A bunch of questions on aircraft

[gap]

Work I am currently doing



I am at squadron No. 31... Initially I thought that only Coastal Command and Fleet Air Arm squadrons were of some interest for our game, but I came to realize that even other RAF commands had an involvement in WWII naval warfare. Still a whole lot of work is in front of me lol
Anyone wanting to help?

[kapuhy]

Originally Posted by gap

Work I am currently doing

I am at squadron No. 31... Initially I thought that only Coastal Command and Fleet Air Arm squadrons were of some interest for our game, but I came to realize that even other RAF commands had an involvement in WWII naval warfare. Still a whole lot of work is in front of me lol
Anyone wanting to help?

Wow Hats off to you, it's a lot of work but when complete, it will be a goldmine of info for any modder or developer working on WW2 naval warfare themed games.

I considered doing something just like this (though on a smaller scale) after I finish importing missing planes, so I'd be happy to help - but atm I have my hands full with trying to get those planes into game. I did however some research already and if you'd like, I can send it to you or post a summary here - maybe it will be of use.

[gap]

Originally Posted by kapuhy

Wow Hats off to you, it's a lot of work but when complete, it will be a goldmine of info for any modder or developer working on WW2 naval warfare themed games.

Yes, mostly a compendium of data gathered from different sources and displayed on a chronogram. Hopefully my work will ease the usage of that data in SH5 or in any other WWII-themed simulation. I had planned it long ago, but your work on new aircraft gave me the incentive I needed to continue this project

Originally Posted by kapuhy

I considered doing something just like this (though on a smaller scale) after I finish importing missing planes, so I'd be happy to help - but atm I have my hands full with trying to get those planes into game.

I agree on your choice of focusing on the 3D modelling / texturing work. Unfortunately it is easier for me proceeding with my own data-collection work squadron by squadron, so until I finish with it I won't be able telling all the locations (and timeframes) that your freshly created aircraft should be used on.

What I can do right away, is listing some of the planes relevant to SH5 but still missing from it that where most commonly used in the maritime patrol / reconnaissance / anti-shipping / convoy protection roles. Whenever you will be ready for working on a new set of aircraft, just get in touch if you feel that you need ideas on which models you should start from.

One last note: as you might have noticed, the sources I have available are detailed to the level of aircraft variants. In most cases, those variants differed externally from each other just for a few details (gun outfit, turrets, control surfaces' shape, cowling/nose shape, air intakes, exausts, etc). If it is not too much work for you, my advise is to keep your models as simple/generic as possible by keeping the "variable" parts - especially guns - separated from the main models. That would enable us to easily customize the new aicraft (even at a later stage) by adding/switching parts via eqp. files.

Originally Posted by kapuhy

I did however some research already and if you'd like, I can send it to you or post a summary here - maybe it will be of use.

Yes sure, share it here please!

[kapuhy]

Originally Posted by gap

Yes sure, share it here please!

So, a while ago I noted down from uboat.net two lists: one counting which aircraft were credited with U-Boat kills (including those sharing a credit) and second with aircraft killed by U-Boats while attempting to attack. Here's the result:

Kills and Losses

I used this to choose a list of planes to try to import. Of course, this doesn't give full picture, because it leaves out ASW/patrol missions that did not result in either aircraft or U-Boat being destroyed (for example, Avro Anson never sunk a U-Boat despite being commonly used for exactly that).

Many planes present in roster (and I mean TWoS roster because stock game is beyond repair) were not even used in theatre (Buffallo, Buccanneer) or would be unlikely to attack a U-Boat - this mostly concerns single-engined air superiority fighters (Mustang, Hurricane, Mig, Yak, La-5, P-47).

Only example I found of such planes attack on U-Boat is very telling:

"On 4 May 1945, U-155 was en route with U-680 and U-1233 from Germany to Norway through the Little Belt when they were strafed by Mustang fighters of 126 Squadron which were escorting Beaufighters of the North Coates Strike Wing. The flight broke off the attack after the leading Mustang was shot down, killing the CO of the squadron."

So it was unplanned attack on target of opportunity, which also failed - probably because attacking planes were not really trained or armed for ASW work. I think in game, such non-ASW planes, if present, should be relatively harmless and rarely attack.

Another thing - I don't know if TWoS already models this, but some some planes (USAAF-painted B-17, Avro Lancaster) would be more fitting doing air raids on ports than hunting subs at sea. Ideally, they should also behave differently: use "level bomber" AI setting and be set to fly very high. One could compensate for low aircraft numbers by making these "air raid only" planes carry more bombs (like, multiple "Bomb_Cluster" weapons) to really bring devastation to a port when player is unlucky enough to witness it.

