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RE: Surface combat in World War II - 2/18/2012 12:22:35 PM

EUBanana

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Shark7
Hey I got an idea, lets send all our best ships to a back water while our capital is being starved and is under threat of attack...yeah that really makes sense.

They didn't send many. That doesn't mean to say the ones they did send were somehow incompetent. I already listed a few. Prince of Wales, Hermes, Exeter, none of these were 'green'.

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Post #: 61

RE: Surface combat in World War II - 2/18/2012 1:28:18 PM

castor troy

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quote:

ORIGINAL: AcePylut

Oh yeeh a pair of logical fallacies from CT as if that will magically convince everyone to see the 'wisdom' of his (non) argument.

Any idiot with 2 brain cells that can read and retain more than a paragraph's worth of knowledge knows that the naval ships being discussed for ineffectiveness is the US navy, not the Japanese navy.

I find it really funny that you are the one bringing the ad homs as if they convince other's of your wisdom (they dont', the just make you look stupid and childish), when you're geniusness doesn't even know how the actual naval combat results from late '41 early '42 panned out.� Funny that the actual combat results are far more akin to "fired all my main gun and didn't hit crap" than "fired all my main gun and didn't hit crap, this game isn't working right".�� If you had more knowledge about the early war battles, you'd know that.� But now, it's clear that you don't, you've dug in your foot on "game code is bad cuz this one time I fired all my ammo and didn't hit squat" argument and won't bother researching the subject to discuss it intelligently, because I'm pretty sure that if you actually did research the subject, you'd see how silly you sound.

Do yourself a favor my friend - go to www.google.com and start researching the subject of late '41 early '42 naval battles and come back when you have a little knowledge on the subject.�

Until then, until you have a little knowledge on the subject, you simply sound like a 14 year old with an e-peen bigger than your e-brain.

oh boy, brain cells? you talk about brain cells. Have you even realized I wasn't the op, boy? And attend a reading course, the op (which wasn't me) was saying EARLY WAR not early 42. omg, what a brainfarth. Not able to read but a lot of fantasy, where is all this BS you write what I have said about the code? yeah, brainfarth

< Message edited by castor troy -- 2/18/2012 1:32:21 PM >

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Post #: 62

RE: Surface combat in World War II - 2/18/2012 2:45:40 PM

d0mbo

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Post #: 63

RE: Surface combat in World War II - 2/18/2012 3:58:26 PM

PaxMondo

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Post #: 64

RE: Surface combat in World War II - 2/18/2012 4:42:53 PM

Shark7

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quote:

ORIGINAL: EUBanana

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shark7
Hey I got an idea, lets send all our best ships to a back water while our capital is being starved and is under threat of attack...yeah that really makes sense.

They didn't send many. That doesn't mean to say the ones they did send were somehow incompetent. I already listed a few. Prince of Wales, Hermes, Exeter, none of these were 'green'.

I never said they were all green. But you should not expect to have the bulk of your best ships sitting in Ceylon and Singapore when the Atlantic convoys are being sunk at the rate they were.

And I will argue that Prince of Wales was inexperienced to an extent...and here is why:

1. Commissioned in March 1941.
2. Less than 2 months sea trials.
3. Crew was mostly (80%) conscripts that had never been on a ship before March of 1941.
4. Gunnery Exercises were curtailed due to problems with the main 14" Turrets. These were still ongoing in May of 1941 when she engaged Bismarck, and Vickers Armstrong technical staff were on board trying to fix problems.

Now areas we will agree upon based on PoW vs Bismarck because this lack of experience proves not to be so much of a handicap when you look at the battle.

Of 18 Salvos fired by PoW, 55 (instead of 74) shots due to main gun problems, 3 straddles and 3 hits were recorded. That is a hit ratio of about 6%, (11% if you count the straddles as damaging near misses). This was with the afore mentioned 80% conscript crew that did not have adequate training. Hood was sunk on the 5th Salvo fired by Bismarck, which was a total of 40 shots if all guns fired (it is interesting to note that Bismarck scored a 'straddle' on the 2nd salvo). Bismarck also scored a direct hit on PoW with the first salvo she fired at that ship.

