Deck Parking on Aircraft Carriers

[Director]

Part of the problem with air group launching and co-ordination is airplane performance: you need to be able to launch them quickly and then have them circle while the strike forms up. US had issues within the components of each carrier and between carrier groups - that's why the dive-bombers and torpedo bombers went out in separate bunches; it was that or land and refuel them because they'd been circling too long to make it to the enemy and back. Japanese planes had longer range and could afford to loiter longer (this is really critical), and since the planes were prepped in the hangar they could be flown off as fast as they could come up.

US at Midway had about the same strike-assembly performance at Coral Sea and the Guadalcanal carrier battles, so the issue was systemic, not a one-off. Deck parking should only be an issue if you need to land a plane, but should can be a loaded word. Pretty sure the US was putting a LOT of thought into this; the carrier admirals were not happy with Midway performance.

The US attacks on the Japanese carriers achieved the fatal distraction of keeping them off-balance and dithering. Cost the US a lot of planes and pilots, and was not the way either side would have run the battle intentionally. The fact that the US strikes found the carriers at all and managed to dive-bomb them almost unopposed is why they call it "The Miracle of Midway". The US had everything break their way. Better yet they realized that - didn't assume all was good just because they killed carriers.

 

[teamgene]

I agree with others, just let it be part of the tech tree.

 

[Daelyn75]

I agree with others, just let it be part of the tech tree.

That's not how the conversation was going here. A lot of info came out in this thread, and a lot of knowledge was gained pretty much for all contributors.

 

[Daelyn75]

Part of the problem with air group launching and co-ordination is airplane performance: you need to be able to launch them quickly and then have them circle while the strike forms up. US had issues within the components of each carrier and between carrier groups - that's why the dive-bombers and torpedo bombers went out in separate bunches; it was that or land and refuel them because they'd been circling too long to make it to the enemy and back. Japanese planes had longer range and could afford to loiter longer (this is really critical), and since the planes were prepped in the hangar they could be flown off as fast as they could come up.

US at Midway had about the same strike-assembly performance at Coral Sea and the Guadalcanal carrier battles, so the issue was systemic, not a one-off. Deck parking should only be an issue if you need to land a plane, but should can be a loaded word. Pretty sure the US was putting a LOT of thought into this; the carrier admirals were not happy with Midway performance.

The US attacks on the Japanese carriers achieved the fatal distraction of keeping them off-balance and dithering. Cost the US a lot of planes and pilots, and was not the way either side would have run the battle intentionally. The fact that the US strikes found the carriers at all and managed to dive-bomb them almost unopposed is why they call it "The Miracle of Midway". The US had everything break their way. Better yet they realized that - didn't assume all was good just because they killed carriers.

It really was a miracle if you asked me.

On a bit of a different note, I think a lot of fighters pilots at that time were still really apprehensive against the all "invincible" Zero. I know how they were defeated later on, attrition, team tactics, not following them into their climb etc. . . But the fighters from Midway were annihilated with little losses given to the Japanese, and I am sure that was well known to the fighter pilots from the carriers when they were going out to meet the enemy with the US strike that was a cluster F%&$.

 

[inteljoe]

There's a couple problems with this.

1. US wasn't the only country to use a deck park ( usual term for what you're talking about ) UK used it at times.

2. Deck parks are weather dependent, you can't really use a deck park in the North Sea or even worse an arctic convoy without huge attrition losses to aircraft.

If deck parks are implemented it should probably be a doctrinal choice that can be activated and deactivated outside of any doctrine tree so that if you're operating your carriers in harsher conditions you can cease using the deck park and opt out of the attrition on aircraft.

What about doing an "and/or" attrition flag, for example, if the carrier is in a certain type of ocean zone where their is little to no attrition attributed to keeping the aircraft stored on deck their would be no penalty. But if they are in the Arctic ocean zone for example their is and it would only apply to carriers that have more aircraft on them than their max allowable. That way you would technically "bleed" aircraft in those weather harsh zones or during storms, but in normal or perfect operations you would not.

