AA, 2 x 40mm dual AA, 10 x 13mm dual AA ea., 75 exp/100 morale) 6 x Naval Pioneer Bn. for repairs. No fighter CAP.

*NOTE; this is a fairly concentrated amount of flak

6 x B17 squadrons at PM, 12 AC each, 75 exp/100 morale, set on Naval Attack/Airfield Attack, target Rabaul, altitude 1000', nav search 0

6 x B17 "reserve" squadrons at Cairns, 12 AC each, 75 exp/100 morale, set on "Training 0"

12 x C47 squadrons at Brisbane, 24 AC each, 75 exp/100 morale, set on "Training 0".

******
First week results (rough)

860 sorties (including aborts?, 235 actual "combat sorties")
9 AC lost to flak
3 Operational losses

Ground hits = 372, with 174 AC attacking. This is 2.14 hits per attacking AC
Ship hits = 25, with 61 AC total attacking (multiple attacks on different TF's). All ships attacked were docked. This is a 41% hit rate per AC attacking. All TF's attacked had relatively low flak potential.

Flak losses per total sortie = 1%
Flak damaged = 35-50% overall against base per mission. B-17 squadron good for 2 days at high op tempo before becoming combat ineffective due to damaged AC.
Flak losses per "combat sortie" = 3.8%

(1) Bombers are apparently NOT attacked by port/base AA when attacking docked ships. Out of the AC attacking ships, there was 0 lost to flak, and 7 damaged.

(2) High number of damaged AC, but few actual losses

(3) High accuracy against ships? This is reasonable against docked ships?

I plan on running it through about a month, then change to different altitude. Then change to B25's and a different base with same parameters and repeat.

[dgaad]

Ground AA is actually slightly less effective against aircraft at very low range 100-2000 feet, because of ground clutter. Planes travelling at 200MPH are going 1 mile every 18 seconds. The amount of time a ground based AA unit has to aim and fire is severely reduced by the relative vector to the AA gun, and ground clutter like trees, buildings, terrain, that block the fire.

[juliet7bravo]

***one month***

2542 total sorties (much bad weather, time down)
737 combat sorties (519 ground sorties, 218 naval sorties)
43 flak losses (43 ground, 0 naval)
10 Op losses

1082 ground hits = 208.5% per AC ground sortie
169 naval hits = 77.5% per AC naval sortie (22 ships sunk, 3 more that are goners)

Number of bombs per AC at that range 4?

323 damaged AC out of 519 ground sorties = 62.24%
43 destroyed AC out of 519 ground sorties = 8.29%
0 destroyed AC out 218 naval sorties = 0%
19 damaged AC out of 218 naval sorties = 8.7%
10 Operational Losses out 2542 sorties = 0.4%

Conclusions so far;
(1) 2 days ops per squadron before combat ineffective.
(2) Morale takes HUGE hits
(3) Port AA should be added to help protect TF's in base hexes...currently it isn't. Being docked in a port adds no extra protection, this is a HUGE issue IMO.
(4) This was a well defended target. Flak losses against a well defended target at low levels should approach 10%. This was the make/break point for daylight bombing in Europe I think. Flak ratings against low level attack, specifically low level bombers should be raised upward, possibly 25% higher given the amount of AA present.
(5) Low level bombing accuracy should be lowered SOMEWHAT, possibly 10%, especially against shipping.
(6) Operational Losses should be higher. Total Op losses in the Pacific was roughly 60% of all AC losses for both the US and the Japanese.

The values are very close, and just need minor tweaking. TF's not being protected by the base AA is a bigger issue. How much tweaking is an open question. Given that this base had 6 AA Bn. present, this was better protected than most bases will be in game, probably by about a third. This would effect how much to raise the AA values. Low level bombing SHOULD be more accurate, but it should come with a price tag of higher damaged/destroyed AC, especially using the B-17.

Ship AA values also need looked at. Not a single B-17 was lost due to shipboard AA fire, and a very low percentage damaged.

