Matrix Games Forums

Here is a thought. It seems, much discussed here, that the problem of 4E bomber effectiveness is the fact that each bomb is targetted individually although in reality, a single plane would not make multiple bombing runs to deliver its entire bomb load (ie not many pilots wanted to make "partial bomb load" drops...gee, I wonder why???).

"Sticks" of bombs were dropped to improve the odds of some ordnance on target. Why not create a "bomb" device in the database that is used by the 4Es and others - it can be something like:

"500 lb bomb stick"
representing 4-8 500 lb bombs
accuracy rating would be higher than the current 500 lb bomb
damage/effect/etc would be the same
load of course would be higher (2000 to 4000)

Any thoughts?

Would this work?

ORIGINAL: donnie_1974_texas

Here is a thought. It seems, much discussed here, that the problem of 4E bomber effectiveness is the fact that each bomb is targetted individually although in reality, a single plane would not make multiple bombing runs to deliver its entire bomb load (ie not many pilots wanted to make "partial bomb load" drops...gee, I wonder why???).

"Sticks" of bombs were dropped to improve the odds of some ordnance on target. Why not create a "bomb" device in the database that is used by the 4Es and others - it can be something like:

"500 lb bomb stick"
representing 4-8 500 lb bombs
accuracy rating would be higher than the current 500 lb bomb
damage/effect/etc would be the same
load of course would be higher (2000 to 4000)

Any thoughts?

Would this work?

I actually considered for a second creating two different classes of bombs one for level bombers the other for dive bombers...dive bombers keep the current stats and level bombers get bombs with the accuracy cut by 50% ...unfortunately there aren't any slots...

Level bombing against ships was not generally as effective as dive bombing. Skip-bombing however was every bit as effective as dive-bombing and masthead level bombing as practiced by the USN was pretty close to as accurate. Basically the effectiveness was simply an inverse of altitude.

The USAAF and IJNAF LBA both bombed from relatively high altitude as a matter of DOCTRINE. They trained to do things that way and pretty much did things that way. The USN VPBs used almost identical aircraft to the USAAF but were much more successful in attacking shipping because USN DOCTRINE was to go in in a shallow dive pulling out just above the target's masts. The USAAF could be just as effective making the same kind of attack but there was an institutional culture that discouraged doing such things with 4E a/c even though the first "skip-bombers" were B-17s.

The problem in the game, if it can be said to be one, is that the Players, both of them, are totally free to "develope" their own DOCTRINE without any cultural or institutional baggage. That is inherent in a game to my mind.

ORIGINAL: spence

Level bombing against ships was not generally as effective as dive bombing. Skip-bombing however was every bit as effective as dive-bombing and masthead level bombing as practiced by the USN was pretty close to as accurate. Basically the effectiveness was simply an inverse of altitude.

The USAAF and IJNAF LBA both bombed from relatively high altitude as a matter of DOCTRINE. They trained to do things that way and pretty much did things that way. The USN VPBs used almost identical aircraft to the USAAF but were much more successful in attacking shipping because USN DOCTRINE was to go in in a shallow dive pulling out just above the target's masts. The USAAF could be just as effective making the same kind of attack but there was an institutional culture that discouraged doing such things with 4E a/c even though the first "skip-bombers" were B-17s.

The problem in the game, if it can be said to be one, is that the Players, both of them, are totally free to "develope" their own DOCTRINE without any cultural or institutional baggage. That is inherent in a game to my mind.

One could massage the data to in the game to implement the institutional baggage...by giving the USAAF the less accurate bombs...

I thought that to skip bomb you set the level bombers at 100 ft altitude...or maybe I read that in the manual.
I would also tend to say that the amount of low-caliber flak in the game is sorely understated.  This would go a long way to curbing, by its own accord, the use of level bombers on low-level ground support, etc. runs - of course, on the flip side, the effect on dive bombers, torpedo bombers, and fighters on their attack runs by significantly upping the low-cal flak assets might knock things quite askew.
I ran RHS, which I like quite a bit for the level of detail and attempts at working the economics better, Pearl Harbor attack and in 10 tests, never once returned with less than 50 of my planes destroyed (versus 29 actual losses).  This was obviously due to the high MG concentrations in the game.  I am doing some tweaking/testing of my own on this with AAMG accuracy/effect.
 

