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Post by mycophobia on May 23, 2019 10:02:17 GMT -6
Regarding misidentifying fleet oilers as warships....Nelson had some rather unpleasant experiences in that regard
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Post by Adseria on May 23, 2019 10:09:33 GMT -6
Regarding misidentifying fleet oilers as warships....Nelson had some rather unpleasant experiences in that regard To be fair, though, misidentifying ships isn't always a bad thing. At least not when it's the enemy doing the misidentifying!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Pulo_Aura
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Post by ramjb on May 23, 2019 10:51:48 GMT -6
Incidentally, Ram, your statement about "1/3 of the Kido Butai" nuking Neosho and Sims was technically incorrect. Yes, Shokaku and Zuikaku were at Coral Sea, and yes, those 2 ships did make up a third of the Kido Butai's carriers (not going into detail about escorts), but they only launched 78 planes of a total of 127, and, of those, only the 36 dive bombers attacked (the fighters and torpedo bombers having aborted after the realisation of the scouts' mistakes). Oh, and Neosho wasn't "nuked" either; she was seriously damaged, but stayed afloat and drifting for over 2 days, and had to be scuttled by the destroyer that rescued the survivors.
Oh come on, some literal artistry here and there should be allowed, right? . It's obvious that not every plane on the japanese carrier was thrown in that attack, that was never done to begin with XD. As for Neosho not sinking...it was quite hard to sink one of those things, unless they were filled to the top. Think of it, a ship that's designed with a huge flotation margin to load...liquids...takes quite a lot to sink by making it embark...water . of course torching those was very simple, but as the germans noticed repeatedly in the north atlantic and the mediterranean, tankers and oilers were awfully hard to sink (There's a story somewhere about a certain tanker that managed to reach Malta in a critical moment when the island was running out of fuel, after the italians and germans threw even the sink at it but no matter how badly they mauled that thing they couldn't sink it. Been a while since I last read about it to remember precise details about date or even the name of the ship, but it certainly shows how awfully hard those things were to sink) /edit: I just looked it up. SS Ohio, during operation Pedestal. What that ship took was unbelievable - she had to be scuttled in Malta Harbor just to be able to offload the fuel (which was what was mostly keeping her afloat).
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Post by Adseria on May 23, 2019 11:04:04 GMT -6
Incidentally, Ram, your statement about "1/3 of the Kido Butai" nuking Neosho and Sims was technically incorrect. Yes, Shokaku and Zuikaku were at Coral Sea, and yes, those 2 ships did make up a third of the Kido Butai's carriers (not going into detail about escorts), but they only launched 78 planes of a total of 127, and, of those, only the 36 dive bombers attacked (the fighters and torpedo bombers having aborted after the realisation of the scouts' mistakes). Oh, and Neosho wasn't "nuked" either; she was seriously damaged, but stayed afloat and drifting for over 2 days, and had to be scuttled by the destroyer that rescued the survivors.
Oh come on, some literal artistry here and there should be allowed, right? . It's obvious that not every plane on the japanese carrier was thrown in that attack, that was never done to begin with XD. As for Neosho not sinking...it was quite hard to sink one of those things, unless they were filled to the top. Think of it, a ship that's designed with a huge flotation margin to load...liquids...takes quite a lot to sink by making it embark...water . of course torching those was very simple, but as the germans noticed repeatedly in the north atlantic and the mediterranean, tankers and oilers were awfully hard to sink (There's a story somewhere about a certain tanker that managed to reach Malta in a critical moment when the island was running out of fuel, after the italians and germans threw even the sink at it but no matter how badly they mauled that thing they couldn't sink it. Been a while since I last read about it to remember precise details about date or even the name of the ship, but it certainly shows how awfully hard those things were to sink) /edit: I just looked it up. SS Ohio, during operation Pedestal. What that ship took was unbelievable - she had to be scuttled in Malta Harbor just to be able to offload the fuel. This kind of begs the question of why no-one ever thought of taking a tanker and putting big guns on it (yes, they probably usually had small (3"/4") guns for self defence, but I'm talking cruiser or even battleship-level armament).
I was about to go on by suggesting you could fit a flight deck and elevators, but then I realised that actually was a thing.
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Post by ramjb on May 23, 2019 11:18:14 GMT -6
Big guns can't be mounted just by wishful thinking. To mount heavy guns you need heavy bearings, barbettes, etc, which need the hull to be built strong enough around the areas where they're mounted. You can't retrofit a ship that's not designed to take a heavy turret and barbette and related equipment with one - the hull will be extremely stressed just by mounting it. You don't want to know what would happen if you actually fired those guns.