[elmo3]

Very interesting numbers. Hopefully they will help Matrix and 2by3 decide what to do about low alt level bombing. So far the poll results are about as inconclusive as you could get.

[panda124c]

Originally posted by Ron Saueracker
Portland used (ineffectually) her 8" guns to engage low flying torpedoe planes by errupting water gysers in front of a/c. Maybe they didn't work against nimble Kates but I wonder what they'd do against 4 engined barn dorrs. Probably quite scary for other ships in TF, too.

This was common practice for all large ships including Battleships on both sides, very good against Betty's, Nell's, Kates, TBMs, and TBFs. you shoot in front of the A/C so it will fly into the column of water. Two effects, one; very discoceting to a pilot who is trying to fly low, slow, straight, and level to drop a torpedo, two; if you hit the column of water or it hits you, the aircraft flips over on it's back, no chance of recovery; the A/C gets it nose pushed up - stall, no chance of recovery; the tail gets pushed up nose down, no chance of recovery; the A/C runs into a solid wall of water, very little chance of recovery.

[panda124c]

Originally posted by brisd
First off, the flak values for low level attacks seem to me fine, the tactical bombers suffer accordingly as well as IJN level bombers.

What I haven't heard is a good argument why three beat up B17's left over from Clark Field with no spares can fly through 21 Zeros, at high morale, experience and low fatigue and striking alone HUNDREDS of miles from their bases against fully operational ships and get four hits and lose no aircraft? If it happened once during the war, I'd say ok, there is a chance. I mean my ICON, BISMARCK, was fatally damaged by a few biplanes so ships are vulerable to aircraft, no argument there. It is not as if the CV had no CAP, was anchored or 100 miles off shore. The CAP was set for 10000 by the way in my example but I understood that CAP will adjust to attack at whatever level the bombers are.

Still disgusted...

So statically it is possible for this to happen. The main difference here is that the number of times this type of attack was tried in WWII can be counted on one hand. However the number of time this type of attack has been tried in the game (by all gamers) is greater than the number sorties flown in all theater by all B-17's. So statically it is possible for someone at sometime to be able to fly one beat up, fatigued, low moral, B-17 and sink the Yamato with one bomb (someone will eventually hit the lottery numbers too). The same applies to both sides and all aircraft.

The policies followed by the AAC for high altitude bombers was to use them at high altitude in as large a group as possible this policy never changed. The policies also was to use medium altitude bombers at medium altitude this policy was changed in WWII Pacific theater. It was considered suicide to fly high altitude bombers at low altitude because of the flak (large targets easy to hit lots of times), because the bombardiers were not trained to bomb from that altitude and the Norden Bomb sight was useless at low altitude.

If you are going to use B-17's to attack ships at low altitudes you should expect to lose a lot of them, have them get fatigued, lose moral, and maybe just maybe get a fantastic result once in awhile. I have found B-17's much more useful bombing ports, airfield and shooting down CAP at high altitude than bombing moving ships.

It is interesting to note that the Navy used B-24's at low altitude against moving ships with good results but not in large formations.

How many fantastic events happen in WWII???
One of my favorites is the Wallis Tall Boy that was dropped on a rail way tunnel, the bomb penetrated through the mountain into the tunnel, exploded and collapsed the mountain crushing the tunnel (this was no low altitude mission). Or the Tall Boy that was dropped on the sub pens and bounced (it was dropped below minimum altitude [20,000ft]).

[juliet7bravo]

Same test with B25D's out of Dodadura...

So far, lower percentage of damaged, but higher percentage destroyed. Number of hits per sortie lower, but they're carrying fewer bombs. Numbers to follow.

Maybe the answer is to separate the heavy bombers and SOME of the medium bombers into a "level bomber" classification, and the majority of the medium bombers into an "attack bomber" class? Then increase the effectiveness of low level flak against the "level bombers" considerably, and just slightly against all others. From what I'm seeing so far, this would be my initial suggestion. Should still be a "clean" fix, and cover the angles.