[gap]

Originally Posted by kapuhy

So, a while ago I noted down from uboat.net two lists: one counting which aircraft were credited with U-Boat kills (including those sharing a credit) and second with aircraft killed by U-Boats while attempting to attack. Here's the result:

Kills and Losses

Amazing!

I had a similar list in mind. Besides the uboat.net database, I had found an useful Wikipedia article listing all the WWII U-boats sunk by an aircraft, but found not time for summarizing their data. Thank you for sharing the results of your own research

Originally Posted by kapuhy

I used this to choose a list of planes to try to import. Of course, this doesn't give full picture, because it leaves out ASW/patrol missions that did not result in either aircraft or U-Boat being destroyed (for example, Avro Anson never sunk a U-Boat despite being commonly used for exactly that).

Once my work on British air squadrons will be finished, we will get a wider picture.

So far (only about 30 RAF squadrons alalyzed, 2 of them operating under Coastal Command), I have found roughly four types of "maritime" duties related with each other in various ways. Here are my observations about them, the aircraft used for carrying them out, and my suggestions on how they could be implemented in game.

Coastal reconnaissance: in early war, when the risk of an invasion from the sea was feared by the British, army cooperation squadrons equipped with Westland Lysanders were rushed into the coastal patrol role. Their instructions were to use their their Lysander's armament (composed of two forward-firing guns and light bombs) for bombing/strafing the invading troops on the beach. I doubt they would have attacked ships and submarines too if they had spotted them, but indeed they would have reported them calling for better suited aircraft.
In game, Lysanders covering this role should have a relatively small radius (just enough for patrolling a few miles off the coasts of Britain), and they should be equipped with a mix of bombs without controllers (so they won't be dropped), one or two cosmetic flares with bomb controller (so they will be dropped in place of the "dummy" bombs) and maybe a visual sensor with extra detection, though I am not sure how realistic the latter feature would be.

Anti-shipping/mine-laying: a number of bomber squadrons were assigned this task in different WWII theatres and timeframes. The aircraft they flew included Vickers Wellington, Fairey Battle, Martin Marauder, Bristol Blenheim, Bristol Beaufort and Bristol Beaufighter, but keep in mind that this is an incomplete list. It is my understanding that squadrons charged with this role had surface vessels as their main target, but I think they would have attacked submarines too, on spotting them. Besides bombs or mines, where/when applicable their armament included torpedoes and rockets as well.
On a side note, air-dropped mines are not featured neither in stock game nor in OHII/TWoS. They could be added to aircraft by equipping them with a particle generator that will spawn one mine every x seconds when the dropping aircraft is flying under a certain altitude. I think the spawned mines can be made to float too and to explode on contact with any unit, just like TWoS mines. The only obvious downsides inherent to this added feature would be that, unless we script mine-laying planes in campaign, we wouldn't have any control on where they would drop their mines, they would perform their task only when within rendering range, and the mines would disappear as soon as the player clears the area.

Convoy/shipping protection: for this role, a variety of aircraft was used, probably reflecting the most likely type of menace that they were going to face; according to the data I have processed so far, squadrons assigned with convoy escort duties could be equipped with fighters (Hawker Hurricane, Supermarine Spitfire, North American Mustang), light bombers (Bristol Blenheim) or torpedo bombers (Bristol Beaufort).
Starting from 1943, RP-3 rockets came in Costal Command and Fleet Air Arm as an air-to-surface weapon, and the Hurricane was one of those aircraft which could be armed with them. Nonetheless, it seems more logical to me for convoy-escorting fighters to have provided mainly air cover against enemy planes, strafing with their guns other types of targets only on occasions. Conversely, heavier escort aircraft might have carried bombs or torpedoes and so I would equip them in game, leaving aerial depth charges for specialized ASW squadrons.
For the sake of realism (and for more effective protection), convoy-escorting sqadrons should be scripted in campaign together with the convoys they are supposed to protect. That's only theoretical though. In practice, if air units are setup in game as convoy escorts, they will try to match their speed with the speed of the convoy leader, and they will collapse miserably in the water. Making them to spawn from airbases, like the majority of the SH5 planes, is the one option left, unless some complicated workaround is devised.

Anti submarine: I think this role does not require long explanations. As far as I can see from the data I have already analyzed, aircraft assigned with it included a mix of light, medium and torpedo bombers. Lockheed Hudson, Vickers Wellington, Martin Marauder and, until December 1940, Vickers Vildebeest. In game, their armament should consist mainly of depth bombs or - when/where appropriate - torpedoes and rockets.