But then, when it comes to combat you would need to specify how many aircraft to deploy so as to keep aircraft as spares. So for example, you have 120 (normal compliment is 90) aircraft spread out the different classes. You would need to specify for each class how many would be active leaving the remainder as "hot spares" more or less. That way if you lose aircraft due to battle, you can replace them without having to make port. On the other hand, if you specify to use all 120 aircraft in battle you would receive a logistical penalty of some sort from trying to bring more aircraft to battle than the carrier (or the Carriers CIC) can handle. Theoretically speaking.

This could also be expanded to simulate ferry missions as well. Assuming that the regular logistical channels are not available in hard to reach places or for newly acquired islands in far and away places that convoy's can't reach. If you specify that 0 aircraft are combatants you would get an increase in the max the carrier can hold as a percentage. So for example, if the max normal is 100 battle aircraft, and due to modifiers (from technology, events, or what not) you have a the ability to have 20% more than the max on board as spares (or you incur a penalty if they are set to battle ready). This raises the amount of aircraft allowed on board 120, but because you want to ferry the aircraft you specify that the max "battle ready" as 0 (as opposed to 100) you get a 100% max aircraft bonus (or 240 total). But if the carrier is brought to battle, 0 of the planes will be used. This could be useful if you have a surplus of older carrier's that functionally have no use as combatants and have a need to get aircraft to far and away places outside the normal logistical channels.

Then you can stagger the percentages so if you set the battle ready aircraft to 50 (as opposed to 100) you would only get a 50% bonus and so on.

 

[Axe99]

So you are thinking that the deck parking was what slowed down the US coordination of their air units? I suppose not having to shuffle planes around would be a pain, but if set up right, I can see them launching the planes faster. Problem is that setting up on the deck probably takes time. I've seen a picture in my West Point book that shows an entire deck with planes with their engines running and ready to take off. I suppose if you just launch them all however they are on the deck if you need them all for a big strike, then there would be a lot of planes waiting to get the rest of their units up while they fly around the fleet, because some other air group had their planes in the way of the rest of yours.

Part of the problem with air group launching and co-ordination is airplane performance: you need to be able to launch them quickly and then have them circle while the strike forms up. US had issues within the components of each carrier and between carrier groups - that's why the dive-bombers and torpedo bombers went out in separate bunches; it was that or land and refuel them because they'd been circling too long to make it to the enemy and back. Japanese planes had longer range and could afford to loiter longer (this is really critical), and since the planes were prepped in the hangar they could be flown off as fast as they could come up.

Appreciate both your thoughts, and deffo appreciate it's far more complicated than that - I'm just trying to think of a way to make it sensible for the Japanese player not to do deck parking, and somewhere either in this thread or while looking up stuff related to this thread, I read they didn't go for it, at least partly, because it didn't gel with their operational procedures. It's not perfect, but that way it won't nerf Japan (as they'll get a buff for their capacity to do launch a well-coordinated strike quickly) and it's nice and simple (a branching path on the Base Strike doctrine tree, say, with deck parking being a later-game tech on the Fleet-in-Being doctrine, so the Brits can't get it early*). It also gives the US a choice of going with lower-capacity carriers and better strikes early as well, if they want to swing that way (so less planes at Midway, but more operationally effective - ie, they wouldn't need as much to rely on blind luck to win).

* Something else in the back of my mind is a national focus option for the UK where they choose between the fleet air arm and the RAF - with bonuses going one way or the other depending on the choice (and the AI choosing the RAF) - giving the player the freedom to go with a more aggressive strategy, but at the risk of leaving the home islands less well defended. If something like this, I was thinking deck parking could be part of the FAA side of the path.

What about doing an "and/or" attrition flag, for example, if the carrier is in a certain type of ocean zone where their is little to no attrition attributed to keeping the aircraft stored on deck their would be no penalty. But if they are in the Arctic ocean zone for example their is and it would only apply to carriers that have more aircraft on them than their max allowable. That way you would technically "bleed" aircraft in those weather harsh zones or during storms, but in normal or perfect operations you would not.

