Shore Battery effectiveness

[Miller]

Playing my first long campaign against the AI. Sent a 100 ship transport force to Pearl Harbour, consisting of about 85 AP/AK and 15 DD's.

After three turns the shore batteries have managed to sink every DD plus about two thirds of the transports! Is this realistic? The first turn alone reported almost 20000 shots fired and 38000!!! Jap casualties [X(]

The PH defences consist of 4 16" guns and 70 155mm guns. Seems a bit overpowered?

[general billy]

You need to put BB and CA in the transport taskforce, DD's or CL's are not enough to surpress the enemy coastal guns and will take hits. In WITP you could surpress the enemy hex with bombardment taskforces a few turns before going in, in WPO bombardments aint that effective. If you have airpower, u should attack ports, it reduces coastal guns.

[Miller]

Can you put BB's in transport task forces? It seems CA's are the biggest ships.

[Helpless]

yes, it's possible..

just set the TF mission to escort, put BB in it and change it back to transport

[8D]

[Fallschirmjager]

270 shots per gun. A TF that large would probably move in smaller groups and sit off shore to unload.
That would take all day.
Shell stockpiles would probably allow each gun to shoot twice that many shells.

Sounds right to me. An unloading cargo ship would probably be anchored offshore and sitting totaly still for several hours.
The gun crews would have a field day with that.

[jwilkerson]

The Coastal defenses of both Manilla and Pearl Harbor, have been substantially underpowered in WITP ... both of these installations were built up ( IRL ) to be "impregnable" against attack.

I don't have that much experience with differences between WITP and WPO regarding these installations.

Mike Scholl, is our resident expert on these installations and he might want to weigh in here .. but tossing BBs in to the mix perhaps ( in real life ) might just make meat out of them too.

On Oahu however, it might matter which side of the Island you are attacking. If the Southern side, then you get wacked, if the Northern ( or Eastern ) then perhaps less so. But isn't Lahaina a separate "hex" in the game ?

However, Manilla, should probably be able to wack the entire IJN if they decided to steam into the Bay. I'm working on replicating this in my "Cautionaries" variant to Scenario 7.

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: Miller

Playing my first long campaign against the AI. Sent a 100 ship transport force to Pearl Harbour, consisting of about 85 AP/AK and 15 DD's.

After three turns the shore batteries have managed to sink every DD plus about two thirds of the transports! Is this realistic? The first turn alone reported almost 20000 shots fired and 38000!!! Jap casualties [X(]

The PH defences consist of 4 16" guns and 70 155mm guns. Seems a bit overpowered?

You sent virtually unescorted Transports to invade Oahu. You have nothing to supress defensive fire. You are landing from ships boats (No specialized landing craft in the 20's). The Coast Defense Instalation there has a pair of 16" guns with a range of almost 50,000 yards (almost 29 miles), plus a considerable number of lessor artillery (much of which is mobile and can be moved to meet your threat, then slipped onto a prepared mounting which ties them in with the Fire Direction System.)

The equipment you cite for the Oahu CD unit is CRAP. Should be 2 16", 2 14", 4 12" guns. 20 12" Mortars, 6 6", 48 155mm Guns (mobile), , and possibly 12 240mm howitzers (depending on if they went to the PI, or were diverted to Hawaii), and a number of lessor pieces. More than enough to make life short and exciting for your invasion force.

[Tankerace]

At start, the PH Fort isn't complete (exact date related data seems to be... incomplete. I found some sources saying one thing, another something else, etc. I chose to under rate it rather than overpower it until a definate source could be found. (Most stated the equipment in 1941, but nothing with respect to 1922/1926). However, the 14", 12", 12" Mortars, 10", 6", and 240mm Schneiders are all in the State's, and can be moved to PH.

[Tankerace]

Mike, as you are the "God of CD weapons", if you have specifics of the PH defenses, I'd be more than happy to adjust them in the next update. As I said, I could find no definative source (that I could procure) which listed exactly what was had in the 1920's. Most everything on PH seems to cover just WW2.

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: Tankerace

Mike, as you are the "God of CD weapons", if you have specifics of the PH defenses, I'd be more than happy to adjust them in the next update. As I said, I could find no definative source (that I could procure) which listed exactly what was had in the 1920's. Most everything on PH seems to cover just WW2.

I don't claim divinity, but it is an area of interest for me. So this would be a more accurate picture.