The game rules for skip bombing are broken.  To skip bomb, a unit needs to have high experience.  When they skip bomb, they suffer more from flak damage and incur very big hits to morale and fatigue.

In reality, skip bombing was virtually the opposite.  It was designed to give low experience crews a chance at hitting something.  The skip bombers were loaded with lots of forward firing armament and they were very effective at supressing flak on the ships they were attacking.  Skip bombing tended to improve unit morale because the skip bomber crews were hitting their targets. 

The USAAF doctrine changed after Midway.  4 engine bombers were almost never used again to attack ships at sea, though they did frequently pound ships in port.  The USAAF anti shipping weapon of choice became the A-20 and B-25.  Both were armed to the teeth with machine guns to suppress flak.

Skip bombing was so effective that the Japanese became extremely concerned.  In the Battle of the Bismark Sea, a relative handful of B-25s and A-20s sank almost an entire Japanese transport task force over the course of 2 or 3 days.  The Japanese tried to figure out a tactic to defeat skip bombing for the rest of the war and were not successful.

If skip bombing worked as it should in the game, people would be complaining about B-25 death stars wiping out all shipping within range.

Bill

ORIGINAL: wdolson

The game rules for skip bombing are broken.  To skip bomb, a unit needs to have high experience.  When they skip bomb, they suffer more from flak damage and incur very big hits to morale and fatigue.

In reality, skip bombing was virtually the opposite.  It was designed to give low experience crews a chance at hitting something.  The skip bombers were loaded with lots of forward firing armament and they were very effective at supressing flak on the ships they were attacking.  Skip bombing tended to improve unit morale because the skip bomber crews were hitting their targets. 

The USAAF doctrine changed after Midway.  4 engine bombers were almost never used again to attack ships at sea, though they did frequently pound ships in port.  The USAAF anti shipping weapon of choice became the A-20 and B-25.  Both were armed to the teeth with machine guns to suppress flak.

Skip bombing was so effective that the Japanese became extremely concerned.  In the Battle of the Bismark Sea, a relative handful of B-25s and A-20s sank almost an entire Japanese transport task force over the course of 2 or 3 days.  The Japanese tried to figure out a tactic to defeat skip bombing for the rest of the war and were not successful.

If skip bombing worked as it should in the game, people would be complaining about B-25 death stars wiping out all shipping within range.

Bill

Isn't there any way to get it to work better?

ORIGINAL: Buck Beach
Isn't there any way to get it to work better?

Unfortunately, it's a code issue.

Bill

ORIGINAL: spence

Level bombing against ships was not generally as effective as dive bombing. Skip-bombing however was every bit as effective as dive-bombing and masthead level bombing as practiced by the USN was pretty close to as accurate. Basically the effectiveness was simply an inverse of altitude.

Although this is a bit unusual, I must concur with Spence. Or go even farther: skip bombing was actually more effective than dive bombing - and considered "impossible to evade" by Japanese officers - until Takishi Hara came up with a technical trick on the occasion his destroyer was skip bombed. [Had it become practice, it would not have worked. It depended on the bomb aimer calculation that the target would circle - Hara didn't do that - and lose effective way in the original direction being moved. Hara got very lucky indeed: his strait shot course gave him a stable gun platform - that much he calculated - and his gunners were able to fatally wound the attacking bomber; the luck was that the ship stacks, filled with creosote, burst into flames, and the bomber believed the flames meant it had been hit - so it reported - as its last act - that it had hit and probably sunk the destroyer!] Skip bombing is not the same as low altitude bombing. Normally, horizontal bombing accuracy increases as altitude decreases. But skip bombing changes the problem altogether: if the target crosses any point on a long line of points of the bomb trajectory, there is a hit - very different from the bomb must hit some point on the target ship.

Note, however, that all these matters are built into WITP code, in a crude way. As altitude increases, bomb accuracy decreases. Dive bombers are more accurate than horizontal bombers. And bombing at ultra low altitude is automatically converted to skip bombing accuracy - so effective many players have a house rule against it before a certain date (because it was not yet thought of). In this context, I see little reason to worry about this problem. It is well and truly addressed by this remarkable game model - which is amazingly well done given its crude simplicity in terms of data to work with. It is much better than I believed could be done with so little technical data, and it is better than we know (witness how amazed we are when someone like Mike Wood explains things in detail - for example the pilot rescue thing).

