Need Help to Finalize HBG Japan Set!

[CWO Marc]

@coachofmany:

I believe one reason the Shinano aircraft capacity was limited was that she was designed as a Battleship and then hurried to change her to a Carrier, so last minute inefficiency. The biggest reason is that American aircraft wings folded near the fuselage where Japanes folded at the wing tips. Of course this is a generality but of what I read, this is my take. American Carriers had far better fire control over the Japanese carriers as well as the Japanese carriers did not vent very well so when bombed the gases accumulated in the ship, thus creating more explosions. My two cents worth.

Yes, Shinano was originally laid down as the third unit of the Yamato class.  After Midway, the Japanese Navy decided it needed more carriers and fewer battleships, so Shinano – which was only partially built at that point – was completed as a carrier.

And you’re quite correct about the superior fire control protocols on American carriers.  The U.S. Navy, for example, took the trouble of purging hangar deck fuel lines after use with (I think) nitrogen gas in order to reduce their flamability in case an enemy bomb got through to them.  The Navy also accidentally discovered that the natural material used in the uniforms of the enlisted men (cotton, I think) offered a fair degree of protection against flash burns during battle, so the Navy insisted that the men wear their full-length pants and keep their shirt sleeves extended rather than rolled up.  The sailors didn’t like that in tropical weather (and rather envied the British, whose summer uniforms left their arms and legs bare), but they suffered far less from flash burns than men from navies which didn’t take the same precaution.

[CWO Marc]

@WARRIOR888:

Gentlemen,
Have any you ever heard of the Japanese Pilot who in the evening as the sun was going down miss-took a RN Armoured deck carrier for his own and was astonished when he stepped onto the deck and found it armoured? The only Imperial Japanese Navy carrier that I have heard might have had an armoured deck was Taiho.Can anyone confirm this? WARRIOR888

I haven’t heard this story, but there’s one detail I’m wondering about.  How could the pilot have been able to tell, just from looking at the deck, that it was the surface of a thickly-armoured steel deck as opposed to just the surface of a thin steel deck?

[knp7765]

@coachofmany:

American Carriers had far better fire control over the Japanese carriers as well as the Japanese carriers did not vent very well so when bombed the gases accumulated in the ship, thus creating more explosions. My two cents worth.

I think this was the same problem that early British battleships, battlecruisers and cruisers had in the First World War against the Germans at Jutland. No way to seal off critical parts of the ship, like the magazines, so when they took hits and a fire broke out, they were toast. The German warships of the time had better armor protection so could take more punishment.

[CWO Marc]

@knp7765:

@coachofmany:

American Carriers had far better fire control over the Japanese carriers as well as the Japanese carriers did not vent very well so when bombed the gases accumulated in the ship, thus creating more explosions. My two cents worth.

I think this was the same problem that early British battleships, battlecruisers and cruisers had in the First World War against the Germans at Jutland. No way to seal off critical parts of the ship, like the magazines, so when they took hits and a fire broke out, they were toast. The German warships of the time had better armor protection so could take more punishment.

The main problem with the British ships at Jutland was indeed the lack of proper anti-flash shutters in the main gun turrets.  Aircraft carriers don’t have heavy gun turets, so their vulnerability comes from a different source – essentially the large amounts of aviation fuel and ordnance that gets handled in the hangar deck (and sometimes above-deck, which is the problem the Japanese ran into at Midway when the American dive-bombers caught them in the middle of a refueling and rearming operation).

[DrLarsen]

Yes; the Americans seemed better at damage control in all sorts of ways.  It’s a complex and difficult area, and it seems as though US designers and planners spent a good deal more time working through many of these details.  No doubt they’d also learned many helpful lessons from early-war losses, but the Japanese were also trying their best to learn these lessons but for some reason didn’t seem to get the details right.  Taiho was built specifically with the lessons of Midway in mind, and still major mistakes in damage control doomed a ship that should have been able to survive.  Shinano was then built with lessons from the Taiho disaster in mind, and still she was lost on her maiden voyage to an attack by a single sub!  (To be fair, sources also point out that not all of her water-tight hatches or pumping equipment was installed; still, accounts indicate that the damage-control officers initially thought they had things under control and were then spectacularly proven wrong, and indication that something was missing in their understanding of the situation…)

But back to the subject of how we should treat the ships in terms of AA stats, after a little more checking, I found on Wikipedia that Shinano supposedly had a maximum capacity of 120 aircraft.  What it didn’t say was whether this meant 120 combat-ready aircraft or whether many of these broken down for storage to use as spares and/or reserves… and I left most of my better sources in VA so I don’t have ready access to them to check on this point.  So maybe giving her an air wing capacity of 3 would still make sense, but I’m not sure.  The stats on her basic armor were impressive, so maybe once all her damage control equipment was installed, and given that her half-sister BB’s took such an incredible beating before going under, maybe she would have been a tough target too, also worthy of 3 hits…