Ships that were lighly built and tried to skimp in structural stressing and reinforcement to save tonnage knew well how bad that was. mogamis are good instances of it - they were severely over the treaties limits even when every trick was tried to keep them from displacing too much. Part of it came from, let's say, "structural economy" and as a result the first time those ships fired their guns in trials, they developed quite worrisome (as if there were any which weren't) hull cracks. Needless to say that needed quite the rework to get solved (which didn't help with their displacement problem).
Tankers were aknowledged as resilient, sturdy and highly desirable for CVE conversion, however. The problem is that tankers also were high-priority ships for logistical needs and to keep running in convoys. There were never enough of them and they were highly needed in their original guise, so relatively few of them were converted to escort carriers.
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Post by mycophobia on May 23, 2019 11:40:02 GMT -6
Oh come on, some literal artistry here and there should be allowed, right? . It's obvious that not every plane on the japanese carrier was thrown in that attack, that was never done to begin with XD. As for Neosho not sinking...it was quite hard to sink one of those things, unless they were filled to the top. Think of it, a ship that's designed with a huge flotation margin to load...liquids...takes quite a lot to sink by making it embark...water . of course torching those was very simple, but as the germans noticed repeatedly in the north atlantic and the mediterranean, tankers and oilers were awfully hard to sink (There's a story somewhere about a certain tanker that managed to reach Malta in a critical moment when the island was running out of fuel, after the italians and germans threw even the sink at it but no matter how badly they mauled that thing they couldn't sink it. Been a while since I last read about it to remember precise details about date or even the name of the ship, but it certainly shows how awfully hard those things were to sink) /edit: I just looked it up. SS Ohio, during operation Pedestal. What that ship took was unbelievable - she had to be scuttled in Malta Harbor just to be able to offload the fuel. This kind of begs the question of why no-one ever thought of taking a tanker and puttingĀ bigĀ guns on it (yes, they probably usually had small (3"/4") guns for self defence, but I'm talking cruiser or even battleship-level armament).
I was about to go on by suggesting you could fit a flight deck and elevators, but then I realised that actually was a thing.
that sounds awfully like the Nelson class xD
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Post by Adseria on May 23, 2019 12:54:51 GMT -6
Big guns can't be mounted just by wishful thinking. To mount heavy guns you need heavy bearings, barbettes, etc, which need the hull to be built strong enough around the areas where they're mounted. You can't retrofit a ship that's not designed to take a heavy turret and barbette and related equipment with one - the hull will be extremely stressed just by mounting it. You don't want to know what would happen if you actually fired those guns. Ships that were lighly built and tried to skimp in structural stressing and reinforcement to save tonnage knew well how bad that was. mogamis are good instances of it - they were severely over the treaties limits even when every trick was tried to keep them from displacing too much. Part of it came from, let's say, "structural economy" and as a result the first time those ships fired their guns in trials, they developed quite worrisome (as if there were any which weren't) hull cracks. Needless to say that needed quite the rework to get solved (which didn't help with their displacement problem). Tankers were aknowledged as resilient, sturdy and highly desirable for CVE conversion, however. The problem is that tankers also were high-priority ships for logistical needs and to keep running in convoys. There were never enough of them and they were highly needed in their original guise, so relatively few of them were converted to escort carriers. Then build more tankers! Duh!
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 23, 2019 13:53:00 GMT -6
My early (1918) ground based torpedo bombers managed a successful air strike. My 1 French BC was outnumbered by 3 Austrian BCs, but our air strike managed to put 4 torpedoes into a single battlecruiser. I was like "wow, these were 20 bombers, I didnt expect 4 hits..." Plot twist: enemy 28 000 ton BC survived all 4 hits and managed to get home from Sicily to Austria... Keep in mind fog of war is a thing. Your crews can (and will) sometimes report hits when no hits have happened... I've seen it personally in one of my battles. Had a CVL around, sent a couple strikes against an enemy BC, one torpedo hit reported after each strike... AAR summary damage report showed that BC had taken no torpedo hits during the whole battle . Yeah, I know that. Pilots reported dozens of hits, but only 4 of these were real. But still, 2 torpedoes in that year and with that technology and torpedo defence should be enough to send a ship down. Yet the ship managed to survive 4 confirmed hits around Sicily and even managed to sail back to Cattaro...