So what I take from this is that WiTP simply does not have enough gunnery hits all around. Then again, Bismarck/Prinz Eugen vs Hood/PoW is a battle in which both sides had radar and could effectively use it. How many ships have radar in the start of WiTP and is it really making any difference? We can also see that in an engagement of around 20 minutes, 1 Ship was sunk and 2 lightly damagaed. We never see results like that in WiTP.

So I will agree that more hits should be recorded all around. And Royal Navy ships that have some actual combat experience vs IJN and USN that to that point only had practice should not fair as badly as they do. Still a ship like PoW should not have 80 or 90 crew XP on start when her crew was 80% conscripts. Though she should have slightly more than a Japanese or USN counterpart.

Overall, I'm going to have to say that RN ship crews need an XP increase in the DB to be similar to the IJN. Of course this again is sighting just 1 battle, but given the circumstances and still managing to make a fight of it, PoW seems to prove the counter-point to the OPs points.

Its something to look into, perhaps RN ships and officers are under-rated.

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Post #: 65

RE: Surface combat in World War II - 2/18/2012 4:49:11 PM

Dili

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Good post spence

The issue is that the experience isn't everything. Sometimes a person with a great experience is surprised by one with less.

"experience" essentially means: have been there, well in war there is no way to have been there in all circumstances. War is new thing and will have many different situations. Then there is doctrine or even simply orders that might put and experienced unit at disadvantage , same for weapons quality etc...

If we go to fighter pilots for example it was almost a law that it was crucial to survive about 10 first combat missions to sink valuable lessons and start to improve.

quote:

HMS Exeter helped trap the Graf Spee. She may well have fought in the Mediterranean but I don't recall it.

She didn't.

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Post #: 66

RE: Surface combat in World War II - 2/18/2012 5:04:58 PM

vettim89

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I think a point could be made that even though the IJN crews were well drilled and practiced, not a single Japanese officer or seaman had "seen the elephant". Many of the RN crews had been in combat prior to the outbreak of hostilities in the PTO. The USN was in the same shape as the IJN but pre-war budget restrictions meant they were not a well drilled especially at night. That said, the USN did not just sit in port in 1940 and 1941. There were fleet exercises each year. In addition, there were quite a few ships on Neutrality Patrol

So in the end there should be a qualitative differnce between the USN crew experience and both the RN and IJN. Obvious there should be a bigger disparity in night experince, but I might put forth that the difference in day should be only a small amount (say +5-10 exp level for the IJ)

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Post #: 67

RE: Surface combat in World War II - 2/18/2012 5:17:19 PM

Shark7

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quote:

ORIGINAL: vettim89

I think a point could be made that even though the IJN crews were well drilled and practiced, not a single Japanese officer or seaman had "seen the elephant". Many of the RN crews had been in combat prior to the outbreak of hostilities in the PTO. The USN was in the same shape as the IJN but pre-war budget restrictions meant they were not a well drilled especially at night. That said, the USN did not just sit in port in 1940 and 1941. There were fleet exercises each year. In addition, there were quite a few ships on Neutrality Patrol

So in the end there should be a qualitative differnce between the USN crew experience and both the RN and IJN. Obvious there should be a bigger disparity in night experince, but I might put forth that the difference in day should be only a small amount (say +5-10 exp level for the IJ)

I think I agree with that. The disparity is too large, despite the heavy training of the IJN, by 1941 most of the RN crews (green at time of commissioning of the ship or not) would have had at least some type of combat patrol experience. The USN crews would be similar to the RN, but with a bigger gap of night xp due to the training practices of the USN.

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Post #: 68

RE: Surface combat in World War II - 2/18/2012 6:48:37 PM

EUBanana

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Shark7
So what I take from this is that WiTP simply does not have enough gunnery hits all around.

