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Post by admiralhood on Dec 19, 2018 21:01:43 GMT -6
The most nerve wracking part in RTW1 and SAI is night fighting. It is basically chaotic shot-range melee within 2000 to 3500 yards. "A barroom brawl after the lights had been shot out". There is no lighting equipment.
Therefore I was wondering if in the RTW2, the player would be able to use searchlight and star shells to illuminate a enemy ship at 8.000 to 10.000 yards? This could give me much more confidence in a night fight before the FCR is introduced.
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Post by jeb94 on Dec 19, 2018 22:01:07 GMT -6
Radar would be the thing that gives me confidence in a night fight. Read some of the accounts of the battles off Gaudalcanal. Radar was new at the time and so not trusted. On Nov 13, USS Helena detected a Japanese surface force at 26000 yards. I believe it was Admiral Callaghan on the USS San Francisco, let engagement ranges drop to inside of a mile. One mile is 1760 yards. The USN knew the Japanese were there but had yet to spot them with the Mark 1 eyeball. The IJN DD Akatsuki spotted what appeared to be a cruiser in close and so turned on her searchlights and illuminated the USS Atlanta. Atlanta class cruisers in that close where a destroyer's worst nightmare. At a range of 1600 yards, Atlanta opened fire. Akatsuki's reward for turning on her searchlights? Being reduced to a burning wreck in moments. Atlanta's reward for being the first ship illuminated and opening fire? Getting torpedoed by one of the other destroyers with Akatsuki and getting shot at from both sides. In a later engagement it was the USS South Dakota that turned on her searchlights and promptly had her superstructure shot up, to include a critical power junction. USS Washington trusted her radar and blazed away at the enemy only lit by the flash from her guns. Night battles are chaos at least until radar technology matures and is trusted. Then its he who has the better radar fire control that has the upper hand in a night brawl.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Dec 19, 2018 22:20:23 GMT -6
At the Battle of Tassafaronga on 30 November 1942, ships were authorized to use star shells but not searchlights. Apparently, someone had learned their lesson in the other battles around Guadalcanal. My Dad used to tell me that it was pitch dark around Guadalcanal and if you turned on a flashlight, they could see it a long way off.
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Post by MateDow on Dec 19, 2018 22:47:32 GMT -6
The most nerve wracking part in RTW1 and SAI is night fighting. It is basically chaotic shot-range melee within 2000 to 3500 yards. "A barroom brawl after the lights had been shot out". There is no lighting equipment. Therefore I was wondering if in the RTW2, the player would be able to use searchlight and star shells to illuminate a enemy ship at 8.000 to 10.000 yards? This could give me much more confidence in a night fight before the FCR is introduced. I like this idea. I've always wanted to see this and always felt it was missing.
Use of them would be improved with the night fighting doctrines and give a significant edge. This would be similar to the edge that the Germans had during the night fighting portion of Jutland.
