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Post by Airy W on Jul 19, 2018 13:21:51 GMT -6
This direction in the thread is interesting, but let's get back to carrier development and aircraft development for the game. I enjoy this, but that's what this forum is all about. I do apologize. I did have a point waaaaaay back when. Even if a site looks authoritative bad information can be lurking there.
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Post by Airy W on Jul 19, 2018 5:48:30 GMT -6
Guys, "ASM" entered this conversation because I was taking poetic licence for a joke. You are looking about 60 years too early. However the source DID say that the vehicles he destroyed were "mostly tanks" and that the number was above 500. Assuming that at a barest minimum "mostly" means 51%, this is over 250 tanks and that is absurd. In order to destroy a tank with a 37mm cannon a Stuka pilot would need to go into a nearly vertical dive, aim at a small part of the tank and then fire accurately while starting a 5 G pullout of the dive at minimum distance. It involves distracting yourself with split second timing while conducting incredibly dangerous maneuvers. And if this amazing event were actually happening on a regular basis, it would have been trivially easy to bring a stop to it by just putting a sandbag on top of the engine compartment. We do have reports of crews adding additional protection to their tanks but that was against horizontal threats, not vertical ones. The nice thing about naval warfare is that while the fog of war is pretty thick at the time, the AARs can give a very accurate picture. Stray planes get lost without report but it's few enough that they can be quantified and it can be known approximately when they are lost. The instances of combat are few enough that the veracity of reports can be checked and you can see what the heck happened. You can even have nicknames like "The Grey Ghost". Land warfare and land aviation is not so clean and well tallied like this. As a result inaccurate reports are harder to refute and inaccurate statements about abilities are harder to study.
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Post by Airy W on Jul 18, 2018 8:25:56 GMT -6
but the page in question was woefully wrong in stating that the kills were achieved with guided weapons. Nooooo, that was just my cheeky take on the situation. The joke was supposed to be putting out the evidence of how exaggerated claims are repeated without critical analysis... and then making an even more exaggerated claim with even less critical analysis. I guess I missed the target, too bad I'm not a Stuka pilot, I hear they never miss.
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Post by Airy W on Jul 18, 2018 8:05:13 GMT -6
1) The Japanese did massed strikes. The Americans took off in penny packets. And at Midway they had a bunch of bombs on the deck to hit ground targets. Not applicable here.
2) The logical conclusion of that argument is that no aircraft carrier should ever launch a strike. We aren't talking about a situation where the incoming strike is known, you just said that a strike might be out there. So in any situation where the enemy carriers are out there you are saying that fear of the enemy should keep the bombers in the hanger.
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Post by Airy W on Jul 17, 2018 23:19:03 GMT -6
Also, bizarrely enough 'Military Factory' list's "Anti-Tank Guided Missiles" as part of the Stuka's supported weaponry.
That article also sees fit to tell the reader that a particular German pilot was credited with destroying "519 combat vehicles (mostly combat tanks)". Destroying a tank with an unguided WWII ASM would take amazing luck. It's not just the incredible difficulty of hitting the target, a hit wouldn't do much damage. While tanks were adding literal tons of armor to the front and sides, the tops of tanks remained thin, everyone knew the damage wasn't from above. It's extremely unlikely that 500 armored vehicles were destroyed by unguided ASMs by all nations combined over the course of the entire war. To claim that an individual pilot did this tasks even 20 times would smack of unapologetic propaganda. To say one pilot destroyed 519 vehicles with unguided ASMs is farcical. Yet that article tells the reader about this claim of 519 kills without any caution about the veracity of the statement. To me, the implications of this are obvious: Nazi Germany must have had at least 519 laser-guided anti-tank air-to-surface missiles.
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Post by Airy W on Jul 17, 2018 14:24:44 GMT -6
Otherwise they might be on their way to hit you and the last thing you want then is staying in range and sending away half of your already inferior numbers of fighters as strike escorts. Also keep in mind this is a quite small US CV with just 60 planes. So you've got half an hour. That's enough time to either: 1) Launch a strike of your own. 2) Move 15 nautical miles. Why do you think that #2 meaningfully improves your odds?
