Forget about Bungo Pete and fear...

[Spraug]

...the Psycho-Haruna!

This is another of the weird encounter posts. In the fourth war patrol of my current I had the order to patrol the Makassar Strait and I circled off Balikpapan. After a bit of a chase I managed to disassemble a Nippon Maru and another ship (Momoyama Maru, I believe) and was already a bit low on torpedoes (duds, duds, duds,...) when I encountered another tanker: a small Haruna Maru. Small vessel and few fish left called for surface action, so called my gun crew to their stations, and surfaced.

While I'm an aggressive skipper when it comes to the choice of attacking or not, I make sure I don't get too overconfident, so I always dive deep after a torpedo attack and I always stay at least 2'500m away during surface engagements (unless heavy fog) and at least 3'500m on the surface if the target has heavy guns.

So, as per modus operandi, I engage at about 4'000m and slowly get closer, as soon as I confirm that they don't have heavy weapons. It works very nicely until I reach around 3'500m. Suddenly all hell breaks lose in the form of 20mm fire. I get hit almost immediately and damage reports are called out, so I have the boat turn around at flank speed to put distance between us again. This takes maybe 3 Minutes and in this time frame the Psycho-Haruna pours magazine after magazine into my poor little boat. Judging by the tracers coming in and the sound of splashes and metal hits, I guess that the freaks hit with about 75%-80% of their shots AT 3 AND 1/2 KILOMETERS and cause 22% hull damage, several bulkhead breaches and internal damage!!! :wah::/\\!!:huh:

Eventually slip beyond their range and sink the bloody monster. While I'm usually happy when I see survivors in boats I'm a bit torn this time. One half of me wants the gunner to survive so I can recommend him for a medal and get him to train our crews after the war. The other half of me is worried what happens if the give him Buzyun Maru and let him spearhead the Japanese attack during the invasion of the Marianas!!!

Anyway, I try to limp back to port when I get a Flash Message of a large convoy in the Celebes Sea. What can I do???? With a heavy heart and a lot of foreboding I decide to investigate and direct in reinforcements. Since I don't dare to dive deep I can only make one half-hearted attack at maximum range from periscope depth. The fish miss, of course and I get destroyer company. Through blind luck one of the defensive shots manages to sink the closest destroyer as I slip aways to the south. Most of my crew - including my humble self - is probably already on anti-anxiety medication, so I call it a day and return to port after something like 25 days with a boat shot to pieces and "only" four kills (that would have been amazing during the war, but obviously isn't in the game).

Fortunately my previous patrols were pretty good (ran into two slow, unescorted Takao Class cruisers during the invasion of Celebes :arrgh!:), so instead of the boot, they give me another boat. All is well that ends well, I guess, but I guarantee you that I will - very carefully - make it my devoted duty to sink every single Haruna Maru for the rest of this career!!!!

[TorpX]

I've had the same thing happen to me. I was wondering if this sort of thing only happened with RFB.

Those 20mm guns are very sinister; they're big enough to sink your boat, but small enough that you don't see them.

[Spraug]

Interesting. Considering the different mods we're running (I've never played RFB), it may be in the original game. If enemy crew works like the boat crew, it may be that the game just randomly came up with someone with gunnery 90% or something.

I guess it's realistic that 20mm are dangerous, but to be honest I've never had any success with my 20mm or even 40mm on enemy ships. Since I never go up against planes, they are just very useless to me.

Still 3'500m ... just imagine what this guy can do to airplanes that are much more fragile.

[rein1705]

Hey fellas. greetings from the S-26.
i play TMO 2.6 and I've ran across freighters armed to the teeth
and,to within varying digress their good shots.
I've had my boat shot up a few times by charging in too close to a Maru.
Check out this German Q-Ship i found in the Sulu sea. Though she was obviously armed with deck guns.http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/picture.php?albumid=282&pictureid=2502a...

[TorpX]

I guess it's realistic that 20mm are dangerous, but to be honest I've never had any success with my 20mm or even 40mm on enemy ships. Since I never go up against planes, they are just very useless to me.


Imo, 20mm, or other small caliber guns have exaggerated capabilities in the game. They should be dangerous in the sense they can kill personnel and damage things, but they should not be able to tear our boats apart.

If I were doing a major rework of the game, uber artillery would be on my short list of things to change. If small caliber shells were so effective, cruisers wouldn't need 6 or 8 inch guns.

