dandin384
Posts: 176
Joined: 11/5/2013
From: United States
Status: offline
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Thought I would share my thoughts, feel free to list your opinions/ideas.
If you've visited Baloogan's JabbR room anytime in the past couple weeks, you've probably heard me yammering on about how exited I am with the World War II database additions. I've been building and playing tons of small scenarios with them since they were released with the beta builds and have had to really change my play style to adapt to the times.
I never quite grasped how reliant we are on modern things like radar and sonar, how simple it is to locate, identify, and target units anywhere on the globe. A US Carrier Strike Group has piles of sensors that make it easy to spot incoming planes, missiles, etc. A WWII carrier strike group might have a short range radar later in the war, no 3D search or height finding radars either. The best tool for locating planes were binoculars and the mk1 eyeball. Once the planes were located you had to eyeball their type, no Radar Warning Receivers or ESM gear to identify emissions and type the target. Usually planes had to be real close before anyone could ID them and appropriate measures could be taken. In terms of locating targets planes had to fly pie wedges over massive swaths of ocean to spot the wakes of ships. Finding a enemy vessel in the dark? Not going to happen. And once a ship was spotted a strike had to be organized, early war radios were not common, so hand signals between pilots and Morse code with signal lamps aboard ships were used. After a strike was chaos as air groups landed on any friendly deck in sight. The next couple of days were spent reorganizing the fleet.
Ever noticed the land range of an Arleigh Burke Class Destroyer? Those tomahawks have a 1600nm range, giving them massive ASuW(Land) coverage. The longest range gun of the Fast Carrier Task Force was the Iowa classes 16" guns with a range of about 17nm. That's a reduction factor of 94. A Super Hornet launched from a carrier has upwards of a 500nm range(exact distance is heavily dependent on the loadout) without any refueling. With refueling it can stay in the air much longer and project power hundreds of miles from the carrier. World War II strike planes had ranges half that size with no possibility to refuel. Their payload capability was drastically reduced, and they had to close to very close ranges to deliver their payloads.
Speaking of close ranges, the deck of every World War II vessel is covered in anti-aircraft weapons. Dozens of heavy machine guns, 40mm bofors, and smaller 5" secondary batteries threw up a virtual wall of flak from every ship in the screen. Black puffs filled the air during every engagement. In modern warfare those weapons systems are replaced with a CIWS or RAM system.
In conclusion, when you start a sim with WWII units throw out that strategy book you've been using and prepare for a whole new type of warfare.
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My Thoughts on WWII in Command - 
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