I think this is probably the bottom line.

Along with ship experience not going up very fast.

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Post #: 69

RE: Surface combat in World War II - 2/19/2012 12:51:14 AM

spence

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quote:

I think I agree with that. The disparity is too large, despite the heavy training of the IJN, by 1941 most of the RN crews (green at time of commissioning of the ship or not) would have had at least some type of combat patrol experience. The USN crews would be similar to the RN, but with a bigger gap of night xp due to the training practices of the USN.

I decided to check on a sample of the RN ships which one finds in the Far East in 1941. I only used the Wikipedia summaries of their histories but without exception every one had seen some sort of action during their up to 2 years of war experience prior to Dec 7th.

The fact seems to be that the Brits and their Commonwealth Allies were so strained by the global nature of the sea war against Germany and Italy that no ship of DD class or larger could stay out of the action. Not all ships took part in a surface action but if they missed out on that they participated in ASW or AAW actions (almost without exception on multiple occasions). For new ships like the Prince of Wales the ships slid off the ways and into combat.

For the RN the real question is not whether they had any combat experience but rather whether their nearly constant operational commitments ever allowed any time for traditional training such as was being carried out in the IJN and USN.

Even so the number of times any given ship participated in a surface action was very limited. And therein would seem to lie the problem with the "linear" nature of experience gain in the game. A ship might have been in real combat action dozens of times against aircraft which (if it survived) would seem to indicate that the AAA crews were first rate but says nothing whatever about the state of training of its main battery gun crews, sonar operators, or torpedomen, or damage control teams. Those guys mostly just chewed their fingernails while the AAA guys did what they were supposed to do.

Shooting at a target sled may not seem like much but it allows the ammunition handlers to really work at passing the ammunition rapidly and solving such problems as might occur while the pointer and trainer (gun crew members) and director operators actually work together to try to spot their fall of shot and put their rounds on target. Training a ship's crew is building a team (several teams which are then welded into one team) and in that respect training is more important than the training of a pilot (who may very well be alone on that plane). Leadership becomes a more important trait for a ship's captain or TF commander. There was nothing wrong with Yamato's crew in the Battle Off Samar in Oct 1944...it was Admiral Kurita that lost his nerve and screwed up that battle. The US DDs/DEs were well trained rookies that fought hard enough to convince him his fleet was in peril and could not accomplish its mission. So HE quit and took his 4 BBs, 8 cruisers and 15 DDs with him.

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Post #: 70

Well...as a counterpoint... - 3/4/2012 4:46:54 AM

Shark7

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The AI got me good with this one, and yes, all of my ships were sunk.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Night Time Surface Combat, near Kuching at 58,88, Range 2,000 Yards

Japanese Ships
DD Hakaze, Shell hits 26, and is sunk
xAK Sinsei Maru, Shell hits 20, and is sunk
xAK Victoria Maru, Shell hits 33, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAP Argentina Maru, Shell hits 6, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAP Baikal Maru, Shell hits 2, Torpedo hits 2, and is sunk

Allied Ships
DD Van Nes
DD Jupiter

Japanese ground losses:
Vehicles lost 8 (6 destroyed, 2 disabled)

