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Post by oldpop2000 on Mar 15, 2017 7:24:59 GMT -6
I see, so the reasons for the lack of shipping were both limited shipyards and lack of resources. Thanks for the insight. Those numbers about the production of aircraft are impressive. I wonder how RTW2 would implement the production of aircraft. Thinking further about shipping. What doctrines and tactics would a carrier force use in convoy raiding. Say for example that the aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin was completed and used. And how would the British react to such a scenario? The Japanese estimated that they would lose 800,000 tons of shipping in the first year of the war, but would be deficient by well over 70,000 by the end of that year. If it hadn't been for some torpedo issues and commanders, like I indicated earlier, they would have lost much more. As it was the totals went up each year until they could not move almost anything from Southeast Asia. I do not know how RTW-2 will approach the US issue of building aircraft, we supplied all the Allies with aircraft. It will be interesting. As to Graf Zeppelin, it was built at the Deutsche Werke in Kiel, so my guess is the British would try to destroy it in the yard with frequent heavy bomber raids. After that, her working up would be in the Baltic then she would sail through the Kattegat and head to Wilhelmshaven, then out into the North Sea. My guess would be that they would be monitoring her and would try to catch her in the narrow straits. After that bomb her at Wilhelmshaven and then possible attack her with submarines in the North Sea. After Norway, the German destroyer fleet was very weak. Just my take. I personally would not risk my meagre carrier resources to interdict shipping, its far too risky. A submarine is cheaper, takes less time to build and can do a much better job of attacking sea communications. A carrier is a pulse weapon, once maybe twice a day. I would attack shipping with land based bombers also.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Mar 15, 2017 8:22:56 GMT -6
Here are some accurate figures about Japanese naval and merchant ship losses. The Japanese naval and merchant losses in WW2 were 686 naval vessels and 2346 merchant vessels. US forces sank 611 naval vessels and 2117 merchant vessels for a total of 2728 vessels. US submarines sank 201 naval vessels and 1113 merchant vessels Carrier-based sank 161 naval vessels and 359 merchant vessels. Here is the link to the complete tables for these figures. www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/Japan/IJN/JANAC-Losses/JANAC-Losses-2.html
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Post by firefox178 on Mar 15, 2017 9:48:26 GMT -6
Wow. Thanks a lot for the very precise numbers. It really helps to paint a clear picture of losses and forces that were involved. And I'm honestly surprised that the submarines sank more naval ships as well as merchant ships compared to carrier and land based aircraft. I expected the subs to sink more merchant ships while the aircraft sink the naval ones. Then again submarines could sneak and operate for some period of time in areas too dangerous for surface ships to operate in. Compound this with the Japanese failure to properly initiate ASW and you get this losses. No wonder Admiral Nimitz had such high praise for submarine arm.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Mar 15, 2017 9:55:23 GMT -6
Wow. Thanks a lot for the very precise numbers. It really helps to paint a clear picture of losses and forces that were involved. And I'm honestly surprised that the submarines sank more naval ships as well as merchant ships compared to carrier and land based aircraft. I expected the subs to sink more merchant ships while the aircraft sink the naval ones. Then again submarines could sneak and operate for some period of time in areas too dangerous for surface ships to operate in. Compound this with the Japanese failure to properly initiate ASW and you get this losses. No wonder Admiral Nimitz had such high praise for submarine arm. Caveat: When you see the figures of merchants sunk by carrier based aircraft, do not be deceived. Carrier based aircraft were frequently off loaded to the islands in the Solomons, specifically Guadalcanal and Munda. The Japanese lost many transports attempting to keep Guadalcanal supplied. They lost even more attempting to keep Truk supplied in fact there was a massive loss at Truk when the US carriers struck the fortress island and essentially put it out of the war. This continued for the rest of the war. Marine aircraft sinking's are frequently included in navy sinking's for obvious reasons. Don't assume that the sinking's by carriers were from aircraft launched from carriers. We rarely risked our carriers to accomplish that mission. If you try to use carriers in the North Sea or the Med, even the Caribbean, submarines and land based aircraft could cause losses that can not be replaced. Beware. Geography matters. BTW, both Admiral King and Admiral Nimitz were submariners. In fact, Admiral Nimitz took command of the Pacific Fleet from Admiral Kimmel on board a submarine. Both were experts on submarine technology and submarine doctrine.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Mar 15, 2017 11:39:03 GMT -6
Improvements to island bases
Here is a point for the new game and how bases should be handled. I will use Truk as an example.