ORIGINAL: wdolson

The game rules for skip bombing are broken.  To skip bomb, a unit needs to have high experience.  When they skip bomb, they suffer more from flak damage and incur very big hits to morale and fatigue.

In reality, skip bombing was virtually the opposite.  It was designed to give low experience crews a chance at hitting something.  The skip bombers were loaded with lots of forward firing armament and they were very effective at supressing flak on the ships they were attacking.  Skip bombing tended to improve unit morale because the skip bomber crews were hitting their targets. 


Bill

I respectfully disagree. I see no way to model air warfare correctly if AAA effectiveness does not increase as altitude decreases. Further - in general - as an AAW guy - I must say that WITP greatly understates the real effectiveness of AAA - although it is hard to know by how much (since we don't know exactly how much damage is done by flak and how much by other factors). Further - I see no way to correctly model air warfare if extended flying at low altitude does not affect morale and fatigue - true even in the present day. I think the model is essentially correct.

Players like to have microscopic control over their units - and expect them to work almost like silver bullets. The game goes a long way toward forcing you to accept factors not under your control are also at work - and you cannot have 100% of the planes fly and be 100% effective - particularly when you have them do something hard (e.g. fly very low). One can quibble over the variables used by code - and I might do so if I knew what they were - but the broad approach used is valid - far more so than if it were not used. Consider the case of Hara and his skip bomber - a single destroyer with long 5s - rarely effective as AA guns - was fatal to its attacker - because he had a target of constant bearing and decreasing range and because he gave his guns a stable gun platform (so his fire control analog computer system was able to correctly solve the fire control problem). Skip bombing could be fatally dangerous for the attacker if the defender did not follow the script (circle, screw up the fire control, make the gun platform unstable).

ORIGINAL: spence

The USAAF and IJNAF LBA both bombed from relatively high altitude as a matter of DOCTRINE. They trained to do things that way and pretty much did things that way. The USN VPBs used almost identical aircraft to the USAAF but were much more successful in attacking shipping because USN DOCTRINE was to go in in a shallow dive pulling out just above the target's masts. The USAAF could be just as effective making the same kind of attack but there was an institutional culture that discouraged doing such things with 4E a/c even though the first "skip-bombers" were B-17s.

The problem in the game, if it can be said to be one, is that the Players, both of them, are totally free to "develope" their own DOCTRINE without any cultural or institutional baggage. That is inherent in a game to my mind.

Once again, I must agree with Spence, in detail. However, I don't view players changing doctrine as a problem in the sense he does. I think one reason to do a simulation is to find out what might happen if a service used a DIFFERENT doctrine? I think it can be interesting to learn what might have been if the enemy (or if we) were not quite so short sighted / inefficient? If you want to say skip bombing should not be used before it was thought of - adopt a house rule against masthead attacks ( or pick your altitude ) before a certain date.

The reality of bombing is hard to get right. Capt Fujida worked horizontal bombers (the single engine kind - Kates) up to an 80% hit probability per element (using a non standard organization of 5 planes in a vic) from considerable altitude - the altitude being used to give the 800 kg bombs penetrating energy. The Japanese twin engine bombers at Clark were more accurate at 24,000 or 25,000 feet than any other Japanese bombers at any altitude during the war - and possibly more accurate than any Allied bombers ever were (and certainly generally were) - at much lower altitudes. This is well modeled by the first turn bonus - but not well enough - and you never see the attacks on Clark do what they really did. These bombers were unopposed by flak (US AA had a fuse limit of 22,000 feet) - but only in RHS is it possible to bomb over the flak by 2 or 3 thousand feet - and even then it doesn't help much (bombing should be more accurate if not opposed by flak).

My reading on Mediterranean War i came to "know" a Capt. Guiseppe Cenni  who was who really started skip bombing in an unsual way. He was CO of 102º and 239º Squadriglia of Bombardeo a Tuffo(Dive bombing) on Stukas he started w/Stuka diving like a diving bomber but not to the ship directly then he skip bombing at very low altitude. Obviously only an elite kind of pilots was able to achieve that.