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Post by admiralhood on Dec 20, 2018 10:46:42 GMT -6
Radar would be the thing that gives me confidence in a night fight. Read some of the accounts of the battles off Gaudalcanal. Radar was new at the time and so not trusted. On Nov 13, USS Helena detected a Japanese surface force at 26000 yards. I believe it was Admiral Callaghan on the USS San Francisco, let engagement ranges drop to inside of a mile. One mile is 1760 yards. The USN knew the Japanese were there but had yet to spot them with the Mark 1 eyeball. The IJN DD Akatsuki spotted what appeared to be a cruiser in close and so turned on her searchlights and illuminated the USS Atlanta. Atlanta class cruisers in that close where a destroyer's worst nightmare. At a range of 1600 yards, Atlanta opened fire. Akatsuki's reward for turning on her searchlights? Being reduced to a burning wreck in moments. Atlanta's reward for being the first ship illuminated and opening fire? Getting torpedoed by one of the other destroyers with Akatsuki and getting shot at from both sides. In a later engagement it was the USS South Dakota that turned on her searchlights and promptly had her superstructure shot up, to include a critical power junction. USS Washington trusted her radar and blazed away at the enemy only lit by the flash from her guns. Night battles are chaos at least until radar technology matures and is trusted. Then its he who has the better radar fire control that has the upper hand in a night brawl. The FCR is something only available in the 1940s. If a war breaks out between French and Italy between 1920 and 1935, then star shell and search light would still be much better then a total darkness.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Dec 20, 2018 10:57:05 GMT -6
Radar would be the thing that gives me confidence in a night fight. Read some of the accounts of the battles off Gaudalcanal. Radar was new at the time and so not trusted. On Nov 13, USS Helena detected a Japanese surface force at 26000 yards. I believe it was Admiral Callaghan on the USS San Francisco, let engagement ranges drop to inside of a mile. One mile is 1760 yards. The USN knew the Japanese were there but had yet to spot them with the Mark 1 eyeball. The IJN DD Akatsuki spotted what appeared to be a cruiser in close and so turned on her searchlights and illuminated the USS Atlanta. Atlanta class cruisers in that close where a destroyer's worst nightmare. At a range of 1600 yards, Atlanta opened fire. Akatsuki's reward for turning on her searchlights? Being reduced to a burning wreck in moments. Atlanta's reward for being the first ship illuminated and opening fire? Getting torpedoed by one of the other destroyers with Akatsuki and getting shot at from both sides. In a later engagement it was the USS South Dakota that turned on her searchlights and promptly had her superstructure shot up, to include a critical power junction. USS Washington trusted her radar and blazed away at the enemy only lit by the flash from her guns. Night battles are chaos at least until radar technology matures and is trusted. Then its he who has the better radar fire control that has the upper hand in a night brawl. The FCR is something only available in the 1940s. If a war breaks out between French and Italy between 1920 and 1935, then star shell and search light would still be much better then a total darkness. Don't forget Hulsmeyer and his radar invention in the early 1900's. It was tested and it worked, if the game would allow it.
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Post by admiralhood on Dec 20, 2018 10:58:10 GMT -6
At the Battle of Tassafaronga on 30 November 1942, ships were authorized to use star shells but not searchlights. Apparently, someone had learned their lesson in the other battles around Guadalcanal. My Dad used to tell me that it was pitch dark around Guadalcanal and if you turned on a flashlight, they could see it a long way off. Speaking of nightly dogfight, I am thinking that it would be great if flashless powder is included in the technology research in the RTW 2. It is less visible in a nightly fight. If the USN used this propellant in Battle of Kula Gulf, they could have avoided the loss of USS Helena.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Dec 20, 2018 11:02:56 GMT -6
At the Battle of Tassafaronga on 30 November 1942, ships were authorized to use star shells but not searchlights. Apparently, someone had learned their lesson in the other battles around Guadalcanal. My Dad used to tell me that it was pitch dark around Guadalcanal and if you turned on a flashlight, they could see it a long way off. Speaking of nightly dogfight, I am thinking that it would be great if flashless powder is included in the technology research in the RTW 2. It is less visible in a nightly fight. If the USN used this propellant in Battle of Kula Gulf, they could have avoided the loss of USS Helena. Helena did use flashless powder but ran out and had to use smokeless powder which would be used in daylight. It is difficult to manage how much of each of those powders you would need because it would be based on how much fighting you plan to do at night and daytime. The enemy always has a say in your plan and the Japanese had practiced night fighting far more than we did, so they tended to go at night.
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AiryW
Full Member
Posts: 183
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Post by AiryW on Dec 20, 2018 11:17:23 GMT -6
Would intercepting enemy radar signals have been an important part of tracking ships at night if there had been a conflict in the 1920s?