But then, when it comes to combat you would need to specify how many aircraft to deploy so as to keep aircraft as spares. So for example, you have 120 (normal compliment is 90) aircraft spread out the different classes. You would need to specify for each class how many would be active leaving the remainder as "hot spares" more or less. That way if you lose aircraft due to battle, you can replace them without having to make port. On the other hand, if you specify to use all 120 aircraft in battle you would receive a logistical penalty of some sort from trying to bring more aircraft to battle than the carrier (or the Carriers CIC) can handle. Theoretically speaking.

This could also be expanded to simulate ferry missions as well. Assuming that the regular logistical channels are not available in hard to reach places or for newly acquired islands in far and away places that convoy's can't reach. If you specify that 0 aircraft are combatants you would get an increase in the max the carrier can hold as a percentage. So for example, if the max normal is 100 battle aircraft, and due to modifiers (from technology, events, or what not) you have a the ability to have 20% more than the max on board as spares (or you incur a penalty if they are set to battle ready). This raises the amount of aircraft allowed on board 120, but because you want to ferry the aircraft you specify that the max "battle ready" as 0 (as opposed to 100) you get a 100% max aircraft bonus (or 240 total). But if the carrier is brought to battle, 0 of the planes will be used. This could be useful if you have a surplus of older carrier's that functionally have no use as combatants and have a need to get aircraft to far and away places outside the normal logistical channels.

Then you can stagger the percentages so if you set the battle ready aircraft to 50 (as opposed to 100) you would only get a 50% bonus and so on.

This is an interesting idea, but relies on a lot of potential levers that may or may not be there in the game, and could get a bit micro-ey quite quickly (the US and UK had tens of carriers floating around late-war, and even Japan starts the war with (I think) 8 or so). I also suspect we won't need to do ferry missions - I think I recall seeing in a WWW Johan automatically transferring a wing to a CV - but could be wrong there. Good thoughts though, and I could well be wrong .

 

[Daelyn75]

Appreciate both your thoughts, and deffo appreciate it's far more complicated than that - I'm just trying to think of a way to make it sensible for the Japanese player not to do deck parking, and somewhere either in this thread or while looking up stuff related to this thread, I read they didn't go for it, at least partly, because it didn't gel with their operational procedures. It's not perfect, but that way it won't nerf Japan (as they'll get a buff for their capacity to do launch a well-coordinated strike quickly) and it's nice and simple (a branching path on the Base Strike doctrine tree, say, with deck parking being a later-game tech on the Fleet-in-Being doctrine, so the Brits can't get it early*). It also gives the US a choice of going with lower-capacity carriers and better strikes early as well, if they want to swing that way (so less planes at Midway, but more operationally effective - ie, they wouldn't need as much to rely on blind luck to win).

* Something else in the back of my mind is a national focus option for the UK where they choose between the fleet air arm and the RAF - with bonuses going one way or the other depending on the choice (and the AI choosing the RAF) - giving the player the freedom to go with a more aggressive strategy, but at the risk of leaving the home islands less well defended. If something like this, I was thinking deck parking could be part of the FAA side of the path.



This is an interesting idea, but relies on a lot of potential levers that may or may not be there in the game, and could get a bit micro-ey quite quickly (the US and UK had tens of carriers floating around late-war, and even Japan starts the war with (I think) 8 or so). I also suspect we won't need to do ferry missions - I think I recall seeing in a WWW Johan automatically transferring a wing to a CV - but could be wrong there. Good thoughts though, and I could well be wrong .

Another thing to keep in mind is that adding deck parking to one of the naval doctrines might make it just too easy to get, or if you put it down far enough were it's like three techs away for the British and the Japanese, then either the US starts off too strong in that area or it's just something that's too easy to get before the war. If it's a national focus, then the US would not be able to start out with it. So I'm not sure what would be the best way to have it in the game. It's not really even a tech anyhow, it's just a decision based upon your nations current carrier practices. Since Japan did things differently, only a big catastrophe could make them change it up, like at Midway. It's not an easy one to come up with one that fits right I think.

 

[Axe99]

Another thing to keep in mind is that adding deck parking to one of the naval doctrines might make it just too easy to get, or if you put it down far enough were it's like three techs away for the British and the Japanese, then either the US starts off too strong in that area or it's just something that's too easy to get before the war. If it's a national focus, then the US would not be able to start out with it. So I'm not sure what would be the best way to have it in the game. It's not really even a tech anyhow, it's just a decision based upon your nations current carrier practices. Since Japan did things differently, only a big catastrophe could make them change it up, like at Midway. It's not an easy one to come up with one that fits right I think.

