Turkey Shoot?

[Torplexed]

Originally Posted by LukeFF

On the subject of Japanese air patrols, I recall reading in a book about the Bowfin how the Japanese had fitted radar to some of their planes late in the war. If so, when did this happen and how effective was it?

Here's one example. The Kyūshū Q1W Tokai ( "Eastern Sea"), was a land-based anti-submarine patrol bomber aircraft with radar developed for the Imperial Japanese Navy in World War II. The Allied code name was Lorna.

The design may have been derived from the German Junkers Ju 88 medium bomber, the Japanese Navy having received some examples for technical evaluation during the war. The radar antennae were located on the back fuselage near the tail.

The IJN ordered development as the Tokai in September 1942, and the first test flight took place in September 1943. It finally entered service in January 1945. The Q1W carried two low-power engines, allowing for long periods of low-speed flight, and was the first purpose-designed anti-submarine warfare aircraft in the world. Due to lack of resources some models were constructed solely of wood. Given their rather low production rate and how briefly they were in service not much is know about how effective these planes were.

[JSF]

Originally Posted by Torplexed

Here's one example. The Kyūshū Q1W Tokai ( "Eastern Sea"), was a land-based anti-submarine patrol bomber aircraft with radar developed for the Imperial Japanese Navy in World War II. The Allied code name was Lorna.

The design may have been derived from the German Junkers Ju 88 medium bomber, the Japanese Navy having received some examples for technical evaluation during the war. The radar antennae were located on the back fuselage near the tail.

The IJN ordered development as the Tokai in September 1942, and the first test flight took place in September 1943. It finally entered service in January 1945. The Q1W carried two low-power engines, allowing for long periods of low-speed flight, and was the first purpose-designed anti-submarine warfare aircraft in the world. Due to lack of resources some models were constructed solely of wood. Given their rather low production rate and how briefly they were in service not much is know about how effective these planes were.

Look at your date....the end of the war was for gone conclusion. This plane was of no consequence for the Japanese war effort. I would venture that we (USA) derived more benefit from it's existence after the war than the Japanese Empire during the war.

[Shaffer4]

[quote=JSF]

Originally Posted by LukeFF

If there are 2 examples were the allies excelled it was our ability to read thier mail and turn darkness into light. Everything else was academic from that point on.

:rotfl:

[Torplexed]

Another area the Allies excelled in was the ability to build stuff....a lot of it. The Second World War more than any other war was a war of material attrition. This situtation was particularly acute in the Pacific where a secondary industrial power challenged the mightiest industrial base on earth.

The War in the Pacific simply put wasn't a fair fight and Japan's industrial infastructure back then simply wasn't up to the myriad demands of the war. During the 1930s, by a prodigious but an ill-planned and poorly organized effort, certain industries vital to Japan's war purposes had been built up. However, Japan's industrial base's footprint wasn't widened in the process. Thus, while total aircraft production was forced-fed into a 1300% increase from 1931 to 1941 this came at a price to other war vital industries such as electrial equipment in which production scarely increased by 30% between the war years of 1941 and 1944. Needless to say, exotic for the time technologies, like radar suffered and lagged as a result.

Those Japanese did at least have a decent torpedo tho. That was the USA's big oversight.

[Ducimus]

I have a suspicion that more often then not, we'll find ourselves in shallow water's.
If that ends up being true, i wouldnt worry too much about things being too easy.

[Nightmare]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

I have a suspicion that more often then not, we'll find ourselves in shallow water's.
If that ends up being true, i wouldnt worry too much about things being too easy.

Exactly! I think it was “Clear the Bridge” where O’Kane wrote that in later years of the war the Japanese tried routing their shipping to hug coastlines if at all possible. In one attack on his 3rd or 4th patrol in Tang (I’m going from memory) he was concerned that after going in after a target near the coastline, he didn’t have enough depth under the keel so as to avoid the torpedoes hitting the seabed (torpedoes could drop several feet after launching and run deep for several dozen yard till they got to their set depth). That’s pretty shallow if you ask me.

Now if that is modeled, we are going to have to be very aggressive and go in to the shallows. A submarine in shallow water can easily become a dead submarine.

[CCIP]

To play devil's advocate, of course, shallow water is only deadly when there's competent ASW present! During Operation Drumbeat, many of the kills by U-boats were in waters off the coast that were too shallow to even dive in, and yet no boats were lost.

That said, I don't expect SHIV to be a turkey shoot! It certainly shouldn't be easier than SHIII - and even though someone very rightly called SHIII an 'ace simulator', which will certainly expand to SHIV, I don't think you can count on getting away with impunity. A subsim shouldn't be murderous at every turn - I think it's always a matter of respecting your enemy and not making errors. It will be a fun game to play as long as it rewards good, cautious behaviour and punishes for mistakes and recklessness.

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by CCIP

To play devil's advocate, of course, shallow water is only deadly when there's competent ASW present!

Yes, but this is a video game were talking about, not real life. I don't think the implentation of the AI will have changed all that much from SH3. Oh sure the nodes in the AI_sensors.dat will be differently named, (maybe even the file named differetnly) but mechanically, ill bet it works very similar to SH3.

And if that is indeed the case, when you look at that, in conjunction to all the shallow areas in the pacific in the SH3 map (if its to be, beleived as any real gauge or indicator of the depth that ubi will use), and the amount of work they did to draw/render the bottom of the ocean with seaweed, plankton and such... well, makes me wonder if they modeled thermal layers this time.

[Steeltrap]

Hmm....

For starters, if they've NOT included thermal layers then I for one will return SHIV!! Sreiously, they were a vitally important tactical consideration, often giving the boats huge advantages in avoiding detection. This is made clear over and over in material published by those who were there (Dick O'Kane and Edward Beach to name a few).

Secondly, there's really no such thing as an easy time when you are thousands of miles/km from friendly assistance. The most mundane problem can become a matter of life or death under those circumstances.

As for the ASW of the Japs, it suffers from comparitively poor technology and, most significantly of all, it was regarded as almost 'peasant' work by the IJN. In fact, many ASW forces weren't even PART of the regular IJN. That attitude was a big factor in why they never got organised the way the Allies did, even though it was as vital to them as it was to the Brits in the Atlantic.

In reading some of the works by actual skippers, the fact that many of them really didn't encounter large numbers of ASW aircraft even when close to the home islands is something that sticks in my mind.

I guess it is likely to be a case of never getting worse than 1942 in the Atlantic by comparison. It SHOULD be considerably 'easier' than what we've grown used to in the super mods in SHIII, but it shouldn't actually be a case of charge in and shoot everything in sight with impunity (unless you've playing on 0% realism.....).

Cheers

[Shaffer4]

Would be nice if we were able to run "screen" missions for Carrier taskforces