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Post by Adseria on May 23, 2019 13:55:15 GMT -6
Keep in mind fog of war is a thing. Your crews can (and will) sometimes report hits when no hits have happened... I've seen it personally in one of my battles. Had a CVL around, sent a couple strikes against an enemy BC, one torpedo hit reported after each strike... AAR summary damage report showed that BC had taken no torpedo hits during the whole battle . Yeah, I know that. Pilots reported dozens of hits, but only 4 of these were real. But still, 2 torpedoes in that year and with that technology and torpedo defence should be enough to send a ship down. Yet the ship managed to survive 4 confirmed hits around Sicily and even managed to sail back to Cattaro... Maybe they towed it? Or got out and pushed?
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Post by Deleted on May 23, 2019 14:01:07 GMT -6
Yeah, I know that. Pilots reported dozens of hits, but only 4 of these were real. But still, 2 torpedoes in that year and with that technology and torpedo defence should be enough to send a ship down. Yet the ship managed to survive 4 confirmed hits around Sicily and even managed to sail back to Cattaro... Maybe they towed it? Or got out and pushed? Maybe. And maybe after taking on 40 000 tons of water they changed its designation to water tanker...
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Post by Adseria on May 23, 2019 14:11:28 GMT -6
Oh, no! The enemy fleet dominates the seas around the Caroline Islands? How will my reputation ever possibly recov-
Oh... Never mind!
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Post by chaosblade on May 23, 2019 14:15:30 GMT -6
From the log - "BB Kawachi identifies TR as BC Bayan-class". Guys, I can understand misidentifying a BC as a BB or CA.... but a Transport!?!? People need to wipe off their binoculars, me thinks. if the Bayan was an all forward ship? maybe they thought it was an oiler? the Nelsons did had that nickname (Nelsol and Ronsol, iirc, after oiler naming conventions)
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Post by Adseria on May 23, 2019 14:49:19 GMT -6
Well, sh*t...
Yes, I would run away, but you see those Lexington class ships? They're 6 knots faster even when my ship is undamaged, and they have more guns and the guns they do have are bigger (16" vs 12")
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Post by Adseria on May 23, 2019 14:54:12 GMT -6
Well, sh*t...
Yes, I would run away, but you see those Lexington class ships? They're 6 knots faster even when my ship is undamaged, and they have more guns and the guns they do have are bigger (16" vs 12")
Really? What a surprise!
She lasted 17 minutes after my initial post. I'm impressed!
EDIT: Some of you may be wondering about what glorious mission cost the Tokiwa her life. The answer: a bombardment mission, for a target that was too far inside the minefield for her to hit it.
EDIT2: Gentles and ladiesmen, I give to you...
The fruits of her labour. One minor secondary hit on an enemy destroyer.
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Post by admdavis on May 23, 2019 19:25:06 GMT -6
I'm currently playing through my first campaign ever, as A-H. My first war is with Italy, and my first battle is to defend against a coastal raid. My fleet has three CA, two legacy fleet, 1 new one that I built. I also have a French CA along for the ride because of my alliance with France, and something like 4 CLs with a host of DDs.
I get a sighting report from a transport, and I head in that direction. I stumble into the Italian formation just after dark falls, and it's a knife fight. My best CA takes a torp and pulls out of the fight with flooding. Somehow, one of the Italian CAs (there were three or four, I think), gets separated out when the Italians pull away, and is surrounded. My remaining CAs pound the thing to scrap, while my CLs and DDs keep losing contact with formation and wandering all over the map. (I'm still figuring out the battle interface, and I swear I was doing something wrong).
The Italian CA sinks, and the battle's only half over, so I patrol the coast area. The Italians reappear! One of my DDs, which had become detached because it lost contact, sails right into the middle of them, and gets it's back broken by a torp. I try to reengage with my heavies, but the Italians pull away in the dark. Everyone returns to port and the scenario ends.
I figure trading an old DD for CA commissioned after the game started is probably going to work out in my favor. Oh. Sorry! Nope. The Italian objective was to sink any two ships. 16000 points. Italian Major Victory. Thanks to the transport they pounded, and the idiot DD captain who lost his formation in the dark, I missed the chance for pretty solid victory to open the war. I hope that DD captain went down with his ship, because if he didn't, it's not going to go well for him at the Court Martial...
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