Too low damage to sink a convoy even when doing critical hit with 20 planes ( which is all that will join on a strike vs a convoy ).
NAV shouldn't be effective against fleets at sea
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Too low damage to sink a convoy even when doing critical hit with 20 planes ( which is all that will join on a strike vs a convoy ).
Not to mention regular B25s doing mast height bombing. Very accurate and effective in right situations.
I don't think the sinkings happen without the other support planes in the American case as the Americans had plenty of air support. I don't know of any documented cases in which torpedo bombers sunk capital ships in open sea that had air support.
Most of the torpedo hits in the Prince of Wales/Repulse engagement happened after the first hit, when the ships were disabled and unable to maneuver effectively. Also, as I said clearly in my original post, ships without air cover should be highly susceptible to torpedo bombers, which was the case for the Prince of Wales and Repulse. Even still, Repulse avoided 19 of 21 torpedoes while functional, while Prince of Wales dodged 7 of 8 - a 10.3% hit rate on a (relatively) unprotected target.
This is an incomplete picture. Most of those torpedo hits are after the initial one when the ships lose maneuvering capability, so you're mixing statistics. I imagine dive bombers had a similar hit rate for moving or non-moving targets, but with torpedo bombers the primary variable is the maneuverability of the target - and, correspondingly, the ability of the torpedo bomber to close range with the target to minimize this advantage. Again, this means that when the enemy has air support, torpedo bombers should only be effective during a combined arms assault - in which there could be some probability of a mortal kill that would give a benefit over a solo dive bomber assault.
In terms of game mechanics, as I said in my original post I think this means that fleets without air support should fare poorly in fending off torpedo bombers - perhaps extremely poorly, based on PoW & co. - and this should incentivize including escort carriers with fighters with every major fleet (which is more or less historical after the opening years of the war). However, people didn't know about this pre-war, so I guess that the widespread use of escort carriers should idelally be tied into some semblance of naval experience.
Weren't these land-based? Were they used against military targets with more speed? I don't think there's too much of an issue with keeping such models land-based and tweaking their naval attack. The primary reason I started this thread was for carrier fleet composition and the effectiveness of NAV in general. Also, based on the model names in the game, the identification NAV = torpedo bomber and CAS = dive bomber seems to be more or less accurate.
You're not breaking it up. Although I beat you to it.
But I think you forgot something:
All true, but I'd add B-29s mining coastal waters and convoy routes. Japanese authorities were really worried about that one at some points. As in a "we might have a famine and then a communist revolution would topple our government even if we aren't invaded" kind of worry.
I missed this distinction in your OP. Usually when I think of Nav I think of the land based ones. I think of the carrier ones if I hear torpedo bombers. You are right that’s not how the models and performance in game are distinguished, but in real life long range 2-4 engined land based bombers (with and without torpedoes) were used MUCH more often than specialized torpedo launching planes. Planes specialized in torpedoes only were more or less only for carrier service where the low maximum launch loads on early carrier borne aircraft prevented larger multirole attack aircraft from being employed.
It was the american dive bombers that put the japanese carriers out of action. Not the torpedo bombers.
Bombs penetrating the flight decks and causing catastrophic fires on the hangar decks below, sealed the fate of the ships. Even if it did not sink them, they were little more than burning hulks.
Bombs penetrating the flight decks and causing catastrophic fires on the hangar decks below, sealed the fate of the ships. Even if it did not sink them, they were little more than burning hulks.
10.3% is not a bad hit rate either. And they were not unprotected, The Prince of Wales was brand new and had state of the art AA + AA direction ( which is one reason they didn't even feel the need to have fighter cover ), and AA alone manage to shoot down 4 bombers + damage several dozens more.
10% hit rate is also fairly comparable to what US dive bombers scored against moving & evading targets at sea. It was common for 10 dive bombers to go in for an attack and not score a single hit, especially the first waves ( happened at Coral Sea for example ).
