Torpedo vs Bombs

[DoubleTap]

Gents,

[Klinger]

You'd think the torp would do more damage than a bomb. I remember us (blue team) going in to this during the Italy SEOW.

The best distance any of us could do was ~3000m, soon after that the motors stop. I dont remember us being too successful with torps.

Some naval vessels have an armoured belt in the middle at the waterline, and are a softer target towards the bow or stern.

We tried the German PC1600 armour piercing bomb, quite effective if used from altitude via a Stuka or level bomber, difficult to do though.

Enforcer and Sid had some success against shipping, skipping SC500s in off Bf110s.

[GreyKnight]

DT,

I did extensive testing, offline, during the Italy SEOW on how best to crack the two Royal Navy Battleships. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I used the He-111 H6 throughout. As it can carry two torps or a pair of SC 2000Kgs or a pair of PC 1600s.

I must of attacked the Prince of Wales Battleship no less than 30 times, and I can't remember the exact figures, but I do know the torps performed the worst. With unlimited ammo setup, it would take several drops of pairs to sink it. I'm guessing something around 6 torps at least.

Whereas the SC 2000s were the best overall. I can't remember if just a pair could do it, I think it might need at least 1 more 2000Kg bomb. And the PC 1600s needed a bit more again I believe.

After about 3 unsuccessful attacks with He-111s in the Italy SEOW, I tested offline again with the Bf-110, with a pair of SC 500s, as Kling mentioned above. And 3x Bf-110s armed this way will sink a PoW BB, as witnessed.

The only good thing about torps I believe, is their ability to allow you to shoot at stationary ships from miles away.

And as Kling again mentioned, with BBs, the armoured belt would probably of hindered the torps power. Whereas skip bombing with SC500s or SC2000s might of led them to skip over the belt and hit the ship above the sealine.

[Rattler]

Several people on Blue reported that torpedoes were not used because they performed very poorly compared to bombs.

[DoubleTap]

Several people on Blue reported that torpedoes were not used because they performed very poorly compared to bombs.

[BadAim]

Just to add my $.02. I aggree that the damage caused by torpedoes v bombs is not accurate in this game, probably mostly because the damage modelling is so simple and because of the stupid requirement that the pilot live. Torpedo bombing was a bloody dangerous sport and I'm quite sure many successful practitioners never lived to see the fruit of thier labors.

[Enforcer57]

ditto on the above contributions. We used skip bombing off Italy because it was the only thing that worked. We exploited it further in attacks on tankers and transports very successfully.

In reality, as Rattler says, torpedos were considered more effective, and low level torp bombers were the main worry of carrier skippers, especially earlier in the Pacific war. As defences improved on allied ships, Japanese losses in such attacks became prohibitive, though they were still great threat.

From what I can gather, allied mediums used skip bombing mostly against shipping targets which are far less well armed than combatants. Most of the photos of such are against such targets.

The AA and damage modeling in the sim forced us to attack the PoW from one end rather than the sides to minimize damage, and it worked like a charm as my two bombs in the stern finished the ship off.......and got a certain P-47 pilot on my keyster trying to kill me in a fury before my gunner killed his engine....heh heh.

Once we found that this worked, it became SOP in anti shipping strikes.

Dive bombing was the preferred way to deliver bombs on combatant ships as it didnt' expose the attacking plane nearly as badly, which I assume is why it was used so much against lighter armed shipping.

If you have torp bombers in your project, you are gonna have to mess around with skill and ROF to make the misns survivable. I always make most of my ships rookie and modifiy the effectiveness with ROF.

[GreyKnight]

I find it is a shame we can't seem to fly bombing missions in the way they were actually flown in WWII. The game itself forces ourselves to alter our tactics from those of real life in order to get the best result.

Take my example about the He-111 versus Battleship scenario and even more relevant was during the BoB night the other Sunday.

I think it was mission 3, were the Luftwaffe had to destroy 16 aircraft at the airfields and then 2 radar stations. So it was planned that some of us would fly He-111s with 20 x 70Kg bombs to carpet bomb these airfields. So I flew one and took about 20 mins to get to 4,000m. I was flying away from the action in order to get lined up on the airfields real nice. Then I go and miss them when my bombs dropped long.

20 mins for ZILCH! Whereas those guys taking a fighter/bomber, either the 110 or 109 E4/B, with a bomb and cannons, were getting to the airfields in no time and chewing up the parked aircraft at will.

So in real life I guess the He-111s were the way to go, but in the game, it's more efficient to take the fighter/bombers... or get better bombardiers!

[DoubleTap]

The AA and damage modeling in the sim forced us to attack the PoW from one end rather than the sides to minimize damage, and it worked like a charm as my two bombs in the stern finished the ship off.......and got a certain P-47 pilot on my keyster trying to kill me in a fury before my gunner killed his engine....heh heh.

Schwein![/b]

Dive bombing was the preferred way to deliver bombs on combatant ships as it didnt' expose the attacking plane nearly as badly, which I assume is why it was used so much against lighter armed shipping.

I also assume it was deliver the bomb at extreme velocity, enabling it to penetrate (or bypass through a smoke stack, etc) deck armor.

If you have torp bombers in your project, you are gonna have to mess around with skill and ROF to make the misns survivable. I always make most of my ships rookie and modifiy the effectiveness with ROF.

I am doing that already, just to make sure the frame rates don't take a dive for people.

I DO need the AAA to be nasty in this case, because I want pilots to put some care into their attacks, and its needed to help balance the scenario.

[Enforcer57]

I'd do alot of testing with the vet setting, as I've found vet to be lethal at even low ROF. You may be able to mess with that some, even changing the class of ship possibly, as that affects effectiveness a great deal depending on the AA suite of the ship. Ie: the Saratoga is a later war incarnation with far greater AA effectiveness than her sister ship Lexington.

Also an example would be the quad 1.1 in mounts on the earlier war US ships compared to the quad, double, or even single 40mm mounts on later classes. The 40s are always considerably more effective, though my testing on such is limited. 40s just rip up everything, as they did in reality.

The level of AA will definitely change attack plans, as it did with us in the Italy cmpn. But that goes both ways, since our discovery of the proper tactics led to the Allied fleet running away (which was pretty smart actually).

I hope somebody is able to add some more new designs of ships at some point rather than just modifications of existing ones.

speaking of such, I remember some Japanese guys had made incredible looking IJN ships using the same kind of compatible tools that made the sim, but of course couldn't import them into the sim.....at least that's what I THINK I remember. I wonder what they are doing with this mod stuff, as much of their work is kind of isolated from the rest it seems. I haven't been able to find much on it, but haven't had time to properly search such out either.

This sim needs some more naval assets really badly. I'll go back under my rock now before somebody yells at me.

[Rattler]

This sim needs some more naval assets really badly. I'll go back under my rock now before somebody yells at me.

Here ya go...

Navel

Assets

[Streak]

Hmmmmm.......nice assets.

[Enforcer57]

Yeah, I wish I had thought of that....I got all sorts of stuff I coulda posted to emphasize my point that I made myself.

[DoubleTap]

Jeezus!

[Rico]

I think high-speed bomb drops were difficult to do, but fairly effective, from what I've seen and read.

[Klinger]

Ok, you've got me intigued now.

If a Stuka diving from 3000 metres to 1000 metres, with a terminal speed of 400kmh, releases his PC 1600, the bomb will be doing ~ 650 kmh when it hits the deck of a ship,

with a kinetic energy of approx. 30 MJoules.

[Rico]

lol

[Klinger]

A few of us played around with some of this stuff a few months back:

[Rico]

Hey, thanks for the link!