Reduced sighting due to 14% moonlight
Maximum visibility in Overcast Conditions and 14% moonlight: 2,000 yards
Range closes to 11,000 yards...
Range closes to 10,000 yards...
Range closes to 9,000 yards...
Range closes to 8,000 yards...
Range closes to 7,000 yards...
Range closes to 6,000 yards...
Range closes to 5,000 yards...
Range closes to 4,000 yards...
Range closes to 3,000 yards...
Range closes to 2,000 yards...
CONTACT: Japanese lookouts spot Allied task force at 2,000 yards
Japanese ships attempt to get underway
CONTACT: Allied lookouts spot Japanese task force at 2,000 yards
DD Hakaze engages DD Van Nes at 2,000 yards
DD Hakaze engages DD Van Nes at 2,000 yards
DD Van Nes engages xAK Victoria Maru at 2,000 yards
DD Hakaze engages DD Jupiter at 2,000 yards
DD Van Nes engages xAP Baikal Maru at 2,000 yards
DD Van Nes engages DD Hakaze at 2,000 yards
DD Van Nes engages xAK Sinsei Maru at 2,000 yards
DD Hakaze sunk by DD Van Nes at 2,000 yards
xAP Baikal Maru sunk by DD Jupiter at 2,000 yards
DD Jupiter engages xAK Sinsei Maru at 2,000 yards
DD Jupiter engages xAK Victoria Maru at 2,000 yards
DD Van Nes engages xAK Sinsei Maru at 2,000 yards
Range increases to 3,000 yards
DD Jupiter engages xAK Victoria Maru at 3,000 yards
Range increases to 4,000 yards
DD Van Nes engages xAK Sinsei Maru at 4,000 yards
DD Van Nes engages xAK Sinsei Maru at 4,000 yards
Range closes to 2,000 yards
DD Jupiter engages xAP Argentina Maru at 2,000 yards
DD Jupiter engages xAK Victoria Maru at 2,000 yards
DD Jupiter engages xAK Victoria Maru at 2,000 yards
Range increases to 3,000 yards
DD Jupiter engages xAP Argentina Maru at 3,000 yards
Japanese Task Force Manages to Escape
Task forces break off...

If nothing else, this does show that the Allies can have good battles too...notice my IJN escort didn't land a single hit in this battle. Now granted, there were no big guns in this one, so the fact that big guns don't seem to hit often still holds true.

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Post #: 71

RE: Surface combat in World War II - 3/4/2012 2:59:13 PM

oldman45

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Post #37 shows a 1943 engagement with US ships with radar, they found the Japanese at 24k but still closed to visibility range (3k) before engaging. I thought in 1943 the US ships would use radar fire control, that was the trade off for nerfing the allied ships in the early war perion.

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RE: Surface combat in World War II - 3/4/2012 4:08:30 PM

Shark7

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Best I can tell, they haven't been nerfed. Now then I can tell you that after I posted this last night I had a surface combat with 3 BBs, 6 CAs and a bunch of DDs mixing it up with each other...there were more Long Lance hits scored than main BB gun hits. Between the 3 BBs, there were 26 tubes firing...this was a full broadside engagement between 11k-16k yards. The Allied big guns hit twice, mine not at all...3 Long Lance hits were recorded.

Something is not right.

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Post #: 73

RE: Surface combat in World War II - 3/4/2012 4:59:04 PM

Sardaukar

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quote:

ORIGINAL: oldman45

Post #37 shows a 1943 engagement with US ships with radar, they found the Japanese at 24k but still closed to visibility range (3k) before engaging. I thought in 1943 the US ships would use radar fire control, that was the trade off for nerfing the allied ships in the early war perion.

It took quite a while to develope successful surface Fire Control radar, compared to Surface Search radar. Before that, you'd need visual sighting to actually target.

http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-079.htm discuss the difference in performance by Mark 3 and Mark 8 FC radars in Surigao Strait.

And mentions Second Guadalcanal:

A final aside, explaining the difference between the Mark 8 and Mark 3 FCRs: The Mark 3 FCR had a small pulse width and a broad beam width. As a result it achieved extremely good range discrimination, but poor azimuth resolution. Thus when Washington engaged Kirishima at Second Guadalcanal with such equipment, it was using radar range inputs and visual azimuth inputs to the fire control computer.

And

The later Mark 8 FCR was a centimetric radar with a more refined wavelength and beam width as well as the small pulse width of the earlier set. This permitted the Mark 8 to establish both range and azimuth very precisely. It also permitted the Mark 8 to generate a much �harder� return off of a much narrower target, and to better discriminate targets in close proximity. By extension, with such refined radiation parameters, the Mark 8 was less likely to have its display cluttered by transient �soft� returns such as shell splashes. This explains the ability of the Mark 8 ships at Surigao to initiate and maintain fire on the Yamashiro regardless of the target angle and visual masking from the cruiser line during the engagement.