Aye, I was thinking more a doctrine than a tech. The US should start with it as far as I'm aware (so you're right, an NF for the US wouldn't be right, thanks ), so the carrier forces should be balanced for Japan to be competitive even with the US having deck parks. If it was an exclusive branching path on a doctrine tree, then Japan has to choose between coordinated strikes or deck parking - if they go deck parking, then they might have more planes, but they'll be less effective, particularly early on (and Japan needs them to be effective early on, while the US has time to build). So US starts with the tech (and no option for a fast-launched, coordinated strike), Japan has a choice (but AI will choose coordinated strike and not deck parking) and the UK is on a different doctrine tree and gets the option, but not until much later. The idea would be to tweak the base strike doctrine options to add a branching path, and add deck parking in base strike down the track (where a UK player can rush if they want, but should probably have other priorities unless they're just in a war with Japan, say).

It's a bit gamey (ie, there's a degree of artificial choice being imposed through the suggestion), just trying to work out a way to get it in the game in a way that both works game-wise and feels reasonable from a historical plausibility perspective. Appreciate your thoughts .

 

[Director]

Something else in the back of my mind is a national focus option for the UK where they choose between the fleet air arm and the RAF - with bonuses going one way or the other depending on the choice (and the AI choosing the RAF) - giving the player the freedom to go with a more aggressive strategy, but at the risk of leaving the home islands less well defended. If something like this, I was thinking deck parking could be part of the FAA side of the path.

That would be a very interesting doctrinal choice and could be spread to the other carrier-using nations; unifying an air force was not just considered in Britain, Germany and Italy but also in Japan and the US. I think that would make for some involved and uncomfortable decision-making, and I'm all for that. There would need to be clear advantages/disadvantages to both courses (probably enhanced carrier operations at a higher financial cost?). One correlation is that Britain never developed the 'black shoe/brown shoe' culture and as far as I know did not have aviators running and driving the carriers. I yield to few in my admiration for the RN, but they'd have taken years to catch up to US and Japanese carrier ops if they were on their own.

 

[Wraith11B]

The thing about that is that loads of the efficiencies that were developed post-war actually came from the RN to the USN, which seems backwards to what it should be but that's how it worked.

Source: Innovations in Carrier Aviation, Naval War College. Free download, too. Great source.

 

[Axe99]

The thing about that is that loads of the efficiencies that were developed post-war actually came from the RN to the USN, which seems backwards to what it should be but that's how it worked.

Source: Innovations in Carrier Aviation, Naval War College. Free download, too. Great source.

Aye, that's the funny thing about the RN - while they didn't (BPF and Pedestal aside) operate much that looked like a CTF, they were actually at the forefront of many areas in carrier aviation. Back when we learned about naval doctrines, many were suggesting the RN should get its own dedicated doctrine tree, and I'm partial to the idea, although I want to get a good idea of how the base ones work already. I read somewhere that the UK definitely knew of the potential for deck parking, and used 'deck park' capacity numbers for its early armoured carriers to disguise how few aircraft they carried, because they thought it was the way forward and wanted to hang onto the strategic initiative (noting this is an area where the UK wasn't necessarily leading the innovations, although the performance of the BPF carriers in the face of kamikaze attacks suggests that had the naval war been less one-sided, it may not have been such a bad idea).

That would be a very interesting doctrinal choice and could be spread to the other carrier-using nations; unifying an air force was not just considered in Britain, Germany and Italy but also in Japan and the US. I think that would make for some involved and uncomfortable decision-making, and I'm all for that. There would need to be clear advantages/disadvantages to both courses (probably enhanced carrier operations at a higher financial cost?). One correlation is that Britain never developed the 'black shoe/brown shoe' culture and as far as I know did not have aviators running and driving the carriers. I yield to few in my admiration for the RN, but they'd have taken years to catch up to US and Japanese carrier ops if they were on their own.

