Fighter Strafing

[Comrade Thomas]

Is it just me or do enemy fighter strafing runs do way too much damage to armored ships? I can understand a couple of Zeros screwing up a cargo ship or a submarine, but last night I had two instances where a cruiser and battleship took way more damage than I had expected. Had an Atlanta that was strafed from astern and had to stop to put out several fires/repair a crippled engine/deal with flooding, and when a North Carolina was strafed from her starboard side I had five engine compartments damaged and four fires that broke out. That kind of damage seems very excessive when you consider the relative armor values of an Atlanta class cruiser, North Carolina class battleship, and the fact that the biggest gun on a Zero is 20mm. Seems like that damage just completely ignores the armor.

[Sinjen Blackstar]

The Atlanta is rather thin skinned, but the North Caroline should take that strafing like a champ. Thinking about it. It would be virtually suicide for a fragile zero to strafe an AA cruiser like the Atlanta, much less the forest of AA of a NC class BB. Tell me they got blown out of the sky for their stupidity?

[Comrade Thomas]

Originally posted by Sinjen Blackstar:

The Atlanta is rather thin skinned, but the North Caroline should take that strafing like a champ. Thinking about it. It would be virtually suicide for a fragile zero to strafe an AA cruiser like the Atlanta, much less the forest of AA of a NC class BB. Tell me they got blown out of the sky for their stupidity?

Unfortunately, in both instances one or two Zeroes got away out of the original four.

I should also mention that both Atlanta and NC were in task forces with overlapping AA fire. Altanta had Hornet, Boise, and two Fletchers, while NC also had South Dakota and two Bensons

[tykits]

I was just posting about the same topic...Just curious how everyone else is seeing this. I had 4 A6Ms strafe my New Orleans Heavy Cruiser, with 2.2" deck armour, 4.7" belt armour, 1.5" superstructure and 8" turret armour. Caused Minor flooding and Moderate damage. I saw no munitions deployed by the planes other than MGs. Seems like a bit odd to me, especially when I try with my Wildcats on a IJN DD and do no damage.

[Nordic]

A6M Zero got a 20mm cannon on it vs Wildcats with 50 cals only, have sunk multiple DDs with either fighter type and with the Wildcat even sunk an IJN light cruiser, okay they aren't much more than rather overly large DDs but still sank it.

Most cruisers despite the name heavy or light added to it, that only tell you it's gun size not how well armoured it is, would have to go back to ww1 cruiser classification to tell armour levels, also is there are a lot of stuff on deck much of it really unarmored and some of it rather flammable, just to name the most obvious ready for use ammo for AA guns and secondaries, ships aren't only all steel and armour topside.

[MAD-3R_Marauder]

That 20mm on the Zero has, IIRC, a whole of 60 rounds of ammo.

And while you are correct that there are cruisers that have virtually no armor, most have at least _some_.
Also, While it is true that there is stuff outside the armor that can go boom or burn, are you seriously suggesting that a CA or BB could have been heavily damaged by having a DD sail up to it and spay it with a 20mm Orlikon for a few seconds?

Personally, I think it's beyond ridiculous.

[Meteor2]

... and in addition to this crazy situation, the planes (or the loss of planes) costs nothing.
So a tactic with high rewards.
Planes have to cost CP! And no spamming on airfield, please.

[tykits]

I could understand some very minor damage to the superstructure of AA guns, maybe a very lucky fire, but certainly not flooding a heavy cruiser with a 4.7" belt. In general I think the zeros are overpowered, probably because of the 20mm guns, they seem to deal an incredible amount of damage compared to the .50 cals.

[Zuul]

I think it’s important for people to realize listed armor values are NOT a universal amount of armor on the ship. They are, rather, the thickest armor in the ships citadel. Since the New Orleans was called out here....there are 9 compartments with literally NO deck armor, and 6 external compartments with either NO armor or 7 tenths of an inch (basically protection against some shell splinters). The Atlanta class as well has 12 compartments with literally no deck armor at all.

Point being, remember that the stats displayed are only for the thickest armor on the ship.

Edit; just for clarification, I feel the need to point out that .50 API ammo could pierce .7 inches of armor out to close to 500 meters.

[boris.glevrk]

IIRC there's a real history IJN ship sunk solely by MG fire due to torpedo detonation....
But of course, normally fighter strafing should only cause partial fires and some dead sailors. At most, it would disrupt bridge operations if it managed to kill a handful of bridge personnel.

[Meteor2]

Again: Planes cost nothing (and they should!). That would prevent player to use the planes this way.

[tykits]

So if we're getting into details, the .50 API can penetrate around 0.75" of rolled homogeneous armour at 500m at 0 degrees angle. A strafing run is almost never going to be hitting the side of a ship at 0 degrees. The power of the bullet after penetration of the first layer of steel is going to be severely reduced. So sure, structural steel compartments on ships could be penetrated, although under very ideal conditions. Below the waterline, if the aircraft is angled against the ship, either in a dive, against the length of the ship, or both, or if the belt composition doesn't include a decent percentage of AP rounds (I couldn't say what WW2 pacific theatre plane belts usually consisted of), damage should really be minimal. A single aircraft getting off a 10 second burst (a very long time to hold a strafing run) would result in around 80 rounds on target (0 missing the target). Of those 80 rounds, either you could say that they are very (extremely unlikely) concentrated and could perhaps do minor structural damage on a small unprotected area(unprotected areas typically not containing anything of value). Far more likely, those 80 rounds are going to be spread across dozens of square feet, one bullet per two or three square feet is hardly going to have any effect.

[Simulacra_53]

Fighters taking a shot at a target of opportunity, or some isolated lame duck is one, late war fighter bomber tactics are yet another, but right now fighters behave atypical and pack a punch strafing bigger ships.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_99_cannon

I’d go as far as saying it makes more sense to spray a deck with 4x/6x .50ies than it does with your type 99.


That said I think you’ll be hard pressed finding references on fighters strafing (capital) ships at sea in formation attacks.

[AdmiralKenobi]

Originally posted by Zuul:

I think it’s important for people to realize listed armor values are NOT a universal amount of armor on the ship. They are, rather, the thickest armor in the ships citadel. Since the New Orleans was called out here....there are 9 compartments with literally NO deck armor, and 6 external compartments with either NO armor or 7 tenths of an inch (basically protection against some shell splinters). The Atlanta class as well has 12 compartments with literally no deck armor at all.

Point being, remember that the stats displayed are only for the thickest armor on the ship.

Edit; just for clarification, I feel the need to point out that .50 API ammo could pierce .7 inches of armor out to close to 500 meters.

Doesn't really matter because all they'll do is punch holes. Ships are huge compared to tanks. So what if you poke a few holes in a compartment? There are dozens more that can keep buoyancy and holes can be patched up easily.

Unless you get a one-in-a-million hit or kamikaze, you won't be able to sink a destroyer with a fighter plane.

There's a reason why ships had to use armor-piercing shells and not solid shot—they were too capable of absorbing hits due to their sheer size.

Anyways, the point about penetration seems moot because there's a problem with fighter strafing, as seen in the config.txt file:

 "ignoreStrafe":0.9,"fireStartStrafe":0.05 

Unless there's a hidden dependency regarding penetration in some hidden file, they treat battleships with 14 inches of belt armor and unarmored cargo ships the exact same.

[tykits]

Aside from the data and statistics of penetration and chance of damage. Lining up a 10 second strafing run would be a hugely risky manouver. Making the plane a stable target. I'm not saying strafing should do NO damage, but it should certainly not be causing FLOODING in a heavy cruiser.

[Reckoner]

I agree, strafing runs do too much damage to armored ships