One well documented case of an attack with only torpedo bombers that sunk a ship at sea would be the second Japanese counter attack at the Yorktown at Midway. Despite heavy fighter defense and furious evasive actions the 10 Torpedo bombers escorted by 6 Zeroes managed to land 2 torpedoes which crippled the Yorktown and resulted in her sinking ( finished off by submarine 2 days later ).
Lexington would probably also count since the dive bombers came in after the torpedoes had already hit and contributed nothing to the sinking except maybe drawing off fighters ( which more torpedo bombers or fighters could have done equally effectively )
There are several other examples.
No that's not the case at all.
Dive bombers also had much much better hit rates against stationary targets but struggled to hit moving and evading targets equally much that torpedo bombers did. The main issue was that an evading target would have plenty of time to turn 90 degrees after the bombers started their dive, so that they came in from the sides rather then aft-stern direction. This made the target they needed to hit 30 meters wide instead of 250 meters long, and moving to the side so that pitch could not been used to compensate aim. At least 8 times as hard to hit if not more!
Dive bombers normally dove from 12000 feet down to 2000 feet, at around 300 mph and in 70 degrees angle taking them about 30 seconds + a few more seconds from bomb release to impact. All this was after lining up their dive which basically meant that the ship had a bit over 30 seconds of evasive action from the push over point of the dive bombers. This is for the first bomber as well, they often flew in single file one at a time with some seconds separation, so for the last bomber in the line it could be as much as 60 seconds time.
This is why both torpedo and dive bombers often attacked from several directions at once ( so called anvil attacks ), so that no matter which direction the ship turned, some of them would have a good solid run.
I totally agree, but it's not limited to just torpedo bombers.
Any fleet without air support should fare poorly in fending of both torpedo and dive bombers.
The same way around both dive bombers and torpedo bombers would struggle against targets that were well protected by fighters, especially if they had good radar and fighter direction doctrines.
If you want to isolate out the differences between torpedo and dive bombers then torpedo bombers were a bit more vulnerable to AA, and a bit better against larger heavily armored targets ( like newer battleships ) since dive bombers would struggle to penetrate their deck armor. Dive bombers probably had an edge against aircraft Carriers since often a single solid bomb hit was enough to put their flight deck out of commission, and I think dive bombers also would be superior in suppressing AA ( so it made sense to send them in first ).
There are however plenty of examples of both Battleships and Carriers being destroyed by a single torpedo or a single bomb hit, mainly down to poor damage control. I ofcourse also agree with your point that a combined assault of both types is better then just one of them.
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So, do we have some agreement on changes that we'd like to see in the future, that we could bring to the attention of Podcat and the other Paradox devs ?
My changes would be:
A: Carrier air wing composition being flexible for AI countries, can be altered by event or technology.
B: Doctrines and other technologies affecting how useful CV-CAS and CV-NAV type aircraft are, against different targets.
C: Carrier aircraft having some ability to attack land facilities.
My thought on point A, would be that for the Fleet-in-Being naval doctrine, that views carriers as an addition to the battle line, then the 50/50 Fighter/Navbomber composition would fit well there. The Trade Interdiction naval doctrine, would favour 50/50 Fighter/CAS composition, and the Base Strike naval doctrine would favour a mixture of Fighter/NAV/CAS on the air wings.
One of my thoughts on point B would be that CV-CAS best represents the dive-bombers, and CV-NAV the torpedo-bombers. NAV normally better against capital ships, CAS better against convoys and screen ships.
Another thought being that bombs are a lot cheaper and simpler than torpedoes, for the cost of 1 torpedo, you could maybe get 3 bombs or so. Which is why for the Trade Interdiction naval doctrine, you'd have Fighter/CAS air groups on the carriers - lots of cheap bombs, for primarily attacking thinly armoured merchant ships.
My thought on point C is that being able to attack buildings on land is something carrier aircraft lack - the player should probably have the chance to actually conduct the ATTACK ON PEARL HARBOR, and damage the island's facilities such that the US Navy can't use it as a base to reach most of the Pacific.
And carrier raids on land airbases. That's something lacking at the moment.