Nice thinking Director You're dead right in that there's no reason to limit it to the UK. If the Japanese went for their anti-Soviet path, for example, a unified air force might be quite handy. On the other hand, a US that went with it's unified air force might find it not as well placed for the Pacific war, but more ready to take on strategic bombing (note, I'm just riffing on the idea here, no forethought has gone into this at all). I'm planning to start with units and techs on the modding side of things, but I wonder how hard it would be to add in a NF column for aviation focus for all nations (although the back of my mind is telling me there's already something like that for one of the majors)......

 

[Daelyn75]

Aye, that's the funny thing about the RN - while they didn't (BPF and Pedestal aside) operate much that looked like a CTF, they were actually at the forefront of many areas in carrier aviation. Back when we learned about naval doctrines, many were suggesting the RN should get its own dedicated doctrine tree, and I'm partial to the idea, although I want to get a good idea of how the base ones work already. I read somewhere that the UK definitely knew of the potential for deck parking, and used 'deck park' capacity numbers for its early armoured carriers to disguise how few aircraft they carried, because they thought it was the way forward and wanted to hang onto the strategic initiative (noting this is an area where the UK wasn't necessarily leading the innovations, although the performance of the BPF carriers in the face of kamikaze attacks suggests that had the naval war been less one-sided, it may not have been such a bad idea).



Nice thinking Director You're dead right in that there's no reason to limit it to the UK. If the Japanese went for their anti-Soviet path, for example, a unified air force might be quite handy. On the other hand, a US that went with it's unified air force might find it not as well placed for the Pacific war, but more ready to take on strategic bombing (note, I'm just riffing on the idea here, no forethought has gone into this at all). I'm planning to start with units and techs on the modding side of things, but I wonder how hard it would be to add in a NF column for aviation focus for all nations (although the back of my mind is telling me there's already something like that for one of the majors)......

Doesn't Britain have a carrier focus? It would be great to be a focus, but the problem would be that the US needs to start the game with deck parking already something they practice. Then we come back to my first post where the US gets it as something that they start with. I'd rather it be a NF simply because it's something easily given to all nations if they would like. The issue is that I believe all NF are empty at the start of the game, correct? Also, the trade off should be efficiency - how you were calling it coordinated strikes, vrs more airplanes per carrier. If there was anything where any nation starts with something unique somehow, then possibly it could be used that way. They also have decisions on the NF tree. You get one or the other. Possibly that could work, but then the issue is that once already completed, the NF cannot be undone right? Because Japan later changed their practices with deck parking. So, yeah I am unsure how to do this.

 

[Director]

The thing about that is that loads of the efficiencies that were developed post-war actually came from the RN to the USN, which seems backwards to what it should be but that's how it worked.

No doubt in my mind that a carrier focus would have been easy for the RN to develop up until the air arm was taken away, just wanted to point out that there were unintentional and unforeseen consequences.

I do think there is a reasonable rationale for the US to have gone the same way - get those smelly gasoline things out of the way of the battleships (LOL).

 

[Wraith11B]

It came close, but then Congress amended Title 10 (in 1926) to say that the COs for aircraft carriers were required to be aviators, or have an aviator XO (at first... those requirements are generally gone now because there are enough aviators in high ranking positions to do so).

 

[Axe99]

Doesn't Britain have a carrier focus? It would be great to be a focus, but the problem would be that the US needs to start the game with deck parking already something they practice. Then we come back to my first post where the US gets it as something that they start with. I'd rather it be a NF simply because it's something easily given to all nations if they would like. The issue is that I believe all NF are empty at the start of the game, correct? Also, the trade off should be efficiency - how you were calling it coordinated strikes, vrs more airplanes per carrier. If there was anything where any nation starts with something unique somehow, then possibly it could be used that way. They also have decisions on the NF tree. You get one or the other. Possibly that could work, but then the issue is that once already completed, the NF cannot be undone right? Because Japan later changed their practices with deck parking. So, yeah I am unsure how to do this.

