Do the current landable carrier decks operate at sea level, using the EAW optical illusion?

1.28c was released with the raised deck allied carrier so that people could take off from it and land on it

Just to be clear, in SPAW, both sides have carriers.

I missed that update on the carriers while I was on MIA.

Hi Guys,

Interesting ships but a bit of confusion in some cases - I presume these are from PAW? For the record you have for the Japanese carriers Akagi though the funnels may be on the wrong side, Hiryu which could have the same problem, "Hurio" is probably Hiyo or Junyo, Ryujo which is fairly OK as are Soryu, Shinano, Taiho and Shokaku. Not sure what SHH is but probably Shoho though a lot of the light carriers are similar in appearance. The so called "IJN Sara" is of course the USS Saratoga. Some of the models seem to be a bit too tall in the upper hull. Compared to US carriers Hiryu, Soryu, Shokaku, Zuikaku and the light carries were long and low.

The battleship is of the Nagato class, the "heavy BB" is a Yamato, the heavy cruiser is either Furutaka or Aoba class, the destroyer could be a Fubuki but the later classes are all fairly similar. The light cruiser is probably a Nagara. One of the problems with cruisers and destroyers is that as the war went on more AA was added, often leading to the removal of some of the main armament so it gets difficult to determine exactly what things are. THe same applies to some extent with battleships and carriers - the AA fit mentioned for Yorktown was probably mid war as the 20mm were added to the original fit, and then 40mm were added later. To be totally correct you have to specify which individual ship and what date, but we need not go down that road I think.

As to the US carriers, Wasp and Essex are OK, as is Saratoga once it changes sides, but the Enterprise is actually the post war CVN - the first nuclear powered carrier. A "real" Enterprise is needed but I note mention of Yorktown though have not seen a pic - Yorktown, Enterprise and Hornet were of course sister ships and all were a slightly enlarged version of Wasp. We could do with one of the Escort (aka Jeep/Woolworth) Carriers as well.

The 2 identical BB are North Carolina and Washington, the light cruiser is an Atlanta class AA cruiser and the heavy cruiser could be a Northampton though the funnels are short. The destroyer looks like a Porter class which is an odd choice but OK. It seems to missing one set of torpedo tubes.

As you will have gathered I am interested in ships and have a good library of photos, specifications and plans and even 1/700 scale models which I will be happy to share if anybody has the time and interest to "improve" these floating targets but they are certainly better than nothing as they stand. One final point regarding skinning - both US and Japan used a basic grey colour scheme but they also used a variety of camo schemes as well - Hornet was several shades of blue for example, including the deck. If we stick to grey the Japanese version was a fair bit darker than the US one and there were at least 3 variations depending on which naval dockyard did the painting. At least one carrier and battleship were green.

Cheers

Pete

Thanks for the info on the Ships, Peter.

I've been looking out for card models of the ships, so Moggy will have ready made skin parts.

I found the Saratoga, and although I don't have a pic, there is a set of files for the Yorktown. I'll see if I can get a screen for you.

The Yorktown

Thanks John,

That looks fine so all we "need" is an Independance or similar light carrier for a reasonable set. Any idea what is available for Royal Navy and Kriegsmarine? If anybody wants to know what colours to skin them give me a shout.

This reminds me of when Microprose were making the sub sim Silent Service II back in the late 1980's. They had pics and line drawings but wanted accurate views of Japanese warships from all angles as they passed the periscope so they "digitised" a set of 1/700 waterline ship kits - Aoshima, Fujimi, Hasegawa and Tamiya had "clubbed together" sometime, possibly in the 1960's and produced almost the entire IJN together with a few US and RN carriers and Battleships. I helped a friend with a model shop in Hackney to import a container full of them! Since then other companies have joined in, mostly with RN & USN cruisers and destroyers but including the odd older USN & RN battleship, the battlecruiser Repulse, German DD and Italian BB as well. I first came across them in a model shop in Liverpool in 1968 and have built a fair few, though they are now consigned to the attic.

Getting interesting target wise. We have the USN and IJN carriers for Midway (Kaga, Akagi, Hiryu, Soryu, Yorktown, Enterprise and Hornet) but are lacking the BB, CL (light cruiser) and CA (heavy cruisers) for the IJN support group which were attached to the carrier group - Kongo class fast battleships Haruna and Kirishima and heavy cruisers Tone and Chikuma plus light cruiser Nagara and 12 destroyers. Later the US planes found and attacked the bombardment group of 4 heavy cruisers - Kumano, Suzuya, Mogami and Mikuma, the latter being sunk. and a couple of destroyers and an oiler in support. Admiral Yamamoto Isokoru was also over the horizon with a big fleet including Nagato, sister ship Mutsu and Yamato, and there was an invasion fleet with even more BB and escorts and a lot of transports so in a "what if" they might be included. Then there were the USN support ships - 7 CA, 1 Atlanta CL AA cruiser and 14 DD not to mention the odd fleet oiler so it could get very busy. I guess Moggy has all the details so it is his choice what ships are included in his scenario - I am looking forward to flying it from both sides. Sorry I cannot do the modelling myself rather than just nit-pick.