Truk, now renamed Chuuk Lagoon,is located about 2204 miles from the Japanese home islands. It is 1297.49 miles from Guadalcanal. Once the US had landed on Guadalcanal in August of 1942, Truk island became the center of IJN operations. Almost all naval vessels gathered and sortied from that location. They also returned for repairs and refueling. However, due to lack of planning, there were no repair facilities located on the island and not fuel tanks for storage. The Japanese tried to expedite the building of these necessary logistical requirements but never succeeded. They had to send the Asahi Repair ship to the island and she was sunk attempting to get there. They had anchor badly needed tankers in the lagoon to refuel the ships. The Yamato and Musashi were referred to as "tankers Yamato and Musashi".
Due these failures to provide adequate logistical support, most ships needing repair had to sail all the way back to the home islands and generally anchor and wait for shipyard space to be repaired. Many never made it, and were sunk by our submarines. It wasn't until the summer of 1943 that the IJN began to construct three new more air strips on the island, two on Harushima and one on Kaede-shima. The bases were almost completed when the US Navy struck Truk on 17 February 1944 and they lost one light cruiser, 26 transports, 3 oil tanks, 2000 tons of food and more than 180 aircraft, 100 lost on the ground. All this resulted from a lack of radar and command and control equipment to use these bases for island defense. This story gets even worse for Rabaul, another main base. I hope this brief account points to the fact that a base needs to be improved to serve as a fleet base. It needs air strips for defense, oil tanks underground for protection along with ammunition bunkers, plenty of AA guns both light, and medium and a command and control system for fighter direction using UHF radios and radar. Repair facilities are a must.
One of the reasons for our rapid redeployment of damaged ships was the improvements to the Naval repair facility at Pearl Harbor which were just being completed after the attack. We also had begun the building of the Red Hill storage facility in the hills for fuel oil. One tanks was completed and full at the time of the attack. We had also begun the installation of the radar and fighter control center for the defense of the fleet while in port. This is why Malta was so important, it had fighter bases, repair facilities and other logistical support functions.
I suggest, if the game permits, that you explore these logistical requirements and ensure they are adequately provided for your expect colonial and local fleets.
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Post by firefox178 on Mar 15, 2017 12:21:48 GMT -6
Oh, thanks for clearing that up for me. And for the reminder to the dangers of geography as well. And I am also shocked by the sheer lack of support that Truk provided for the IJN. I mean they gained control of it after World War 1. They had plenty of time to build up the necessary logistical facilities as well as the necessary defensive measures. I just can't see why did not do so. After all, they decided to use the place, why not improve it to better serve its function?