...During this campaign he flew 46 combat missions and was awarded with two Medaglia d’argento al valore militare. After this campaign the unit briefly patrolled the Mediterranean and during this period he developed the tactic of skip-bombing by pulling out of a dive very low to fly horizontally at the target, thus giving the released bomb added momentum to skim the surface into a ship’s hull. The technique demanded very accurate flying. On 7 May the unit moved to North Africa. At this time it had become Autonomo. They returned to Italy in December 1941. ...

http://surfcity.kund.dalnet.se/italy_cenni.htm

ORIGINAL: el cid again
I respectfully disagree. I see no way to model air warfare correctly if AAA effectiveness does not increase as altitude decreases. Further - in general - as an AAW guy - I must say that WITP greatly understates the real effectiveness of AAA - although it is hard to know by how much (since we don't know exactly how much damage is done by flak and how much by other factors). Further - I see no way to correctly model air warfare if extended flying at low altitude does not affect morale and fatigue - true even in the present day. I think the model is essentially correct.

In the game, the entire mission is flown at the altitude you set, unless it is a special mission type like dive bombing or dropping torpedoes. Skip bombers did not fly at mast height the entire mission. They flew at a good search altitude, usually around 2000 - 5000 feet, and then only went down on the deck to attack.

The only way to correctly model this would be to have a mission selection for skip bombing. I think the model is flawed.

Players like to have microscopic control over their units - and expect them to work almost like silver bullets. The game goes a long way toward forcing you to accept factors not under your control are also at work - and you cannot have 100% of the planes fly and be 100% effective - particularly when you have them do something hard (e.g. fly very low). One can quibble over the variables used by code - and I might do so if I knew what they were - but the broad approach used is valid - far more so than if it were not used. Consider the case of Hara and his skip bomber - a single destroyer with long 5s - rarely effective as AA guns - was fatal to its attacker - because he had a target of constant bearing and decreasing range and because he gave his guns a stable gun platform (so his fire control analog computer system was able to correctly solve the fire control problem). Skip bombing could be fatally dangerous for the attacker if the defender did not follow the script (circle, screw up the fire control, make the gun platform unstable).

It's been many, many years since I read "Destroyer Captain", so I may be wrong. I do recall the passage where Hara messed up the skip bomber, but I didn't recall he shot it down.

In any case, I understand the game engine does factor in many random variables and units end up doing things very differently than you intended. While frustrating, it's also realistic. I don't think that microscopic control would be appropriate.

I was focusing on the issue of skip bombing alone. It is modeled very differently than reality. Yes, there are some problems with the AA model too. I'm not arguing that.

Skip bombing, in the real world was so effective and so easy that it became the standard anti shipping mission for B-25s and A-20s. In the game, a unit has to have very high experience before it will happen, then they incur very high fatigue and moral hits plus become more vulnerable to flak. That makes skip bombing a virtual suicide mission that can only be done with a few units.

The Battle of the Bismark Sea would be impossible in the game. Those B-25s and A-20s flew several sorties a day for 2 or 3 days in a row. If any unit skipped bombed that much in the game, their moral would be 10, their fatigue 90, and 2/3 of the unit would be gone.

Skip bombing is not modeled correctly.

Bill

How much diference from a torpedo bomber? It seems even more risky.

ORIGINAL: wdolson

ORIGINAL: el cid again
I respectfully disagree. I see no way to model air warfare correctly if AAA effectiveness does not increase as altitude decreases. Further - in general - as an AAW guy - I must say that WITP greatly understates the real effectiveness of AAA - although it is hard to know by how much (since we don't know exactly how much damage is done by flak and how much by other factors). Further - I see no way to correctly model air warfare if extended flying at low altitude does not affect morale and fatigue - true even in the present day. I think the model is essentially correct.

In the game, the entire mission is flown at the altitude you set, unless it is a special mission type like dive bombing or dropping torpedoes. Skip bombers did not fly at mast height the entire mission. They flew at a good search altitude, usually around 2000 - 5000 feet, and then only went down on the deck to attack.

The only way to correctly model this would be to have a mission selection for skip bombing. I think the model is flawed.

