Amiral Crapaud

Could be the feeling indeed at first sight, yet I think that it also makes sense to compare it to the actual whiter shade of the replaced moving surfaces on the model. Then, in retrospect, the color tone the chaps picked eventually for the "worn out" ameiro looks much greener when compared to the clean newer amber grey picked for the moveable parts, with the assumption that it would turn slowly into the color of the fuselage with a few extra weeks of carrier service.

The Japanese had their own systems, using their directional finders. Lundstrom alludes to these in Black Shoe Carrier Admiral. In the meantime Biard continued relaying to Fletcher the messages intercepted from the Japanese strike group. In the Lexington Fullinwider did the same for Fitch. Lt. Cdr. Clarence C. Ray, the Yorktown communications officer, recalled, “The air was full of their conversation trying to get home and aboard.” One of Biard’s intercepts received at 1903 gave an all too accurate position for TF-17 (bearing 160 degrees and 110 miles from Rossel), so not all enemy aircrew were befuddled. At 1900 another aircraft said it would “arrive” at 1940. Had it been one that buzzed TF-17, its carrier might be seventy to a hundred miles away, direction unknown. That seemed to be that case at 1939, when another plane requested its carrier turn on the lights. At 2003 an aircraft advised: “I see you.” A few minutes later the observer piloting his plane requested, then demanded, that a searchlight be shone on the sea so he could try a water landing. The revealing transmissions lasted until about 2130. They appeared to show two carriers differentiated by their call signs. In addition to communicating directly with the aircraft, these ships also used high-frequency transmissions as radio homing beacons, but TF-17 lacked proper receivers capable of taking a bearing on such transmissions. [...] Takagi agreed to Hara’s recommendation that MO Striking Force assume a special formation to facilitate recovery of the strike. The Shōkaku and Zuikaku deployed abreast, while ahead off to starboard the two heavy cruisers aimed searchlights across their bows and destroyers on both quarters shined their searchlights forward to demarcate the flanks. Takagi could risk illuminating MO Striking Force for as long as it took to recover his planes, because he (unlike Fletcher) had a pretty good idea of the position of the nearest enemy ships. At 2000 when the first strike plane landed, the two carrier forces were about one hundred miles apart. Thereafter the distance between them increased as Takagi steamed east and Fletcher southeast. [...] At 2151 Fitch informed Fletcher by TBS: “Presence of enemy planes during recovery of our fighters and analysis of later radar plots indicate enemy carrier or carriers about thirty miles bearing 090 at 1930.” He also warned that the Japanese carriers might have “excellent” high frequency radio direction finders. Thirty miles east? The Lexington’s radar tracked the strike planes as they circled thirty miles away and seemed to disappear one by one as if landing. The reason why at least some Japanese planes circled was the U.S. fighter director transmissions jammed their radio homing signals.

Yeah wanted to share that too based on the thumbnail, until I realized there was no mention of any beacon system (that the Japanese actually absolutely had). That evening raid that got caught by the US CAP and tried to land on US carriers at Coral Sea sure did not find its way home by looking solely at the stars ^^

Although the jury might still be somewhat out as far as the number of actual radios is concerned, one thing is still certain - considering there was no FDO doctrine really, having a radio in this case would amount to little in terms of overall efficiency. No RADAR & no TBS also means that any indication from the screen would have to be usually relayed (usually by light signals) to the carrier before it could be transmitted to any radio operator, a most inadequate technique that explains why the screen was instead instructed, from my understanding, to fire in the direction of the threats they'd spot, with larger guns if need be, so as to attract the attention of the fighter cover.

That was true of Hornet, but both Enterprise and Yorktown had had their fair share of action - Yorktown in particular used torpedoes at Tulagi and Coral sea (with some success, but these were possibly from the pre-war Mod 0 stocks that might have suffered from less issues than the Mod 1 used at Midway) As for the parameters for efficient deployment, these were at any rate hampered by doctrine, which last time I checked asked of US pilots drop distances which would have made their IJN counterparts feel ashamed of themselves, to be honest ^^

Aye! @Jason_Williams as what can probably be best described as a feat akin a cosmic pendant to the inability of waves of dedicated torpedo aircraft using doctrine to score a single hit, PBYs rigged with Mk13 torpedoes attacked the invasion fleet at night during a nerve-cracking mission, finding their target in the middle of the ocean hundreds of miles away from Midway, slipped one into tanker Akebono Maru and found their way back home ^^ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Battle_of_Midway_PBY_torpedo_attack_pilots_in_June_1942.jpg TROM entry at Combinedfleet (Japanese PoV) The coordinates logged by the Japanese ship puts it at 528 miles away from Midway, just to give an idea of the needle in the haystack part of the adventure

And it wasn't just a legend, quite impressive to witness 😉 At the end of the day, a single one did find a target during that battle still after all. Even a broken clock etc... I guess

So is what a computer gotta compute in such a situation 😉 The amount of steel thrown at nothing in the sky is no small joke, it is a challenge to model in itself, even early war. The number of projectiles for which ballistics may or may not have to be calculated is a big affair. "Fused artillery AA" - as in proximity fuze vs. normal self-destruct or manually set time fuze - is, like Cpt Crunch says, a matter of later war scenario. Still, the mere amount of tubes on the average June 1942 US warship makes it all much more dangerous to face than its Japanese equivalent at any rate. But considering this added lethality is primarily due to the mere volume of fire and overall savvyness of the gun crews for everything that fires below 25mm, I can tell you, that's one of the hardest parts to balance so as to reach a believable level of destruction.

Yeah, we all loved their turretless New Orleans indeed ^^ "Damn it guys, we expended the CGI budget, we cannot give cruisers their main battery, sorry" "Who cares!" Apart from that and many other things unfortunately, much worse obviously, yes there was something to this idea. Just too bad the execution is as it is.

There might be some nostalgia involved there - PAW had its plane count in a single scenario limited to 16 if I remember correctly. For more, you'd have to wait for its cousin European Air War 4 years down the road 😉 To my knowledge, we hardly had any offering that did not fancy itself as an arcade game providing us with the relevant number of ships and aircraft on screen in the nearly 30 years that separate us from that game, as far as PTO is concerned. Cheers

Oh hello Feathered! Sorry, only saw your message just now! If you mean the map that might have popped up on SAS and of which I had seen pics back in the day, with the town, that really was a great, great job. Thank you very much for your kind offer, I'll happily ask when time comes 🙂 What I saw over there in the forums was a big source of inspiration, if I can make the best use of your experience, rest assured I will 😉

The original post on the Il-2 GB forum https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/84861-d3a-val-attacking-yorktown-cv-5-full-cgi/

As a follow-up to discord, here are good archival videos of the elusive 3 inch AA gun https://we.tl/t-LteD4MYEes packaged above on wetransfer, but the original files are here anyway https://catalog.archives.gov/id/24636 Several variants of the 3 inch AA gun are on display. The ones with automatic pointing in fixed emplacements deployed as a battery are likely M3s I suppose? But I could be wrong. At any rate at the beginning of video 2 you get several shots show the deployment of the spider chassis as seen in the scale model posted by m0ther_bra1n3d Obviously not enough to make a 3D model out of it all, but very precious as far as operations are concerned.

Yeah, it really is a matter of which airplane we're talking about. Ask the ghost of Butch O'Hare what he thought of the Betties being difficult to shoot down, let's say that different personal experiences might lead to different statements & opinions in the matter 😅

Then I raise you one Chris & one Claringbould, good companion to all this!