Slitherine

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even at static and big targets like kassel and other cities in germany, the hit ratio of the RAF bomber command was more then bad in 1942. and remember: we are talking about big cities and not a comparatively small target like PM AND we talk about the royal air force, which was way ahead in electronic warfare compared to the japanese.

the hit ratio of the RAF nightbombers in 1942 was lesser then 20% of the bombs in a 5 KM radius around the target. an RAF commander said about the question, if he had attacked the right city: "all i can say is that we dropped xxx tons of bombs over germany." and that was the situation in 1942 even with target finding systems like GEE.

air-surface radar (the british HS and the US HSX) were in development at the beginning of 1942 and not ready for action. the japs even did not developd such a radar in WW2.

so when large 4E bombers of a leading nation in electronic warfare had such a huge problems in 1942 to find a huge germany city at night, then tiny carrier aircrafts of a underdeveloped nation (in radar technique) were more then ever unable to find a small allied base in south pacific at night, attack it precice (killing 600 men and causing 100-150 hits on the AF) and fly back to their carriers and land safety.

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Gather & check your facts. A large fixed target was hard to hit. Now check on the definition of the British for the area of radius that they considered a hit.

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A small moving target is much harder to hit from any altitude.

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I’m playing WITP, but not multiplayer since I’m too chicken; and because I’d still don’t fully understand production, yet.

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Others just want to win, the end justifies the means with those people - This is PVP. Get used to it!

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Uh huh, and your facts are from where?

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ORIGINAL: SuluSea

The few that say the IJN could pull off a night attack have failed to offer any proof of a successful mission.

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In daylight seasoned IJN pilots were mauled at Coral Sea even going up against pilots in the USN that had little to no  dogfighting expierience. Zuikaku had nine operational planes left by the end of the carrier engagement. Certainly if the admirals in the IJN thought they could night attack and have success they would have.

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If you choose to play a game using the night attack tactic you're not playing a game that's even close to historical but strictly gaming. Might as well play Star Trek.

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ORIGINAL: ILCK

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ORIGINAL: SuluSea

The few that say the IJN could pull off a night attack have failed to offer any proof of a successful mission.

In daylight seasoned IJN pilots were mauled at Coral Sea even going up against pilots in the USN that had little to no dogfighting expierience. Zuikaku had nine operational planes left by the end of the carrier engagement. Certainly if the admirals in the IJN thought they could night attack and have success they would have.


If you choose to play a game using the night attack tactic you're not playing a game that's even close to historical but strictly gaming. Might as well play Star Trek.

I think this is a bit extreme since night attacks are POSSIBLE but the simple fact is that, based on what we've seen here they are:

a) Way too effective
b) Suffer a too low loss rate

The game should elegantly handle this by making the attacks not work and suffer losses plus the fatigue that means any reasonable player should not do them just as their historical counterparts decided not to for the same reasons.

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The complete absence of Japanese CV launched night raids at any time during WW2.

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The extensive evidence that night operations from CVs had high operational losses merely trying to land and take off.

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The absence of any Japanese accounts indicating that night operations were part of IJN doctrine and training.

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The observation that the only successful night CV ops were conducted by special night ops groups intensively trained for that specific purpose by the USN and first deployed in 1944. Both the USN and IJN were interested in night ops. Both determined prior to WW2 that night attacks on fixed targets much less mobile targets were not worth the casualties.

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Targeting. Allied PBYs and other a.c. had surface search radar that allowed them to locate targets and make a radar guided attack approach. To make it work, the a.c. so armed notablty had a radar operator, a pilot and co-pilot both dedicated to the business of making sure the plane did not fly into the water, and a bomardier who took his weapon release cue from the radar operator. The Japanese did not have anything like that.

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There is no evidence at all for any kind of 1942/3 cv based night attack capability.