My changes would be:
A: Carrier air wing composition being flexible for AI countries, can be altered by event or technology.
B: Doctrines and other technologies affecting how useful CV-CAS and CV-NAV type aircraft are, against different targets.
C: Carrier aircraft having some ability to attack land facilities.
My thought on point A, would be that for the Fleet-in-Being naval doctrine, that views carriers as an addition to the battle line, then the 50/50 Fighter/Navbomber composition would fit well there. The Trade Interdiction naval doctrine, would favour 50/50 Fighter/CAS composition, and the Base Strike naval doctrine would favour a mixture of Fighter/NAV/CAS on the air wings.
One of my thoughts on point B would be that CV-CAS best represents the dive-bombers, and CV-NAV the torpedo-bombers. NAV normally better against capital ships, CAS better against convoys and screen ships.
Another thought being that bombs are a lot cheaper and simpler than torpedoes, for the cost of 1 torpedo, you could maybe get 3 bombs or so. Which is why for the Trade Interdiction naval doctrine, you'd have Fighter/CAS air groups on the carriers - lots of cheap bombs, for primarily attacking thinly armoured merchant ships.
My thought on point C is that being able to attack buildings on land is something carrier aircraft lack - the player should probably have the chance to actually conduct the ATTACK ON PEARL HARBOR, and damage the island's facilities such that the US Navy can't use it as a base to reach most of the Pacific.
And carrier raids on land airbases. That's something lacking at the moment.
If we are talking about Midway, then it's important to note that fuel and ordnance was positioned on those ships to rearm and refuel planes. They got hit at the absolute worst time.
This doesn't diminish the value of the dive bombers, but let's not forget that the damage they did was helped along considerably by circumstances beyond the control of those planes.
Well, AA was quickly found to be insufficient in WW2.
The Yorktown had previously been damaged in a dive bombing attack and lost speed.
The Lexington required a sequence of events to be successful: defending American fighters were flying too low and missed the torpedo bombers flying over them, and unlike the Yorktown the Lexington had a much larger turning radius and was less maneuverable. Still, I can give you this one.
In general I think this means that torpedoes should be much more effective against damaged ships or ships with low speed.
Do you have some examples of ships executing the 90-degree turn? A dive bombing run can be executed in about 40 seconds and ships are massive objects. I'm surprised capital ships could execute such a maneuver. Aside from that, almost all doctrine material I've read on this has stated that dive bombers are more accurate.
I agree that your point that combining them should be more effective - this is another case in the game where a combined arms bonus would be appropriate.
It could be a combined assault mechanic or just make ship speed a lot more important in torpedo bombing attack calculations. This would make torpedo bombers effective against older ships. For newer ships, the mechanic would first do damage to the ships with dive bombers, which would decrease their speed and allow torpedo bombers to deliver the killing stroke. Torpedo effectiveness would grow exponentially with speed decrease. Delivery of the killing stroke would be very hard for dive bombers unless they get some sort of lucky critical strike. How does that sound?
There's a little bit of this captured right now with the evasion mechanic - but perhaps it could be adjusted. Do ships lose evasion when they're damaged? Really, evasion for a gun and evasion for a torpedo should be different statistics - I think using speed for defense would be a better representation of torpedo miss rates for capital vs. screen ships. And speed should decrease with damage.
On this note, I wish I could edit the title to be something like "NAV shouldn't be as effective..."
Well no navies used 50/50 of anything, it really should be all 3. Maybe something like 50/50 was used by British escort carriers to patrol for submarines - but I'm not sure and haven't looked into it. What do you think of my proposal in the previous paragraph?
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The Yorktown was making 20 knots speed though while maneuvering when the torpedo bombers was attacking her. If you read more into it the repairing of the dive bomber damage was a remarkable feat of damage control, such that the Japanese though it was a totally different carrier than the one they hit just 1 hour prior with dive bombers. So I don't think there would have been alot of differences compared to if they actually had hit a undamaged carrier.