However, there are limitations in the game models which make a realistic simulation of these things difficult. As you found out, shells do not loose the ability to penetrate targets at longer range. I'm not sure if Japanese merchantmen had AP 20mm ammunition, or not. Seems questionable to me.

I guess I can forgive Ubisoft for not putting too much effort into guns and ballistics, in a submarine game, but the situation is not ideal.

[Admiral Halsey]

I'd suggest just nuking AA gun damage altogether but then you have to mess with the planes armor otherwise you're never gonna knock any of them out of the sky.

[TorpX]

Well, I understand what the RFB team wanted to do. Skippers should be deterred from sailing through a storm of 20mm fire. Otoh, a handful of small shells should not trash your sub. There has to be a middle ground where they can disable/damage/wound, but not really sink your boat. I think they went too far. Not sure exactly how to fix it.

In the meantime, I give armed ships a wide berth. :arrgh!:

[Armistead]

I came on a armed sampan hitting me with machine gun fire, before I knew it getting mass damage, damn near sunk me before I got him sunk

[TorpX]

Did he have 20mm guns, or something smaller?

In any case, I believe it. I've had 2 S-boat careers terminated this way. Not fun! :nope:

[Spraug]

Reading your stories, I realize I actually got away lucky.

[Hambone307]

Lost my USS- Thresher (Tambor class) to two armed sampans last week. Got up to make lunch and forgot to pause game. While making lunch, our fire department got called out to a car wreck. I came back about an hour later to find my boat almost standing up vertically, multiple bulkheads and other equipment destroyed, half my crew dead, critical flooding in most compartments, and those two sampans plugging away at me... :shifty:

[Spraug]

Lost my USS- Thresher (Tambor class) to two armed sampans last week. Got up to make lunch and forgot to pause game. While making lunch, our fire department got called out to a car wreck. I came back about an hour later to find my boat almost standing up vertically, multiple bulkheads and other equipment destroyed, half my crew dead, critical flooding in most compartments, and those two sampans plugging away at me... :shifty:

WOW! Those sampans shot up your sub, a car and your lunch? That's really... wow, my deepest sympathy. :hmmm:

[Hambone307]

LOL! I didn't think those sampans could mess up a fleet boat that bad. I knew they had small arms on them, but never actually sat there and let them shoot me! :arrgh!: I appreciate the sympathy Spraug! :yeah:

[rein1705]

that poor poor lunch....

[swdw]

20mm are not as weak as you'd think.

Something to think about. The HMCS Assinbone was in a running gun duel with a U-boat in the fog. So she had to get in close to use her guns. She wound up ramming the U-boat because the destroyer was being torn apart by the 20mm anti-aircraft guns and had to do something to end the engagement.

A couple of quotes from the book "The Necessary War."

"The submarine's 20mm flak gun shells raked the destroyer, causing significant damage."

"Allen Riley, a radio operator experiencing his first battle, recounted the shock of feeling the U-boat shells tearing through the ship"

The biggest problem in SH4 is the accuracy of the Japanese gunners. Sometimes you'd swear they are using laser guided ammo ;)

[TorpX]

Hmmm.............

I have two questions:

1. Were the Germans using AP ammunition?

2. How thick was the ships hull.

I did read how a couple of P-38's strafed a IJN DD and set it to smoking, but I figured that involved a good number of hits.

[Sailor Steve]

The last couple of posts point out something that does get overlooked sometimes, and that is that both the 20mm cannon and .50 caliber (12.7mm) machine gun were created at the end of WW1 as anti-tank weapons. I recall reading years ago in a book on American PT Boats that they experimented with 1/2" (12.7mm) armor plate for the boats. Before installing the plates the crews tested the plates by hanging them up from trees and shooting at them from more than 100 yards away with their twin-50 mounts. At the end of the test the plates looked like Swiss cheese, and they didn't bother installing them after that.

The point is that most ships are built of 1/4" to 1/2" common steel and are not bulletproof, and the only part of any destroyer that has armor is the gun shields, and event those are only meant to stop splinters from a shell exploding on deck. The bad part is that your submarine is no better, and holes in the hull can mean that you don't have a submarine any more. I've read more than one account from merchant crews of being approached by a u-boat, opening fire with machine guns and the boat diving and running away.

Yes, machine guns are dangerous.

[scubamatt]

If we're talking about Japanese AA Guns on merchants (etc) then you're looking at a Type 98 20mm gun, since it made up about 98% of all AA guns in the IJA and was also used by the IJN. Merchants would have gotten their (improvised) AA defenses from the Army, most likely.

