Aces High Bulletin Board
Help and Support Forums => Help and Training => Topic started by: Kweassa on December 18, 2002, 01:09:12 AM
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Alright AH fans!
One of our new planes we received in 1.11 is the B5N2-kate. What do you think of it? What? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know.
It's slow. No forward firing guns, too. Not very inspiring JABO capabilities. In fact, many of us wonder why this plane was introduced in the first place.
However, every planes has its ups and downs.
What this babe Kate's got, is a nifty torpedo sight which you can use to accurately destroy ships with a devastating torpedo run!
Well, how is one supposed to use it?
Sit tight, it's gonna be explained!
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Let's sit at the cockpit of this babe. What do you see?
A strange " I " shaped sight with numbers underneath.
What can those be used for?
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Well, AH fans, those numbers are the relative angles between the B5N2 and the target ship! For better understanding, look at the picture below. These angles are only effective when Kate and the target ship is approaching each other.
When you approach the ship in a straight Head-On, the angle is 0 degrees defelction.
When you approach the ship in a diagonal line like described right in the middle, the angle is 45 degrees deflection.
When you approach the ship like described in the third instance, rhe relative angle is 90 degrees deflection.
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It is a little bit difficult to just simply judge these angles with your eyes, but that is the part where you need extensive training and experience.
When attacking a ship, always circle to its front side and attack in the position where you and the target ship both approach each other!
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From the cockpit, a perspective like this is about 45 degrees relative deflection.
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Look at the angles from a perspective outside your plane. At the beginning of my approach, I guessed I was doing about 35~45 degrees deflection. Looks like I was right!
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Now, this is the part where the sight becomes useful. Match the target ship near the marked angle on your torpedo sight, and keep it there! Let's call this the "mark" process.
In our case, it was about 45 degrees. So, keep it a little outside of that "40 degrees" position on the sight.
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Some people may wonder if this process is really effective. Because your Kate and the target ship is moving towards each other.
However, if your initial "mark" is correct(if you guessed your approach angle correctly in the first place), all you have to do is keep the target on your sight's angle marker.
If you keep the target on the numbered angle marker of the sight, as you and the target approach each other your "actual angle" will change and become something different than the initially guessed angle. However, because you are keeping the ship on the numbered mark, your heading also changes slowly with the movement of target ship. This means you keep on maintaining the correct lead amount for the torpedo drop, even if you and the target ship's relative angle keeps changing.
But this is purely theoretical, and most of the times, it works because ships are so large and slow, and you are much faster than them ;) The small difference in angles are almost negligable.
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But the really important and difficult part is surviving through all those hideous fleet ack firing at you! This is one part where all the experience in the world does not help. It is mostly about luck, actually! ;)
What you must do, is get within about 1000~1200 yards of the target. The closer the better, but your survival chances are slim anyhow!
Get as close as your guts can afford, and let 'er rip!
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.... what are you doing? Get the hell outta here!!
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.... and it's off...
Going.....
Going....
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Going....
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Gone!
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nice ... but HO works good for me
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Great explanation, how does one use the sight for a 90 degree
attack or can it be used?
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Yes, Mogi it is possible.
But contrary to what people think, 90 degrees deflections are the most difficult attempt on a torpedo run, because while the largest surface on a ship is exposed, it is also a 90 degrees deflection on a moving target. In case of 45 degrees runs, small mistakes do not matter much, but in the 90 degrees runs, absolute precision is required. It's either right timing or total miss!
Also, if you are aiming for large, capital ships, 90 degrees runs are very dangerous, because Destroyer Escorts are placed on the sides of the capital ships.
In using the sight, there is a way to use it by relative estimates. But as I said 90d runs require very accurate estimation.
The relative angles large than 40 degrees can be roughly estimated in this manner:
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Also, a precise approach is required. What you want to do is first run along the TG group in perfect parallel, and then when you pass the TG, turn towards the TG in exact 90 degrees. When at the moment you do so, the target ship must be seen at the 90 degrees position marked in the upper picture.
