4 replies to this topic

[Nicola Prandoni]

I'm studying how to handle campaign game air recon.I'm somehow puzzled on how effective long range aircraft (PB) are.I don't really know how was the actual search pattern, but using the rule as written seems to give too generous results.Imagine three Sunderlands searching a 15° arc with a 40 hex radius.They project maximum chances over an area of more than 6270 sqnm at all times!!!This seems even more generous if you think of their speed of 4 hexes (120nm) per hour; that makes for 20 hours round trip.This makes it all the most difficult to be everywhere at the same time over such a large area.Am I missing something or should I consider to divide the number of aircraft by a factor related to the range.As area grow with the square of the distance, reduction should be important at greater ranges.Say 2 for ranges of 21 to 30, 3 for ranges of 31 to 40.Did any of you guys think about it already, and would like to share thoughts?Nicola

[Jim O'Neil]

Nicola,Weather should modify the probability (thick clouds, say 80% coverage means only a 20% chance of visual sighting); see page 3-4. Also there is a fine chance of an inaccurate sighting report (which could ID enemy ships as friendly) and for an aircraft to make a sure ID requires that it get close enough to get shot down by AA.

[James Davis]

for what its worth, I was in an air rescue sqd in the 50s, and used to go along for the ride on training missions, sitting in one of the observation blisters. (Carribean, south america ) I could see a lot father tan 60 miles, even at the 5-7000 ft we flew. ( with windows removed for cooling, and no oxygen, so under 10.000. ) I spotted single ships 1/2 to 2/3 of the way to the horizon. These were smaller cargo and DD sized naval vessels, i am sure a CV or group of ships would bave been spottable at greater distance, especially at higher altitude.. Cloud cover will usually mimimal, The hard part was lower down, looking for a life raft or single person.Jim

[Cpt M]

Nicola,As Jim pointed out, the range of visibility from altitude can be incredibly long. According to what I've read, the results the rules give are consistent with the operational doctines of the time.

[Lonnie Gill]

True, but Nicola makes a good point when simulating the very long "pie search" arcs flown by PBs (flying boat patrol bombers) in WWII. Even in good weather, the total area expands as the distance flown increases to the point that some of the square miles will end up unscanned. Accordingly, the Air Search table has been revised in Amendment 1 to reflect the effects of long range searches.Thanks Nicola for helping us finetune the simulation to improve this area.LONNIE