It has two types of ammunition, an AP-T round that weighs 165 grams and an HE-T round that weighs 136 grams. Muzzle velocity on the Type 98 is 2720 f/sec (830 m/sec), and maximum possible range firing horizontally is 5,500 meters. Ammo came in 20 round box magazines.

Depending on the range, it could very easily punch holes in any submarine in the US Fleet at that time, since they used 7/8" steel (at most) for the pressure hull. I would expect performance to drop off dramatically on the AP round past 2500 meters, but the HE round would remain dangerous out to its maximum range - this is why cannons replaced machineguns in combat aircraft.

Pics of the ammo:
http://www.inert-ord.net/jap02h/t100aa/index.html

Excerpt from the Intelligence Bulletin, September 1943:
http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/jp_type98/

"The Japanese Type 98 antiaircraft-antitank gun, 20-mm, is considered one of the enemy's best constructed and most efficient weapons. Most of its features were copied from a 20-mm rapid-fire gun manufactured by the Oerlikon Company, of Switzerland. In fact, some of the bearings in the carriage of a Type 98 recently examined by U.S. Ordnance experts bore a Swiss stamp. The Japanese weapon, weighing approximately 840 pounds, is relatively light and very maneuverable."

[ColonelSandersLite]

You know, I remember reading a p-38 pilots account several years ago where his squadron sank a Japanese freighter with 20mm fire. To paraphrase what he said, they took turns firing their 20mm cannons into the ships waterline until it rolled over and sank.

Oh, and 20mm AP should absolutely be able punch straight through a subs pressure hull. I dunno about .50 though, I would guess probably not. Maybe one of the thin skinned boats.

[TorpX]

I still consider that the effects of small rounds are greatly exaggerated in game.

About the .50 cal. Naturally they are going to be effective at 100 yds. But how much could they penetrate at 1,000, or at 2,000? I looked over at NavWeapons.org, but I couldn't find anything about penetration.

In the game, I think these AA guns are 25mm single mounts. It seems the IJN had singles, doubles and triples, as well as smaller guns, and favored all these. Mostly they were evaluated from the perspective of light AAA, so it's hard to say what they might do to a sub. In the game one man operates the gun, but in RL a single 25mm had a crew of 3.

I remember from a long time ago, gun camera views of US fighter planes strafing merchant ships. They didn't show any sinking, just blowing up in the middle, apparently penetrating boilers. This with just .50 cal. Rounds could have gone through decks or hulls. Note that with fighter aircraft, the rounds will hit with increase velocity, so this doesn't mean a PT boat could do the same thing from 2,000 yds.

The British were naturally interested in deploying aircraft weapons that could sink U-boats. AFAIK, few, if any were sunk with 20mm alone, or even 30mm. They developed an airborne version of the 6 pdr. that could reliably penetrate through the deck superstructure and pressure hull. That's a 57mm weapon.

I think the real problem in these matters (SH and games generally), is that they fail to distinguish between hits that can damage and disable things, and hits that can destroy outright. They also fail to take into account velocity loss or angle of impact.

[Sailor Steve]

I still consider that the effects of small rounds are greatly exaggerated in game.
I'd say it depends on what you mean by "effects".

About the .50 cal. Naturally they are going to be effective at 100 yds. But how much could they penetrate at 1,000, or at 2,000? I looked over at NavWeapons.org, but I couldn't find anything about penetration. Not much. According to the following site outside of 500 yards there isn't much chance of a hull being penetrated by any "light" weapon, and at 1,000 yards these weapons are unlikely to penetrate the .25-inch mild steel armor of a standard merchant hull.
http://www.inetres.com/gp/military/infantry/mg/50_ammo.html

On the other hand reports put out by Allied merchants occasionally mention opening fire on u-boats with such weapons, the result being the u-boat diving and not coming back; the point being that you don't know for sure that your hull isn't going to be penetrated.

More to the point here, and this to is a definite "effect", the 25mm Japanese AA gun has a maximum rang of over 8,000 yards. That almost certainly won't penetrate anything, except the skins of your deck-gun crew and bridge crew.

All that said, I agree that the game is extremely simplistic when modelling small-arms fire from aircraft and ships. Then again, the game is extremely simplistic with just about everything it does.

[TorpX]

Thanks for posting that link. I copied that stuff down - very interesting. Most of what I've seen is in the nature of .30 cal. penetration of earth or building materials, and AT guns penetration of armor.

Then again, the game is extremely simplistic with just about everything it does.

Isn't that the truth. :yep: