|
Arcturas posted:Did the sights adjust for things like wind? While it did correct for wind at high altitude the as the bomb drops it encounters different layers of wind at different speeds in layers of the atmosphere. The bombsight was tested in a clear day in the desert where you could release a weather balloon have have it go straight up for 30,000 ft and you could drop a bomb in a barrel. In Germany it was cloudy 3 out of 4 days and you couldn't measure the weather at the target so then the accuracy became much closer to hitting the correct district of the city.
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2018 07:25
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 17, 2024 16:14 |
|
|
“At night they could at least hit the right city” is only true for the refined bombing raids towards the end of the war, when huge advances in strategic bombing tactics and operations improved accuracy to a “we’re vaguely in the right area” level. The 1941 Butt report revealed that for the first two years of the war RAF bomber command accuracy was much, much lower than city-level. I’ve written up reams on this in various iterations of the milhist threads, but when it comes down to it something like 5% of bombers leaving the airfields got within 5 miles of their targets. If anything this game has bombing accuracy without pathfinders and coordinated streams set preposterously high.
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2018 07:37
|
|
|
Late war had radar bombsights like the H2S (British 10cm) and H2X (American 3cm reengineering) that weren't very accurate but could lead you to a city in night or complete overcast and allow you to hit it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2018 07:47
|
|
|
lenoon posted:The 1941 Butt report Butt
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2018 08:39
|
|
|
lenoon posted:“At night they could at least hit the right city” is only true for the refined bombing raids towards the end of the war, when huge advances in strategic bombing tactics and operations improved accuracy to a “we’re vaguely in the right area” level. The 1941 Butt report revealed that for the first two years of the war RAF bomber command accuracy was much, much lower than city-level. What do the 95% of bombers that miss the cities do? Just look for a good target and drop bombs then?
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2018 14:18
|
|
|
Donkringel posted:What do the 95% of bombers that miss the cities do? Just look for a good target and drop bombs then? They're not saying that the bombers didn't drop their bombs, or didn't nominally reach their targets; they're saying that the drops weren't anywhere near close to what they were supposed to hit.
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2018 14:35
|
|
|
Usually they dropped their bombs on what they thought was a target and ended up being a field or a river or the sea or a farmhouse or whatever it was. Then they’d return, be debriefed and say “oh yes the oil refinery went right up, sheets of flame” when what had actually happened was a couple of hay bales caught fire. Turns out it’s hard to tell what you’re hitting when you’ve no idea where you are, you’re high up and you’re just praying you make it home. In stressful conditions a small town suddenly looks like a huge city, one AA gun is a huge curtain protecting strategically vital areas and famous landmarks are incredibly easy to confuse. Britain played on this rather well - my home town outside Sheffield had nothing but fields and sheep, but stationing a couple of searchlights and some very expendable very useless AA there diverted quite a few raids from the City.
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2018 16:19
|
|
|
Of course once you had enough bombers you end up hitting your targets anyways just by sheer tonnage of ordinance. IIRC the first time it really worked was Hamburg in 1943.
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2018 17:07
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:You need to use the Port Attack mission to hit port facilities and docked ships I've read on the Matrix forums that this leads to a somewhat cheap tactic in MP games where you can hide ships by auto-disbanding them at the end of the turn into a tiny, unoccupied dot base. If your opponent has squadrons set to naval search and naval attack, the planes straight up will not see even very large fleets if they are disbanded into the port instead of present in a task force in that same hex.
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2018 17:12
|
|
|
habeasdorkus posted:Of course once you had enough bombers you end up hitting your targets anyways just by sheer tonnage of ordinance. IIRC the first time it really worked was Hamburg in 1943. Blot out out the sun style bombing requires a pretty 20th century approach to ideas about nationality and warfare. Pre-Napoleon nations were the land not the people (ie you would be king of France) Naploeon and the French Revolutions really ramped up the Nationality aspect to Nation (King of The French) so Prussians had no problem persecuting French people for being French, but it required a fully modern industrial economy to get to where we could just bomb everything. 21st Century warfare seems to be restricted by a belief that the populations of a country is in someway different than the leadership, but this still in flux or maybe has more to do with the scale of warfare.
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2018 17:24
|
|
|
"L'etat, c'est moi" gets you hung these days.