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Post by oldpop2000 on Mar 15, 2017 14:24:14 GMT -6
Oh, thanks for clearing that up for me. And for the reminder to the dangers of geography as well. And I am also shocked by the sheer lack of support that Truk provided for the IJN. I mean they gained control of it after World War 1. They had plenty of time to build up the necessary logistical facilities as well as the necessary defensive measures. I just can't see why did not do so. After all, they decided to use the place, why not improve it to better serve its function? The answer to the Truk situation is explained by the treaties following WW1. The Japanese were strict in their compliance with those treaties and they were not allowed to improve them at all. Which of course they did not. However, after 1935 or thereabouts they could have begun the process. At the start of the Pacific war, there was only one half of a completed air strip on Takeshima island which is only 1000 meters long. There had been no logistical support functions added at all. I will also tell you that the Japanese were very slow at building airstrips and other logistical support structures. The airstrip on Guadalcanal, later titled Henderson Field was not completed by the Japanese at the time of the invasion although they had had six months to accomplish it. We invaded on 7 August and by August 20th, 1942 it was fully active and aircraft were launching off it. The Japanese had barely even graded and put down some crushed coral to make a hard structure. We simply used steel mats, put in a radar unit, built up structures for the protection of aircraft while on the ground and built a bomb dump on Lunga Point. So, it took us 13 days from the day the Marines landed on the island to the completion of Henderson Field. We were good at construction, that's for certain.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Mar 15, 2017 17:46:55 GMT -6
I wanted to bring up a naval issue that most don't know about. This is the importance of knowing the depth of water that you are sailing through. Illustration: You've probably heard of Dogger Bank or Dogger Sea off the coast of eastern Great Britain. There was an important battle in WW1 near that bank. The depth of water at that bank is 49 to 118 feet. Now, if a ship has a draught of 35-40 feet and is moving at 20-25 knots, it stern squats. The squat effect is proportional to the square of the speed of the ship. It isn't going to take much to ground out on that bank. There are many instances, like the grounding of the QE 2 in 1992 where that problem is the cause. In our San Diego Bay, the depth is 45 feet and super carriers can't go more than 10 knots entering and docking at North Island.
Dogger Bank is a glacial moraine formed during the Pleistocene. It has been above ground as a peninsula and as an island during those periods. Animal bones like Elk have been found on it. The point is it is important to know where you are sailing. This is why warships have consistently avoided this region and many others.
I doubt the game will try to represent such detail but it could be important.
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Post by steel selachian on Mar 15, 2017 20:10:25 GMT -6
Skinny water like that is also not a great place to be a sub driver - the dives I've made on some of the WWII wrecks off North Carolina had me thinking it was a gutsy move for a Type IX or even a Type VII to get into less than 100 ft of water in an area that's known to claim ships very easily without a war on. On top of that, on a clear-water day a sub would stick out like a sore thumb to an air search.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Mar 15, 2017 21:16:35 GMT -6
Skinny water like that is also not a great place to be a sub driver - the dives I've made on some of the WWII wrecks off North Carolina had me thinking it was a gutsy move for a Type IX or even a Type VII to get into less than 100 ft of water in an area that's known to claim ships very easily without a war on. On top of that, on a clear-water day a sub would stick out like a sore thumb to an air search. You bring up a good point, to add to the discussion. Skinny water....love it. Skinny water is the most dangerous waters for any ship but especially a stealth boat like a submarine. I am curious about sonar and shallow waters though, it should be very effective with less of a thermocline for the submarine to hide under. Do you agree?
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Post by steel selachian on Mar 15, 2017 21:34:39 GMT -6
Skinny water like that is also not a great place to be a sub driver - the dives I've made on some of the WWII wrecks off North Carolina had me thinking it was a gutsy move for a Type IX or even a Type VII to get into less than 100 ft of water in an area that's known to claim ships very easily without a war on. On top of that, on a clear-water day a sub would stick out like a sore thumb to an air search. You bring up a good point, to add to the discussion. Skinny water....love it. Skinny water is the most dangerous waters for any ship but especially a stealth boat like a submarine. I am curious about sonar and shallow waters though, it should be very effective with less of a thermocline for the submarine to hide under. Do you agree? Likely. You can hit thermoclines in very shallow water (less than a hundred feet; it sucks on a summery Florida day when you jump into 82-degree water on the surface and down around 70 ft it plummets to the mid-60s). However, that wouldn't leave enough room on the bottom for even a WWII sub to hide. That said, depending on the bottom composition shallow water might make it harder to sort the sub's return out, much like a low-flying aircraft.