FORT KAMEHAMEHA 2 12" GUNS on long range carriages completed in 1920
2 12" GUNS on disappearing carriages completed 1913
8 12" MORTARS completed 1914
2 6" GUNS on disappearing carriages completed 1914
2 120mm GUNS on pedestal mounts completed 1915
5 3" GUNS on pedestal mounts completed 1915

FORD ISLAND 4 6" guns on pedestal mounts completed 1917

FORT DERUSSY 2 14" GUNS on disappearing mounts completed 1913
2 6" GUNS on disappearing mounts completed 1913
2 3" GUNS on disappearing mounts completed 1911

FORT RUGER 12 12" MORTARS completed 1917
2 5" GUNS on pedestal mounts completed 1916
4 120mm GUNS on pedestal mounts completed 1915

FORT WEAVER 2 16" GUNS on barbette carriages completed 1924

The 12 model 1920 240mm HOWITZERS I mentioned were on their way to the PI when the Washington Treaty was signed and the ships turned back and unloaded them at Pearl. The Model 1918 155mm GUNS
arrived in the interwar period (by 1932). With no threat of war, there was no rush..., but without the Treaty and with the Japanese "making noises", they could have been there by 1922 as well. The additional two 16" Naval MkII guns that would occupy FORT BARRETTE weren't installed until 1935. They wouldn't be available in a non-Washington Treaty scenario (they'd be on the cancelled ships)---but they might well have been replaced by additional "Army"" model 1919 16" GUNS like the ones at FORT WEAVER. There wouldn't be any fewer pieces of artillery on Oahu in a non-Treaty war threat era such as the scenarios postulate. But there very well could have been even more.

[Tankerace]

Ok, will bundle in with tthe next update.... and I'll forward all death threats from the Japanese fanboys to you [:D]

[Fallschirmjager]

PH is pretty much untakable now

[general billy]

Better to start your games now then [:D]

[Miller]

Come on, an average of 30 ships sunk a day[:-] The best gunners in the world would struggle to get that sort of score.......totally overated regardless of task force composition in my opinion[:@]

[String]

ORIGINAL: Miller

Come on, an average of 30 ships sunk a day[:-] The best gunners in the world would struggle to get that sort of score.......totally overated regardless of task force composition in my opinion[:@]

Have you ever thought why such a situation never happened IRL, transport ships sailing straight into CD fire?

well?

Because no commander IRL was stupid enough to do such a thing.

[Miller]

Yes I was silly not putting BB/CA into my invasion fleet, but the question still remains....would PH coastal guns be able to sink 30 transports a day????? No chance.

[Helpless]

Was the Oahu's harbor the only place to have an invasion? Might be the reason all the forts are located in the southern part of PH. Or could they bring an equall suppression in case of TF approaching from north? [&:]

http://www.cdsg.org/mapspdf/HDHI1921.pdf
http://www.cdsg.org/hawaii.htm

In game there is no distinction between landing direction and all of these Forts will eventually fire, because PH is a single hex location.

[Tankerace]

Actually they could. It would only take a few 16" shells from one gun to sink a transport. ANd if you have about 60 guns, each firing 10 shells thats 600 shells, and if one half hit, that's 300, meaning 10 heavy 6.1-16" shells hitting per transport. (assuming each gun fires 10 shells).

Blast the island for a week with BBs and CAs, then send in your fleet, see what happens then.

ORIGINAL: Miller

Yes I was silly not putting BB/CA into my invasion fleet, but the question still remains....would PH coastal guns be able to sink 30 transports a day????? No chance.

[jwilkerson]

I lived on Oahu for a year but still won't claim to be a "expert" on Oahu geography ( I was working and going to school and taking care of a kid for a friend who was in the Army ) ... not wandering around drawing maps or making Ocean charts !!!

But for what I do know ... First, much of the Island is surrouded by coral reefs which are far enough offshore that they would probably form a major obstacle to an invader. Also much of the NW and NE coasts are faced by short but steep mountains and even if you get ashore you will have a big problem going anywhere.

The two good landing spots are on the southern coast near Honolulu and around Kaneohe Bay on the southern end of the East Coast. Note, if you land at Kaneohe you still have to cross the mountains to get to Honolulu side ... but you have a decent place to land.

Mike ( Scholl ) did not specify which batteries where protecting Honolulu side and which were protecting Kaneohe side .. but I believe there were some batteries protecting Kaneohe, although most batteries were protecting Honolulu side.

If someone wanted to redraw the map, we could conceivably put Kaneohe in a different hex, though for my money we'd need a "mountain" hexside between Kaneohe and Honolulu to show to difficulty of getting across the Koolau range. We could put a "pass" in this mountain hexside to represent Nuuanu ... but the defender should have some decent advantages fighting here.

Or we could just accept, that taking Oahu by "coup de main" is probably very unlikely in the game. Amiral Laurent took it in WITP. But he took all/most of the other Hawaiian islands first and used land based bombers and naval bombardment to eliminate the supply before attacking ( this quarters the defense strength ).

[bwheatley]

Agreed i will be able to take PH in my game vs general billy but the big mistake i made was bad fleet grouping. Also after billys new CD guns landed it put a 9000+ casulaty whopping on me. I have to supress more. I won't complain invasions shouldn't be easy .

just imagine how fun it will be now as the japs holding places when you offload those big CD guns