In a sense it is - and it also must be. Any model can always be improved by adding detail. On the other hand, no simulation can be as complex as reality - if it were it would be cost prohibitive. Compromises are required to get a real model really done in a reasonable time. Disagreeing about the details of the compromises made is possible - and indeed we all have different tastes so we might make some of the detail choices differently - but it isn't our place to make those choices (unless we are willing to pay for implementing them with dollars).

That said - I think the suggestion is a good one: making skip bombing a function of altitude setting was a reasonable compromise because it was implemented after the design was case - but more mission options would be better modeling. It is likely you will see more missions if WITP II is ever implemented - and possibly even if it is not.

ORIGINAL: wdolson

[

Players like to have microscopic control over their units - and expect them to work almost like silver bullets. The game goes a long way toward forcing you to accept factors not under your control are also at work - and you cannot have 100% of the planes fly and be 100% effective - particularly when you have them do something hard (e.g. fly very low). One can quibble over the variables used by code - and I might do so if I knew what they were - but the broad approach used is valid - far more so than if it were not used. Consider the case of Hara and his skip bomber - a single destroyer with long 5s - rarely effective as AA guns - was fatal to its attacker - because he had a target of constant bearing and decreasing range and because he gave his guns a stable gun platform (so his fire control analog computer system was able to correctly solve the fire control problem). Skip bombing could be fatally dangerous for the attacker if the defender did not follow the script (circle, screw up the fire control, make the gun platform unstable).

It's been many, many years since I read "Destroyer Captain", so I may be wrong. I do recall the passage where Hara messed up the skip bomber, but I didn't recall he shot it down.

In any case, I understand the game engine does factor in many random variables and units end up doing things very differently than you intended. While frustrating, it's also realistic. I don't think that microscopic control would be appropriate.

I was focusing on the issue of skip bombing alone. It is modeled very differently than reality. Yes, there are some problems with the AA model too. I'm not arguing that.

Skip bombing, in the real world was so effective and so easy that it became the standard anti shipping mission for B-25s and A-20s. In the game, a unit has to have very high experience before it will happen, then they incur very high fatigue and moral hits plus become more vulnerable to flak. That makes skip bombing a virtual suicide mission that can only be done with a few units.

The Battle of the Bismark Sea would be impossible in the game. Those B-25s and A-20s flew several sorties a day for 2 or 3 days in a row. If any unit skipped bombed that much in the game, their moral would be 10, their fatigue 90, and 2/3 of the unit would be gone.

Skip bombing is not modeled correctly.

Bill

These are resonable opinions. What is missing is that they are 20-20 hindsight. WITP was designed with a very simple air model - probably not including skip bombing at all. [Its implementation implies it was an after thought add in]. This is an evolutionary product in its third macro generation (probably, assuming that PACWAR is the first generation and Uncommon Valor the second). Look for more evolution as time passes - IF the product remains marketably viable.

ORIGINAL: el cid again

ORIGINAL: wdolson

The game rules for skip bombing are broken.  To skip bomb, a unit needs to have high experience.  When they skip bomb, they suffer more from flak damage and incur very big hits to morale and fatigue.

In reality, skip bombing was virtually the opposite.  It was designed to give low experience crews a chance at hitting something.  The skip bombers were loaded with lots of forward firing armament and they were very effective at supressing flak on the ships they were attacking.  Skip bombing tended to improve unit morale because the skip bomber crews were hitting their targets. 


Bill

I respectfully disagree. I see no way to model air warfare correctly if AAA effectiveness does not increase as altitude decreases. Further - in general - as an AAW guy - I must say that WITP greatly understates the real effectiveness of AAA - although it is hard to know by how much (since we don't know exactly how much damage is done by flak and how much by other factors). Further - I see no way to correctly model air warfare if extended flying at low altitude does not affect morale and fatigue - true even in the present day. I think the model is essentially correct.

I did the analysis about thirty years ago for WWII systems in a professional analysis. I wonder if my notes can be found...

ORIGINAL: herwin

ORIGINAL: el cid again

ORIGINAL: wdolson

The game rules for skip bombing are broken.  To skip bomb, a unit needs to have high experience.  When they skip bomb, they suffer more from flak damage and incur very big hits to morale and fatigue.

