Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: alanschu

I know the US CLs are pretty much CAs (in some cases they are even more durable!) and so forth.

Does the game treat CLAAs differently than the other cruisers, or is it just a designation more for flavour?

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CLAAs were, from what I've read, a post war USN designation for CLs that had a large suite of dual purpose 5 inch guns instead of 6 inch guns. During the war they were designated CLs.

I don't believe the code treats them any differently than CLs, they just throw up a lot more AA against air attacks and aren't as potent in a surface battle against anything larger than a DD.

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Given the light armor protection they had and their armament, it doesn't seem they (Atlanta class CLAA) were intended or well suited for use in surface combat ops.

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ORIGINAL: wneumann
Armor protection on Atlanta Class CLAA is much lighter than armor on other US light cruiser classes. It's likely they were probably designed as AA cruisers despite their use in several surface actions off Guadalcanal (CLAA more often than not were casualties in these actions). Given the light armor protection they had and their armament, it doesn't seem they (Atlanta class CLAA) were intended or well suited for use in surface combat ops.

The lighter armor protection for the Atlanta CLAA class is reflected in the AE game data values, code in the AE game engine likely picking up the numbers in the ship data and going from there.

WitP AE - Test team lead, programmer

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ORIGINAL: alanschu

In evolving this thread, how exactly does task force AAA work?

I know there's the shots while approaching, during attack (if the alt changes), and leaving. Do all ships get those shots? Does the attacked ship only get the shots for the 2nd phase? All phases?

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ORIGINAL: castor troy

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ORIGINAL: alanschu

In evolving this thread, how exactly does task force AAA work?

I know there's the shots while approaching, during attack (if the alt changes), and leaving. Do all ships get those shots? Does the attacked ship only get the shots for the 2nd phase? All phases?

all ships in a TF fire at an incoming strike, above 15 ships additional ships contribute less and less to flak to simulate the fact that not every ship in a TF would be able to fire on incoming aircraft. A 100 ship TF with 10000 total AA value would put more flak up than a 15 ship TF with 2000 total AA value even though the 10000 total AA value wouldn't actually turn out as 10000 as it is just the sum of each ship's AA value of the TF. Do I make myselve clear? Probably not.

"To meaningless French Idealism, Liberty, Fraternity and Equality...we answer with German Realism, Infantry, Cavalry and Artillery" -Prince von Bülov, 1870-

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ORIGINAL: spence

Unfortunately, TF flak, particularly CV TF flak, is coded in a manner which reflects USN doctrine:
high value targets sailing in the center of a compact, protective "ring" formation. Such a formation was not adopted by the IJN until 1944.

As detailed and even photographed in "Shattered Sword", prior to that the Kido Butai sailed around in a very, very dispersed formation. Flak played almost no part in TF defense (2 US planes were shot down by IJN flak all day on June 4th, '42 out of over 220 attacking bombers(all day)). If the CAP failed to stop attacking bombers, the ship which was under attack was supposed to maneuver radically as its primary defense. It had plenty of sea room to do so but had virtually no help in the form of flak from other ships (other than the plane guard DD).

The other ships were spread out to visually spot incoming raids: BBs and cruisers out at around 5 miles from the CVs (thus only within range of the heavy AA guns along the axis of the attack) with the DD's out to about 15 miles (out of range of all of their AAA). The principle job of the ships along the axis of the air attack was to use smoke and/or their main armament firing at the water to attract the attention of the CAP.

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Flak played almost no part in TF defense

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Are you sure it's not coded to adjust per side?

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... if they'd fired their guns AT the attacking planes.

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But the SBDs did such massive damage that the IJN scuttled all 4 carriers

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The description of the Kaga in Shattered Sword is striking. Even if the ship had been capable of getting to a friendly base, she might have been scuttled anyway

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ORIGINAL: btbw

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But the SBDs did such massive damage that the IJN scuttled all 4 carriers

MASSIVE damage from own planes mostly. Ineffective damage from 1000lb was reason to born Helldiver.

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ORIGINAL: btbw

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But the SBDs did such massive damage that the IJN scuttled all 4 carriers

MASSIVE damage from own planes mostly. Ineffective damage from 1000lb was reason to born Helldiver.

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But the SBDs did such massive damage that the IJN scuttled all 4 carriers

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ORIGINAL: btbw
MASSIVE damage from own planes mostly. Ineffective damage from 1000lb was reason to born Helldiver.

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The description of the Kaga in Shattered Sword is striking. Even if the ship had been capable of getting to a friendly base, she might have been scuttled anyway

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Wrong! No capable for getting to friendly base like Bismark.

