Re: dreadnought thrust was Re: Fighters and Hangers

["Grant A. Ladue" <ladue@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> 
> I encountered similar problems when doing the conversion of FT I to WW2 Naval - for instance an Iowa class battleship had 9 Class A (Beam 3) guns mounted in three turrets, twenty Class C (Beam 1) mounted on the sides, 10 PDS and 4 ADS.  Belt armor was represented by shields, but ignored if fire came from the front/rear arc or from long range (plunging fire). Hull boxes was based on displacement, roughly 1 box per 1,000 tons with some fudge factor based on anecdotal evidence of strength of design.
> 
   Did the "armored box" design of the Iowa's cut across the front and rear of
 the ship?  There should be some kind of armor against plunging fire as well I
 would think.


> Interesting enough, large American carriers (Essex Class) were serious ship killers with 10 stands of planes (representing 120 planes)  With limited launch and recover facilities (one stand per turn, flight deck only allowed to launch or land, not both in the same turn) it would take 5-6 turns for a strike to form then a large cloud of planes would descend on some poor hapless target and pretty much annihilate it. (18 torpedo shots can ruin a battleship's day) then take another 10-12 turns to land, re-arm and launch again.  The main concern was the opposing fleet's aircraft attacking while your own planes were down for re-arming.
> 
   The big thing with aircraft of the time was that it was usually very hard to
 locate the target.


> There was a problem with Battleships and heavy cruisers annilhating destroyers at long ranges, which historically didn't happen much.  Another issue is that in real life, salvoes are very much hit or miss, with rarely anything like a "grazing" shot.  Getting slammed with 1,600 lbs of armor-piercing steel is going to hurt, but a near miss is only going to get you wet, so in reality there should be a "to hit" roll then a damage roll.
> 
   Sounds like a "to hit" would be needed.  Battleship shells frequently failed
 to detonate when they hit destroyers as well.  They were just too lightly 
 armored to set off the AP shells.


> Submarines were ok with a referee but oddly unsatisfactorily slow and unpredictable, a good salvo of 6 torpedoes into a key ship could change a battle in an instant, but getting the submarine into the correct position was a very difficult job.
> 

   Hmm, sounds like real life WWII submarine ops then.  They really did only
 operate well against shipping away from battle zones.

 grant