I'm pretty sure Britain has the 'Fleet in Being' for its naval doctrine, so is a bit more limited in what in how much it can build up its carrier capability (although I don't think we've seen the whole Fleet in Being tree, and it's likely still subject to balancing in any event). Agree that the US should get deck parking at the start of the game. I'm still erring on a 'hard choice' in a doctrine tree, because I think the doctrines (unlike the national focusses) can be reversed - so a US or Japanese player could choose to to go back on the choice, but both might start with either the 'deck parking' or 'coordinated launch' already chosen, so there'd be a cost involved, and presumably the AI wouldn't change doctrines in any event.

 

[Axe99]

@Daelyn75 - for interest (as figures relating to this came up throughout the thread ), in the course of my ships research, I've just gone through the Lexington class CVs, and from Navypedia (which has been a pretty solid source - most reliable of the three I'm using - http://www.navypedia.org/ships/usa/us_cv_lexington.htm) their aircraft capacities (which I'd expect is just 'total operational aircraft, deck park or hangar) at various dates were:

- at commissioning, both had a capacity of 63 aircraft
- in 1936, the air group was around 77 aircraft
- in May 1942, the Lexington had an air group of 70 aircraft
- In August 1942, the Saratoga had an air group of 92 aircraft
- In September 1944, after it's refit and hangar extension, Saratoga had an air group of 69 aircraft

My guess would be the 63 at the start doesn't include a deck park, but the 77 in 1936 (which would have been larger aircraft) did. I'm not sure what happens in August 1942 to get Saratoga 92, but suspect the drop to 69 in 1944 (after the hangar was lengthened by nearly thirty feet) was due to larger aircraft again. This is an outright guess on my part though - things like aircraft availability and a bunch of other things could also have had an impaction their air wings.

 

[Orlunu]

My guess would be the 63 at the start doesn't include a deck park, but the 77 in 1936 (which would have been larger aircraft) did. I'm not sure what happens in August 1942 to get Saratoga 92, but suspect the drop to 69 in 1944 (after the hangar was lengthened by nearly thirty feet) was due to larger aircraft again. This is an outright guess on my part though - things like aircraft availability and a bunch of other things could also have had an impaction their air wings.

They had their first major modernisation in early '42, didn't they? They lost some fairly big gun batteries, maybe that freed up some deck space for more planes to be stuck on?
'44 looks like they stopped deck-parking for a while, though. The F6F wasn't that much bigger than the F4F. Not by a long shot.

 

[Axe99]

They had their first major modernisation in early '42, didn't they? They lost some fairly big gun batteries, maybe that freed up some deck space for more planes to be stuck on?
'44 looks like they stopped deck-parking for a while, though. The F6F wasn't that much bigger than the F4F. Not by a long shot.

From what I can see, the '42 modernisation involved fromving the 8" twin batteries, but the Saratoga got four twin 5" batteries and 8 single 5" mounts, so I'm not sure how much extra room it would have made up, but could be a reason.

I just looked up the F4F's, and the F4F-4 was the first with folding wings, and didn't enter service until 1941 (with many carriers not changing over until well into 1942) - that could well explain the big jump between the 70 on the Lexington in May and the 92 on Saratoga in August (most of the increase in the air wing was in the number of F4Fs carried) (according to Navypedia, I wasn't there ).

Given the F6F wasn't that much bigger, and could also fold its wings, moving away from deck parking in '44 is probably the best explanation - maybe an anti-kamikaze thing? Doubt* there'd have been shortages of F6F's, they made a stack of 'em.

*But could be wrong.

 

[Wraith11B]

It might have been that they didn't need to cram as many airframes aboard each hull because of having more hulls. Right around that time, they were specifying each flattop by airframe type: hence why the aircraft carried by the Taffys were carrying CAS-oriented birds and HE explosives and Big E was carrying night fighters, etc. With more flattops, they don't need the capacity over just straight up having less chance of getting blown up from those Kamikazes.

 

[BattleMoose]

All assets in this game are the same between countries, besides modifications which are also open to all. To fanboy for your specific country just opens a hornets nest of all countries wanting specific attention that would just spiral out of control.

1. Brits want better armor on their CVs, because unlike the wooden decks of USA CVs, their decks were made of steel.
2. Start of the war, USA torpedoes did not work. Like, they literally had a failure rate of, irrc, betwee 50-80%.
3. Japanese want advantages for their highly disciplined banzai charges.
4. And more more more until infinity.