So I'd not expect too much help from radar in gunnery during nights before late 1943 or 1944. Obviously, situational awareness should be better with search radar and also chance to achieve surprise.

< Message edited by Sardaukar -- 3/4/2012 5:04:42 PM >

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Post #: 74

RE: Surface combat in World War II - 3/5/2012 2:42:01 AM

crsutton

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Shark7

Best I can tell, they haven't been nerfed. Now then I can tell you that after I posted this last night I had a surface combat with 3 BBs, 6 CAs and a bunch of DDs mixing it up with each other...there were more Long Lance hits scored than main BB gun hits. Between the 3 BBs, there were 26 tubes firing...this was a full broadside engagement between 11k-16k yards. The Allied big guns hit twice, mine not at all...3 Long Lance hits were recorded.

Something is not right.

Date? Moonlight? Old BBs or new? Old CAs or new? Weather conditions? You do realize that you are talking about ships that engaged each other at 7-8 mile range in the dark? The Allies had fire control radar but it was not the best until the MK8 became available. The Washington had the best radar available when she sunk the Kirishima at about that range but that was probably the exception to the norm. Older BBs and CAs would still be targeting on gunnery flashes and splashes. Depending on the night conditions this might have made it impossible to hit a surface ship seven miles away.

I have said this before but a post Guadacanal campaign analysis by the USN stated that Old BBs and treaty cruisers were poorly suited to night combat in confined waters due to very slow turrets and obsolete fire control systems.

One example just does not make a case because conditions and factors can vary so much. In fact, it is the unexpected that sort of makes the game so much fun. However, those who send old BBs into combat vs torpedo armed ships should do so with the expectation that they will eat torpedoes. As it should be.

My biggest beef is that modern American CLs are not as effective vs the older Japanese CAs in night fights. In fact they should eat them alive, but I suspect it is more a balance thing.

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RE: Surface combat in World War II - 3/5/2012 4:03:50 AM

Shark7

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All of that is fine and well, though moonlight was 50% and weather clear; and this was a pair of Lexington BCs vs an Amagi BC (this is a mod). This was not a case of old pre-WWI deadnaughts, but relatively modern fast BCs. The cruisers were hitting like mad...well over 150 hits registered over the course of the battle. The long lance hit rate I expected...but should the big guns have not hit more they did given the ability of the CAs and CLs to score hit after hit? If nothing was hitting I'd just give it up to bad sighting or lack of visibility.

And this is the rule in my experience, not the exception. The smaller ships register hit after hit, the big guns rarely find their mark.

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RE: Surface combat in World War II - 3/5/2012 4:28:31 AM

msieving1

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Shark7

I think I agree with that. The disparity is too large, despite the heavy training of the IJN, by 1941 most of the RN crews (green at time of commissioning of the ship or not) would have had at least some type of combat patrol experience. The USN crews would be similar to the RN, but with a bigger gap of night xp due to the training practices of the USN.

Almost all the RN and RAN ships that served in the Far East in 1941-42 were veterans of combat in the Mediterranean. They had far more combat experience than either the USN or IJN.

But I think that the game puts too much emphasis on individual ship crew experience.

Ship crews were not permanent establishments. Navies of WW2 were not like Star Trek, where crews remain constant for years. It was normal practice to rotate crew members to other ships. Especially in the USN and RN, experienced members of existing crews formed cadres for new construction. These men brought the experience gained on their old ships to their new assignments. While there was always some degree of continuity in crews, significant numbers of both enlisted men and more importantly officers and petty officers were coming and going on a regular basis. Commanding officers of cruisers, battleships, and aircraft carriers rarely stayed in their positions for more than a year before being transferred.