[CWO Marc]

@DrLarsen:

Yes; the Americans seemed better at damage control in all sorts of ways.  It’s a complex and difficult area, and it seems as though US designers and planners spent a good deal more time working through many of these details.  No doubt they’d also learned many helpful lessons from early-war losses, but the Japanese were also trying their best to learn these lessons but for some reason didn’t seem to get the details right.  Taiho was built specifically with the lessons of Midway in mind, and still major mistakes in damage control doomed a ship that should have been able to survive.  Shinano was then built with lessons from the Taiho disaster in mind, and still she was lost on her maiden voyage to an attack by a single sub!  (To be fair, sources also point out that not all of her water-tight hatches or pumping equipment was installed; still, accounts indicate that the damage-control officers initially thought they had things under control and were then spectacularly proven wrong, and indication that something was missing in their understanding of the situation…)

But back to the subject of how we should treat the ships in terms of AA stats, after a little more checking, I found on Wikipedia that Shinano supposedly had a maximum capacity of 120 aircraft.  What it didn’t say was whether this meant 120 combat-ready aircraft or whether many of these broken down for storage to use as spares and/or reserves… and I left most of my better sources in VA so I don’t have ready access to them to check on this point.  So maybe giving her an air wing capacity of 3 would still make sense, but I’m not sure.  The stats on her basic armor were impressive, so maybe once all her damage control equipment was installed, and given that her half-sister BB’s took such an incredible beating before going under, maybe she would have been a tough target too, also worthy of 3 hits…

I have quite a few reference books at home that probably include specifications on Shinano, so I’ll have a look this weekend and see if I can turn up anything useful.

One of the factors which contributed to the confusion (and hence the poor damage control) on Shinano when she was torpedoed is that she had several civilian naval construction workers aboard.  Their work clothes looked vaguely naval in design, so when they went up on deck after the ship was hit they were given orders by naval officers (who thought they were naval personnel) to return to their stations (which they refused to obey), thus confusing the real sailors nearby about whether or not orders had been given to abandon ship.

[Imperious Leader]

Shinano sunk because the crew were not experienced in counter flooding, so it listed heavily and broke the other compartments and sunk the ship.

Anyway:

CVL/CVE:  0-1-2-10 ( one hit, one plane)
CV: 0-2-2-16 ( two hits, two planes)
CVB: 1-2-2-22 ( three hits, three planes)

[DrLarsen]

@Imperious:

Shinano sunk because the crew were not experienced in counter flooding, so it listed heavily and broke the other compartments and sunk the ship.

Anyway:

CL/CVE:  0-1-2-10 ( one hit, one plane)
CV: 0-2-2-16 ( two hits, two planes)
Super Carrier: 1-2-2-22 ( three hits, three planes)

I presume you mean CVL (Light Fleet Carrier), not CL (Light Cruiser?)  In any case, I think I’d prefer:

CVL/CVE:  0-1-2-10 ( one hit, one plane)
CV: 1-2-2-16 ( two hits, two planes)
Super Carrier: 1-3-2-22 ( three hits, three planes)

This still only gives the standard CV the same A/D stats as in AA42 and the SCV the same A/D as in classic.

Perhaps there could also be room for a CVE below a CVL as a 0-1-1-8 (1 hit, 1 plane)

In my July tournament with the kids I might try using a bunch of classic pieces to try the CVE along with (slow) old BB’s, (slow) 6 IPC transports and maybe (slow) DE’s, too on a classic board, (and use AH pieces for their standard “fast” equivalents) just to see how it goes.

[Yavid]

@Imperious:

Shinano sunk because the crew were not experienced in counter flooding, so it listed heavily and broke the other compartments and sunk the ship.

Anyway:

CL/CVE:  0-1-2-10 ( one hit, one plane)
CV: 0-2-2-16 ( two hits, two planes)
Super Carrier: 1-2-2-22 ( three hits, three planes)

and she was sailing with a skeleton crew, and she didn’t have her fire control systems complete, and didn’t have her water tight doors installed.

