Unsinkable Kongo Class BBs

[Long Lance]

Now back to the game since some weeks, played it extensively when it was new.

What's annoying to me: Within two weeks or so, i twice hit Kongo Class BBs very hardly in the slot wih SBDs and TBFs form GC . Both managed to get back to Shortland. Both with Sysdamage 99, floatdamage ~50, the other 74(!).

Both did not sink, floatdamage is repaired. Is there some sort of guardian angel preventing to sink those BBs in action?
Or is this some sort of a damage 'break' that helps the AI to not use up all the BBs on silly Bombardment runs?
If so, this must have been impemented with one of the later patches, right?

I wonder how a little port likes Shortland (size 4 methinks) could have saved those big and heavily damaged ships in real live from sinking.

[PizzaMan]

Battle reports (including damage) isn't always accurate.  Pilots tend to exagerate.
 
The quick cheat to see actual damage is to play as the nips for a turn. 

[DEB]

ORIGINAL: Long Lance

Or is this some sort of a damage 'break' that helps the AI to not use up all the BBs on silly Bombardment runs?
If so, this must have been impemented with one of the later patches, right?

I cannot find any patch notes to confirm this ( 2.40 onwards).

[Ike99]

What's annoying to me: Within two weeks or so, i twice hit Kongo Class BBs very hardly in the slot wih SBDs and TBFs form GC

How many torpedoes did you put into them? This is what really sinks battleships and other heavily armored ships badly as they hit below the waterline.

[Long Lance]

Well. in both cases I cheated by loading up as the Jap. So the damage I reported above is accurate, not estimated.

[Ike99]

Well. in both cases I cheated by loading up as the Jap. So the damage I reported above is accurate, not estimated.

I´m saying heavily armored ships, especially US battleships can take, well really what seems like an incredible amount of damage from bombs and not sink. It does lots of system damage but flotation damage is what sinks the ships.

Put 3-5 torpedoes in those Japanese battleships and they won´t be sailing anywhere for very long.

[Long Lance]

ORIGINAL: Ike99

...
Put 3-5 torpedoes in those Japanese battleships and they won´t be sailing anywhere for very long.

They're still hiding in shortland -> no Torpedoes.

Anyway, as I understand you ONLY flotation damage sinks enemy ships? I thought flotation damage would also cause system damage over time. So, if a ship has, lets say 99 % sysdamage and it is hit by 5 or so pentrating bombs, the sysdamage won't increase over 99 and thus destroy the ship?

[Ike99]

Anyway, as I understand you ONLY flotation damage sinks enemy ships? I thought flotation damage would also cause system damage over time. So, if a ship has, lets say 99 % sysdamage and it is hit by 5 or so pentrating bombs, the sysdamage won't increase over 99 and thus destroy the ship?

For a ship to sink its floatation damage must go to 100%.

If a ship has 99% system damage and is hit by a bomb, yes, it will more than not sink as bombs do flotation damage also but not as much as torpedoes and just 1% pt is needed to sink the ship. Understand this is why the Japanese bombers and Long Lance equipted ships are so deadly as they all carry big warhead torpedoes that do A LOT of floatation damage.

They hit ships where it hurts the most, below the waterline.

Against heavily armored ships like Battleships, especially Iowa class or Yamato class you can hit them with bombs quite a bit and they will not sink. You´ll slow them down and break the AA guns and such but for a target like this you really need to put torpedoes in them. Bombs against these ships are not going to do a lot of floatation damage unless you hit them like 15 times.

A good tactic is to slow them up with bombs and have submarines lurking as when these big ships get slow they are easy targets for submarines.

Japanese Battleships less so except for Yamato class as their armor really isn´t so great. They´re more Battlecruiser than Battleship anyways.



For example, recently in a game I had a 500pnd bomb hit Yamato and it did just had 4% System damage. That´s it! The ship is so armored a 500 pnd bomb is like shooting cork at it. For armored targets you really want to find a way to hit them below the waterline.

Torpedoes.