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Post by firefox178 on Mar 15, 2017 22:09:24 GMT -6
Oh, thanks for clearing that up for me. And for the reminder to the dangers of geography as well. And I am also shocked by the sheer lack of support that Truk provided for the IJN. I mean they gained control of it after World War 1. They had plenty of time to build up the necessary logistical facilities as well as the necessary defensive measures. I just can't see why did not do so. After all, they decided to use the place, why not improve it to better serve its function? The answer to the Truk situation is explained by the treaties following WW1. The Japanese were strict in their compliance with those treaties and they were not allowed to improve them at all. Which of course they did not. However, after 1935 or thereabouts they could have begun the process. At the start of the Pacific war, there was only one half of a completed air strip on Takeshima island which is only 1000 meters long. There had been no logistical support functions added at all. I will also tell you that the Japanese were very slow at building airstrips and other logistical support structures. The airstrip on Guadalcanal, later titled Henderson Field was not completed by the Japanese at the time of the invasion although they had had six months to accomplish it. We invaded on 7 August and by August 20th, 1942 it was fully active and aircraft were launching off it. The Japanese had barely even graded and put down some crushed coral to make a hard structure. We simply used steel mats, put in a radar unit, built up structures for the protection of aircraft while on the ground and built a bomb dump on Lunga Point. So, it took us 13 days from the day the Marines landed on the island to the completion of Henderson Field. We were good at construction, that's for certain. That is very impressive. Only 13 days to create a fully functional airfield. How come the Japanese failed to do so with their half a year head start. I mean they had half a year. And as you said, they had plenty of time to upgrade Truk once they no longer bound themselves to the treaty. Yet their efforts were simply poor. Why such a massive difference in construction capabilities?
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Post by oldpop2000 on Mar 16, 2017 7:43:10 GMT -6
The answer to the Truk situation is explained by the treaties following WW1. The Japanese were strict in their compliance with those treaties and they were not allowed to improve them at all. Which of course they did not. However, after 1935 or thereabouts they could have begun the process. At the start of the Pacific war, there was only one half of a completed air strip on Takeshima island which is only 1000 meters long. There had been no logistical support functions added at all. I will also tell you that the Japanese were very slow at building airstrips and other logistical support structures. The airstrip on Guadalcanal, later titled Henderson Field was not completed by the Japanese at the time of the invasion although they had had six months to accomplish it. We invaded on 7 August and by August 20th, 1942 it was fully active and aircraft were launching off it. The Japanese had barely even graded and put down some crushed coral to make a hard structure. We simply used steel mats, put in a radar unit, built up structures for the protection of aircraft while on the ground and built a bomb dump on Lunga Point. So, it took us 13 days from the day the Marines landed on the island to the completion of Henderson Field. We were good at construction, that's for certain. That is very impressive. Only 13 days to create a fully functional airfield. How come the Japanese failed to do so with their half a year head start. I mean they had half a year. And as you said, they had plenty of time to upgrade Truk once they no longer bound themselves to the treaty. Yet their efforts were simply poor. Why such a massive difference in construction capabilities? The first idea to grab hold of, is that the South Pacific islands had nothing to offer except their location near areas strategically important to the Japanese. The islands did not have any important functions except as locations for air bases and those became the primary target. This was not true in northern Europe or the Mediterranean. Because of those facts, the island air bases had to have everything brought in to build and operate the sophisticated bases. Another factor is the lack of knowledge about these remote islands. The geology and climate were not well understood so European methods were used and this did not work well. There was no local labor to help build anything. The drainage on these islands was terrible so when the heavy rains started, everything was a mire of mud. It also had many different strains of disease that no medicines had been developed to counter. It was a hell of place to fight wars. My father suffered from malaria for five years after the war, my mother said he would shake at night and she would have to administer the medicine to help him stop. He also had a bad case of jungle rot on his feet. It was hideous to see, and he had to