Keep in mind that when maneuvering evasively capital ships would lose 5-10 knots of speed so even a Carrier with a theoretical top speed of 30 knots could be slowed down to 20-25 knots when in a sharp turn.
This is the 3 Japanese Carriers burning at Midway minutes after having been hit by the dive bomber attack, we can still see flak bursts and burning planes. One of the Carriers was hit only by a single bomb, but that still was enough to cause a disaster due to bad damage control:
Of a total of 111 Dive bombers sent towards the Japanese during the morning ( not including the 10 launched to scout ), a total of 8 hits by dive bombers were scored ( 7.2% ).
This is the shokaku under dive bomber attack at Coral Sea ( with water geyser of bomb miss visible behind it ):
Most capital ships would probably need closer to 60 seconds to turn 90 degrees in a full circle at max engine power, although this is still fast enough to significantly throw off the aim by changing direction 45 degrees or more.
Against faster ships like destroyers it's probably true that dive bombers were more accurate since destroyers would have an easier time dodging torpedoes. You are correct in that one of the issues with the air dropped torpedoes being their slow speed. The Japanese type 91 made 42 knots speed compared to the US Mk 13 that made just 33 knots. Although after reading about all the issues divebombers had with hitting capital ships I am not so sure they had a huge advantage in that field compared to at least the Japanese elite torpedo bombers in 1942.
I think AA screen was a more important factor in torpedo bomber accuracy then speed of the target though, although not saying speed shouldn't have any impact at all. Especially for American slow torpedoes it would be a challenge to hit faster ships.
Yes this is something I can agree with. If we talk about game balance though it does kind of make sense to have them be best against ships since dive bombers are best against land divisions. So if Dive bombers could become equally good against ships as well, why should anyone ever build naval bombers?
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At the top of the page, if you press "thread tools", you can change the title.
The main point is having the composition variable by event or technology for AI countries, the actual compositions don't particularly matter as such.
the carrier composition is set in the air units definition file, and can't be changed for AI countries once the game is loaded. normal is 1/1 fighter/nav. if it is changed, to 2/2/1 fighter/nav/cas, then if a country doesn't have cas, but builds carriers, it will still reserve space on the carriers. Which makes it difficult to apply variations between different countries, a carrier air group from France will be the same as one from Japan.
Make ship AA more disruptive against CV-NAV, make CAS able to suppress ship AA, and there's the combined arms bonus.
Make naval attack by aircraft work best against lightly armoured ships - convoys & screens. Give NAV bombers a torpedo_attack stat, making them work best against heavily armoured ships. There's an incentive to build naval bombers ?
Maybe there should be some combined arms bonus for using both dive and torpedo bombers in a naval engagement.
At least, the defending fighter CAP should have a harder time if both types show up at the same time.
At least, the defending fighter CAP should have a harder time if both types show up at the same time.
Yeah I like that approach, I think it could work well for the game.
Or you could give planes a "piercing" stat just like ships have, and give dive bombers smaller amounts so that they start struggling against anything with more armor then a heavy cruiser.
That way the Carrier armor stat also makes much more sense since increasing it with designers or variants could be a deciding factor in reducing damage from dive bombers.
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This is the shokaku under dive bomber attack at Coral Sea ( with water geyser of bomb miss visible behind it ):
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Better pictures even than the ones I was going to post. Modern naval ships (and the US and Japanese Carriers of WWII definitely qualify and in fact are the archetype for them) have enormous power to weight ratios and usually 3-5 propellers and very large steering rudders, the combination of which gives them tremendous maneuverability. Under emergency conditions (and avoiding bombers definitely qualifies) they are capable of maneuvers more akin to what you might expect from a speedboat than a 30 - 50,000 ton ship. The fact that Lexington was making 20 knots after heavy damage was incredibly impressive, but not anywhere near it's potential without battle damage. The large modern US and Japanese carriers would routinely hit 33-35 knots (66-70 km/hr) while in the process of evading attack or launching planes, and a few times closed in on 40 knots for brief periods under ideal conditions. These are incredible speeds even by modern standards, and in fact most modern naval ships today can't go that fast even in an emergency.