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: Ike99


For example, recently in a game I had a 500pnd bomb hit Yamato and it did just had 4% System damage. That´s it! The ship is so armored a 500 pnd bomb is like shooting cork at it. For armored targets you really want to find a way to hit them below the waterline.

Torpedoes.

That's absoultely in line with my experiences. 500lb bombs don't even penetrate the deck armor of battleships. They do penetrate the deck armor of cruisers, buit it takes thousand pounders to penetrate the decks of BBs.

[ILCK]

If I recall right the Musashi took 20 bombs and 10 torpedos to send down  and Yamato took a ton of abuse as well. I'm trying to recall a BB sunk strictly by bombs because I think the torpedos did in most of the really big ships.

[RGIJN]

ORIGINAL: ILCK

If I recall right the Musashi took 20 bombs and 10 torpedos to send down  and Yamato took a ton of abuse as well. I'm trying to recall a BB sunk strictly by bombs because I think the torpedos did in most of the really big ships.

The brand-new italian battleship ROMA, pride of their navy, was killed by just two german "Fritz X" bombs in 1943. And the ROMA wasn´t a bad BB at all... Though these bombs were kinda guided bombs, the precursors of modern guided missiles...

[Ike99]

Yamato vs Dauntless...

Here in this attack as you can guess no bombs penetrated the Yamatos deck armor. Destroyed a lot of AA guns but really put the ship in no danger of sinking...at all. I did read somewhere, manual or one of the patch comments, can´t remember where now, but if a bomb penetrates the deck armor of a ship there is a small chance of scoring a critical hit that will sink the ship.

I suppose this reperesents fire in one of the main magazines.

[Ike99]

Here, much smaller strike of torpedoe planes do much more damage and a second strike could possibly sink the ship, or maybe even this one depending on how well the flooding is stopped and how close it is to a friendly port...

[Ike99]

Here is Yamato in real life after being hit multiple times by US dive bombers. From what I can tell in this picture no bombs have penetrated Yamatos deck armor and the damage is superficial. The ship seems completely sea worthy. But then again, I never was a sailor but that is what it seems to me.

[PizzaMan]

ORIGINAL: Ike99

Here is Yamato in real life after being hit multiple times by US dive bombers. From what I can tell in this picture no bombs have penetrated Yamatos deck armor and the damage is superficial. The ship seems completely sea worthy. But then again, I never was a sailor but that is what it seems to me.

Do you have any opinion on why the main deck guns would be at 45 degree angles off the center line during an air raid?

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: PizzaMan

ORIGINAL: Ike99

Here is Yamato in real life after being hit multiple times by US dive bombers. From what I can tell in this picture no bombs have penetrated Yamatos deck armor and the damage is superficial. The ship seems completely sea worthy. But then again, I never was a sailor but that is what it seems to me.

Do you have any opinion on why the main deck guns would be at 45 degree angles off the center line during an air raid?

Yamato's big guns were dual purpose, if you can believe it, and COULD be used for AA fire, although the Admiral in charge was reluctant to risk damaging the barrels with the AA rounds, so I would imagine they were skewed in sets to aim at incoming planes to at least threaten to fire them in AA mode.

[Long Lance]

Thanks for the information! But from somwhere I have in my mind that as long as there are fires and flotation thhey could cause sysdamage, and sysdamage going > 99 would mean the ship sinks even if it has far less than 99 flotation damage.

Perhaps I'm mixing this up with QQP's Battles of the South Pacific or GG's War in South Pacific. I'm getting old[;)]

[Ike99]

Do you have any opinion on why the main deck guns would be at 45 degree angles off the center line during an air raid?

Yamato had a special anti aircraft shell that fired from its main guns. During the battle it was in use.

Here is a clip from the recent Japanese movie ¨Otoko Tachi No Yamato¨ where you can see this in recreation, check it out.

Click Link-

Yamato

[AcePylut]

I just bought that movie. It arrives in 4-14 days.

I heard it reviewed as "Titanic on a Battleship wiht a little Saving Private Ryan"

[Prince of Eckmühl]

The movie clip was interesting. I never knew that P-47s took part in the attack on the Yamato. Guess you learn something new every day!

PoE (aka ivanmoe)