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I have tinkered with determining whether or not adding a depth charge device to an airframe's loadout will result in it using the ASW device against subs. Maybe someone has already reached a decisive conclusion about this.

My understanding is that there exists additional values (filters) for aircraft loadouts that do not display in the official scenario editor, where the filter field does show, and in the witpload output, it appears to be represented as WpnAmmo# for each device. Further, I believe the filters are toggles for which mission types the particular device is capable of being used for. For example, 1 is for Ground Attack, 2 is for Naval Attack, 8 is for Air-to-Air, 64 is for ASW, and they can be combined.

When I made my overhaul and expanded upon Rich Dionne's WitpExcel for PacWar and later made another for WitP in the 90's and early 2000's respectively, I do not recall there being filters or at least I did not recognize them being so.

With what little I am certain about, I suspect that the Device Type is hardcoded to determine the default mission types that will make use of the device, and that is why the game allows us to select whether some airframes will use the Torpedoes or Bombs. It is possible that unless we enter a filter for a device, the device will operate in its default mission uses (at least that would explain why there are no filters in the stock airframe loadouts...all having "0" in the filter field.

Please feel free to correct any of my "believe's", assumptions, and suspicions.

My question is about game mechanics and not concerned with historical contexts: do we know for sure whether or not an airframe will use ASW Devices such as Depth Charges or do we know there are specific Devices that are designated to be for Aircraft ASW attacks? Are there reasons the existing Depth Charge Devices cannot be used for Aircraft?

Came up a long time ago, ac can't used depth charges. In all the scenarios I've played, both official and player I've never seen an ac carry any which to me confirm this.

However I've never tried it but it should be easy to test.

Chris21wen wrote: Wed Jul 02, 2025 6:18 am Came up a long time ago, ac can't used depth charges. In all the scenarios I've played, both official and player I've never seen an ac carry any which to me confirm this.

However I've never tried it but it should be easy to test.

Correct, many have tried. What the solution iirc was to create some sort of Frankenstein "depth bomb". Search the forums.

It has been done, but the device type I aded as others had dioone was GP bomb. I also added ASW ( 64) Rockets on some planes - please check the Empire mod - I am just uploading the update.

Yes, it worked ok in my game. We had subs hit and sunk by these devices and hit by rockets and ASW TT.

Cav

Please check out my Empire mod, which I spent a long time adding all this to.

Not all numbers work together like the 64 ASW. Some planes have hard-coded loadouts; no matter what you put in it, it will not change anything. You can make a new version of the same plane, but that may have other ramifications on say Dec. 7 turn.

There is no DC device for planes, but I think you can choose GP bombs, which I did, and it works ok, and you model the accuracy from there. I added them as 64 and then added an alternate say bombs as 61, which covers all other uses - that works fine, it seems on all planes I have used it on. I also have rockets on 64 as they were used a lot for ASW. I also have ASW TT like Fido simulated as well.

Some of the numbers do not always work it seems, with certain plane types - in my mod, I think I have it now almost 100% working ok.

Hope this helps - check out my mod and you may not need to do one:)