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2018 17:32
|
|
|
Bold Robot posted:I've read on the Matrix forums that this leads to a somewhat cheap tactic in MP games where you can hide ships by auto-disbanding them at the end of the turn into a tiny, unoccupied dot base. If your opponent has squadrons set to naval search and naval attack, the planes straight up will not see even very large fleets if they are disbanded into the port instead of present in a task force in that same hex. haha drat - that's cheap as hell, but yeah, following the game's internal logic, it does seem like that could work. if I'm not mistaken the solution would be to use the Recon mission to check bases, but you'd definitely be able to do a bunch of sneaky poo poo against a player that isn't completely obsessive about setting up their missions
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2018 17:36
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:They're not saying that the bombers didn't drop their bombs, or didn't nominally reach their targets; they're saying that the drops weren't anywhere near close to what they were supposed to hit. IIRC Bomber Command's accuracy was so poor that on several occasions they bombed Switzerland.
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2018 22:33
|
|
|
Roller Coast Guard posted:IIRC Bomber Command's accuracy was so poor that on several occasions they bombed Switzerland. Yes, and they also hit Denmark while trying to hit Germany. The Luftwaffe also bombed Ireland a few times as well.
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2018 22:36
|
|
|
Roller Coast Guard posted:IIRC Bomber Command's accuracy was so poor that on several occasions they bombed Switzerland. night navigation is hard, seriously
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2018 22:41
|
|
|
Roller Coast Guard posted:IIRC Bomber Command's accuracy was so poor that on several occasions they bombed Switzerland. It IIRC got bad enough that the Swiss were threatening to start shooting up any allied planes entering their airspace.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2018 01:08
|
|
|
KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:night navigation is hard, seriously https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAhKcsMcInk
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2018 02:21
|
|
|
KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:night navigation is hard, seriously Eddie Rickenbacker, Flight 19, Amelia Earhart, the US daylight bombing of Swiss cities, Operation Tidal Wave, and many others are examples of navigation error. Yes, some of those are over water but famous examples. For us it's sometimes hard to comprehend, in modern times, how hard it actually was as we always have hyperaccurate topo maps, aerial photos, and GPS to crutch on before attempting such a feat.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2018 14:44
|
|
|
Magni posted:It IIRC got bad enough that the Swiss were threatening to start shooting up any allied planes entering their airspace. They amazingly actually scored kills against both the USAF and the Luftwaffle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Air_Force#World_War_II The US hit both Basel and Zurich. quote:On 4 March 1945, six USAAF B-24H bombers hit Zurich with 12.5 tons of high explosives and 12 tons of incendiaries, killing five people. The intended target had been Aschaffenburg near Frankfurt am Main (290 km north). The six bombers had gone off course, and their crews believed they were bombing Freiburg im Breisgau. At virtually the same time, other bombers dropped 12.5 tons of high explosives and five tons of incendiaries on Basel.[1] Basel and Freiburg are similar-sized cities 45 minutes apart by train and comparing what's left in terms of historical building stock in one and the other is pretty eye-opening. Freiburg got leveled in 44.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2018 15:16
|
|
|
   They are finally picking off the last of the Marshall islands, I don't expect the base force here to last long!   We sink some cargo ships south of Milne bay.  Let's hope they save some ammo for the bombardment!  This is just to prove that bombarding Milne bay will get me nothing.  They do clear out a few patrol boats though!  I need to call these guys off for a bit.   I continue to rain bombs on target.   Bases bombarded, ships sunk, airfields bombed. All normal activity for mid '44 Japan.  100% Historically accurate.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2018 17:51
|
|
|
  We sink more ships on the way to Port Moresby. This uses up the last of the task forces ammo, and they turn for home. I'll try again after they've rearmed.  This place needs a visit again – they got their spitfires back in the air.  The mass of air-planes keeps losses even.  It's just a shame they have so many planes.  The bombing continues.  Reinforcements are a shore and ready at Manus, so it's time to hit them again there!  Another good day of sinkings. Bloody 4:00am toddler wake ups. it's screwing with my schedule.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2018 17:52
|
|
|
The Allied strategy is clear: throw wave after wave of liberty ships into your guns to absorb all available ammo before you can hit anything worthwhile.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2018 19:11
|
|
|
Why not just bomb the airfield at Chungking? Then they can't repair it, no more intercepts.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2018 19:52
|
|
|
Plus, damaging the airfield will divert supplies to fixing it, keeping them from the ground troops in the hex.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2018 19:56
|
|
|
The tiny enemy boat in the first picture... It was hit by a 46 cm shell. Or what equals to a high explosive Honda: 
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2018 22:19
|
|
|
It's a v small wooden warboat, but it's still a 34m hull. That shell would only be ~1.5% the empty weight.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2018 22:33
|
|
|
That is a shitload of Tojo's at Rabaul.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2018 22:35
|
|
Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
|
Not gonna lie, wanna see our ships blow the hell out of some actual Allied naval vessels instead of the merchant marine and tugboats with machine guns
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2018 00:48
|
|
|
4 July 1944 US carrier aircraft sink the minelayer Sarushima and minesweeper W-25 in the Bonins. British MTBs sink the German minesweeper M-469 off the Dutch coast. 6 July 1944 USS Paddle torpedoes the destroyer Hokaze north of Celebes/Sulawesi. Off Normandy, the Royal Navy loses the frigate Trollope (torpedoed by an E-boat and not repaired) and the minesweepers Magic and Cato (torpedoed by "Neger" midget subs).