[knp7765]

I think giving SuperCarriers a defense of 3 would make them overpowered. They already carry 3 planes for defense plus take 3 hits to sink. You would need an armada just to attack 1 fully loaded Super Carrier.
A little curious about your CVE idea. I’m not sure that having a ship with a movement of 1 would be good for anything other than coastal defense. All other ships move 2 so it wouldn’t be able to keep up with anything. Or is that your idea for the “old” battleships and 6 IPC transports, that they only move 1 as well? I guess that might be an interesting idea. You could have a “fast” fleet take off to do an attack then a “slow” fleet comes up behind and makes a sort of second wave attack.

[DrLarsen]

@knp7765:

I think giving SuperCarriers a defense of 3 would make them overpowered. They already carry 3 planes for defense plus take 3 hits to sink. You would need an armada just to attack 1 fully loaded Super Carrier.
A little curious about your CVE idea. I’m not sure that having a ship with a movement of 1 would be good for anything other than coastal defense. All other ships move 2 so it wouldn’t be able to keep up with anything. Or is that your idea for the “old” battleships and 6 IPC transports, that they only move 1 as well? I guess that might be an interesting idea. You could have a “fast” fleet take off to do an attack then a “slow” fleet comes up behind and makes a sort of second wave attack.

That’s exactly my idea.  Much like the 3rd/5th Fleet [a mobile strike force] (dominated by CV’s & CVL’s, supported by New BB’s & CA’s, along with the latest CB’s, CL’s and DD’s) was supported by the 7th Fleet [the amphibious force] which contained the slow transports supported by older BB’s and CA’s for fire support, CVE’s for air support, and DE’s for ASW/ screening.  I’ve get one set of classic (& classic-style EotH, Xeno and/or TT) pieces for the amphibious task forces and one set of revised/AA40 pieces for the strike forces.

Note that slowing the slow ships down to 1 is premised on the assumption that I use a small board (probably the classic board.)  Either next year (or maybe this year if I get a large # of kids who want to play) I’ll try a bigger board and speed up the fast ships to a 3 instead.

For me having at least 2 different ship speeds is about the only thing that makes any sense of Coach’s insistence on an old BB for everybody.  Otherwise, just have the latest SBB/BB/CB for everybody, because the biggest difference between old and new BB’s was speed and efficiency.  (Yes there were all sorts of other improvements, but most old BB’s were retrofitted with all of these improvements.  Even in areas where this wasn’t possible, there was still such a scale & capability gap between any BB and any CA that you couldn’t reasonably lower old BB capabilities that much, besides the key speed exception. At worst, you could maybe say that a typical old BB would roughly equate to a slow CB.)

[DrLarsen]

Another way to look at it is that you have your fast-attack “blue water navy” to gain control of the sea and your “brown water navy” that specializes in amphibious work… which is pretty much exactly what the US Navy learned to do, first in having 2 different types of task force in the mid-war island-hopping campaigns (Solomons, Marshalls, Marianas) and then in having two whole different “numbered fleets” (the 7th vs. the 3rd/5th) in the last couple of really big campaigns (Philippines, Okinawa.)

Remember, now, that during WW2, transports were nearly always much slower than warships anyway, so having a group of slower (and thus cheaper and/or legacy) warships that specialized in supporting transport ships actually made perfect sense.  Given that DE’s were much cheaper than DD’s and that CVE’s were much cheaper (and more plentiful) than CV’s (or even than CVL’s, for that matter), using them to support transports freed up more of the latest, fast, state-of-the-art warships for the point-of-the-spear sea-control mission.  Likewise, supporting the amphibs was the perfect role for legacy, slow BB’s (and then they came in handy in a defensive role at Leyte Gulf, and certainly could have a similar secondary defensive function in an AA amphib campaign.)

[CWO Marc]

Basically, the difference between fleet carriers (CVs), light fleet carriers (CVLs) and escort carriers (CVEs) is as follows.  Fleet carriers operated large numbers of top-of-the-line naval aircraft of all types.  CVLs operated the same aircraft types, but in smaller numbers; they were essentially reduced-sized fleet carriers.  Escort carriers were less capable ships, built cheaply and in large numbers, intended for a support role rather than a front-line fleet combat role.  They didn’t operate the latest high-performance aircraft or the full range of naval airplene types, unlike fleet carriers and light fleet carriers.

[DrLarsen]

@CWO:

Basically, the difference between fleet carriers (CVs), light fleet carriers (CVLs) and escort carriers (CVEs) is as follows.  Fleet carriers operated large numbers of top-of-the-line naval aircraft of all types.  CVLs operated the same aircraft types, but in smaller numbers; they were essentially reduced-sized fleet carriers.  Escort carriers were less capable ships, built cheaply and in large numbers, intended for a support role rather than a front-line fleet combat role.  They didn’t operate the latest high-performance aircraft or the full range of naval airplene types, unlike fleet carriers and light fleet carriers.

