Rami,
I'm glad to hear you like it! I can't wait to see what you guys do to the scenery!
tobob
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The Staff of SOH
Tobob_Taranto released!
- Thread starter tobob
- Start date
Rami,
I'm glad to hear you like it! I can't wait to see what you guys do to the scenery!
tobob
kelticheart
Charter Member
Great news, folks! 
Replicating the Taranto attack in CFS2 will yield the same emotions as the definitive release of Pearl Harbour last year!
Another missing tile in the "secondary" Med front: nice, very nice!
Thank you, Rami and Tobob!
KH :ernae:
Replicating the Taranto attack in CFS2 will yield the same emotions as the definitive release of Pearl Harbour last year!
Another missing tile in the "secondary" Med front: nice, very nice!
Thank you, Rami and Tobob!
KH :ernae:
Reply...
Good afternoon,
The work has begun...I'm using Wolfi's Med houses and other goodies, Wolfi's palm and other trees, steel and wooden bridges, and other stuff.
I've built some of the breakwater so far....this is going to be a BIG GSL job, something on the neighborhood of being Gibraltar-esque.
In other words, let's give it a few days, folks!
Good afternoon,
The work has begun...I'm using Wolfi's Med houses and other goodies, Wolfi's palm and other trees, steel and wooden bridges, and other stuff.
I've built some of the breakwater so far....this is going to be a BIG GSL job, something on the neighborhood of being Gibraltar-esque.
In other words, let's give it a few days, folks!
Some screenshots...
Good evening,
This is VERY beta, but here are a few screen shots. So far, I have included things like torpedo nets, barges so I can anchor barrage balloons, breakwaters all around the harbor area, and a couple of bridges, one steel, one wooden.
Additionally, there are some trees placed, Mediterranean houses, and I'll start tomorrow on creating the port facilities and expanding the cityscape. It's coming along, bit by bit.
Good evening,
This is VERY beta, but here are a few screen shots. So far, I have included things like torpedo nets, barges so I can anchor barrage balloons, breakwaters all around the harbor area, and a couple of bridges, one steel, one wooden.
Additionally, there are some trees placed, Mediterranean houses, and I'll start tomorrow on creating the port facilities and expanding the cityscape. It's coming along, bit by bit.
CrisGer
Charter Member
wonderful Rami, thanks so much.
here is some background for those interested....
Italian Naval Base at Taranto
In due course an official RAF Opinion was delivered on the subject of barrage balloons, but the navy had already modified its plan to take them into account.
Although the Italians had nothing in the way of radar, the area around Taranto was guarded by thirteen huge electrical listening devices that could hear an airplane many miles away. There were three rows of barrage ballons: one along the eastern Edge of the harbor, one on the mile long Diga Breakwater di Tarantola and a third in the middle of the cruiser anchorage in the northern half of the main harbor. What the British could not have known however is that of ninety ballons recently installed sixty had been destroyed in bad weather around November 6 and had not been replaced because of a shortage of hydrogen
Scattered around the periphery of the harbor were 21 batteries of four inch anti aircraft guns, 84 automatic cannons of twenty and thirty seven millimeters and 108 light machine guns. Twenty two modern searchlights were ready to illuminate attacking planes and dazzle the pilots destroying their night vision.
The six battleships, seven cruisers, and twenty eight destroyers in the inner and outer harbors of Taranto mounted more than 600 antiaircraft machine guns. Further under the surface of the water were huge steel mesh nets that could catch torpedoes. These nets suspende from buoys extended across much of the harbor. The harbor authorities had ordered 14,000 yards of net but several senior Italian officers feared that the nets woudl interere with ships manuvering so only 4,600 yards of netter were in position on Novemmber 11, 1940.
