Bullwinkle58
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Joined: 2/24/2009 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: witpqs quote:
ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58 quote:
ORIGINAL: Q-Ball Do you guys have a HR against using the Malacca Strait before Singapore falls? Just curious. My understanding is that the 15in guns in Singapore Fortress could reach the coast of Sumatra, which meant the Japanese could not transit. I have recently been in PM contact with Alfred on the issue of Singapore's history. He knows quite a bit, certainly more than I do. He does not read this AAR. But based on his comments I believe the devs leaving Malacca off the "narrow strait" list in the game code is the correct decision. The guns installed were for harbor denial. The various defense plans presented by the British government from 1919 on had underlying assumptions about force allocation for Singapore's defense which never came about due to budget cuts. Overall, the base was intended to be defended by a large naval force which was never detailed, supported by naval shore infrastructure which was never built. Once Force Z, a faint shadow of the original planned force, was sunk, the defense consisted of the TBs, weak as they were. Once Force Z was/is gone, the IJN could/can sail past Singapore into the IO with abandon. HRs which deny this are historically incorrect. If anyone wants details perhaps a post in the main forum to Alfred would induce him to offer one of his succinct renditions of the facts. I presume this means that the guns which were there IRL, if the had the range to cover the strait, were not installed to bear properly to do so? Reading a bit after I posted, it appears there were a total of five 15in guns installed. They were the same model as found on HMS Hood; a post-WWI design. No HE ammunition was stocked, only armor-piercing. Three guns were on the site of the current airport (east), and two were on the western side of the Singapore Strait (Jahore Battery I believe.) Two had transverse capability of 180 degrees, while the other three had 360. Magazines were in armored bunkers beneath the gun emplacemnts, with a narrow-gauge railway connecting them to further ammo storage. I did not find any info on fire-control. I did not find anything about effectiveness at night, on moonless nights, or in heavy rains. None of the five 15in guns ever engaged a naval target in their life spans. There is some controversy about the fate of all of them, but some of the emplacements were destroyed by British engineers before the fall of the base, at least one so effectively that the magazine area was not discovered and excavated until 1991. In addition to the heavy guns there were multiple 6in gun emplacements around the island, mostly focused on amphibious invasion denial. Without knowing the FC capability of the five 15in guns I can't even begin to say how effective they would have been on a passing IJN force which hugged the Malaysian coast, or which attempted to run past at flank on a moonless night. Since it was never tried we'll never know. But I believe that leaving Malacca off the narrow strait list was not an accident, and a HR preventing such a move would . . . well, I'm not going into the rocks and shoals of HRs again. I am, after all, a mere AI-playing sub-human.
< Message edited by Bullwinkle58 -- 6/29/2012 6:51:59 PM >
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