I don't know if this was the case for WWII carriers, but modern US nuclear carriers when they are going to full battle stations and undergo radical maneuvers put most nonessential personnel in their bunks to prevent them from being tossed around by unexpected G forces (also there is a paging system to get them to any place they are needed in an emergency if they start in their bunks)
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No I think you are misinformed here. I am pretty sure that no Carrier in WW2 could make 35 knots while evading attacks ( maneuvering ). Since alot of the energy is lost when turning radically, evading attacks slows down any ship quite alot.
The Yorktown had a maximum speed of 32 knots and the Lexington had a maximum speed of 33 knots ( both speeds when going straight ahead under ideal conditions ).
Yes - once they start to turn, they loose considerable speed. The 32 and 33 were designed speeds over a 'long run' measured course going first one way, then the opposite , so that the effects of wind and sea state tend to average out. However in fact the ships did better than this in reality:
The ships exceeded their designed total power and speed when actually tested.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexington-class_aircraft_carrier#Propulsion
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An interesting summary, but important for some things it leaves unanswered.
The first major warship ever to be sunk by aircraft was the Konigsberg, sunk by Skuas out of Hatston, while she was alongside at Bergen in 1940. However, the RN did not develop or purchase or LL any dive bombers after the Skua and relied entirely on TSR types throughout the war for offensive missions. The Pacific is not the only metric for carrier warfare, as the use of carriers was very different in more confined seas such as the Mediterranean or the Norwegian.
At Mers el Kebir the Swordfish attack crippled Dunkerque (a pre-Taranto port strike) and you are also overlooking Cape Matapan, where the immobilising of the Pola brought about the destruction of three German cruisers. You mention Bismarck yourself, and the cases of both Matapan and Bismarck are both set piece RN carrier doctrine: slow down the enemy in order to bring them within the range of the big guns of the fleet. In other words it is a very narrow view to simply focus on ships sunk. If you do that then the number of KM and RM warships actually sunk at sea by airpower to zero!
You omit the use of TSR variants in ASW. Indeed, the first kill for a Swordfish was U-64 in Norway, although this was via bombs from the Warspite's Swordfish floatplane. The slower speeds and greater payloads of TSR types made them ideal, particularly when fitted with radar, and level bombers operating from land were a major factor in winning the Battle of the Atlantic, either attacking U-Boats or guiding escorts to a position of a U-boat. We do not know for sure how many were sunk by airpower alone, how many were shared and how many were actually sunk by mines but attributed to aircraft or escorts. Estimates in the range of 150 sinkings that involved airpower would not be too wide of the mark, and that is just German submarines sunk by the British.
In terms of anti-shipping strikes, a few Swordfish from Malta sank on average 50,000 tons of Italian ships a month over a 9 month period.
Alex makes a good point about ordnance, and I would like to add training to that. Germany lacked a functioning aerial torpedo of her own until 1942, and had to buy from the Italians. Germany lacked an AP or SAP bomb until 1941, and the Italians never developed one. Flying over land is far easier than at sea, as you have landmarks, and it is not too hard to find a port or strike close to shore. But flying at sea is a much greater navigational challenge, particularly pre-GPS and trying to find a moving target. Then you have to identify it correctly (a notoriously challenging problem) and then conduct your attack. The Germans and Italians had simply not trained for this.
I think airpower in general is overpowered against naval targets, particularly early in the war and particularly against armoured targets. But I am not sure nerfing the poor old TSR at the expense of an SBD is the way to tackle this.
Submarines were far more lethal outside of the Pacific against capital ships and carriers, though how many of either I have seen sunk by an undersea torpedo is nil.
K
Bugger only knows how many plates would spring when making violent turns at 35 knots! No need for the enemy to hit you, you'd spring so many leaks you would probably sink yourself!
K
Sea trials which took place in the flat waters of the Caribbean when everything was brand spanking new and without a full load of aircraft, munitions or AV fuel is not what you are likely to find in 1942...By that token Hood should make 32 knots in 1939.
K