The admiral in charge of the port, Arturo Riccardi, was fully aware of the likelilhood of an airborne torpedo attack and at nightfall the harbor defesnes were put on high alert. In an offical report by the Italian commander in chief afloat to the chief of naval staff dated November 10, 1940, he enumerated the guns, searchlights, listening devices and nets and described the plans for dealing with moonlight attacks, the scheme for coordinating shore based guns with those on ships the clear anticipation of imminent attack and the extensive state of readiness.
In brief, twenty one slow, heavily laden, canvas covered airplanes were to launch an attack against battleships with armor ten inches thick in a harbor with approximately 800 antiaircraft guns, against an enemy that was expecting them. The sky contained thirty steel cables suspended from balloons and the sea held 12,000 linear feet of steel nets to catch torpedoes.
With the loss of the Eagle, several Swordfish and a revised timetable, the final Royal Navy attack plan, glorious in its complexity, took the following form:
The naval craft of the RN were organized for this operation into six groups. Force A consisted of the battleships Warspite, Malaya and Valiant: the aircraft carrier Illustrious: the cruisers Glocester and York and the destroyers Hyperion, Havock, Hero, Hwereward, Hasty, Ilex, Decoy, Defender, Nubian, Mohawk, Janus, Juno and Jervis.
Force B contined the cruisers Ajax and Syndey. Their initial assignment was to take troops and equipment form Port Said in Egypt to Suda Bay on the northern shore of Crete and there get Bofors antiaircraft guns mounted. The Sydney was then to join Force A: the Ajax was to remian at Suda Bay until relieved by the Calcutta and then join Force A. Force C consisted of merely the cruiser Orion which was to take RAF supplies and personnel to Piraeus, the harbor near Athens and then to proceed to Suda Bay. Force D was comprised of the battleshiop Ramilles; the antiaircraft Cruisers Coventry and Calcutta, the destroyers Vampire, Voyager, Waterhen, Dainty, Diamond and Wyrneck and the slow trawlers Kinsgston Coral, and Sindonis, and the minesweeper Abingdon.
Force F consisted of reinforcements from England bound for the Mediterranean fleet: the battleship Barham, the cruisers Berwick and Glasgow and the destroyers Griffin, Greyhound and Gallant. Force F also contained on temprary loan from Force H, the destroyers Faulknor, Fortune and Fury.
Force H based at Gibraltar under Vice Adm Sir James Somerville escorted Force F as far as Malta and returned to its Gibralter base. For the operation, Force H consisted of the aircraft carrier, Ark Royal, the cruiser Sheffield and the destroyers Duncan, Isis, Foxhound, Forester and Firedrake.
Intimately connected with these six naval forces were four convoy groups of supply and transport ships. Convoy AN6 carrying petrol and bunker fuel from Egypt to Greece, sailed on Novemeber 4 from Port Said and consisted of the Dutch ship, Abinda, and the British ships Pass of Balmaha and British Sergeant. The convoy was limted to seven knots because the armed trawlers Kingston Coral and Sindonis were even slower than the merchant ships. This convoy was escorted part of the way by the antiaircraft ship Calcutta. As they neared Crete, the Calcutta went ahead to assist operations at Suda Bay, which were still quite undeveloped and the convoy steamed on along the northern coast of Crete arriving safely in Piraeus with its anxiously awaited cargo of supplies and petrol. To its good fortune, it had seen nothing of enemy submaries or aircraft.
Convoy MW3 which left Alexandria, Egypt on November 5 consisted of the transports Waiwera, Devins, Plumleaf, Volo and Rodi, bound for Malta and two ships headed for Suda Bay; the Brisbane Star, carrying trucks and mobile AA guns and the Brambleleaf with bunker fuel and gasoline. On November 8, MW3 rendezvoused with Force A halfway between Crete and Malta, and the naval vessels took a covering position to the north of the convoy. Near noon that day an Italian reconnsisance craft spotted the convoy and radioed its postion before being chased off by Gladiators. At this point, the fleet and the convoy were about 180 miles from Scily. Before 2:00 PM seven SM79 bomberes appeared, British Fulmars shot down two and the remaining five bombers dropped their bombs and returned to Sciliy. The following day, the Ramilles and theee destroyers were detached to convoy MW3 to its destination on Malta while the remainder of the fleet remained at sea. (to be continued)
The Attack on Taranto: Blueprint for Pearl Harbour T..P. Lowry, J. Wellham and other sources...
here is some background for those interested....