The port flak not protecting the docked ships is a bad one...this needs fixed really really badly.

[doomonyou]

port AAA coverage as well as something to tell naval attack aircraft not to drive into the center of rabaul harbor at noon on a cloudless day would be nice...

also the real tweak (I feel) for the heavy bombers is not to destroy more (mind you in the West, b-17 could fly home 600 miles over german terrirtory with two blown engines and wing damage) but more importantly to respect that even at a major airfield the damaged four engines bombers are repaired too quickly. A heavy damaged b-17 might take two weeks to fix.....

[juliet7bravo]

Ship AA...so far, I haven't tested against a hard core pure naval TF, just transport TF's and "light" SC TF's. But, it occurs to me...a medium-large transport TF probably has more AA firepower in absolute terms than the 6 AA Bn that are at Rabaul, and most definitely are engaging over "flat terrain"...yet TF AA fire to date has been uniformly anemic, weak, and useless. Six DD's would be roughly comparable to the 6 AA Bn's, and 6 DD's (with a CL or 2 thrown in) get their peepees whacked severely, and without doing any damage to the AC's worth mentioning. What's up with that?

[doomonyou]

ships have the following disadvantages--

1) they are not stationary, stable shooting platforms. Even on calm seas at slow speed they are moving both horizontally and vertically, often significantly.

2) Ships mount thier arms on both sides of the ship. This is critical because while an AA battery on land can (and typically does) have 360, most shipboard has 180 or even less traverse. While a bomber passing over both sides would be exposed to both sides, only half of the guns would come into play before the bombs were dropped, which would have a fairly suppressing effect even if they are just near misses.

3) ships typically spread themselves out over a fair distance (which is why high level bombing didn't work, if you want to argue that the Japanese could compress thier formations very tightly than the high level bombing would become effective). Even just five ships would probably be spread over a square mile of space, probably more, which would place the commonly small calliber (and piss poor for the japanese I might add) 26mm and under weapons on a ship at one edge of the formation well outside of the effective range of the other edge. An airbase/port like Truk for example only coverage a relatively small area and was protected by more large caliber, sighted weapons.

The port protection thing should be fixed as I myself have noticed such seeming suicidal attacks succeed with relatively low loss rates. With enough AA protection (6 AAA bn's as cited, + plus STATIONARY shipboard weapons) on a ground based target, ships docked in port should be practically immune to any sort of low to midlevel port assaults. That is where high level bombing was historically used and used to good effect.

[Joel Billings]

I think the game makes the assumption that ships disbanded in port get the port AA fire, but ships in a TF actually move away from the port prior to the air raid and thus don't have the huge to hit disadvantage that the ships disbanded have. Yes, this is an abstraction, as not all air raids are known about ahead of time. From the comments, I'm assuming that only the TF's are not getting the port AA fire, which is the way the game is intended to be.

Joel

[doomonyou]

especially since hexes are what 30 miles? a task force could easily be five miles from shore...

[Kavik Kang]

I'm glad too see that the test stats support my instincts. I just wanted to add again that, because players do not consider the lives of the 8-10 man crews of the level bombers, a more realistic end result between human players will only be achieved through compensating for this factor. It would probably be necessary to make bombers take a little more flak at low levels, and have less of an effect on the target, if in the end you want players to voluntarily make the same decision as the real commanders did... not generally attacking fleets at low level due to the great loss in human life suffered when a big bomber goes down. The goal isn't realisim, the goal is to cause the players to think in realistic terms and make realistic decisions.

[doomonyou]

Originally posted by Kavik Kang
I'm glad too see that the test stats support my instincts. I just wanted to add again that, because players do not consider the lives of the 8-10 man crews of the level bombers, a more realistic end result between human players will only be achieved through compensating for this factor. It would probably be necessary to make bombers take a little more flak at low levels, and have less of an effect on the target, if in the end you want players to voluntarily make the same decision as the real commanders did... not generally attacking fleets at low level due to the great loss in human life suffered when a big bomber goes down. The goal isn't realisim, the goal is to cause the players to think in realistic terms and make realistic decisions.

