Unit Descriptions: Air, Naval, Land

[Shannon V. OKeets]

I thought I would separate these out into their own thread. The air unit decsriptions are done but people are still working the naval, and the land are just getting started.


Here are a few examples of each type.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

I finally finished formating all 1200 of these. The new writeups are being formatted as they are written, so I am out of that business (yay!).

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Here are couple of naval writeups.

Anyone who is doing naval writeups and hasn't sent me a few example, please do so. I'll free up some time to review. comment, and post them.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

She went boom!

[Shannon V. OKeets]

The HQs writeups are done.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

6th and last in the series.

Several people are working on writeups for the land units. I have a couple of dozen for German units from Capitan, and here is one of his most recent.

Anyone who is working on writeups for the land units, and hasn't sent me an example, please send me 2 or 3. I will make time to review, comment, and post them.


Thank you everyone who has worked/is working on these. The are a great addition to MWIF.[&o][&o][&o]

[Glen Felzien]

Steve,
 
The JU-87B counter is displayed in the example. The description states that some were converted to a -C varient for carrier operations. The aircraft type states that this -B varient example is a carrier plane. Is this an error, contradiction?

[benpark]

This game is shaping up to be a compendium of useful info, as well as what looks like the be all and end all of strategic/operational WW2 wargames. Great looking stuff.

[Greyshaft]

ORIGINAL: Glen Felzien

Steve,

The JU-87B counter is displayed in the example. The description states that some were converted to a -C varient for carrier operations. The aircraft type states that this -B varient example is a carrier plane. Is this an error, contradiction?

Questions of this sort are welcome. Since Steve is fully occupied with other stuff it is best to raise those points with the appropriate author or team co-ordinator which is:

• Land HQ plus all Air units - myself (Greyshaft)
• Naval - Terje
• Land (sans HQ) - capitan

This leaves Steve free to get on with the coding.

I'll check on the Stuka.

Steve, can you email me the current Air Units.txt so I can start patching as required?

Thanks

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Greyshaft

ORIGINAL: Glen Felzien
Steve,

The JU-87B counter is displayed in the example. The description states that some were converted to a -C varient for carrier operations. The aircraft type states that this -B varient example is a carrier plane. Is this an error, contradiction?

Questions of this sort are welcome. Since Steve is fully occupied with other stuff it is best to raise those points with the appropriate author or team co-ordinator which is:

• Land HQ plus all Air units - myself (Greyshaft)
• Naval - Terje
• Land (sans HQ) - capitan

This leaves Steve free to get on with the coding.

I'll check on the Stuka.

Steve, can you email me the current Air Units.txt so I can start patching as required?

Thanks

Thank you. I will.

[wosung]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

I finally finished formating all 1200 of these. The new writeups are being formatted as they are written, so I am out of that business (yay!).

It's "Sturzkampfbomber" not "sturzkamfflugzeug".

Regards

[wosung]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

She went boom!

Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were never classified or labeled as pocket- battleships.

The Scharnhorst class were battleships with heavy armour (max 13 3/4 inch belt - Bismarck class had max 12 1/2 inch) but only "medium" armament (9x280 mm = 11 inch), because the 280 mm turret was readily available from the pocket battleship class (Deutschland/Lützow, Admiral Scheer, Admiral Graf Spee). Development of the planned 380 mm (15 inch) turret for the Scharnhorst class, which was allowed for by the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935, would have taken some years, so it was decided for sake of Hitler's power-politics, to complete the ships quickly with the lighter armament and to re-arm them later.

As far as I rememeber the term "pocket battleship" was invented in Anglo-American newspapers for the Deutschland-class "armoured ships" ("Panzerschiffe"), as the Reichsmarine labeled them.

The particularity of the construction of the Deutschland class was, that it found a way between international armament restrictions (for Germany the Treaty of Versailles forebade to built larger warships than 10.000 tons, for the USA, GB, France and Japan the Washington treaty made the 10.000 tons "Washington-cruisers" mandatory) and the German naval strategy of cruiser warfare ("Kreuzerkrieg"):

The Reichmarine built a class of ,eehr, 11.700 tons ships, which were more heavily armed and armoured than the Washington cruisers, but faster than enemy battleships.

To counter the threat of the pocket battleships the tactical and strategic concentration of multiple cruisers worked quite well, as the Battle of the Rio de la Plata showed.

Regards

[jesperpehrson]

I am currently adjusting my early writeups to comply with the later ones. Better to do it now and have them all correct before moving on.

As Steve said please let us see some of your submissions on Landunits.

[Greyshaft]

ORIGINAL: wosung

It's "Sturzkampfbomber" not "sturzkamfflugzeug".