Italian Naval Base at Taranto
In due course an official RAF Opinion was delivered on the subject of barrage balloons, but the navy had already modified its plan to take them into account.
Although the Italians had nothing in the way of radar, the area around Taranto was guarded by thirteen huge electrical listening devices that could hear an airplane many miles away. There were three rows of barrage ballons: one along the eastern Edge of the harbor, one on the mile long Diga Breakwater di Tarantola and a third in the middle of the cruiser anchorage in the northern half of the main harbor. What the British could not have known however is that of ninety ballons recently installed sixty had been destroyed in bad weather around November 6 and had not been replaced because of a shortage of hydrogen
Scattered around the periphery of the harbor were 21 batteries of four inch anti aircraft guns, 84 automatic cannons of twenty and thirty seven millimeters and 108 light machine guns. Twenty two modern searchlights were ready to illuminate attacking planes and dazzle the pilots destroying their night vision.
The six battleships, seven cruisers, and twenty eight destroyers in the inner and outer harbors of Taranto mounted more than 600 antiaircraft machine guns. Further under the surface of the water were huge steel mesh nets that could catch torpedoes. These nets suspende from buoys extended across much of the harbor. The harbor authorities had ordered 14,000 yards of net but several senior Italian officers feared that the nets woudl interere with ships manuvering so only 4,600 yards of netter were in position on Novemmber 11, 1940.
The admiral in charge of the port, Arturo Riccardi, was fully aware of the likelilhood of an airborne torpedo attack and at nightfall the harbor defesnes were put on high alert. In an offical report by the Italian commander in chief afloat to the chief of naval staff dated November 10, 1940, he enumerated the guns, searchlights, listening devices and nets and described the plans for dealing with moonlight attacks, the scheme for coordinating shore based guns with those on ships the clear anticipation of imminent attack and the extensive state of readiness.
In brief, twenty one slow, heavily laden, canvas covered airplanes were to launch an attack against battleships with armor ten inches thick in a harbor with approximately 800 antiaircraft guns, against an enemy that was expecting them. The sky contained thirty steel cables suspended from balloons and the sea held 12,000 linear feet of steel nets to catch torpedoes.
With the loss of the Eagle, several Swordfish and a revised timetable, the final Royal Navy attack plan, glorious in its complexity, took the following form:
The naval craft of the RN were organized for this operation into six groups. Force A consisted of the battleships Warspite, Malaya and Valiant: the aircraft carrier Illustrious: the cruisers Glocester and York and the destroyers Hyperion, Havock, Hero, Hwereward, Hasty, Ilex, Decoy, Defender, Nubian, Mohawk, Janus, Juno and Jervis.
Force B contined the cruisers Ajax and Syndey. Their initial assignment was to take troops and equipment form Port Said in Egypt to Suda Bay on the northern shore of Crete and there get Bofors antiaircraft guns mounted. The Sydney was then to join Force A: the Ajax was to remian at Suda Bay until relieved by the Calcutta and then join Force A. Force C consisted of merely the cruiser Orion which was to take RAF supplies and personnel to Piraeus, the harbor near Athens and then to proceed to Suda Bay. Force D was comprised of the battleshiop Ramilles; the antiaircraft Cruisers Coventry and Calcutta, the destroyers Vampire, Voyager, Waterhen, Dainty, Diamond and Wyrneck and the slow trawlers Kinsgston Coral, and Sindonis, and the minesweeper Abingdon.
