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Post by alexbrunius on May 20, 2019 4:01:27 GMT -6
AFAIK Japanese Carriers could not arm their torpedo bombers on the deck at all, only in the hangars, and dive bombers could be armed in either hangars or on deck ( Although usually on deck ).
Not sure about the British, but since their Carriers were designed to operate in the rough weather of the Atlantic I wouldn't be surprised if they also had a focus on rearming in the hangars just like the Japanese. I can imagine it's not ideal to lug around heavy bombs and torpedoes in rain, wet slippery flight deck and high wind.
I haven't gotten as far yet ingame, but if bombers & strikes can be turned around almost instantly than that is a serious problem in a game where minutes can matter in battle. Ideally committing to preparing a strike should put your Carrier in a very vulnerable state as fuel hoses and bombs are everywhere, and it should probably take somewhere in the span of 30-90 minutes depending on size of strike, size of Carrier and experience of crew.
Having infinite torpedo reloads is a simplification I can live with as long as battle lengths and turnaround time are changed to limit you to a historical about 2-3 strikes per day and Carrier maximum which means you won't be able to go through unreasonable amounts of reloads.
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Post by dorn on May 20, 2019 5:30:20 GMT -6
I do not know if they have ability to rearm on deck.
But certainly RN procedure was struck aircraft down to hangar as soon as it landed. Especially with Illustrious class they considered hangar as save place so rearming and refueling was in hangar. On top of that they were very cautions about fuel even much more than USN.
It is linked that RN fought in different envinroment and protecting the fleet, convoys were main task. And in case of strikes they have a lot of time to do it so they did not focuse on speed of launching strike. As they operate together with USN carrier in 1943 they started to look at USN procedures which were much better. RN was inferior of deck handling, spotting, speed of operations. They did need to focus on something different than IJN and USN in Pacific. However they have never come even close to USN efficiency of that.
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Post by director on May 20, 2019 5:30:43 GMT -6
As I recall, the limit on airstrikes was attrition of planes and pilots. After the initial strikes at the Japanese carriers, US plane count was severely reduced. (I haven't looked up the actual numbers - just going on memory here.) That was one of the reasons Spruance chose to withdraw during the night and not press after the rest of the Japanese fleet. "Stop when you have won" is a little-appreciated talent in military command.
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Post by Procopius on May 20, 2019 6:12:02 GMT -6
generally it was the exact opposite NOBODY loaded torpedoes and bombs in the hangar because if an explosion goes off inside the hangar from a torpedo or bomb the INTIRE airwing is done the elevator is jammed or destroyed and the intire hangar is gone and probably on fire if an explosion happends on deck you might loose 2 or 3 planes have a sizable hole in deck and a fire which is easy to deal with because its not inside the ship so your crew dosent die from fumes for example when the 4 japanese carriers where hit by bombs and sunk they were all refueling fighters and loading torpedoes into their strike planes as such the fuel lines caught fire and burned the decks and helped sink the carriers while it does increase the risk its not as catastrophic as an in hangar explosion 12 plane spotting should be about at most 40 minutes and at short 30 minutes or less The Japanese armed belowdeck, famously at Midway. The book Shattered Sword talks about it a great deal.
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Post by JagdFlanker on May 20, 2019 9:23:18 GMT -6
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Post by alexbrunius on May 20, 2019 10:25:56 GMT -6
I haven't gotten as far yet ingame, but if bombers & strikes can be turned around almost instantly than that is a serious problem in a game where minutes can matter in battle. Ideally committing to preparing a strike should put your Carrier in a very vulnerable state as fuel hoses and bombs are everywhere, and it should probably take somewhere in the span of 30-90 minutes depending on size of strike, size of Carrier and experience of crew. Having now had some very basic experience with 1920s Carrier Ops and a minimal CVL myself sending out strikes of 5 planes these took 16 minutes to make ready, another 16 or so to spot on the flight deck and then 2-3 minutes to launch. That adds up to 35 minutes and seem perfectly reasonable for a normal turnaround.
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Post by ramjb on May 20, 2019 10:43:36 GMT -6
generally it was the exact opposite NOBODY loaded torpedoes and bombs in the hangar because if an explosion goes off inside the hangar from a torpedo or bomb the INTIRE airwing is done the elevator is jammed or destroyed and the intire hangar is gone and probably on fire if an explosion happends on deck you might loose 2 or 3 planes have a sizable hole in deck and a fire which is easy to deal with because its not inside the ship so your crew dosent die from fumes for example when the 4 japanese carriers where hit by bombs and sunk they were all refueling fighters and loading torpedoes into their strike planes as such the fuel lines caught fire and burned the decks and helped sink the carriers while it does increase the risk its not as catastrophic as an in hangar explosion 12 plane spotting should be about at most 40 minutes and at short 30 minutes or less The Japanese armed belowdeck, famously at Midway. The book Shattered Sword talks about it a great deal. Gosh am I relieved. I read that book a LONG time ago ,but I remembered exactly the same. However if everyone tells you you're wrong, generally...you're wrong. Seems not this time tho . Thank heavens...I was beginning to think if I already had serious memory issues already at 40 years old XDDDDDDD.
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Post by ramjb on May 20, 2019 10:45:16 GMT -6
"Stop when you have won" is a little-appreciated talent in military command. Indeed, and he played the same card in the Phillipine Sea. He got a lot of flak for it, but he did the right thing. Because "don't go chasing ghosts" is yet another valuable talent - as Halsey was a fraction of an inch from finding out at Leyte.
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Post by oldpop2000 on May 20, 2019 10:47:48 GMT -6
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Post by scheerpower on May 20, 2019 11:58:28 GMT -6
I don't know about this whole "Don't worry about torpedo ammo" thing. Considering the game models individual gun ammo, modelling bombs and torpedoes should be in there, even if it's just at the level of "bombs per plane" or something. Otherwise you'll have totally different endurance times for carriers and just about everything else.
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Post by Procopius on May 20, 2019 12:15:56 GMT -6
I don't know about this whole "Don't worry about torpedo ammo" thing. Considering the game models individual gun ammo, modelling bombs and torpedoes should be in there, even if it's just at the level of "bombs per plane" or something. Otherwise you'll have totally different endurance times for carriers and just about everything else. Agreed. Limited stores of munitions often affected carrier operations. Even if it were something that abstracted all bomb types into one generic dial-a-bomb or something, I think it would be good.
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Post by alexbrunius on May 20, 2019 15:52:44 GMT -6
I don't know about this whole "Don't worry about torpedo ammo" thing. Considering the game models individual gun ammo, modelling bombs and torpedoes should be in there, even if it's just at the level of "bombs per plane" or something. Otherwise you'll have totally different endurance times for carriers and just about everything else. The difference is that a Battleship can run through it's entire magazine in ~2 hours of intense combat while a Carrier need ~2 days. If most Battles last no more than 1 day you can see why having limited ammo for guns matters alot while it might not matter a whole lot for air dropped munitions. Now if the game modeled an entire operation ( say 2 weeks or so ) instead where you might combine port strikes, bombing land targets, supporting invasions and striking several enemy fleets in the same map,then I would totally agree with you that carrier endurance ( and fuel for ships as well ) would matter a whole lot more than the way it works now.
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