Well, in the game at the moment, it is not only that the controller of Gibraltar doesn´t close the strait, it gets even worse, the enemy can use your Gibraltar port! I just reported it in the bugs forum, you can have a look at the savegame.
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
The issue is a bug. As ITA, my carrierfleet was also able to pass gibraltar, though it was controlled by the British at the time...
Bouys, yes, although the water was quite deep and flows quite fast. Just knowing the rough size of the ship coming towards you, figuring out the angles, using instruments etc, would work well.
The Guadalcanal battle I was referring to was Navy only, no shore batteries - although the range was very close (one of the US destroyers machine gunned the bridge of a Japanese BB, killing many officers incl the captain I think).
I think torpedo boats would have been more effective if the UK/US torpedos were more reliable. Although hard to hit PT boats with the big guns, they would be quite vulnerable to a ships AA guns if they could aim that low. I guess also at short range the flight time of a DD shell, for example, would be quite short so you may get some proximity damage.
DD shells are tiny compared to shells fired from land. I can easily imagine it taking 30 shots. Land based has better aim too.
And I'm now doing some research on torpedoes but can't for the life of me figure out why they aren't more effective.
I know those DD shells are small, but if you look back at my post, I said a handful were BB. There were also some cruisers there as well
I think that the allies just didn't have a design as good as the Germans and Jap's for quite a few years! Ship-launched Jap ones had great success at ripping holes in the side of USN cruisers. And well we know how many Torps the German's fired from u-boats... 1 or 2 I think! ;-)
Hercules should of just left that land the way it was, then we wouldnt be having this problem
Your assumptions, while neat and tidy in the conclusions you draw from them, are remarkably incomplete.
Let's say Germany takes Gibraltar, and on their way out, the Brits destroy everything.
This so far fits right in line with what you posted, but it doesn't seem to take into account any German action to fortify Gibraltar, build their own emplacements, base air units there, or possibly even base ships there (maybe even Italian ships).
Is the strait easier controlled with a task force present? Yes.
Is it possible to control it with coastal batteries and aircraft? Yes.
I know those DD shells are small, but if you look back at my post, I said a handful were BB. There were also some cruisers there as well
I think that the allies just didn't have a design as good as the Germans and Jap's for quite a few years! Ship-launched Jap ones had great success at ripping holes in the side of USN cruisers. And well we know how many Torps the German's fired from u-boats... 1 or 2 I think! ;-)
No, I mean actualy land based torpedo frigate or corvette fleets. One would imagine they'd be terribly destructive against a fleet of say normany invasion sizes.
No, because no task force was present. If there was, it would have been attacked by aircraft continuously (as opposed to the handful of air raids that there actually were).
? Corvettes are not that much smaller than DD. DD had lots of torpedo tubes.
If you mean a torpedo launcher that is mounted on solid ground, then it may be more accurate. It would however, be of limited use unless you knew exactly where the landing was coming from, and even then it would be destroyed by aircraft or BB bombardment before ships came into range of the torps.
If you mean somewhere like Gibraltar, the 14km range is too long and PT boats can get much closer.
He means torpedo boats, think stuff like the American Elco PT Boat, British MTB and german E-Boats. (Actually, the english called them E-Boats, the Germans called them S-Boats (Schnellboot), I blame years of reading Commando comics as a kid.)
-edit-
Thought about it some more, and remembered some stuff. Originally it was thought that torpedo boats might be the answer to the Dreadnought style Battleships. It seemed to have had several admiralties worried about the vulnerabilities of their big bad kings of the sea. So a new class of ship was developed, they termed it the "Torpedo Boat Destroyer". These days we just call them destroyers.
Also they found that the Destroyers, as well as being a relatively small fast warship, could carry more torpedoes than the Torpedo boats (as well as having the light deck armaments capable of swatting the pesky torpedo boats) and were just generally a more useful vessel all round. So I'd say that goes a fair way to explaining why you never really saw fleets of coastal torpedo boats, they were used, but in a limited supporting role rather than the original battleship counter role they where originally intended for. (Which is true for many of the various ship classes of the era, whose role changed as the nature of the battlefield they fought on changed, including the Battleships themselves.)
(At least, that's my understanding of things, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.)
-edit-
Thought about it some more, and remembered some stuff. Originally it was thought that torpedo boats might be the answer to the Dreadnought style Battleships. It seemed to have had several admiralties worried about the vulnerabilities of their big bad kings of the sea. So a new class of ship was developed, they termed it the "Torpedo Boat Destroyer". These days we just call them destroyers.
Also they found that the Destroyers, as well as being a relatively small fast warship, could carry more torpedoes than the Torpedo boats (as well as having the light deck armaments capable of swatting the pesky torpedo boats) and were just generally a more useful vessel all round. So I'd say that goes a fair way to explaining why you never really saw fleets of coastal torpedo boats, they were used, but in a limited supporting role rather than the original battleship counter role they where originally intended for. (Which is true for many of the various ship classes of the era, whose role changed as the nature of the battlefield they fought on changed, including the Battleships themselves.)
(At least, that's my understanding of things, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.)
Last edited:
If you have watched Das Boot you know that:
all Uboat in med is not built there but sneak into med through Gibraltar.
Half of the boats attempting to pass were destroyed.
None of the boats could make it out of med.
Although Gibraltar has no lock, you can still lay mines over the strait and leave a small pass, which has highest concerntration of land-based field artillery, submarine aiming all torpedo tubes at the hole, or even focks of divers. I think all naval commanders at the time will know passing through a strait controlled by foreign power is so dangerous.
all Uboat in med is not built there but sneak into med through Gibraltar.