Originally Posted by kapuhy

Many planes present in roster (and I mean TWoS roster because stock game is beyond repair) were not even used in theatre (Buffallo, Buccanneer) or would be unlikely to attack a U-Boat - this mostly concerns single-engined air superiority fighters (Mustang, Hurricane, Mig, Yak, La-5, P-47).

Only example I found of such planes attack on U-Boat is very telling:

"On 4 May 1945, U-155 was en route with U-680 and U-1233 from Germany to Norway through the Little Belt when they were strafed by Mustang fighters of 126 Squadron which were escorting Beaufighters of the North Coates Strike Wing. The flight broke off the attack after the leading Mustang was shot down, killing the CO of the squadron."

So it was unplanned attack on target of opportunity, which also failed - probably because attacking planes were not really trained or armed for ASW work. I think in game, such non-ASW planes, if present, should be relatively harmless and rarely attack.

Yes, for a long time I have had your same doubts and, as you can imagine from my notes above, I came to your same conclusions, reinforced now now by your findings.

Except maybe for carrierborne ones, the large majority of fighters in game should be armed just with "fake" bombs (i.e. harmless/invisible bombs), so that they will attack surface/ground targets only with their guns, or with no bombs at all, so to make them to only attack other aircraft if TDW's dogfight patch is enabled (otherwise they won't perform any attack).

Another important factor is aircraft max radius. Setting it up only according to real stats is a mistake. In game, that number should reflect the type of duties the plane is supposed to perform. If we subdivide fighter squadrons in "offensive" (performing bomber escorts, tactical strikers, etc.) and "defensive", the latter suqadrons should have rather short max radii so to that their fighters will show up only around ports and coastal installations.

Originally Posted by kapuhy

Another thing - I don't know if TWoS already models this, but some some planes (USAAF-painted B-17, Avro Lancaster) would be more fitting doing air raids on ports than hunting subs at sea. Ideally, they should also behave differently: use "level bomber" AI setting and be set to fly very high. One could compensate for low aircraft numbers by making these "air raid only" planes carry more bombs (like, multiple "Bomb_Cluster" weapons) to really bring devastation to a port when player is unlucky enough to witness it.

I agree. Unfortunately I think there is no way to tell "air raid only" aircraft how to behave in game according to their supposed mission. Two possible workarounds come to my mind:

a) having a (very) small number of air groups whose fighters and bombers have long enough ranges to attack player bases, having a (very) high number of air groups with maritime patrol and home defense aircraft, and lowering the 'Air Strike Probability' parameter in AirStrike.cfg. That should compensate the high number of "short range" air groups and make the few "long range" airgroups to spawn rarely. Of course they would still attack the player if they spot him, but their small number should make that eveninece pretty rare.

b) removing "air raid only" from bases, and scripoting them in campaign. This way we would have full control on route and altitude of the attackers, on player bases to attacked and on the frequancy raids will happen. I am not an expert of campaign stuff, but I am confident that some randomness can be addeed to scripted events, so that they won't happen always on the same dates and with the same freqiuency...

[kapuhy]

Some thoughts:

- Lysanders: I doubt these would fly far out into the sea, especially if they were army pilots rushed to coastal defense. These could be scripted like current air patrols over Bay of Biscay, except they'd fly up and down the coast, able to spot an U-Boat and raise alarm if you sail within sight from shore.

- Hurricanes, Spitfires etc. in convoy protection: unless we're talking carrier-based, I strongly suspect that the convoys they were protecting were English Channel and South-East England coastal convoys, and "protection" in this case meant deterring Luftwaffe.

- Making convoy protection squadrons spawned from airbases in not that unrealistic. That's just my recollection from Clay Blair's book, but what seemed to happen is, because they didn't have aircraft to protect all convoys at all times (at least until late war), SOP was to saturate skies with aircraft over convoys that were under attack or expected imminent attack. More or less how spawning system works : when they learn you're in area, then they start sending planes.

- Re "air raid" planes: I'd choose the option of scripting them in campaign. Leave base air groups for what they do best (reacting to detected threats/targets in airbase's range), and add an air group for every U-Boat base flying regular high altitude air raids (might be good to check how often these bases were really bombed).

It's a bit more predictable (experienced player might learn never to dock at Brest on Mondays and never leave Lorient on Thursdays - unless you can randomize frequency that is), but allows to retain more control over how these "special events" unfold. Relying on air wings might end up requiring much more work time playtesting and finetuning to work well than scripting those groups in.