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As you note vis proficiency, sanity, etc. that is after all the point. A good *consim* might let a player attempt it, while guaranteeing "no successful attack" and while also guaranteeing higher than usual operational losses. Which elicits the question-- why waste the time coding for something something that if properly modeled no one would attempt to do?

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That is not correct. Romulan Birds of Prey was an analogy. Applying the analogy to WW2, any capability that did not in fact substantially exist might as well be a Romulan Bird of Prey. I use that analogy when confronted by a particular question, commonly deployed by people desperate for an ahistorical game about a historical subject matter, typically expressed as follows: "If you want to duplicate history, go read a book." My reply is that if someone wants a game that fabricates a capability that did not exist, don't play a WW2 Consim, go play Starfleet Battles.

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Get a clue.

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ORIGINAL: HansBolter

Been busy at work lately with little time to post, but I'm enjoying watching DEB................give a fool enough rope.....

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ORIGINAL: SuluSea

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ORIGINAL: Ike99



You´re speaking of attacking ships at sea, at night.

Without radar, or perhaps even with the radar they had at the time, it would have been extremely difficult to just find an enemy task force in open sea much less attack it with a carrier strike.

I'm also speaking about finding their own carrier at night and landing on pitching decks after the attack if you read earlier in the thread .
The USN practiced night landings on the USS Langley in 1925, that doesn't mean they were night capable even some 16 years later.

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ORIGINAL: Ike99

Finding specific night operational information would be more difficult for the Japanese side because of the language barrier but it is know they practiced and trained for night operations as well. I´m sure some information good be found by digging deep enough though.

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Ahem...how much rope have you got Hans?

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ORIGINAL: ILCK


Yes but the example you gave of of Allied craft equipped with radar, the Feb 16-17 raid on Truk was 1944 and so outside the time of UCV. There's clearly no evidence of the IJN or any other Japanese force being able to mount large scale effective night raids as opposed to one off strikes by some Betty pilots and in fact there's precious little evidence of ANYONE mounting consistently effective night operations in WWII until planes became radar equipped.

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ORIGINAL: SuluSea

I still haven't seen anyone provide or even find in my research any successful night attack by IJN air. I believe Erik Rutins said it best so I'll quote him from a different thread regarding the same subject.

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However, I think that since this is a historical game, most players will not be happy about repeated use of tactics that were not historically possible.

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ORIGINAL: SuluSea

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ORIGINAL: barkhorn45

"I still haven't seen anyone provide or even find in my research any successful night attack by IJN air"
I think I documented successful night attacks by IJN air units if your reference is to IJN carrier night ops I wish you would specifiy this in your post as it is it makes a blanket statement which i have refuted in that the IJN DID successfully attack at night do I need to repeat my references

I made clear in my many posts in this thread I was refering to carrier operations, which just so happens to be the topic of discussion posted by the thread starter.

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ORIGINAL: bigbaba

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even at static and big targets like kassel and other cities in germany, the hit ratio of the RAF bomber command was more then bad in 1942. and remember: we are talking about big cities and not a comparatively small target like PM AND we talk about the royal air force, which was way ahead in electronic warfare compared to the japanese.

How does WW2 Radar help you find a city/town?
By your sirmise, why does the game have night raids at all?

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air-surface radar (the british HS and the US HSX) were in development at the beginning of 1942 and not ready for action. the japs even did not developd such a radar in WW2.

Is anyone disputing that? We are talking using navigation skills here.

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so when large 4E bombers of a leading nation in electronic warfare had such a huge problems in 1942 to find a huge germany city at night, then tiny carrier aircrafts of a underdeveloped nation (in radar technique) were more then ever unable to find a small allied base in south pacific at night, attack it precice (killing 600 men and causing 100-150 hits on the AF) and fly back to their carriers and land safety.

I thought your problems were: The raiders were from Carriers & The lack of losses.

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and although i could not see ikes reals OP-loses, they were low for sure, because he was able to repeat this attacks very often with nearly exactly the same number of AC.

