McPherson
Banned
Aerial warfare over land. In a sea-air battle with aircraft carrier borne aviation, the tendency is for CAP to cycle up and down in the air battle. Also in a sea-air battle CAP fighters will attack the bombers. That is USNAS and presumably FAA doctrine. Enemy fighters will be ignored. And we do not have many examples of the LW or the RA knowing HOW to escort an anti-ship strike package. So the air battle as described is a head scratcher for me.Regarding the fighters.. they didn't scatter. My reading of World War II fighter battles is one minute the sky is full of airplanes and shortly after its "where the hell did everyone go!" in effect the fighters engage, they fight but the circumstances of a furball prevent them from aiding the bombers any longer. Luckily the Germans also concentrated on their fight and target fixation neutralized them from beating up the bombers too much. They Allied fighters did their job, they covered the aircraft they were escorting and the only failure was in part to the very communications issues that Calbear and you mentioned. RAF fighters covering a US task force have problems due to communications.
One knows that the IJNAS LIED a lot? And I have commented about Crete and the nature of those LW claims?It should be noted that the Vals in the Indian Ocean attacks on 2 fast moving desperately manuevering heavy cruisers got 80% hits. The German pilots here got nothing like that, but are for the most part the very same pilots from Crete (attacking fast moving destroyers as well as a carrier and a pair of battleships) and at Crete they got mission kills on the carrier and both battleships.
Hmmm. All I have is RTL examples and a modified Harpoon system to check the results.It seems possible the German aviation losses might be higher but I got the results I game with (used a modified wargame /board game version of Bismark/Midway...old Avalon Hill games and second checked them with World In Flames which is strategic World War II with excellent naval/air interface combat system).
To be honest? MOO. YMMV.As to the drydock, likely the Americans are wrong and it is repairable, but it won't be as the Tirpitz will never be coming and thus in the views of the people in TTL, the mission is a success. Losing the Oklahoma costs Pye his chance at CNO, and Stark lost his job because of the damage suffered and Kimmel got himself killed. Publically this is a great albeit costly victory. Roosevelt is privately less enthused of course. Churchill is happy as he didn't lost any ships of importance and half the German surface fleet is gone.
Kimmel, if he had not been killed, Pound, and Pye, should all be facing serious jail time. Stark? Drop the London Bridge on that apple polishing son of a bitch. California Actual should have done what Captain Bode of the USS Chicago did do. Churchill should be asking his RAF why they are so incompetent and seriously considering having charges pressed against Charles Portal and whoever the idiot is that runs the Coastal Command right now. Two Alaska equivalents and one badly designed heavy cruiser are not worth the loss of two Standards, the slaughter of a CV air group, and the obvious naval defeat that Goebbels can crow about.
Their accuracy will suffer markedly. Area bombardment of St. Nazaire will have US-Vichy France repercussions.As to the firing rate.. Pye has only 3 hours to do as much damage as he can and then run away. I might be off somewhat in rounds fired, but the Battleships would have shot as fast as they could only slowing to prevent overheating the barrels and because crew exhaustion is a thing.
Stationary or non maneuvering slow target. Here the Standards should be as they were in Philippine Sea, S-turning for their lives.To be fair, until late war and Kamikaze attacks (and defending with massively powerful AAA), the Standard battleships never experienced any kind of serious attack after Pearl Harbor. At Pearl Harbor only the Nevada was attacked by dive bombers (18 dive bombers got 5 hits) and there she was in confined waters and unable to manuever. but that is a 30% hit rate while the entire US Navy at Pearl Harbor (and a few Army guns) where shooting at them. Speaking of Pearl Harbor, I did use that in part for a guide to likely German losses based on Japanese losses during 2nd Wave (excluding the attacks on the airfields and what American fighters managed).
I mentioned that the Germans should be sortieing everything with wings.I did review Freya radar pretty closely. Although by the time the radar gunners picked up Force Y they already new about it from a patrol plane. The Carriers were far enough out that their launches may have been noted but considering what their aircraft were doing, it didnt matter what German gunners in France were preparing for them. The Luftwaffe provided what escorts it could for its complicated mission day and for the most part, until the attack on Force Y (and interference from above) they did their job, just as the Allied escorts did.
As I stated, only an after action analysis and my opinion. My observations and opinions are not gospel.Overall not perfect but I feel comfortable with the results and losses based on gaming it out. Sure games are only as good as the designer (which is why I use more than one) but they give me sufficient confidence to go with the results. The details may differ but the overall picture seems right.