Torpedo Bomber Speed?

[zedfifty]

I am under the impression that during their attack runs, torpedo bombers had speed and altitude restrictions. Is there a similar speed restriction in RTW2 for torpedo bombers making torpedo attacks? If so, perhaps I should emphasize something other than speed for my late-game RFPs.

[JagdFlanker]

i'v reached the point where i develop all aircraft types with speed/speed - regardless of what speed a TB makes it's attacks at, speed will allow it to find targets faster and get back to base quicker, which *might* give them time to do more strikes in a day and/or give them a better chance to land before dark

fast fighters can also win you the air race for a single prestige

[garrisonchisholm]

There are lots of different envelopes that aircraft operate it, but Maneuver helps everything. I have been selecting Maneuver and Toughness for my TBs, on the theory that the former helps deliver the fish and the later helps survive the delivering. I don't have any data on whether that actually works, but it feels right through my time with the game.

[jishmael]

Shouldn't speed also impact this heavily though? The faster you are, the less time you spend under aa in a given attack run, no?

[ulzgoroth]

Aug 5, 2019 7:55:58 GMT -6 jishmael said:

Shouldn't speed also impact this heavily though? The faster you are, the less time you spend under aa in a given attack run, no?

In game terms, I don't think so.  According to the manual, speed can determine whether you take LAA attacks before or after releasing your weapons, but it doesn't indicate having any effect on HAA/MAA or even changing how much you'll lose to LAA.  Maneuver is the trait for not getting hit.

In reality...maybe, depending on engagement range and rate of fire of the AA.  But in reality AA probably doesn't only engage planes during their attack runs, so.

[Blothorn]

I also expect that speed helps increase the chance of reaching the target before getting attacked by escorting fighters, which is pretty important.

[JagdFlanker]

speed likely doesn't help attacking TBs much since they have to attack at a certain speed to properly drop their torps, which i assume hurts them more and more the deeper you progress in the game

[zedfifty]

And why would manoeuvrability matter against AAA? Jinking on the final approach would throw off any sort of attack run.

[ulzgoroth]

Aug 5, 2019 15:27:59 GMT -6 JagdFlanker said:

speed likely doesn't help attacking TBs much since they have to attack at a certain speed to properly drop their torps, which i assume hurts them more and more the deeper you progress in the game

Why would you assume that? Considering what speed actually does according to the documentation, I'm not sure it should be relevant to torpedo bombers as their weapons can be dropped literally miles away from the target.

Aug 6, 2019 2:51:09 GMT -6 zedfifty said:

And why would manoeuvrability matter against AAA? Jinking on the final approach would throw off any sort of attack run.

While you're lining up the weapon release, yes. All the rest of the time, not necessarily...

And if you're flying in a straight line, flying fast isn't much of a defense against decent AA fire control.

[jwsmith26]

Aug 5, 2019 15:27:59 GMT -6 JagdFlanker said:

speed likely doesn't help attacking TBs much since they have to attack at a certain speed to properly drop their torps, which i assume hurts them more and more the deeper you progress in the game

Quite the contrary, the speed and altitude at which USN torpedoes could be dropped increased substantially during WW2. The USN entered the war fielding an aerial torpedo that could be dropped at no higher than 50 feet and at a speed of no more than 110 kts. So yes, at that point, speed was a large factor, a very negative one. The contemporary Japanese torpedoes could be released from over 600 feet and at a slightly higher speed. in the early years of WW2 a faster torpedo bomber would not have mattered much during the torpedo attack itself when the weapon dictated the maximum allowable speed. High speed was still a positive factor during the approach to the target and during air to air combat regardless of how slow you had to fly to actually drop your weapon.

The Americans substantially improved the attributes of their aerial torpedoes so that by war's end USN torpedoes could be effectively dropped from an altitude of 2400 feet and at a speed of over 400 kts. At that point the speed of the attack was no longer limited by the delivery speed of the torpedo and the speed of the bomber itself would become much more of a factor. However, I don't believe that this rapid improvement in aerial torpedoes is modeled in RTW2.

In a game like RTW2 that covers half a century of technological developments you can't just pick one 5 year period and make evaluations based on that period. For the first twenty years of naval aviation torpedo bomber speed was not much slower than the fighters they would have faced. For most of the period leading up to WW2, due to inefficient aerial engines, poor understanding of how aerodynamics affected speed, and the continued use of the biplane format, high aerial speed was quite difficult to achieve. Maneuver, not speed, was considered the most important aerial quality and speed was not the hugely important attribute that it became in the late 30s. It was only after the improvements mentioned above were developed in the 30s that fighters were able to rapidly sprint ahead of TBs in speed and this difference became a major factor in the TBs survivability.

Looking past the 40s, while this does not occur in RTW2, after 1945 the use of torpedoes dropped off precipitously because improvements in AAA made such attacks unlikely to succeed and developing missile technology replaced the need for aerial torpedoes (and there were few targets). Hopefully, this decline will be modeled in RTW2 when missile tech is introduced. Incidentally, the same thing happened to dive bombers. AAA became too good to risk such a close-in attack and missile tech made the weapons largely obsolete anyway. Single purpose dive bombers and torpedo bombers morphed into multi-purpose attack bombers. Initially capable of performing both dive bombing and torpedo attacks, they were eventually armed with weapons that allowed the plane to launch an attack from a safer distance from the target than either of those older attack methods allowed.

 

[zedfifty]

Aug 6, 2019 11:31:20 GMT -6 jwsmith26 said:

Looking past the 40s, while this does not occur in RTW2, after 1945 the use of torpedoes dropped off precipitously because improvements in AAA made such attacks unlikely to succeed and developing missile technology replaced the need for aerial torpedoes (and there were few targets). Hopefully, this decline will be modeled in RTW2 when missile tech is introduced. Incidentally, the same thing happened to dive bombers. AAA became too good to risk such a close-in attack and missile tech made the weapons largely obsolete anyway. Single purpose dive bombers and torpedo bombers morphed into multi-purpose attack bombers. Initially capable of performing both dive bombing and torpedo attacks, they were eventually armed with weapons that allowed the plane to launch an attack from a safer distance from the target than either of those older attack methods allowed.

An important step in this process was unguided rockets like HVAR and Tiny Tim. It is missing from the game's technology list.