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Post by admiralhood on Dec 20, 2018 11:33:30 GMT -6
The FCR is something only available in the 1940s. If a war breaks out between French and Italy between 1920 and 1935, then star shell and search light would still be much better then a total darkness. Don't forget Hulsmeyer and his radar invention in the early 1900's. It was tested and it worked, if the game would allow it. Yes, this is true. Although I am still not quite sure about its efficiency in a surface gun battle. The performance of a FCR may not be that stable in the 1940s. It did a really good job in the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal (12–15 November 1942) and Battle of the North Cape(1943). However, in the Battle of Surigao Strait. The firing accuracy of the USN's battleship was terrible. I believe that there is a reason that Admiral Willis Augustus Lee was trying to avoid a nightly fight with the IJN on the night before the Battle of Philippine Sea.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Dec 20, 2018 14:32:11 GMT -6
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Post by aeson on Dec 20, 2018 14:51:30 GMT -6
Would intercepting enemy radar signals have been an important part of tracking ships at night if there had been a conflict in the 1920s? In a mostly-historical hypothetical scenario? I doubt it. I don't think radar sets were operationally deployed on any ships until the mid- to late-1930s, and even then they weren't exactly common; the US Naval Research Laboratory's page on radar says that at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack "20 radar units were in operation on selected vessels." The US Navy had 17 battleships, 7 aircraft carriers, 18 heavy cruisers, and 19 light cruisers in service at the time, so, assuming one radar unit per ship with all 20 radar units on cruisers and larger vessels, that's only about a third of the cruisers and larger vessels in the US Navy outfitted with radar by late 1941. I don't know figures for Britain, Japan, France, Italy, or Germany, but I doubt if any of them would've been much better prior off to the outbreak of the Second World War. Radar-equipped ships would have been vanishingly rare in the 1920s - at most there might be a ship or two equipped with an experimental set in the entire fleet of a technologically-advanced power - so it's quite likely that there would not have been any radar emissions to detect. You can't intercept nonexistent emissions, and you cannot use nonexistent intercepts to track ships.
In a hypothetical scenario in which active radars of some description were sufficiently widely adopted by the mid- to late-1920s, tracking ships by means of their radar emissions becomes more plausible, but probably isn't significantly more important for tracking ships than interception and direction-finding on communications signals, especially as radar emissions, not being intended to deliver intelligible transmissions to stations hundreds or thousands of miles away, are probably not as easily detected as communications signals, which would make it more difficult to obtain enough bearings from intercept and direction-finding stations spread over a wide enough area to develop sufficiently accurate positional estimates for tracking something. Powers sufficiently technologically advanced to have deployed radar sets on a reasonable proportion of their fleets in the 1920s would presumably also be aware of the potential for their ships' radar emissions to be detected from beyond the range at which their radar emissions could produce a useful return and thus might be expected to exercise some form of emissions control, though the Kaiserliche Marine's relatively lax radio discipline in the First World War shows that this is not necessarily guaranteed.
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Post by rimbecano on Dec 20, 2018 15:04:22 GMT -6
However, in the Battle of Surigao Strait. The firing accuracy of the USN's battleship was terrible. What the heck are you talking about?! West Virginia hit at 23,000 yards on her *first salvo*. I don't think that such a feat was ever matched even in a daytime engagement. Now, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Mississippi didn't have radar as good as the other the ships, and Maryland had to range visually on the other ships' shell splashes, while Mississippi fired only one salvo and Pennsylvania not at all, but I have *never* heard the accuracy of the USN battle line as a whole at Surigao Strait described as "terrible".
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Post by oldpop2000 on Dec 20, 2018 15:13:25 GMT -6
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AiryW
Full Member
Posts: 183
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Post by AiryW on Dec 20, 2018 15:31:32 GMT -6
Whoops, meant to say would interception of radio matter in the 20s. tracking ships than interception and direction-finding on communications signals, especially as radar emissions, not being intended to deliver intelligible transmissions to stations hundreds or thousands of miles away, are probably not as easily detected as communications signals, which would make it more difficult to obtain enough bearings from intercept and direction-finding stations spread over a wide enough area to develop sufficiently accurate positional estimates for tracking something. Was this possible at the tactical level? Could they triangulate signals when the enemy was close? Or would they just be using it to know the enemy was nearby?
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