If the target ship is behind that position, you turned towards the ship too late, so you have to throttle down. If the target ship is in front of the position, you turned towards the ship too early and have to throttle up a bit.
So in my view,
HO runs: easy to aim, and easy to survive.. but with slightest movement the ships can evade torpedos easily, as much as it is easy to aim it is also easy to miss if the aim is wrong, it takes a long time to set up
90 degrees runs: no pros, only cons. takes long to set up, requires precision, low survivability, hard to aim, hard to hit...
45 degrees runs: average difficulty in aiming, average survival rate, easy to set up runs, high possibility of hitting ships, and ships cannot evade torpedos easily.
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Excellent presentation that took a lot of extra work. Thanks, Kweassa.
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Originally posted by Halo
Excellent presentation that took a lot of extra work. Thanks, Kweassa.
Agreed. Very impressive.
- oldman
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Thank You! Very useful information to know. I have never had any success at torpedo runs....now I know why. I always tried a 90 degree approach. I will try this method tonight.
Also, what about approach speed and altitude. I have been told to approach at 100-feet alt and at a speed of 200 mph. Is this correct?
Thanks and !
pangea
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Thanks very much Kweassa!!
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I'm gonna have to try this out.... I'll add it to my "bag o' tricks". Nicely done!
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here's a film using this method from 45 degree angle. terrain used is philippines.
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Thats the 2nd time Kweassa, carefull you may get put to work!
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Very good Kweassa, thanks :)
One observation though which may help survivability (the real hard bit) :
In Kweassas pictures he shows himself attacking the front left quarter of the fleet, I believe that it would be more prudent to attack the front right as this is no so well defended by manned ack.
this image shows the field of fire for each manned ack
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this image shows the fields overlapped notice the two weeker areas front right and rear right only defended by 1 gun .
in conclusion:
45 degree front right side attack defended by = 1 ack
90 degree right side attack defended by = 2 ack
45 degree front left side attack defended by = 3 ack
90 degree left side attack defended by = 4 ack (suicide)
hope this helps as well :)
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Nice post. But...
I seriously doubt that this is how this thing is supposed to work.
Take a closer look at it. That thing with the angle is round, as if it could be turned IRL. This would be just a device to measure an angle if you moved your head to the side. If it was also possible to adjust the forward notch along the roll axis of the aircraft (forward/backward) off the center of the disc with the angles this would increase the degrees of freemdom to 2.
With the right settings (turnin the thing and moving the forward notch) it should be possible to adjust it for a certain angle of attack, relative speed of target and torpedo and distance of the drop.
If it was just a device to guess the lead angle neither would it need notches nor would there be any reason to draw the angles to a disc.
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Kweassa .. very nice !!!
We, the MAW, flew JU88s in TOD one night and our orders were to torp a CV Group.
IceMAW, after many practice runs, established very similar targetting method to yours, but used the position of the ship/target at a particualr spot on the windscreen lined-up with something else in the cockpit. This approximated a 45-degree angle of attack. It worked quite well, for those of us that didn't get jumped by Zeros ... :D
Your method, while it maybe very effective, still doesn't (at least for me) explain the use of the targetting device that we see in your second picture.
If it does ... then I apologize for being so thick.
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wow...very good...i think you work to hard for this game though kweasa you and mitsu have probably put more into this game that anyone except htc staf
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Thanks Kweassa for more good stuff (again). however, I do have that questioning feeling raised by ccvi two posts up.
The degrees ring does indeed appear to be able to be rotated. It presumably does not in the game. If it WAS rotated (say, to 30 degrees), I suspect the sight would then offer a new aiming mark through whch you could then line up on the target. I think that the degreees to be read off are those that would align with the sight centre (i'e for 30 degrees offset attack) place '30' dircetly in front of you
However, we need help on practical bombing techniques and any guidance which works is a good thing. We just need to be clear if this was the technique actually used in real life.
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What is the Max Alt and Max Speed a torp can be released at ?
Are they different for different models of torp?
Thanks Kweassa, I've never been effective with torps, but I can't wait to try tonight !