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Woodchip posted:Those boats are the Taffy 2 of the battle. Taffy 3. 
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Jan 4, 2018 19:58
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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The Marines were a distraction that successfully baited the Japanese into sending their carrier fleets. Extraction was never part of the plan.
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Jan 4, 2018 20:11
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3 DONG HORSE posted:The Marines were a distraction that successfully baited the Japanese into sending their carrier fleets. Extraction was never part of the plan. Truly the Marine Corps' finest hour 
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Jan 4, 2018 20:48
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RZApublican posted:Truly the Marine Corps' finest hour yeah and in the Greyverse they're still gonna want fuckin Harriers and to make every plane ever VTOL. REMEMBER JALUIT they'll yell at every appropriations committee, and if only they'd had air support they would have won.
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Jan 4, 2018 21:57
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BUG JUG posted:yeah and in the Greyverse they're still gonna want fuckin Harriers and to make every plane ever VTOL. REMEMBER JALUIT they'll yell at every appropriations committee, and if only they'd had air support they would have won. If they exist as independent force after this disaster... It would still be a disaster for the Marines, even if the Navy spin their loss as a win... somehow...
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Jan 4, 2018 22:00
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Dammit!
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Jan 4, 2018 22:09
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What day did the Kido Butai get ganked I think I missed it while skipping pages.
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Jan 4, 2018 22:16
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Jack2142 posted:What day did the Kido Butai get ganked I think I missed it while skipping pages. Kiddo, not Kido
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Jan 4, 2018 22:20
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   This is a big wave of bombers....   Flak em up boys!  It looks like these guys are heading home.   We hit that convoy again.  They send Liberators after our ships – we fill them full of lead and they crash through the extra weight.   A rare day where our air kills outstrip our losses!  Stop announcing our losses!  She's just about usable.
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Jan 5, 2018 05:39
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I've always wondered where the name 'flak' for AA came from.
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Jan 5, 2018 05:54
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Night10194 posted:I've always wondered where the name 'flak' for AA came from. It's German. FliegerabwehrKanone which translates as "aircraft defence cannon"
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Jan 5, 2018 05:56
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Night10194 posted:I've always wondered where the name 'flak' for AA came from. Fliegerabwehrkanone E:f,b E2: ^^should be avaitor, not aircraft
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Jan 5, 2018 05:58
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As nasty as the air war over Europe was, it would have been 10x worse for the allies had the Nazis had proximity fuses on their flak like the Americans had in the pacific.
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Jan 5, 2018 06:40
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Ron Jeremy posted:As nasty as the air war over Europe was, it would have been 10x worse for the allies had the Nazis had proximity fuses on their flak like the Americans had in the pacific. Losses were bad enough as it was, prox fuses would have ended strategic bombing entirely.
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Jan 5, 2018 07:17
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mllaneza posted:Losses were bad enough as it was, prox fuses would have ended strategic bombing entirely. Did late war germany have the industrial capacity to manufacture proximity fuses? Edit: There's a whole lot of precision manufacturing to build something like this. 
Bip Roberts fucked around with this message at 08:34 on Jan 5, 2018 |
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Jan 5, 2018 08:29
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The "war affecting industrial capacity" thing was a new phenomenon, it's easy to forget. But for all WWI turned thousands of hectacres into mudded wasteland bog and mire, Germany still did not simplify its small arms towards 1918 on a large scale, and even France (who pulled the trigger too early on small arms modernisation, if you'll pardon the pun) only made small compromises
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Jan 5, 2018 08:33
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I guess it's also worth noting that the allies also developed RF countermeasures that would prematurely detonate proximity fuses so their value might have been mitigated in a war where both sides robustly understood their mechanism.
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Jan 5, 2018 08:49
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mercenarynuker posted:Eh, Singapore is probably a mixed bag. I can't imagine that the public would react favorably to "And we would have captured it too, if not for those two plucky little patrol boats!" Well, they sank two cruisers too.
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Jan 5, 2018 11:02
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simplefish posted:The "war affecting industrial capacity" thing was a new phenomenon, it's easy to forget. But for all WWI turned thousands of hectacres into mudded wasteland bog and mire, Germany still did not simplify its small arms towards 1918 on a large scale, and even France (who pulled the trigger too early on small arms modernisation, if you'll pardon the pun) only made small compromises WW1 only turned a big chunk of France into a moonscape (on the western front). Outside of no mans land the effects of the war were more grieving widows who lost all their sons. Infrastructure was largely intact. WW2 had the combined problems of all the cool toys needing rare materials to make (titanium aluminum tungsten etc) plus engine factories not being any use because some blew up the bearing factory.