have clean dry socks on all the time with special powder. All this eventually went away by the '60's. These diseases hampered combat operations and we were better equipped than the Japanese in this area. The importance of island air bases was such that, commanders had to locate them within the operational area to serve their function. In other words, they had to be strategic close enough to the next area of attack to warrant their construction and development. The key figure was "fighter range". The fighter was key in the Pacific war and the bombers had to have escort so, the fighter bases had to be within their range to support bomber attacks. Initially the Japanese Zero could escort bombers from the bases in Rabaul to hit Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, but when the newer type 32 Zero came along with its bigger engine and better 20 mm gun and increased ammunition load, that went away. It was so bad, the Japanese took out their worthless radios to decrease weight. However that did not really gain them much and they lost any sort of coordination with the bombers. Keep this in mind when playing RTW-2. Check the combat radius of your fighters and ensure that the air base is in range of the next operational target. Also, develop early 400 gallon drop tanks to increase range. They will be dropped when empty or entering combat. Remember that heavy bombers need longer runways especially when fully loaded, medium bombers less and fighters even less. The bombers will need the best runways that can handle the weight, fighters less. Now to the reason or possible reason why the runway on Guadalcanal was not finished after three months of work and probably would not have been completed for another three months. It had to do with the type of engineering team that was working on the construction. The runway at Guadalcanal was a satellite to Rabaul and Wewak on New Guinea. The main base was the support base for this field. The aircraft would shuttle between the two. Apparently, according multiple sources, the Japanese were actually excellent field engineers. They had three engineering functional groups: Combat engineers, field engineers and pioneers. The latter were very poor construction teams not made up of Japanese soldiers but Korean. They had a few Japanese officers and performed almost all of their construction with manual labor except for maybe a steam roller, light bull dozers, concrete mixers. The army engineers considered some work undignified so the pioneers did the manual labor and these were the engineers, if you want to call them that, that were building the airfield on Guadalcanal. These were essentially labor battalions with the Japanese operating the few machines and providing protection. The importance of these forward bases like Wewak, Rabaul and others was never considered by the IJN until the invasion and loss of Guadalcanal. It was at this time that improvements to Rabaul and Wewak along with the development of newer bases on Bougainville and New Guinea were begun, these did not take the time that Guadalcanal took and were very sophisticated. However, as with much the IJA and IJN did, it was too little and too late. By the time of the end of the Guadalcanal operation in early 1943, heavy and medium bomber raids from Port Moresby and Darwin had already increased along with newer P-38 fighters to accompany them. Once Guadalcanal was secure, bombers began to fly from Henderson after the completion of Fighter one and two. Both bases were now under full scale alert almost daily and the movement of supplies between the outer islands and bases was difficult. Hope this clarifies the situation, I have more information on this subject. My primary source is "Fire in the Sky: The Air War in the South Pacific" by Eric Bergerud and the Naval Technical documents.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Mar 16, 2017 8:51:11 GMT -6
Just a comment. I feel I am lecturing here and most of you are working and don't have the time to really read these lectures. I will stop and keep it shorter if you want or you tell me what you want to hear. As I say, I am retired and have the time until its pickup time for my granddaughter.
Let me know
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Post by firefox178 on Mar 16, 2017 9:26:33 GMT -6
Thanks for the explanations. I can see why the construction was slow going. Also that tidbit about prioritizing fighters and their range is understood. Bombers can't operate effectively and efficiently without fighter cover. For while there is the saying that "the bomber will always get through", that only is true if you can afford the massive losses in men and aircraft. Combined with the fighters fewer take-off requirements means that fighters be given first priority. After all it's the fighter planes that make sure that your bases won't be turned to ruble.
I can't say for the others reading this thread, but I find your lectures alright. And while I am sometimes busy, I can spare time to rad them. They are interesting and informative. Plus the personal stories you add to them give it a more human approach.
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