Force F consisted of reinforcements from England bound for the Mediterranean fleet: the battleship Barham, the cruisers Berwick and Glasgow and the destroyers Griffin, Greyhound and Gallant. Force F also contained on temprary loan from Force H, the destroyers Faulknor, Fortune and Fury.
Force H based at Gibraltar under Vice Adm Sir James Somerville escorted Force F as far as Malta and returned to its Gibralter base. For the operation, Force H consisted of the aircraft carrier, Ark Royal, the cruiser Sheffield and the destroyers Duncan, Isis, Foxhound, Forester and Firedrake.
Intimately connected with these six naval forces were four convoy groups of supply and transport ships. Convoy AN6 carrying petrol and bunker fuel from Egypt to Greece, sailed on Novemeber 4 from Port Said and consisted of the Dutch ship, Abinda, and the British ships Pass of Balmaha and British Sergeant. The convoy was limted to seven knots because the armed trawlers Kingston Coral and Sindonis were even slower than the merchant ships. This convoy was escorted part of the way by the antiaircraft ship Calcutta. As they neared Crete, the Calcutta went ahead to assist operations at Suda Bay, which were still quite undeveloped and the convoy steamed on along the northern coast of Crete arriving safely in Piraeus with its anxiously awaited cargo of supplies and petrol. To its good fortune, it had seen nothing of enemy submaries or aircraft.
Convoy MW3 which left Alexandria, Egypt on November 5 consisted of the transports Waiwera, Devins, Plumleaf, Volo and Rodi, bound for Malta and two ships headed for Suda Bay; the Brisbane Star, carrying trucks and mobile AA guns and the Brambleleaf with bunker fuel and gasoline. On November 8, MW3 rendezvoused with Force A halfway between Crete and Malta, and the naval vessels took a covering position to the north of the convoy. Near noon that day an Italian reconnsisance craft spotted the convoy and radioed its postion before being chased off by Gladiators. At this point, the fleet and the convoy were about 180 miles from Scily. Before 2:00 PM seven SM79 bomberes appeared, British Fulmars shot down two and the remaining five bombers dropped their bombs and returned to Sciliy. The following day, the Ramilles and theee destroyers were detached to convoy MW3 to its destination on Malta while the remainder of the fleet remained at sea. (to be continued)
The Attack on Taranto: Blueprint for Pearl Harbour T..P. Lowry, J. Wellham and other sources...
CrisGer
Charter Member
Anchorages of the Italian fleet at Taranto
The Taranto Harbor has two main areas, the Mara Grande, a circular basin three miles wide and about 45 feet deep, separated from the sea by breakwaters and an inner harbor, the landlocked Mar Piccolo. The two are joined by a canal. The battleships, battlecruisers and heavy cruisers were moored in the former, the inner harbor held smaller craft, destroyers and many other lesser craft and were surrounded by seaplane hangars, storage sheds, warehouses and fuel tanks.
Williamson commanding the first wave decided that part of his group would approach the harbor from the west at 9000 feet, drop to sea level crossing the Diga di Tarantola, and launch their torpedoes at the Cavour, while the other half of his flight wouldl come in from the north west giving the anti aircraft defenses two attacks to think about at once.
Hale the leader of the second wave chose to take his entire flight in from the northwest, then turn south, to increase the chances of hitting a battleship as the targets overlapped each other at this angle. The drawbacks of Hale's approach were the concentration of AA guns at the nearby canal and the row of almost invislble barrage balloons. The chances were against hitting a balloon cable, however as the cables were 900 feet apart and plane wingspans were 48 feet.
Reply...
CrisGer,
Thanks for the encouragement. Putting in those breakwaters is a real pain when you have to cross distances of more than a mile, connecting the breakwaters in a curve to the islands, and then around to the other side of the mainland. It requires a real fine touch with the mouse to get 'em to line up just right.