Thanks for the feedback. I'm not a linguist so I can't toss around the finer points of the language. This may be one of those compromises that we need to live with.

http://www.vectorsite.net/avstuka.html
In the early 1930s, following the rise of Adolf Hitler to power, Germany began to rearm in earnest. One of the items on the military shopping list was a dive bomber, a "Stuka", short for "SturzKampfFlugzeug" (translated literally as "diving combat aircraft")

http://www.bellum.nu/basics/concepts/Ju87tactics.html
Several models were tested and came into use, but the most memorable outcome was the Junkers Ju-87 Stuka ("Sturzkampfflugzeug" = eng"diving fighter airplane").

[Greyshaft]

ORIGINAL: Glen Felzien
The JU-87B counter is displayed in the example. The description states that some were converted to a -C varient for carrier operations. The aircraft type states that this -B varient example is a carrier plane. Is this an error, contradiction?

Many of the WiF counters represent aggregations of aircraft which necessitated compromises in the naming of the unit. The MWiF counters are exactly as provided in cardboard WiF while the descriptions are based on separate historical research. There are many such examples in the game.

Having said that, I urge you to please keep pointing out these issues. I'm sure there are bugs in the descriptions which will benefit from the eagle-eyed scrutiny of our Forum members.

http://www.vectorsite.net/avstuka.html[i]
[4] JU-87C / JU-87R

* A carrier-capable variant of the Stuka, the "Ju-87C", was planned for the aircraft carrier GRAF ZEPPELIN. The Ju-87C featured:

* A catapult attachment.

* Arresting hook.

* Manually folding outer wing panels.

* Flotation gear built into the airframe.

* A rubber life raft.

* Full cockpit heating.

* Jettisonable main landing gear.

The jettisonable landing gear was a puzzling feature. It clearly made ditching at sea easier, since the fixed landing gear would pitch the aircraft nose-over, and it apparently was also intended to help the crew escape if their Stuka was jumped by enemy fighters, allowing them to get away alive even if they had to splash or belly-in their aircraft. However, Germany never completed any aircraft carriers, and though some preproduction "Ju-87C-0" machines were manufactured beginning in the summer of 1939, the production "Ju-87C-1" variant was never built. It would have featured automatic wing folding.

Some of the Ju-87C-0s saw action in Poland. One had to drop its main landing gear, and German propaganda played up pictures of the machine to suggest that they had been shot off, with the Stuka proving so tough it made it back home anyway. Some of the Ju-87C-0s were also used for various trials. One was fitted with a recoilless forward-firing 88 millimeter gun under the fuselage, with the weapon firing a counterweight backwards to balance the recoil of the shell. However, this scheme came to ruin when the gun misfired and ripped itself out of the belly of the aircraft. The pilot was able to land safely.
[/i]

[Neilster]

The detail about the capture of a FW-190 is interesting (British Channel? English Channel perhaps?) but there is no mention of the actual characteristics that made this one of the premier piston-engined, multirole fighters of the war. It was a physically small target, had an amazing roll rate, was able to absorb tremendous battle-damage, was capable of enormous development in many roles, had an excellent view from the cockpit and incorporated a highly efficient and compact air-cooled radial engine layout.

Cheers, Neilster

[macgregor]

Deleted post as I saw it was already addressed.

[Greyshaft]

ORIGINAL: Neilster

The detail about the capture of a FW-190 is interesting (British Channel? English Channel perhaps?)

I used 'British' rather than 'English' to be alliterative... British v. Bristol ... easy for a poor German pilot flying his first combat mission to confuse the two. Interesting point was that Faber was not a combat pilot. He was an admin staff person who begged to be allowed to fly a combat mission to see what it was like. [:D]

... but there is no mention of the actual characteristics that made this one of the premier piston-engined, multirole fighters of the war.

Correct.. for this particular counter. There are a number of FW190 counters in the game and the technical details are split between them. Sometimes the only difference between MWiF counters is a minor change in armament (Me-109 was a real pain in this regard)and it is an interesting exercise to find something new to say about each version of an aircraft. See for example the FW-190A...

.T The FW-190 first flew in June 1939 and outclassed its Bf-109 older sister in everything except high-altitude performance over 6,000m. The FW-190A0 began deployment into the Luftwaffe’s frontline squadrons in late 1940 for familiarisation purposes. Although the FW-190A easily outflew the RAF fighters that it met, its armament was clearly inadequate for the task.
.H
.B The FW-190A's 1,600hp engine gave it a top speed of 626kph.
.B Armament was four 7.9mm machine guns split between the cowling and the wing roots.
.B Later planes added two 20mm underwing cannon.

[hazpak]

Apologies i was away all weekend and only just back up on the forums i'll pick out a few of the Japanese units and send them in hopefully tonight (my time). But i'm not happy yet with the level of detail I have for them.

Haz.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Here are a couple of writeups from new guys. This one is by Wosung.

(Gee, there seems to be a lot of material on this unit - if you can read Chinese.)