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What can I say? That's rich! Quote:
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Looking at 1945. Only a handful of DG claims over 1000 tons with the DG. Most unconfirmed, none more than 2000 tons, most 1000 to 1500 tons. One confirmed 1000 ton ship sunk was actually 200 tons.
Note that there were MANY DG attacks in 1945, more than 1944 looks like. There are ZERO confirmed DG sinkings for ships over 1000 tons in 1945. There are very few claims even made over 1000 tons, and none in '45 over 2000 tons for DG sinkings. Given the tonnage ratio for the confirmed DG sinkings (claimed tonnage vs actual) seems like an average would be to reduce the claim by 5-10 times, lol. 2000 tons? Maybe it was 500. (there were only 2x2000 ton claims anyway) So, in my look at every single claim by a submarine (US Submarine Attacks During World War II, Alden, NIP), I found ONE confirmed DG sinking over 1000 tons, and it was by Narwhal, armed with 2x6" guns. There were a a fair number of claims over 1000 tons, but very very few were even as high as 2000 tons, and none were confirmed (I'm not saying they weren't sunk, I'm saying the tonnages were almost certainly off considerably based on the claims vs real tonnages for confirmed DG sinkings). Many of the 1000+ ton claims were for targets that were well under 500 tons in reality. Note that the volume I used also lists attacks for damage. I didn't pay a lot of attention to them, but there were hardly any damages claimed on >1000 ton targets with DGs either. Bottom line is that fleet boat skippers clearly did not think the DG was a good weapon for attacking such targets (>1000 ton merchants) otherwise they would have availed themselves of the weapon. |
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Frank "Torpex' Kulick Subsim Staff :cool: |
Alden started with some of that as a premise, actually. The book I used is not just JANAC, he looked at many other records, and in places corrects JANAC.
In my posts above by "confirmed" I mean an actual RL ship name, lat/long, etc is found for the target. tater |
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Frank |
Sorry, I didn't take it that way, actually. Just pointing out that Alden's rationale for writing the book exactly matches your post. He wrote it as a reaction to complaints he'd heard from vets regarding JANAC and sought to do a more exhaustive analysis.
tater |
Ok, good.
It really made me wonder how JANAC even considered some of the records from the Japanese. One story goes there was one ship that had aparently delivered a shipment of something to Washington pre war. The manifests and all documents were retained as per shipping "rules" back then, noting the ships name and its size. That same ship was sunk by one of our subs, and ID'd by the ONI manual, which contained actual pictures of the ship, and its tonnage. JANAC in review of the sinking claim, actually used the lower tonnage supplied by the Japanese records. When a few key crew members got wind of this years later they did their own research, and presented the pre-war evidence. They were told it didnt matter. So I accept it, but just wonder........ Frank "Torpex" Kulick Subsim Staff :cool: |
Same questions about JANAC
I too have some doubts. I'm reading "Silent Victory" at the moment. It's confusing to see that some captains write that they saw the ship they torpedoed explode only to read a few lines further that JANAC did not confirm the sinking...
Has anybody got some information on why the JANAC credits deviate so much from the skippers' claims? Where the Japanese such sloppy bookkeepers that they didn't record all their lost vessels? |
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JANAC also didn't count smaller ships (under 1000 or 500 tons) and it didn't count ships that were sunk but later salvaged and refloated. |
The flask would break just because of the impact, but the contact dud problem was indeed related to the firing pin. The fuse was destroyed before it could trigger an explosion, basically. It worked fine with slower torpedos, but the faster mk14 (almost never used on the slow setting) had this problem.
The smaller targets would certainly be a problem since for many of the confirmed sinkings, the targets were actually small. The japs used a LOT of <1000 shipping. By 1943, they were on a major building program for such shipping. tater |
The firing pin design was taken from an earlier torpedo, its speed was 33 knots, the faster Mk 14 shattered the pin. Interestingly enough, against a stationary target, those torpedoes worked almost 100% of the time at all angles. But hitting a moving target apparently added a extra force not encountered during pre-war testing (which was all against stationary targets), and that was just enough to disable the torpedo. The firing pin should work good at the slower speed setting.
The magnetic influence would go off at random, mostly due to the difference of magnetic fields threw out the world. |
There was a third problem.
The depth guage for the torpedo was positioned badly. This apparently caused it to register the wrong depth and the torps would run deep. So if you model the MK 14 to do these things, because that was what was wrong with them, then you play the game, you could turn off the mag exploder, set the torp to run at slow speed, and fire shallow and hardly ever get a dud. From a historic stand point they would be accurate, but from a game standpoint it sounds like it would be fubar because you know how to make them work in 1941 when it took the real guys about 18 months to figure out. |
Just like many other aspects of the game that create higher tonnages, there is hardly any way to lower the tonnage in a historically accurate manner. I think (and this is just my thoughts) that we have a clear example of just how psycological war really is. Here behind our screens we are physically safe from any harm, and immune to any repercussions for deviation from years of training and doctrine/policy. So we are free to do as we please with no one to answer to. If there was an ingame "black-box" that recorded our actions, and it would divulge infractions of the rules back in port, tonnages might be lower, or careers would be shorter. Also, if the game would somehow simulate the psycological effects of war on our decision making ability, I think tonnages would be lower. We would also need some means to remove what we know about the war and how things progressed. Combine those effects with some technical mods and you might see results closer to what they got back then.
Frank "Torpex" Kulick Subsim staff :cool: |
Oh, agreed. Tonnages in the game will ALWAYS be higher. I actualy would love to see a sub sim or a flight sim that doesn't give "instant success" by telling you and recording when kills are made. I'd rather have a debriefing screen on RTB when I make claims, and they can be checked vs intel, etc and awarded.
But that's aside from "fear of death." Doctrine also plays a role. Early war, we should be making submerged sonar approaches. We should also be setting the run depth on the fish to maybe 10 feet below the keel. Combined with the 11 feet of deep run we'd not sink ANYTHING. Of course that's at 100% real, no watching the fish. In fact, you should fire then pull the plug to act like a real sub of the period (least early war). If you get a timed explosion (or even close) you'll assume hits. Course in game you'll know that the hits didn't sink if you don't see the kill notice. As for this with the deck guns... the crew isn't as vulnerable as they should be (I never seem to get dead crew unless a few DDs are landing shells on deck), etc, ad nauseum. The RL data is clear though, the number of sinkings of anythign bigger than a coaster with a DG (including coup de grace) is vanishingly small. The number of claims is not much higher, and still insignificant. So even if you take every claim at its word—including the tonnages which are frequently quite a bit off—it still doesn't amount to a drop of water in the sea. |
Yes I was just limiting to detonations. As for running deep, yes. The mk 14 was a $10k torpedo, in the depression the Navy did not want to waste money exploding torpedoes, so they ran them into soft targets and then recovered them. The actual warhead was heaver then the test weights causing the nose to run lower then trip. This not wanting to do live tests caused the weak firing pin, and deep running torps, the magnetic/influence issue varied depending on location. Detonators that worked well in the states did not work well in the south Pacific. Germany did not have issues with the magnetic until they were far north off of Norway.
In the stock game I never have tested the slower speed, however the shattering off the firing pin was lessened at non 90' shots, the game emulates that well. Hindsight sees 20/20 Quote:
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