Cheers

Pete

BTW, with 1000 TMOD slots each capital ship can be assigned it's own slot which means the accompanying string file can reference actual ship names rather than the generic "Battleship" or "Carrier".

Kreigsmarine had no carrier.The Battleships and heavy raiders had Cat launched Arado 96 floatplanes and the subs did have Flettner autogyro,s for spotting duties.

They did have one, the Graf Zeppelin, but it was never finished after the Bismark was sunk, and the Tirpitz was hounded into a Norwegian fjord. The Graf Zeppelin was sunk as a target ship, by the Russian Navy, on 16 August 1947, and rediscovered in 2006.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/graf...d-a-428857.html

Just to say that in the Medway update I was working on last year, I intend to include all the classes of ships, and the naval groupings, Peter mentions. As posted, I have the US carriers skinned and functional. At the moment I have the Japanese carriers and the other capital ships (PAW models BB, CA, CL) functional only in the original type 3 elements. For reasons discussed, these are static, though differently set out in each of five time periods (planefolders for 3rd May, 4th May morning, 4th May afternoon, 5th May, 6th May).

I intend as Ray suggests, to have each ship individually named.

I intend to have catapault launched floatplanes on a number of the battleships and cruisers. It's not too difficult to do that, just a different application of the invisible raised deck skinned to look like a ramp. Now that we can land floatplanes on water, at least they can land next to the ship from which they were launched, even if we can't winch them back on board!

Moggym where do you stand on float plane inventory?

I have a few unfinished projects.

Hi Moggy,

I guess that as this a flight sim we do not need to worry too much about the accuracy of the ships, but it is a pity that the PAW Japanese CA is a Furutaka as this class and the near sister Aoba class were, like the British Exeter and York, lightweight versions of the genuine heavy cruisers of the Nachi, Takao and Mogami classes which had 10 8" not 6 and a bit more AA. Of course many of the recce floatplanes for the initial battle were launched from the two Tone class hybrid CA with 8 8" guns up front and a long floatplane launching deck aft. Part of me thinks that given the time and trouble taken to produce accurate planes we could try and get the ships a bit more accurate, but as I will not be the one to do it then I can happily live with whatever you decide to use. Incidentally I have scale plans for the Kongo BB, Nachi, Takao and Tone CA if anybody did have the inclination.

As a matter of interest how do the PAW ships react to bomb and torpedo hits? In a warship sim there are masses of calculations about armour thickness, location of hit, size of warhead, damage control effectiveness and so on but what happens in EAW - is it just one hit anywhere and it will sink? Also, does the ships AA reflect the number and type of weapons actually fitted?

Pete

Ray - I'll check the Jap side when I get home. I think its mostly Petes and Daves. On the US side I could do with the Curtiss Seagull and the Vought Kingfisher. I don't think we currently have either.

There may some possibilities to edit the appearance (broader/longer/superstructure) but I doubt we can do it in great detail, though at least we should be able to differentiate the true heavy cruisers from the more lightweight constructions.

We can edit the number and weight of hits needed to take out each ship in the corresponding TmodXX.dat, though in nothing like the detail a proper ship sim would do. Likewise we can equip the separate layers of the ship with AA of the three types available, but this would just give an impression of the actual armament rather than scrupulously accurate.

As discussed above, the problem we have at the moment is that in using the multi-part PAW models, each part is a separate Tmod, and until we can recode to get the sim to use all the parts together as PAW did, we are thrown back on using various bodges.

Funny you mention the Seagull. This month's Air Combat Magazine has a write up on the Sewmew.

It was supposed to replace the Seagull and have that name but it was a real stinker. The US took a number of old Seagulls out of mothballs as a stop gap measure. Problem would have been two different aircraft with the same name so they christened the new one Seamew.

And then scrapped 'em. Well a few became target drones but that's really just slow motion scrapping.

I'll look around my inventory and see what have that would make a good base for those two.

I also have a hi-res Pete that's partially done.

The Dave looks a bit Swordfishy doesn't it? Might be able to adapt your excellent Swordfish model.




Now on to the ships.

In SPAW I used the same model for the heavy and light cruisers. All I did was reduce the size by 30% and edit the number of gun barrels.

As for multi part ships. If that doesn't get off the ground you could still use the trick I used in the new target upgrade.

I dedicated a number of TMOD slots to models that were raised up from ground level to the exact height of a couple of different freighters. Then using the target editor I added those models to the ships so it looks like they are attached to the ship. Those ships have AA guns, tanks, jeeps, trucks and aircraft.

The only downside is that the destroyed ship has to be a floating hulk, not sinking. Otherwise any unharmed deck cargo would be left floating in mid air.

Also, it could only be used on static ships.

You can see for yourself if you look at the static convoys in the English Channel.

I heard about the Seamew. I wonder what you do with them when you've ordered a load of junk like that (See Blackburn Botha!)

I love the bodge to get cargo on those freighters. In the original Midway I used "invisible" models to get AA on the carriers and other ships. I'll let this run around in my head a bit and see what comes out.

Don't forget to tilt your head or the good ideas might get stuck.