In reality, skip bombing was virtually the opposite.  It was designed to give low experience crews a chance at hitting something.  The skip bombers were loaded with lots of forward firing armament and they were very effective at supressing flak on the ships they were attacking.  Skip bombing tended to improve unit morale because the skip bomber crews were hitting their targets. 


Bill

I respectfully disagree. I see no way to model air warfare correctly if AAA effectiveness does not increase as altitude decreases. Further - in general - as an AAW guy - I must say that WITP greatly understates the real effectiveness of AAA - although it is hard to know by how much (since we don't know exactly how much damage is done by flak and how much by other factors). Further - I see no way to correctly model air warfare if extended flying at low altitude does not affect morale and fatigue - true even in the present day. I think the model is essentially correct.

I did the analysis about thirty years ago for WWII systems in a professional analysis. I wonder if my notes can be found...

Here's what I posted last year:

AA effectiveness was complicated, but the following numbers of aircraft were typically shot down by an unsurprised defense of 200 guns (pre-radar, with an equal number damaged):

Br 5.25: 45-50
Br 4.7: 27
Br 4.5: 40
Br 4"1916: 20
Br 4"1935: 39
Br 4"1920s: 25
Br 2 lb: 13
Br 3"1914: 15
US 5"L25: 22
US 5"L38: 50
US 40mm: 12
US 1.1": 6
US 20mm: 9
US 3"older: 8
US 3"DP: 20
US 3"1944: 40
IJN 5"L50: 40-45
IJN 4.7": 25
IJN 3.9": 50
IJN 25mm: 5
Ger 105mm: 50
Ger 88mm: 31
Ger 20mm: 9

Cum grano salis!

The effectiveness reflected the expected amount of damage done between the maximum and minimum effective range of the AA weapon barrel against a closing target array. Thus it was essentially a sum of per-round effectiveness. This was pre-VT, which about tripled the damage for shells large enough to contain the radar receiver (3 inches plus). These figures can be compared to actual historical records for calibration. The numerical ratios are better than the absolute values.

ORIGINAL: herwin

ORIGINAL: herwin

ORIGINAL: el cid again



I respectfully disagree. I see no way to model air warfare correctly if AAA effectiveness does not increase as altitude decreases. Further - in general - as an AAW guy - I must say that WITP greatly understates the real effectiveness of AAA - although it is hard to know by how much (since we don't know exactly how much damage is done by flak and how much by other factors). Further - I see no way to correctly model air warfare if extended flying at low altitude does not affect morale and fatigue - true even in the present day. I think the model is essentially correct.

I did the analysis about thirty years ago for WWII systems in a professional analysis. I wonder if my notes can be found...

Here's what I posted last year:

AA effectiveness was complicated, but the following numbers of aircraft were typically shot down by an unsurprised defense of 200 guns (pre-radar, with an equal number damaged):

Br 5.25: 45-50
Br 4.7: 27
Br 4.5: 40
Br 4"1916: 20
Br 4"1935: 39
Br 4"1920s: 25
Br 2 lb: 13
Br 3"1914: 15
US 5"L25: 22
US 5"L38: 50
US 40mm: 12
US 1.1": 6
US 20mm: 9
US 3"older: 8
US 3"DP: 20
US 3"1944: 40
IJN 5"L50: 40-45
IJN 4.7": 25
IJN 3.9": 50
IJN 25mm: 5
Ger 105mm: 50
Ger 88mm: 31
Ger 20mm: 9

Cum grano salis!

The effectiveness reflected the expected amount of damage done between the maximum and minimum effective range of the AA weapon barrel against a closing target array. Thus it was essentially a sum of per-round effectiveness. This was pre-VT, which about tripled the damage for shells large enough to contain the radar receiver (3 inches plus). These figures can be compared to actual historical records for calibration. The numerical ratios are better than the absolute values.

To be meaningful, these statistics should be normalized for a saturation number of attackers. That is, the number of attackers must always exceed the number shot down - or you would have potential kills not stated. Is this the case?