WitP AE - Test team lead, programmer

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It might also be that the Japanese AA doctrine, deficient as it was, was also geared towards stopping torpedo bombers more than dive bombers. Torpedo bombers use longer, slower, more steady runs at lower altitudes. High elevation, high altitude, fast turning AA is possibly less important for those types of planes relative to dive bombers. Concentric rings of AA might give you more attempts to hit a torpedo plane driving on the high-value targets in the middle of the rings.

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MASSIVE damage from own planes mostly. Ineffective damage from 1000lb was reason to born Helldiver.

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ORIGINAL: witpqs

The myth of armed planes crowding the decks has been convincingly put to rest.

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ORIGINAL: alanschu

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ORIGINAL: witpqs

The myth of armed planes crowding the decks has been convincingly put to rest.

Apologies if this has been discussed in depth already, but most things I have heard indicate that the carriers (at least one anyways) were more vulnerable due to being more exposed with fuel lines.

Are you saying it's overstated (i.e. it likely helped add to the damage, but ultimately several 1000 lb bombs would still have taken her out regardless) or that it's actually incorrect? Feel free to link as I gobble this stuff up (while letting turns do their thing in the background haha).

Although you could argue the indecisively of which type of armaments to use just delayed the planes which is a gaffe big enough in and of itself.

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ORIGINAL: wdolson

Pre-war Japanese doctrine considered surface ships the more potent threat. They figured the USN aircraft to be poor quality and the crews just as poor. The TBD was a generation behind the Kate, and Japanese doctrine saw the torpedo bomber as the primary naval weapon with the dive bomber being the secondary weapon that split enemy forces and crippled ships for the torpedo bombers to finish off.

The Japanese badly underestimated the SBD. The SBDs dropped their bombs at a higher altitude than the Vals. The Japanese thought that was because American pilots were weak, they didn't realize it was because the US had a superior weapon.

The US had a technology nobody else did, the trailing edge split flap. Japanese and German dive bombers used fence type dive brakes. Fence style dive brakes did work, but the plane bucked and bounced on the way down. To ensure a hit, pilots had to hold the dive to near suicidal altitudes. With the trailing edge split flap, the dive was very stable which allowed the pilot to make gentle course corrections within the dive. SBDs could release at a higher altitude and still have a good chance of a hit because the pilot had a better assurance where the bomb was going after release.

The SBD could also carry a larger load. The max load was 1600 lbs for an SBD, but that was almost never used. The SBD could and did carry 1000 lb bombs, the Val was limited to 250 Kg (about 550 lb). And early war USN strike package was usually about 2/3 500 lb bombs and 1/3 1000 lb bombs, but the bigger bombs were there.

The lack of a potent torpedo bomber at Midway did ensure that the USN didn't actually sink any carriers. But the SBDs did such massive damage that the IJN scuttled all 4 carriers. The description of the Kaga in Shattered Sword is striking. Even if the ship had been capable of getting to a friendly base, she might have been scuttled anyway. The fires gutted all the upper decks of the ship.

In any war, especially a long one, everybody goes in with assumptions that are proven wrong in combat. The Japanese thought their carrier aviation was vastly superior to the USN and in some ways it was, but they underestimated US strengths.

Everybody underestimated how much flak they would need. Both sides upgraded flak suites on everything throughout the war. The US was more aggressive about it, but they also had the industrial infrastructure to afford it.

The US had the mutual defense doctrine down early war (though effectiveness lacked), but the Japanese thought the big threat was coming from surface ships coming in after the air attack, so they built their CV formations with that in mind. The Japanese war doctrine was built on the subs thinning the enemy fleet, then the CVs taking out some more, and finally the big surface ships would come in to finish the job. The US was thinking along the same lines, with CVs and BBs, but the loss of so many BBs at PH made them rethink. By Midway the US knew they were much weaker in surface assets, but they could attain near parity in air power between the 3 Yorktowns and Midway. Even still, TF 1 was waiting out in the middle of the Pacific between San Francisco and Midway with all the serviceable BBs in the Pacific fleet. A bit of the US OOB nobody knows about.

Early war USN air defense doctrine was a bit better than Japan, but early carrier losses demonstrate it had holes too. It's telling the only US carrier losses after 1942 were due to 3 factors:

1) A lucky shot by a lone attacker slipping through the CAP (the Princeton)
2) A massive screw up (Battle Off Samar)
3) Kamikazes (which never sank a carrier larger than a CVE, though they damages a lot of fleet carriers)

After 1942, the US started building a lot of advantages from lessons learned, better AA, better AA direction, better CAP, better fighters as well as better pilot training, and better CAP direction. At the same time Japanese pilot quality was in steep decline and newer aircraft designs were often inferior to US designs. The US had the luxury of building fighters around big engines like the P&W 2800 which had just about worked out all the bugs by Pearl Harbor. The Japanese had to start from scratch with bigger engines and it wasn't until late war they had anything they could use and Japanese large engines remained finicky to the end.

I'll stop rambling now...

Bill