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Jan 5, 2018 16:56
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Ron Jeremy posted:As nasty as the air war over Europe was, it would have been 10x worse for the allies had the Nazis had proximity fuses on their flak like the Americans had in the pacific. Were proximity fuses that useful for large calibre, high alt AAA? In my understanding, German heavy Flak defending against strategic bombing wasn't aiming for direct hits, but laying down areas of shrapnel. A heavy bomber moves in a very predictable path at constant speed, so you can set the altitude of the fuse and for it into the path of the formation. With a VT fuse I guess you'd soon it right into the middle of the formation, but what are the odds of it being triggered? How close does it have to be before detonating? The US did put VT fuses on their 90mm AAA, but my understanding is that the greatest use was on medium range AAA like the 5" dual purpose gun, which had a high rate of fire and could take down fast, maneuvering targets before they got in range
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Jan 5, 2018 18:21
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The problem with manufacturing the VT fuse was not so much precision machining of any of the hard components as much as miniaturization of the small RADAR. Barrage techniques for AAA were in use in part because of the issues with fusing and gunlaying. The fuse probably would have performed well against Allied bombers.
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Jan 5, 2018 18:53
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Grumio posted:Were proximity fuses that useful for large calibre, high alt AAA? In my understanding, German heavy Flak defending against strategic bombing wasn't aiming for direct hits, but laying down areas of shrapnel. A heavy bomber moves in a very predictable path at constant speed, so you can set the altitude of the fuse and for it into the path of the formation. With a VT fuse I guess you'd soon it right into the middle of the formation, but what are the odds of it being triggered? How close does it have to be before detonating? VT was a critical advance for every sort of AA gun. Your understanding of how heavy AA operated is flawed. This often-linked video gives a really solid overview of how AA operated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIYVwqHM488 Whenever possible, heavy AA guns tried to put their shells in very close proximity to individual aircraft. This was already very nasty with time fuses, but time fuses had a bad habit of running ever so slightly long or short, which meant that a lot of the shells would over- or under- shoot and burst close enough to pepper the plane, but not close enough to kill it. With VT, that never happened. If a shell was well-aimed, it would burst at the ideal distance to the target and inflict maximum damage. When that wasn't possible, they did the same thing to the individual formation. VT would have a much greater effect here, because any given shell is likely to pass by several aircraft in a formation, and if it is time fused most of these will be immune to damage. VT means that you can threaten more aircraft for each shot fired. Random barrage at points a bomber would have to fly through was used as a last resort, and was the least effective despite it looking the scariest. Even here, VT would increase the kill chance. Indeed, it might have the greatest effect here because the damage chance of any given shell was so low - any increase would be huge.
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Jan 5, 2018 19:05
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Grumio posted:
5" = 127mm. It's secondary ordnance by ship standards but for AAA it's about as heavy as it gets.
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Jan 5, 2018 22:10
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Im mostly talking out my rear end but I just can't see Germany putting together a mini-Manhattan Project to miniaturize radar returning fuses. Rockets? Tanks? Jets? Sure, but I can't see the development of something like a VT fuse getting the kind of resources required - especially in terms of the best physicists, engineers, etc. Even though a working prox fuse would have probably done far more damage to the Allies than all the V-Weapon projects put together.
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Jan 5, 2018 23:06
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They were specifically not used against Germany due to fears of reverse engineering. That changed later in the war but it was strictly an anti-Japanese weapon / anti V1* weapon at first. *inside England so doesn't count e: Did a quick wiki and the first time VT fuses were used in a non-naval or non anti-air capacity was the Battle of the Bulge, where it decimated German troops in the open. Imagine how bad that would've been for the 101 if the Germans had that tech. 3 DONG HORSE fucked around with this message at 23:36 on Jan 5, 2018 |
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Jan 5, 2018 23:30
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  Same old same old.  Night attacks on the airfield at Rabaul – now this could be a dangerous precedent!  Now this is a random target...  You bloody well leave my supply lines alone!   Two Chinese units surrender to my men today.  Next stop, Lanchow and it's 400 points. 
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Jan 6, 2018 05:50
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Acebuckeye13 posted:5" = 127mm. It's secondary ordnance by ship standards but for AAA it's about as heavy as it gets.  of course it is. Didn't think to do the calculation in my head, and yes, on a ship that number seems tiny!