Converting this for WITP use is difficult. First, the basic algorithms are beyond our reach - inside code. Second, it is not really the case that a majority of instances involved no radar nor VT frag - although certainly that was the norm in 1941.
Third, our model does not really lend itself to the case of "unsurprised defenses" where air warning radar is missing: the "sound detector" devices are 90% ineffective in most mods and 75% ineffective in RHS. [Perhaps we should rename them "sound/visual warning" and up the effectiveness rate?] In any case, until late in the war, our model grossly understates the losses one should expect in a raid. In 1945 tests, it appears the model may go the other way for the Allies - permitting no penetrators to speak of - although we have managed to partially address that. But the concept that most US heavy bomber losses caused by enemy action were due to AAA is hard to see here. Neither is it normal to find that Japanese fighters - when they can be fueled - in 1945 - and of both services - could be very effective. [I don't mean the ultra fantastic fighters you can get in a mod, I mean the ones historically used in numbers. Both JAAF and JNAF managed techincal surprises with fighters - and recon planes combined with fighters in the case of the Navy - which we cannot duplicate here.] The model is incomplete - but if one semi-abstracts - its foundation is remarkably well done.

I did the analysis about thirty years ago for WWII systems in a professional analysis. I wonder if my notes can be found...

Here's what I posted last year:

AA effectiveness was complicated, but the following numbers of aircraft were typically shot down by an unsurprised defense of 200 guns (pre-radar, with an equal number damaged):

Br 5.25: 45-50
Br 4.7: 27
Br 4.5: 40
Br 4"1916: 20
Br 4"1935: 39
Br 4"1920s: 25
Br 2 lb: 13
Br 3"1914: 15
US 5"L25: 22
US 5"L38: 50
US 40mm: 12
US 1.1": 6
US 20mm: 9
US 3"older: 8
US 3"DP: 20
US 3"1944: 40
IJN 5"L50: 40-45
IJN 4.7": 25
IJN 3.9": 50
IJN 25mm: 5
Ger 105mm: 50
Ger 88mm: 31
Ger 20mm: 9

Cum grano salis!

The effectiveness reflected the expected amount of damage done between the maximum and minimum effective range of the AA weapon barrel against a closing target array. Thus it was essentially a sum of per-round effectiveness. This was pre-VT, which about tripled the damage for shells large enough to contain the radar receiver (3 inches plus). These figures can be compared to actual historical records for calibration. The numerical ratios are better than the absolute values.

To be meaningful, these statistics should be normalized for a saturation number of attackers. That is, the number of attackers must always exceed the number shot down - or you would have potential kills not stated. Is this the case?

Imagine a large attack with at least 200 closing aircraft at 180 mph against 200 guns, so that each gun concentrates on one aircraft. Then each 5"L38 would have a 0.25 chance of shooting down its target firing one shell every 4 seconds in the 2 minutes between its maximum and minimum range. With VT fuzing, that would rise to 0.75 chance. In reality, multiple guns would concentrate on each target under the control of a single gun director. Against one gun, an aircraft has a 0.75 chance of survival; against two, that drops to 0.75*0.75 chance of survival, and so on. Multiple guns under the control of one director does two things--makes it less likely that the plane will survive, and finishes off the plane faster.

Converting this for WITP use is difficult. First, the basic algorithms are beyond our reach - inside code. Second, it is not really the case that a majority of instances involved no radar nor VT frag - although certainly that was the norm in 1941.
Third, our model does not really lend itself to the case of "unsurprised defenses" where air warning radar is missing: the "sound detector" devices are 90% ineffective in most mods and 75% ineffective in RHS. [Perhaps we should rename them "sound/visual warning" and up the effectiveness rate?] In any case, until late in the war, our model grossly understates the losses one should expect in a raid. In 1945 tests, it appears the model may go the other way for the Allies - permitting no penetrators to speak of - although we have managed to partially address that. But the concept that most US heavy bomber losses caused by enemy action were due to AAA is hard to see here. Neither is it normal to find that Japanese fighters - when they can be fueled - in 1945 - and of both services - could be very effective. [I don't mean the ultra fantastic fighters you can get in a mod, I mean the ones historically used in numbers. Both JAAF and JNAF managed techincal surprises with fighters - and recon planes combined with fighters in the case of the Navy - which we cannot duplicate here.] The model is incomplete - but if one semi-abstracts - its foundation is remarkably well done.