Are you sure?, Ike said the OPS losses were high and only sustainable as you had already lost your Carrier's and Carrier Aircraft. Perhaps he used additional aircraft / squadrons to give you a false impression.

If he caused that much damage then maybe the night OPS raids do do too much damage, but that does not detract from the fact that Night raids from Carriers are possible for the Japs.

(in reply to bigbaba)

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ORIGINAL: tocaff

Uh huh, and your facts are from where?  Don't ignore this question like you do to all of the others.  I want to read these "facts" of yours from the source, not on your say so.

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Land based airfields were small in comparison to cities.  Many airfields in the area covered by UV were nothing more than a small area carved out of a jungle, not like an airport serving cities of today.  I offer up Henderson on Guadalcanal as an example of this.  It was used by single engine planes (small) because it was small at first.  Facilities at Henderson were non existent at first, example: refueling was done from 55 gallon drums with a hand pump. 

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Moving targets are the ships you referred to, or did you forget?

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ORIGINAL: tocaff

So specially trained and radar carrying planes made the attack that you talk about.  The dateline here is 1944 while UV doesn't cover anything later than 1943.  The planes were USN and not IJN or IJA.

All this shows me is what I already knew. 

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ORIGINAL: DEB

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ORIGINAL: HansBolter

Been busy at work lately with little time to post, but I'm enjoying watching DEB................give a fool enough rope.....

I see you have not disagreed the comments I made to Tocaff, or even entered the general disscussion. I wonder why.

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ORIGINAL: DEB

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ORIGINAL: SuluSea

I still haven't seen anyone provide or even find in my research any successful night attack by IJN air. I believe Erik Rutins said it best so I'll quote him from a different thread regarding the same subject.

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However, I think that since this is a historical game, most players will not be happy about repeated use of tactics that were not historically possible.

But thats just my point ( which you continue to fail to grasp ).
IT IS POSSIBLE; not practicable, sane, useful, or anything else you lot wish to throw at "us", just POSSIBLE. Read the link I put in !!

By the way, those little Blue boxes have now appeared, so I guess you changed some of your settings.

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ORIGINAL: DEB

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ORIGINAL: SuluSea

I still haven't seen anyone provide or even find in my research any successful night attack by IJN air. I believe Erik Rutins said it best so I'll quote him from a different thread regarding the same subject.

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However, I think that since this is a historical game, most players will not be happy about repeated use of tactics that were not historically possible.

But thats just my point ( which you continue to fail to grasp ).
IT IS POSSIBLE; not practicable, sane, useful, or anything else you lot wish to throw at "us", just POSSIBLE. Read the link I put in !!

By the way, those little Blue boxes have now appeared, so I guess you changed some of your settings.

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What you persist in demonstrating a failure to grasp is that what is "possible" is not what matters in a historical depiction that examines historical alternatives. What matters is what is "resonably plausible".

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All this shows me is what I already knew.

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If you find the fleet, in the dark, you still have to find a deck to land on and then do it. No mean feat. Remember a late returning strike was saved by MM's famous "light 'em up" order.

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You're still talking AIR to AIR & Air to Ship, We are discussing Air to Base.

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Indeed, why waste the time. It was surely possible to exclude Carrier based Aircraft from night missions. So why did they ( the game designers ) NOT do it?

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ORIGINAL: Ike99


It was no design error to include the night mission button on carriers. That was a concious choice by Gary Grisby and 2by3 games. If such mission were impossible or not plausible as you believe then why did they include it? We don´t see other impossible or not plausible buttons there.

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Night Carrier Ops would have been mass suicide for the pilots embarking on the mission. No commander worth his salt would have given the order to attack in that manner, not to mention the damage inflicted would have been minimal.

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The only thing you are correct about is that it was no error.

It was a lack of desire to engage in the effort necessary to write the additional code necessary to create an entirely separate interface for carrier air operations.

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Things do seem to be a bit unsettled in your neck of the woods. I hope all goes well for you (and I'm not being facetious).