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Early and Late War Carrier Ops

Talon

Talon

Members +
Someone a while back made a comment about Late War Carrier Ops and that not many missions were done for them while there are alot of early missions.

Well one of the reasons may be the size of the Task Forces.

Early war TF may have 10 to 12 ships,maybe 2 carriers with an escort of 2 or 3 cruisers and 6 destroyers.During the Solomons sometimes a battleship.

Late war 2 Fleet Carriers sometimes 3,2 light carriers acouple of battleships,3 - 5 cruisers and 15 or more destroyers. This totaled 25 to 30 ships.Now this only 1 task group from the task force.Usually the TF had 4 TG with carriers.On top of that ships were changed in the TGs as the campaign progressed.Some of it depended on ship damage and some on where the ships were needed most.

That's alot of work to build missions.When I build missions I use the ships that were there and it takes along time sometimes just to make 1 TG.I do know some shortcuts but it still takes awhile.

The sites I use give me the ship types and names,co-ordinates,what planes are used and where ships were hit or sunk.That's not the easiest thing to setup either.

I'm just letting you know why it takes along time sometime to do my campaigns.As you know some are pretty long also.


Talon
 
thanks for that attention to detail Talon, it is much appreciated.


3858.jpg

Task Force 38/58
 
Right on Talon. I know what you mean. I had a similar task when setting up my Sibuyan Sea and Operation "en-Go" minicampaigns. Both the IJN and US Orders of Battle called for large numbers of ships. I divided the numbers of planes in each strike in half to make it more playable but still had 45-60 planes in each of the strike missions.

Thanks for your efforts! :icon29:
 
You hit the nail on the head, Talon. Many of the early war battles and campaigns can be accurately recreated, but the late war battles were simply too big.

That doesn't prevent me from fooling with them though. I just put a pared-down order of battle and task force routes into an Airboss-supplemented DCG campaign, and let 'er eat. Chips fall where they may. I get big battles, but of course not nearly as big as the real ones. And of course, not actual re-enactments of the real ones.

I have beefed-up renditions of the Coral Sea, Solomons, Truk, Marianas, and Leyte Gulf DCG campaigns. I'm still fooling with (I prefer to think "fine-tuning") all of them.

My current version of Airboss is divided up into two modules. One resides in the "Campaigns" folder and edits the DCG "mission" file. The other resides in the DCG campaign folder and tinkers with the campaign files, implementing airfield suppression, a degree of task force coordination, and deleting destroyed task forces. That module is a one-clicker that is run before generating a DCG mission. The other "Airboss" module is run after generating a mission. It takes an extra minute to generate a mission, but to me it's worth it. This latest version has not been uploaded. I plan to upload it eventually, possibly with a few campaigns.

The net effect is a DCG campaign in which bombing airfields actually accomplishes something, which in turn makes it feasible for carrier groups to operate near land bases and raid them regularly - because the land bases can be suppressed by bombing them. This is in addition to AI escorts, collision-reducing formations, etc.

And works with Vista.

However, the combined efforts of DCG and Airboss still cannot fully recreate the size and scope of the big late war sea battles.
 
I tried to put in 100 moving ships along with 200 static objects once and of course it didn`t work but that was using win98se.This is what I found out ,each waypoint = 2 static objects and each moving object can only have 36 waypoints.There is away to put in a group of ships and only have one ship with waypoints.The ships in the group have to be with in 12nm of the ship with the waypoint for it to work.Once you have set up your one ship with the waypoints add the other ships.You then take and hit shift and draw a squar around all the ships connected to that group.you then hit alt,ctl,F and this completes the operation.Once the mission starts the ships should follow the ship with the waypoints.Also the more waypoints the slower the framerates.There is a limit to the number of waypoints you can put into a mission.Just thought this might help.
 
Bob

I used to do the Task Forces that way with one ship with waypoints.The biggest problem with that is if the waypoint ship gets destroyed all the ships stop moving.I now do the waypoints I want for the first ship and than copy it for the rest of the ships.This way you have more realistic TG's and the right distance between the ships.


Talon
 
Talon, I was never able to find any info for the correct distance between ships.Would it be a problem to list the distance or can you give us a rule that you use to put the ships at the correct distance.Also where the ships are stationed in the task group. The best I can find out is the DEs are the outer most group then the DDs then CAs, BBs and the carrier.
 
The ships should be spaced at least .3 miles but .5 is better.I space mine even further apart.

Carriers in the middle,battleships,than Heavy Cruisers,next Light Cruisers,DD's and finally DE's.

Late war the DE's were used as picket lines against the Kamikazes.That's why so many DE's got hit.

At the Marianas all the fast Battleships were grouped together so the IJN Carrier planes had to fly over them first against a concentrated AA barrage.

Now the IJN didn't always have Battleships protecting their carriers,they were usually seperate force and expected to do a surface battle.

Their carriers were usually protected by 1 or 2 cruisers and 6 or more DD's.Even at Midway there were only 2 battleships with the carriers.Yamamoto's main force had the BB's plus the light carrier Zuiho.