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2018 00:51
|
|
|
KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:night navigation is hard, seriously Night navigation and over water navigation are super hard if you don't have any of our fancy modern gizmos or instruments for flying. Charting by dead reckoning over hundreds of miles of open water requires you to be on the ball, and night flying comes with its own fun challenges. Its nice when you can pick up a VOR or a TACAN and fly a line of bearing to a way point or hit a GPS way point on a pre programmed rout. gradenko_2000 posted:I don't recall exactly how this was done, but yes, there was a provision to account for wind. For winds its actually not too bad. for our training we just bust out a whiz wheel and pay attention to how far off a line of bearing we drift in a certain amount of time to figure out winds. I don't know how bomber formations worked, but they could probably interpolate a rough wind based on how much crab angle (direction you point you nose to offset the side force of wind so you can continue to fly your planned course) the pilots were having to put in to fly their pre-planned route over the target. For the bombs, they'd just need the ground speed which is just adding or subtracting head or tail wind from the true air speed calculated and that'll tell you the no kidding speed you are flying over the surface of the Earth at. From there once you have winds its just a matter of releasing your bombs a bit sooner or later to account for a head wind or a tail wind and potentially having your plane fly at an angle to offset any sideways wind... Of course depending on your altitude, your bombs might fall through several different layers of wind speed, each potentially adjusting the trajectory of the bomb in a way you might not have foreseen.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2018 06:39
|
|
|
  I continue to smash their light industry.   We see a quick skirmish in Burma.  My planes try an protect a bombardment force, and get butchered.  A tanker – Noooo!  They come back for the destroyer in the afternoon.  Then they smash Truk.  Fall drat you!  Well, that was a bad day! 51 air losses!  And four sunk ships!
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2018 18:27
|
|
|
Losing 62 planes to down 23 is not a good day. How bad were the subs hit at Truk?
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2018 21:40
|
|
|
if someone wants to keep track of Grey's progress in Chunking, it has 324 Heavy Industry, 162 Light Industry, and 162 Resources
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2018 00:29
|
|
|
And a little auto-gen supply on top of that? Also, can you over damage light industry if one of the hits lands on an already destroyed part (so if you do 100 hits for 3 days in a row you might only have 150/162 destroyed)?
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2018 01:07
|
|
|
acidia posted:And a little auto-gen supply on top of that? Also, can you over damage light industry if one of the hits lands on an already destroyed part (so if you do 100 hits for 3 days in a row you might only have 150/162 destroyed)? Nope, you can't overhit.
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2018 03:18
|
|
|
I say just go low and bomb the hell out of everything faster. I sincerely doubt heavy bombers are something you're short on since you barely use them.
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2018 12:49
|
|
|
  Escorts would just be more planes lost at this time.  Maybe this time we can get t Port Moresby without using up all our ammo!  Dammit, time to send in more supply ships.  This is a small win.   Bloody 10K snipers!  Supplies have been dispatched to Manus.  Dammit, they still have a battleship!
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2018 18:11
|
|
|
8 July 1944 Two Japanese destroyers go down to submarines: Tamanami west of Manila, by Mingo, and Usugumo in the Sea of Okhotsk, by Skate. German midget subs are in action off Sword Beach, torpedoing the Polish (ex-British) cruiser Dragon, which is declared a total loss after being beached near the Arromanches Mulberry, and the minesweeper HMS Pylades.
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2018 23:16
|
|
|
Oh my god, I just found out that you're doing this thread again, for the Japanese. I'll see you in a month or two of reading back updates. You're truly amazing for doing this, Grey. Edit: Can I be added to the lucky ship list? I'd love to claim the AE Pyro if so! Volmarias fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Jul 9, 2018 |
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2018 05:43
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 17, 2024 16:14 |
|
|
Grey Hunter posted:
At least this time those ships were in a port and not moving so it makes alittle more sense.
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2018 14:40
|
|