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Jan 6, 2018 09:00
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  This is a good plan with the wrong plane type!  Of course, the stupid way this game calculates hits means if you drop enough bombs, you'll get a hit eventually.  Owch owch owch.  There are at least fifteen raids on this convoy across the day.  Bloody snipers.  Make it more like 20-25 raids.  Flak kill! And for anyone wondering, yes the airfield here is nothing but Rubble.  I'm actually pretty worried about this new tactic, as there is little I can do to stop 200+ planes across the day from just swamping my ships with bombs.  So far, it's been very effective.
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Jan 6, 2018 17:44
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Phone posting so no references but: Missouri’s first shot fired in anger was to no-scope head shot an attacking Japanese aircraft at 10k with a 5” gun. Also, there was an Eastern front veteran unit who had braggingly wrote “shelling, men resting” in their war diary for a day long barrage by 3 Russian artillary corps that crumbled under VT fused rounds at the bulge and went on at length about how effective it was. I think Grosse Deutschland.
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Jan 6, 2018 18:40
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Grey Hunter posted:
That's not Rabul - that's Luganville!
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Jan 6, 2018 18:56
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Grey Hunter posted:[ I guess it's lucky you don't have any airplanes, then.
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Jan 6, 2018 21:12
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Do we still have troops on New Caledonia? I know Grey pulled them back after Noumea got turned into Stalingrad, but did the troops ever get shipped back to Rabaul?
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Jan 7, 2018 03:49
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Murgos posted:Also, there was an Eastern front veteran unit who had braggingly wrote “shelling, men resting” in their war diary for a day long barrage by 3 Russian artillary corps that crumbled under VT fused rounds at the bulge and went on at length about how effective it was. I think Grosse Deutschland. Were the Russian VT-fused rounds their own separate development, or shared technology? It seems like it'd be a risk to let the Russians use it, if the Allies didn't in the Western Front for fear of reverse-engineering as mentioned upthread.
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Jan 7, 2018 04:07
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gradenko_2000 posted:Were the Russian VT-fused rounds their own separate development, or shared technology? It seems like it'd be a risk to let the Russians use it, if the Allies didn't in the Western Front for fear of reverse-engineering as mentioned upthread. Murgos's phrasing was unclear and I'm pretty sure he meant there was a german unit, that had previously been real smug about getting shelled by non-VT-fuze-using Russians, and that german unit got ripped apart by American VT-fuzes during the Battle of the Bulge. The Soviets had an entire intact VT-fuze clandestinely sent to them by Julius Rosenberg.
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Jan 7, 2018 04:12
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gradenko_2000 posted:Were the Russian VT-fused rounds their own separate development, or shared technology? It seems like it'd be a risk to let the Russians use it, if the Allies didn't in the Western Front for fear of reverse-engineering as mentioned upthread. What I think Murgos was talking about was an Eastern Front veteran (who bore up pretty good under under the justly famous thunder of Soviet artillery) who was transferred to the Western Front for the Battle of The Bulge and broke under the VT barrages first used there. Where normal HE often burst too high for effective shrapnel or burst almost-harmlessly in the ground itself, VT always burst at the exact right height for maximum carnage. The Russians weren't given VT, and I don't think they developed it themselves during the war.
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Jan 7, 2018 04:13
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hailthefish posted:Murgos's phrasing was unclear and I'm pretty sure he meant there was a german unit, that had previously been real smug about getting shelled by non-VT-fuze-using Russians, and that german unit got ripped apart by American VT-fuzes during the Battle of the Bulge. hailthefish posted:The Soviets had an entire intact VT-fuze clandestinely sent to them by Julius Rosenberg.
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Jan 7, 2018 04:18
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simplefish posted:That's not Rabul - that's Luganville! After all the bombing, the force there may just be rabble.
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Jan 7, 2018 05:48
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gradenko_2000 posted:Looked this guy up and drat he kinda owned. The Soviet espionage effort in war time America is really something to behold. They were extracting secrets all over the place, and even got sent a pretty significant fraction of the world's (very tiny) supply of Uranium-233 at one point.
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Jan 7, 2018 07:30
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Pro tip: take carrier air groups off training mode to make them more effective :facepalm:
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Jan 7, 2018 17:01
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  Now this is is a definite, and worrying change in tactics. We do bag two Liberators though!  Then two more!  A carrier?  It's only a CVE, but I'll take any kill I can get at this point. She's retreating this way after that raid on Singapore.  Not a bad day, one of our ships took a hit, but we took out 4 Liberators and 2 Catalina's, along with the CVE and her contents.  Two old kills improve the day.  The damaged and the dammed set off for repairs.
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Jan 7, 2018 18:51
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