At the Marianas the IJN used their BB's more to protect their carriers.

Even though the Japanese used carriers very effectively at the beginning of the war they still believed in the great surface battle between BB's.

The USN also believed in this until Pearl Harbor which forced them to depend on the carriers.The Battleships was than used in secondary rolls to protect the carriers and bombard enemy positions during invasions.


Talon
 
Talon, I am finding that as I build my missions for Bong and McGuire that there is so much overlap during that time period within the SE Pacific theater. It brings out the Marine in me to want to build some USMC missions that were being flown right next to the USAAC missions. I find the same "mission creep" with the RAAF campaigns going on in the area, ESPECIALLY when Bong and McGuire missions were less productive than those going on around them.

FOCUS! :bump:

When I go into building missions as my hobby instead of just for fun flying CFS2, I never realized the attention to detail required and the time consuption to get them right. Now, the limitations of CFS2 code and making sure that I build them so other, less robust computers can fly them, is sometimes a challenge.

When the history that I am reading says over 100 planes, I want to put over 100 planes in the missions. So, I build and rebuild until I can maintain a minimum of 50 FPS on my system. I then install them on my less robust laptop and see the FPS. If I can stay above 30 FPS, I have a winner!

BTW, thanks for your work in our joint hobby!
:ernae:
 
I try to stay as close to historic as I can in building my scenery placing objects and building missions.Two things I found out that I can`t show with the scenery on Eastern Island airfield Midway are the revetments for the aircraft dug into the island at about a 10 degree angle and the bunkers that everyone lived in.I tried it and the frame rates got so low with the AA going off all that smoke and all the planes that I couldn`t fly the mission.I have had to eleminate the revetments a few trees and bunkers inorder to pick up the frame rates.Another frame rate killer are the 115 planes and 8 pt boats at Midway in the 1st mission.This mission is when VT-8 flew there TBFs to Midway from Pearl.I will get it all worked out so that it works some how. Pics at midnight
 
When I started doing missions for PHP2 I wanted to breakup the attacks a little so you didn't have to many planes over the Harbor at once.I believe in the scenery I have there are about 90 ships plus all the buildings.I was over ruled and was told to do a full attack so in the first wave there are over 140 planes but they spawn at different times.As an example the torpedo planes attack but the level bombers spawn about 5 - 10 minutes later as they should.During the attack the ships get torpedoed,than the level bombers attack and Hickam and Ford are bombed.I get about 25fps with a mid range computer.Attacks on other airfields are much higher fps.

Now remember this is the old scenery they were working on a few years ago and I believe the new ships and scenery will be much more frame friendly.


Talon
 
Rule of thumb for ship formation changed during the change in doctrine but usually they needed room for high speed manuvering under fire, yet had to have picket ships, ie DD and DE close enough to the Flat tops to do plane recovery and pilot recovery if needed, but also had to give good defensive spacing for AA so there were circles in the formations, DE, then DD, then LC then Heavy Cruisers then the BBs and the flat tops, with the soft skinned ships, ie the Fleet Train disposed at a distance, Oilers, supply ships, etc... with their own escorts and protection. A full Task force was like a moving city, with much thought going into defense on many levels, including ASW as well as air and surface threats. Sometimes like with what happend with the Taffy force when the big fleet groups left, the little ones got hit, but the TF at sea was an awesome challenge on many levels, it is great that it can be simmed in CFS2, really no other sim yet had reached the same capacity for realism. We are fortunate to have the guys to do the work you all are doing to bring it into possiblity. Much appreciated. There are fleet manuver guides at the Naval War College, but not easy to get to, i will see about what i can get out of the people at the Nimitz Museum who I have had some contact with. Manuver orders used to be issued in mimeograph form for fleet distribution but they did not survive well the years since.
 
Spacing of ship formations

I've got these "old" handwritten notes on anti-air formations for USN & IJN ...

Both navies employed circular formations

US formations usually had 1 carrier as formation guide, remaining carriers placed on a 2000yd diameter circle whilst the cruisers & destryers were placed on a 4000yd circle. Ships in US formations only manouevred independently to avoid immediate threats.
By 1944 each US Task Group would typically comprise 2 Essex class CVs & 2 Independence class CVLs.
Each Task Group would steam 12 miles apart from any other CV group, & by mid 44 the US fleet could field 4 of these groups!

IJN formations placed 1 carrier at the centre as formation guide. Any further carriers were placed on each quarter of the guide CV at 1500m. Any BBs & CAs present might also be placed on 1500m circle, whilst any CLs & DDs were placed around a 2000mtr circle.. Once under attack IJN vessels would tend to manouevre independently, with little regard for mutual protection.

For air operations the spacing changed to give the carriers room to manouevre.

IJN CV groups opened out with CV/ BB/ CAs around a 7000mtr circle, & the CLs & DDs out around a 10000mtr circle. Haven't yet come across similar info for the US, will keep looking ...:running:
 
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