Also, particularly in the USN but also in the RN, experience gains by one ship were not limited to that crew. If you read the after action reports from any ship engaged in combat, one section will be "Lessons Learned". These lessons were analyzed and rapidly communicated to the rest of the fleet. Experience gains by one crew will in short order be experience gains by every crew. (This is one area where the IJN was much weaker than the Allies. In a culture where suicide was the expected response to failure, there was great pressure to cover up mistakes. The USN was much more open, at least internally, about their screw-ups.)

Where experience seems it matter, it's not the general, overall experience of the crew so much as the experience of critical individuals. For example, during the raids on the Marshall Islands and at Coral Sea, the US fighter direction officers (FDO) were mostly learning their jobs, and there were breakdowns in the process. On Yorktown though, the airgroup commander, Oscar Pederson, stayed on board to act as FDO (much against his wishes), and was better able to manage Yorktown's fighters. On the negative side, the engineering officer who shorted out South Dakota's main electrical switchboard and the damage control officer on Taiho who vented avgas fumes throughout the ship showed how the inexperience of a single officer could cause a critical failure.

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Post #: 77

RE: Surface combat in World War II - 3/5/2012 5:14:28 AM

msieving1

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Today I ordered The U.S. Navy Against the Axis: Surface Combat, 1941-1945 by Vincent P. O'Hara from Amazon. According to the description, the book describes every surface engagement by major warships of the USN in WW2 (so I assume it leaves out PT boat actions). It should be interesting to see O'Hara's take on the USN's performance in surface combat.

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Post #: 78

RE: Surface combat in World War II - 3/5/2012 7:57:07 AM

CT Grognard

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The Royal Navy surface assets do perform well against the Japanese in the early war, in my experience.

As a test I ran simple experiments directing Force Z (BB Prince of Wales, BC Repulse, DD Electra, DD Express, DD Tenedos, DD Vampire) to meet up with the Japanese heavy cover force (TF 5 I believe, BB Haruna, BB Kongo, CA Takao, CA Atago, CL Jintsu and 6 Japanese DDs) on the first turn in Da Big Babes.

I also placed RADM Raizo Tanaka as commander of the Japanese surface combat TF.

Best result for the IJN was BC Repulse and DD Express sunk, with DD Vampire heavily damaged, in return for moderate damage to BB Haruna, BB Kongo, and CL Jintsu.

Worst result for the IJN was BB Haruna sunk, BB Kongo heavily damaged (about 50 flotation), both CAs moderately damaged, CL Jintsu heavily damaged (sank two turns later), and a Japanese DD sunk - in return for moderate damage to BC Repulse and light damage to BB Prince of Wales and two British DDs.

In terms of shell hits, on average the Japanese scored around 40-50 hits total in the engagement with the British scoring around 20 shell hits in each case. Only on a few occasions did the Japanese score Long Lance hits. The BC Repulse and BB Prince of Wales are brutal when their shell hits connect (in the worst result mentioned above BB Haruna took four 14-inch hits from Prince of Wales and sank).

A lot of Japanese shell hits bounced off Prince of Wales.

Interestingly enough, in all engagements, the brunt of the Japanese fire was taken by BC Repulse. Very rarely was BB Prince of Wales heavily damaged.

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Post #: 79

RE: Surface combat in World War II - 3/5/2012 10:11:58 PM

mdiehl

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quote:

Is it really that unjustified then to see results in 1941 and early 1942 where Japanese ships outclass US ships?

Yes, it is unjustified. The USN won it's first battle vs the IJN (at Balikpapan) in January 1942. The torpedo hit rate in that action was the same (12%) as the Japanese torpedo hit rate in August 1942 at the Battle of Savo Island. The US lost the second battle against the Japanese (at Savo) and won the third battle (at Cape Esperence).

In the Java Sea battles the battle line was not under US command, and the TF was a classic multnat clusterf**k. Commands were given in Dutch, relayed to Exeter for translation, and then broadcast from Exeter using the British flags codes, and in English via radio, just to make things completely chaotic.

Evidence suggests that "victory or defeat" in 1942 was largely about the quaility and timeliness of tactical intel. Both the USN and IJN had their moments in which they were the "aggressor force" against foes that had no idea they were about to be thrust into combat.