Half of the boats attempting to pass were destroyed.
None of the boats could make it out of med.
Although Gibraltar has no lock, you can still lay mines over the strait and leave a small pass, which has highest concerntration of land-based field artillery, submarine aiming all torpedo tubes at the hole, or even focks of divers. I think all naval commanders at the time will know passing through a strait controlled by foreign power is so dangerous.
Actually I am having a hard time seeing the Italians or Spanish or Germans stopping the RN if it really wanted to sail through the straits. Yes you can put coastal artillery there, but the ships shoot back, don't they? And when the battleships show up they would bring a lot more guns to the fight than any fortress could.
The guns aren't there for the BBs as much as they are for the minesweepers. An 8" shell can do nasty things to a BB's exposed parts (even 5" shells can as Samar proved), but it won't harm the armored parts at all. Now, 600+ pounds of explosives touching the keel will harm a BB. That's a G7 torpedo warhead, and the Germans had thousands of those. Mines typically had twice that much explosive, with later types having over a ton of TNT equivalent. That will stop a BB if it detonates close or underneath.
The minefield prevents the BBs from giving sweepers close escort. The guns make life hell for the sweepers. The torpedoes give the BB captains a few more things to worry about and keep them moving, which makes gunnery that much harder. Torpedoes can make 14 km, but it's better to just mine the African side more heavily and force the ships to come closer. Easily possible to make that strait a nightmare to pass. Add a few squads of Bf-109s and Sea Stukas and you've got yourself a tenacious little rock.
The thing is, any defensive arrangement can be breached with enough time, intel and firepower (and the British certainly had firepower). It's possible to make this impractical though, and that's more or less what a sealed straight represents.
German subs never tried to go from the med to the ocean.
All italian subs that tried succeded, despite the current.
BTW there is no way a surface force could break through a defended Gibraltar strait. Mines, land artillery, land based pre-aimed torpedoes, fast patrol crafts would have made it simply too expensive without a preliminary huge commando action against land fortification.
There is a old rule about coastal artillery: one coastal gun is worth one ship.
Whether or not the RN could have forced a passage past an Axis Gibraltar is only one part of the issue.
The most important one is at what cost.
Simple fact is that the cost of defending Gibraltar effectively is massively less than the cost of forcing a naval passage.
Plonk some artillery down, some mines, some squadrons of aircraft, a division or two - the in the scale of the war that's a tiny investment and is easily replaced if it's lost.
Just one battleship (or carrier if you'd be insane enough to risk one) would be worth the price, and be an unaffordable loss compared to the losses of the defenders.
Gibraltar may in fact not have had much by way of artillery, that's because it didn't need more, because the cost of forcing the straight was already too high for the Axis to sustain.
The most important one is at what cost.
Simple fact is that the cost of defending Gibraltar effectively is massively less than the cost of forcing a naval passage.
Plonk some artillery down, some mines, some squadrons of aircraft, a division or two - the in the scale of the war that's a tiny investment and is easily replaced if it's lost.
Just one battleship (or carrier if you'd be insane enough to risk one) would be worth the price, and be an unaffordable loss compared to the losses of the defenders.
Gibraltar may in fact not have had much by way of artillery, that's because it didn't need more, because the cost of forcing the straight was already too high for the Axis to sustain.
I agree with all the arguments that say that the controller of Gibraltar should control access to the Med.
The problem is that a battleship or cruiser or even an old war destroyer is far far more expensive than the land or air equivalent. The land/air adversary waiting at Gibraltar is far cheaper but also far more effective. UK wouldn't spare ships to bust open Gibraltar (and for what? for AFRICA?! MALTA?!?!)
The cost of the navy was much better risked in other locations: 1) defending the home coast, 2) deterring any Italian navy outside the Med, or even 3) defending Pacific/Indian Ocean threats. The Allies could easily have won the war without Gibraltar or the Mediterranean.
Speculation aside, the original point remains that the controller of Gibraltar should be able to restrict access through the channel.
edit: is it broken for all straits? certainly the Suez and Panama canals would be closed to only their owners....
The problem is that a battleship or cruiser or even an old war destroyer is far far more expensive than the land or air equivalent. The land/air adversary waiting at Gibraltar is far cheaper but also far more effective. UK wouldn't spare ships to bust open Gibraltar (and for what? for AFRICA?! MALTA?!?!)
The cost of the navy was much better risked in other locations: 1) defending the home coast, 2) deterring any Italian navy outside the Med, or even 3) defending Pacific/Indian Ocean threats. The Allies could easily have won the war without Gibraltar or the Mediterranean.
Speculation aside, the original point remains that the controller of Gibraltar should be able to restrict access through the channel.
Code:
Land batteries, air power > naval power;
cost_land/air units << cost_navies;
=> no reason to risk the losses.edit: is it broken for all straits? certainly the Suez and Panama canals would be closed to only their owners....
Nobody here seems to be worried about convoys passing through Gibraltar? IMO that would be the main reason for the Axis taking control of Gibraltar. If you are able to blockade UK convoys through the Mediterranean, that would cause huge problems to the british economy. Combine that with some convoy raiding subs in the Atlantic and you're done: the brits lose access to their huge overseas empire.
So I am not particularly worried if there is a bug that allows one or two warships to pass through Gibraltar. I am worried about a bug that allows convoy passing, because that alone defies the strategic value of taking Gibraltar.
So I am not particularly worried if there is a bug that allows one or two warships to pass through Gibraltar. I am worried about a bug that allows convoy passing, because that alone defies the strategic value of taking Gibraltar.
Leaving the homeland undefended. And only for the sake of... fun ? Smartest plan ever, really.
isn't it the same bug ?