I think that they should also impose penalties agaisnt commanders that engage in ground combat with the enemy since this also leads to great loss of life. And if you think b-17's are bad... those callous bastards to risk whole subs (forty man crews!!) against japanese shipping should litteraly have thier game freeze up and crash windows.


This kind of thinking is quite odd. Ummm I don't really want my wargames to dictate to me morality. Perhaps b-17 crews should suffer from morale penalties if they suffer large numbers of casulties, but the problem is self defeating since large numbers of casulties inevitably remove the squadrons from the rotation.

[Kavik Kang]

...but that is the real-life reason why commanders did not use level bombers at low-altitude against war fleets. Players don't consider that loss of life and so are willing to use them that way. All I am saying is that the low level flak might need to be more powerful, and the low level attacks have less of an effect than reality, so that the people playing the game make the same decision for the same reason. That's realism through unrealism:-)

The reason, in my view, that it is such an issue is that as a SOPAC war game this is primarily about carriers. Say one side has 50 ships, 4 of which are carriers. 46 of those ships don't matter much if the 4 "special" ones (the carriers) are lost. Because so much of the game rides on so few units, it is very important that those units be relatively protected. This is the true heart of the problem being discussed. The level bombers should be less of a threat to the carriers. Currently they are the primary threat to the carriers, and that is just not right.

[dpstafford]

I have a proposal for ending this debate which I'm sure that no one will like. Get rid of "altitude" altogether. As a player I don't want to micro-manage a/c altitude. (Everything else, yes! But not plane altitude). Have all aircraft attack at their historically accurate height and that SHOULD get rid of unrealistic results. If "skip" bombing is important enough to keep in the game, add that as a primary mission for level bombers. (And "strafing" as a mission type for fighters).

Now that we've settled that............

[doomonyou]

but the arguement that the game rests to a great extent on the carieers speaks to why I would risk anything to wreck them. Imagine the lives lost in raids like schiewnfurt or the Romanian Oil Field raids from North Africa that were justified by the prize. Had the Japanese really wandered into range often with thier carriers it might have happened. By the way jap lba is also quite nasty (try rolling two or three USN CVs by an active rabual and see how many torpedoes you suck down for your trouble).

In the actual war I don't believe that Japanese carriers acted near or around places where signficant LBA bomber assets could be directed against them for that precise reason. If the AI or some yahoo wants to roll the Akagi past optimal range of the PM DeathStar, then he gets the alderaan treatment just like the rest.

IMHO...

[dpstafford]

Originally posted by doomonyou
In the actual war I don't believe that Japanese carriers acted near or around places where signficant LBA bomber assets could be directed against them for that precise reason. If the AI or some yahoo wants to roll the Akagi past optimal range of the PM DeathStar, then he gets the alderaan treatment just like the rest.
IMHO...

No good. With B17's, the range of PM is halfway to Truk.
Gotta fix the low-level bombing, or eliminate it.

[dgaad]

I've seen real B-17s manuvering in person at altitudes of approximately 1000 feet. I can tell you they would be more than capable of hitting a carrier. However, they would also take alot of flak. But, if I ordered several airgroups of B-17s to attack a carrier task force at low level, I can guarantee you I would sink those puppies.

The question is as simple as this : flak values against large targets flying at low level in an area that is completely flat (such as the open sea) should be increased somewhat (by about 10-20 percent).

I am aware of Juliet7bravo's testing, and commend it.

However, I don't think it indicates anything except the above.

I say again : there does not appear to be a "target size" variable for AA to Target aircraft fire. This explains the sameness of results versus Medium bombers and B-17s.

[dgaad]

Originally posted by dpstafford

No good. With B17's, the range of PM is halfway to Truk.
Gotta fix the low-level bombing, or eliminate it.

Are you suggesting that because B-17s have a certain range they should be tweaked? Cannot the same argument be made for Bettys?