[gap]

Originally Posted by kapuhy

- Lysanders: I doubt these would fly far out into the sea, especially if they were army pilots rushed to coastal defense. These could be scripted like current air patrols over Bay of Biscay, except they'd fly up and down the coast, able to spot an U-Boat and raise alarm if you sail within sight from shore.

• No. 4 Squadron is known to have complemented its coastal patrol role with Air-Sea Recue duties.
  
  
• No. 16 Squadron is said by one of my sources to have "operated as a reconnaissance squadron, first around the British coast, guarding against a German landing, then further out to sea" (http://www.historyofwar.org/air/units/RAF/16_wwII.html).
  
  
• Talking about another Lysander squadron, No. 26, the same website states: "After the fall of France the squadron flew coastal patrols, especially over the potential German invasion ports" (http://www.historyofwar.org/air/units/RAF/26_wwII.html).

Scripting those squadrons might be a good idea: the circular range of activity of base-spawned aircraft is probably not the best way to imitate in game some patrol courses that, in reality, had to be nearly parallel to the coastline. Nonetheless, going by the impression I got from the aforementioned facts, I would move Lysander's courses more to the sea side than to the land side (but indeed not too much) and I would privilege the areas near the major British ports. How mutch the patrol area of each Lysander squadron stretched over the coastline, and which harbour areas were more guarded by them, is an information we will discover once we find all of those squadrons and we plot their stations on map but, indeed, I expect the southern British shore to be the most hravily guarded.

Originally Posted by kapuhy

- Hurricanes, Spitfires etc. in convoy protection: unless we're talking carrier-based, I strongly suspect that the convoys they were protecting were English Channel and South-East England coastal convoys, and "protection" in this case meant deterring Luftwaffe.

• In May-June 1940, No. 19 Squadron covered the Dunkirk Evacuation with its Spitfires.
  
  
• No. 6 Squadron was based in Edku when, between December '42 and February '43 it was appointed to the protection of Allied shipping (probably in-/out-bound to/from the near port of Alexandria) with its Hurricanes.
  
  
• Between July '43 and April '44, when it was carrying out convoy escort patrols, No. 26 Squadron was based in Yorkshire (First at RAF Church Fenton and then at RAF Hutton Cranswick, both close to Port of Hull), with a detachment flying from RAF Ballyhalbert, Northern Ireland.

I am not 100% sure that those fighter squadrons would have ignored any other attacker than Axis aircraft, but I am reasonably confident that their primary mission was contrasting raids from the air.

Originally Posted by kapuhy

- Making convoy protection squadrons spawned from airbases in not that unrealistic. That's just my recollection from Clay Blair's book, but what seemed to happen is, because they didn't have aircraft to protect all convoys at all times (at least until late war), SOP was to saturate skies with aircraft over convoys that were under attack or expected imminent attack. More or less how spawning system works : when they learn you're in area, then they start sending planes.

Okay, good to know, I rather thought that they were following up and down the route of convoys they were supposed to protect, but that's probably more correct for US blimps.

Going by your account, the best way to simulate in game the activity of RAF convoy escorts, is giving them the maximum realistic number of aircraft (24 for fighter and 12 for bomber squadrons) and making their max radius relatively wide.

Originally Posted by kapuhy

- Re "air raid" planes: I'd choose the option of scripting them in campaign. Leave base air groups for what they do best (reacting to detected threats/targets in airbase's range), and add an air group for every U-Boat base flying regular high altitude air raids (might be good to check how often these bases were really bombed).

I totally agree with you that scripting is the best available method for simulating air raids against player bases. That would give us full control on air raids' aircraft composition, on their frequency, their altitude and the route they will follow. The scripted aircraft might still (irrealistically) divert from their mission and attack enemy vessels at sea if they meet with them, but that would be a much rarer eventuality than if the "U-boat bunker raiders" were left to spawn from air bases and to freely roam in the skies.

Originally Posted by kapuhy

It's a bit more predictable (experienced player might learn never to dock at Brest on Mondays and never leave Lorient on Thursdays - unless you can randomize frequency that is), but allows to retain more control over how these "special events" unfold. Relying on air wings might end up requiring much more work time playtesting and finetuning to work well than scripting those groups in.

I wish we could randomize the frequency of recurring scripted (air) traffic, but I am a total ignorant on this respect. Is there any way to do that?

[Gerald]

Good work gap

Aircraft an important factor in the game. Especially low flying that sweeps in over the Bay of Biscay which means that the M42 has to work a little harder ... and if the outcome is good, free beer will be served for dinner.