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Post by Airy W on Jul 17, 2018 13:53:35 GMT -6
If I was commanding a USN Carrier the answer depends on how many enemy Carriers I have spotted. If 3 or more and I'm in a lone CV I do the smart thing which is run home at full speed launching no planes except a CAP. I would probably be very hesitant launching in a 1:2 situation as well unless under very favorable conditions. If you already know the enemy location, an immediate attack would be expected to remove one of those carriers as a danger with a fairly typical degree of luck. The strike could fail but it could also damage two Japanese carriers and make them withdraw themselves. I think it would be safer to strike against the detected enemy then run.
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Post by Airy W on Jul 17, 2018 13:38:10 GMT -6
You could glide bomb at 30 degrees and that might work if you are careful with the throttles. I'll take it.
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Post by Airy W on Jul 17, 2018 9:55:36 GMT -6
I would not replace the torpedoes with bombs, because you are probably going to get very poor results if you are level bombing. Jerry-rig bomb sights and use them as dive bombers. Horrible but still better then trying to use them as torpedo bombers. And if they are hitting a fleet still reeling form the dive bomber attacks, there might not be much resistance.
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Post by Airy W on Jul 17, 2018 9:53:19 GMT -6
IIRC Thucydides mentions that Athens was able to impose wartime tariffs on all maritime trade by the Aegion. It appears that the eastern city states that were the ones hit by this tax were quite willing to accept it. We dont see mention of garrisons and punitive expeditions to collect the revenues in Asia minor, just Athens sending over tariff officers and a collections fleet. This seems to suggest that while the mainland city states resented the Delian league, the ones closer to Persia were of the opinion that Athens wasn't that bad the whole time. I suppose that from their perspective they were going to be paying tribute to somebody anyway and at least the Athenians would do a better job protecting commerce then the Persians.
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Post by Airy W on Jul 17, 2018 9:21:48 GMT -6
It was not intended to be tricky. You have a task force with one carrier and escorts. Your scouts detect an enemy carrier. How many aircraft can you launch? If you want a hint, just examine Coral Sea. This scenario is similar except I have reducing the carriers to one. Well if I'm on an American carrier in 1942 and I've got hindsight 20/20 I'm going to launch every dive bomber at the enemy as quickly as possible, put every fighter I have on CAP and order my torpedo bombers to replace their torpedoes with bombs and send them after the the dive bombers for a possible second strike. If I'm on a Japanese carrier and I've got hindsight 20/20 I'm going to reserve 8 fighters on CAP and take every other plane and launch it in a single strike force.
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Post by Airy W on Jul 17, 2018 8:32:59 GMT -6
Haha, to be fair, anything with guns looks like a battleship when you are steaming around in what essentially is a big food tin in comparison. I once used the analogy that hitting a WWI era destroyer with an artillery shell is like trying to destroy a house with a hand grenade. Just cuz they're smallest doesn't mean they're small.
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Post by Airy W on Jul 17, 2018 7:07:23 GMT -6
It appears it was initiated to relieve the other city-states like Sparta, Argile, Thessaly etc. of Athenian control. Before the war, polis ruled over polis. After the war, the situation was reversed.
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Post by Airy W on Jul 17, 2018 6:38:17 GMT -6
The problem with ordnance-laden bombers flying from Zeppelins is that Zeppelins have very low payload capacity for their size. The most airplanes I've heard of being carried on any airship was something like five small interwar fighters. That's really only a problem if you are limited to having the same number of vessels. However I'm guessing that Zepplins are a lot cheaper then aircraft carriers. Even if we are talking "small" aircraft carriers of 20 kTons, that's a lot of ship. Let me pose a theoretical question for all. I have a carrier with a capacity of sixty aircraft. The breakdown is twenty fighters, twenty dive bombers and twenty torpedo bombers. If I detect the opponents carriers, how many aircraft can I launch in my strike? Tricky question. There are so many answers that I think unless you give me a nation and a year I shouldn't even hazard a guess.
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Post by Airy W on Jul 15, 2018 19:00:07 GMT -6
On reflection, perhaps I should have named him Doctor Hickory... ba-dum-cha. Airy W - got so carried away after reading yours I didn't take the time to tell you how much I enjoyed it. Goes a long way to explain gas attacks, perhaps. And... 'trenches'... Oh god.
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