Yes, but you missed the other key distinction: CVL’s were fast to operation with fast carrier task forces, whereas CVE’s were slower (and thus cheaper) as they only had to keep up with merchant convoys (in their original role) or slow transports (in their secondary amphibious role).  Also, escort carriers carried the same TBF Avenger torpedo/ level bombers and SBD Dauntlass scout/ dive bombers as other carriers.  They did tend to carry smaller and less capable fighters, though, (like the F4F Wildcat) and I’m unsure if this was just a matter of prioritizing the best fighters for the “point-of-the-spear,” “blue-water” fleet/ light fleet carriers or because the faster and more powerful fighters like the F6F Hellcat or F4U Corsair had trouble operating from the shorter deck or some other such operational reason.  The Bottom line, though, is that the planes carried were pretty similar: the Wildcat was a pretty good fighter, not that much inferior to the Hellcat, with many advantages over the Zero.

[Pacific War]

I.ve been waiting for nice Japanese pieces in the classic yellow gold color for over twenty years!!!  Way to go HBG!!!

[DrLarsen]

@Pacific:

I.ve been waiting for nice Japanese pieces in the classic yellow gold color for over twenty years!!!�  � Way to go HBG!!!

Amen to that!  While I have the one small philosophic disagreement in preferring CB’s to old BB’s and CVL’s to CVE’s (since I’ve been assuming that Classic pieces can serve as old BB’s and CVE’s anyway, like I’ve always done, and since I don’t see much point in old BB’s or CVE’s without a speed distinction anyway) I still find HBG’s overall line-up for the Japanese impressive and a huge step up and I can’t wait for it to be available!

[CWO Marc]

@CWO:

I have quite a few reference books at home that probably include specifications on Shinano, so I’ll have a look this weekend and see if I can turn up anything useful.Â

Here are the figures I found.  The basic conclusion is that Shinano had stronger deck protection than Yamato but considerably weaker side protection.

Main belt armour (amidships):
Shinano 160mm
Yamato 410mm

Lower belt:
Shinano 200mm tapered to 75mm
Yamato 270mm tapered to 75mm

Deck armour (centerline):
Shinano 250mm total
Yamato 240mm total

Deck armour (outboard):
Shinano 380mm
Yamato 293mm

Both ships had a maximum speed of 27 knots.  Shinano carried 47 aircraft: 20 fighters (including two dismantled), 20 bombers (including two dismantled) and 7 scouts (including one dismantled).

[DrLarsen]

Hey Coach and Variable: I was checking at your site and noticed that it looks like you’ve settled on the Kaga for your “late war/ large” carrier design.  Since the Kaga was a unique one-off conversion design, I think that Shokaku or Taiho would make more sense as they come closer to the Japanese ideal of what they wanted in a carrier, and thus would be likely to build more of.  What was the thinking on that one?

[Variable]

@DrLarsen:

Hey Coach and Variable: I was checking at your site and noticed that it looks like you’ve settled on the Kaga for your “late war/ large” carrier design.  Since the Kaga was a unique one-off conversion design, I think that Shokaku or Taiho would make more sense as they come closer to the Japanese ideal of what they wanted in a carrier, and thus would be likely to build more of.  What was the thinking on that one?

The Kaga is being included in the “Basic Set” which is the future set not being done right now. The idea of this set is that it includes “iconic” sculpts, not necessarily the most common. Akagi has now been done by WOTC, and we want to do Unryu in the Expansion Set. Coach really likes Kaga, so we settled on that as the iconic Japanese carrier for HBG. So, after all is said and done, we will have available Shinano, Akagi, Unryu, and Kaga, plus whatever FMG decides to do. That’s a lot of CV choices!

[knp7765]

Geez! That is a lot. We’re looking at 4 and possibly 5 different fleet carriers for Japan now. I know people like some variety, but doesn’t that seem a bit much for these games? Is each carrier type going to have different specific values? Or will some of them simply be for a different “look” on the game board? This isn’t even including the Light carriers and Escort carriers, which we know will also have different values.

BY the way, HBG has really outdone himself on the Japanese sets. That is a LOT of different types of units to put into play. Looks great. Can I assume that eventually we will have this selection for just about all the different countries? I know some of the smaller ones like France, ANZAC and Italy won’t be quite so big, and Russia and Germany probably won’t have as many naval choices, but I’m talking the major countries like USA and Britain. WOW! That would really be some kind of lay out.

I’m starting to feel a little sorry for Britain now. They are the only major nation that nobody has made any new stuff for, unless you count the 1941 sculpts and stuff from Singapore.