4 replies to this topic

[Andrew Burton]

With the US and Germans when they both have an R+ and an RFC + does this mean in daylight to go down a colum or not. I know the RFC helps in night actions but what does it do for them in the daylight. Is Royal Navy capable of doing the samething?

[Bob Benge]

RFC is only used for limited visibiltiy or night engagements. See the rule below which is on Page 1-8, Section 1.5.5 item 3 (at bottom):"DARK scale [RFC scale for USN and Kriegsmarine] along the right side for nocturnal and limited visibility attacks."

[Dave Franklin]

I have to admit wondering about this too - not the rule as written, but the whole idea of using RFC during a daylight engagement. Obviously in WWII there weren't a large number of daytime engagments, as compared to night, and most were in the earlier part of the war, but wouldn't you think at least the later war R+ RFC would help the gunnery in the daytime?Don't know about R- RFC, I'll have to go back and read up on Komandorski Islands to see if there are accounts of Pensacola's RFC helping her gunnery. Also could look up if there were any daytime battles in the Med after the Brits fielded R- RFC on their ships.From what I've read, between range and deflection, range was by far the harder of the two to resolve, as far as a firing solution was concerned. If the premise is that a downshift on the day range scale would be too much, how about exempting ships with RFC (or at least R+ RFC) from the Initial Salvos penalty? Just a thought...

[Jim O'Neil]

Radar was much more accurate in range determination, this coupled with visual tracking gave much better FC data to work with.Radar also was not bothered by smoke, and could 'see' much further. Radar detection of shell splashes allowed for adjustment when the spotting tops could not see. In all, it offered many advantages.

[Dave Franklin]

I did a quick read of the account of the Komandorski Islands battle in Morrison's History of the USN in WWII over the weekend. The only references to radar seemed to be SW; nothing that seemed to be about RFC.