To make the curve, you only have a single section of breakwater with a twenty-five degree angle shift, the rest are all straight. Also, the anti-submarine nets are large, so they have to be carefully placed to reasonably re-create how they were laid out in 1940.
Lastly, I'm having to balance looks and functionality, no easy task.
CrisGer,
Thanks for the encouragement. Putting in those breakwaters is a real pain when you have to cross distances of more than a mile, connecting the breakwaters in a curve to the islands, and then around to the other side of the mainland. It requires a real fine touch with the mouse to get 'em to line up just right.
To make the curve, you only have a single section of breakwater with a twenty-five degree angle shift, the rest are all straight. Also, the anti-submarine nets are large, so they have to be carefully placed to reasonably re-create how they were laid out in 1940.
Lastly, I'm having to balance looks and functionality, no easy task.
Taranto scenery testers...
To all,
I'm looking for a few brave souls to test out the GSL scenery I've been working on for Taranto and check how the framerates are. With my rig, which is on the middle-low end, I can get 20-35 over the harbor area, and 18-25 over the city scape, which is admittedly very dense. I'd like to get a few other testers on a varying scale of computer power and see what the numbers are like.
It is also extremely necessary to provide feedback on ways that some of the additional space can be utilized, and what else can be done, within reason. There are no ships or AA guns just yet, or any vehicles. This is all infrastructure-based scenery.
A hyperlinked readme will be provided for those who volunteer, of course, to make installation easier. I'm only building up to where I have the breakwaters on the northwestern side of the city, as it was in 1940,...and will speak to tobob about possible changes to the land class west of the breakwater, but if it has to remain that way, it can be.
I'd like to really do a bang-up job on this, because of the historical significance involved here.
And to CrisGer....please take this round off, I anxiously await reports from you on the Kondor missions! :salute:
Thanks,
To all,
I'm looking for a few brave souls to test out the GSL scenery I've been working on for Taranto and check how the framerates are. With my rig, which is on the middle-low end, I can get 20-35 over the harbor area, and 18-25 over the city scape, which is admittedly very dense. I'd like to get a few other testers on a varying scale of computer power and see what the numbers are like.
It is also extremely necessary to provide feedback on ways that some of the additional space can be utilized, and what else can be done, within reason. There are no ships or AA guns just yet, or any vehicles. This is all infrastructure-based scenery.
A hyperlinked readme will be provided for those who volunteer, of course, to make installation easier. I'm only building up to where I have the breakwaters on the northwestern side of the city, as it was in 1940,...and will speak to tobob about possible changes to the land class west of the breakwater, but if it has to remain that way, it can be.
I'd like to really do a bang-up job on this, because of the historical significance involved here.
And to CrisGer....please take this round off, I anxiously await reports from you on the Kondor missions! :salute:
Thanks,
Reply...
Good evening,
Here is the second beta version of Taranto. I noticed a couple of things in the pictures, such as a missing ramp, and I filled in some of the harbor area a bit more, leaving a few spaces for vehicles and perhaps train cars later on.
Additionally, there is a mosque in the city (I'll give you a virtual beer if you can find it!) which is from Jean Bomber's unreleased Afnor, Part II, so I'll have to talk to Wolfi about using it.
If no other problems crop up, I'll release it. I'm not going to include a ship and anti-aircraft gun layout, I think I'll hold that in reserve for the Swordfish mission.
Good evening,
Here is the second beta version of Taranto. I noticed a couple of things in the pictures, such as a missing ramp, and I filled in some of the harbor area a bit more, leaving a few spaces for vehicles and perhaps train cars later on.
Additionally, there is a mosque in the city (I'll give you a virtual beer
if you can find it!) which is from Jean Bomber's unreleased Afnor, Part II, so I'll have to talk to Wolfi about using it.If no other problems crop up, I'll release it. I'm not going to include a ship and anti-aircraft gun layout, I think I'll hold that in reserve for the Swordfish mission.