So yes, the assumption of general Japanese surface combat superiority during 1941-1942 is not supported by any empirical data. In my view, the historical POV on this is mostly a myth embellished by Morrison during the l.1940s-e.1950s, during which time there was a great deal of squabbling between rival services for funds during the roll up to the cold war.

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Post #: 80

RE: Surface combat in World War II - 3/6/2012 6:51:47 AM

CT Grognard

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Are you trying to compare torpedo hit rates against anchored transports to torpedo hit rates against Allied cruisers and destroyers?

Balikpapan should have been a slaughter, all twelve Japanese transports lined up, at anchor, silhouetted by onshore fires. But only 6 out of 48 torpedoes hit.

Don't forget the US Navy themselves attributed the poor hit rate to "lack of experience, a hasty approach and/or defective torpedoes."

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Post #: 81

RE: Surface combat in World War II - 3/6/2012 7:02:56 AM

Puhis

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quote:

ORIGINAL: CT Grognard

Are you trying to compare torpedo hit rates against anchored transports to torpedo hit rates against Allied cruisers and destroyers?

Balikpapan should have been a slaughter, all twelve Japanese transports lined up, at anchor, silhouetted by onshore fires. But only 6 out of 48 torpedoes hit.

Don't try logical arguments with that troll.

Even if transorts were not anchored, it's much easier to hit slow transports than combat ships with battle speed...

(in reply to CT Grognard)

Post #: 82

RE: Surface combat in World War II - 3/6/2012 8:18:16 PM

mdiehl

Posts: 5998
Joined: 10/21/2000
Status: offline

The targets were neither anchored nor back-silhouetted. The action report for Ford, for example, reports rolling smoke obscuring the targets from on-shore fires. In such shallow waters, one suspects also that some torps fouled on near shore obstacles.

My point was to observe that the JFB perspective is to assume that the hit rate for IJN torpedoes represents something like a "reasonable normal outcome" (even though they had only one battle in which they succeeded at that level), while the hit rate for USN torpedoes at Balikpapan is presumed to represent both an "abnormal result" and also evidence of "poor performance."

Situational readiness was 99% of the game in 1942. The overwhelming similarity between the route at Balikpapan and the route at Savo Island is compelling.

In both instances, the TFs and commanders had been standing at action stations for most of the day prior to the action.
In both instances, the TFs and commanders were not provided with timely information from aerial recon that spotted enemy ships in the vicinity.
In both instances, the TFs and commanders were in a lax state owing to the perceived absence of an enemy threat.
In both instances, the TFs and commanders failed to perceive the nature of the threat once the shooting started.

Context matters to people who really analyze anything.

_____________________________

Show me a fellow who rejects statistical analysis a priori and I'll show you a fellow who has no knowledge of statistics.

Didn't we have this conversation already?

(in reply to Puhis)

Post #: 83

RE: Surface combat in World War II - 3/7/2012 3:39:02 AM

msieving1

Posts: 526
Joined: 3/23/2007
From: Missouri
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Puhis

quote:

ORIGINAL: CT Grognard

Are you trying to compare torpedo hit rates against anchored transports to torpedo hit rates against Allied cruisers and destroyers?

Balikpapan should have been a slaughter, all twelve Japanese transports lined up, at anchor, silhouetted by onshore fires. But only 6 out of 48 torpedoes hit.

Don't try logical arguments with that troll.

Even if transorts were not anchored, it's much easier to hit slow transports than combat ships with battle speed...

The Allied ships at Savo Island were traveling in a straight line at a speed of about 10 kts. They didn't realize the Japanese were anywhere near until they were under fire. Even though the north group of the Allied force heard the gunfire from the engagement against the southern group, they assumed that it was the southern group bombarding Japanese forces ashore.

No offense, but mdiehl seems to make more sense than most of his detractors, at least about the actual history.

(in reply to Puhis)

Post #: 84