Blair's change of heart . . .

Re: Re: Re: Jeep Carriers vs Fleet Carriers

Originally posted by Starkey


True. Some of the ships that could sustain more hits were the German´s Bismarck and the Graf Spee.
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Problem is, you're talking about different weapons here. The Graf Spee (one of Germany's pocket battleships during WW2, btw) was sunk by shellfire, not dive bombers and torpedoes. Torpedoes were designed to hit ships below the waterline, where their armor was often much lighter. And while bombs might be somewhat similar to shellfire, it might also be useful to compare the weights of the shells vs. the bombs (I don't know either bit of information, unfortunately).
Also worth mentioning is that as far as the Japanese carriers at Midway are concerned (sunk strictly by bombs), the carriers largely went down due to the ordinance for the planes being improperly secured. Bombs outside of magazine equals big trouble when carrier gets bombed. And incidentally, while the Hiryu was turned into an unusable flaming wreck, it didn't actually sink until a day or two after the battle (This turned out to be fortunate for the engineering crew as they were assumed dead by the Japanese and left behind. The US Navy picked up the very bitter engineers who managed to abandon ship just before she finally went down.).

The moral of this story is that torpedoes are superior to bombs and shellfire.
 
Ok, valid point, but it is a heck of a lot easier to dive bomb than it is to make a torpedo run, hugging the waves, going slow, and getting bracketed by triple-A. Yes, a torpedo run can deliver greater results, but getting a good, well aimed shot of could be tricky. The best method for delivering torpedos? A submarine.
 
Originally posted by Starkey
I might have overrated the "Admiral Graf Spee" by comparing it to the Bismarck, but it was no puny U-boat.
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Mmmhh... I always thought that the Graf Spee was an U-Boat.
 
Originally posted by Ghost


Mmmhh... I always thought that the Graf Spee was an U-Boat.
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I believe its been termed a "pocket battleship". Just to provide a minor bit of comparison (though admittedly not very scientific), Avalon Hill once produced a wargame called War at Sea that attempted to model a possible Battle of the Atlantic. Some standard ship stats were...
Attack/Armor/Speed

Graf Spee 2/2/5
Bismark 4/9/6
Generic Heavy Cruiser 1/1/7
Generic British Battleship 4/4/3(or 4)
King George V 4/5/6
 
War at Sea... is that game good?

Hey Ghost, the battle that crippled the Graf Spee took place in the Rio de La Plata, in the beginning of WWII. That´s near you. The captain of the Graf Spee, in spite of being considered a great commander, was blamed for the loss of the ship.

More details at www.grafspee.com

The Bismarck, though, is a whole another story. That ship was very tough, only destroyed because of a lucky torpedo shot in the rudder, which kept it from maneuvering and eventually led to its ambush and destruction.
 
Yes, i saw that site just few minutes ago, those Nazi also came with gold, and according some people here, in the government of Peron some Nazi´s U-Boat came with more gold and some war criminals seeking assylum (that is why i confused the Graf Spee with the U-Boat)
 
Originally posted by Starkey
War at Sea... is that game good?
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War at Sea was okay. A VERY simple game. Victory in the Pacific, which was almost identical, but covered the Pacific theater, was much, much better. The counters were almost interchangeable for both games, though, and it wasn't too hard to come up with custom rules to combine them. I think there were some "official" rules to combine the two that were published in Avalon Hill's magazine (The General), but I never saw them.
Of course, since Hasbro pretty much killed every last game that Avalon Hill made when they bought AH, you'd have to look pretty hard to find a copy of either game.
It looks like a few AH games have been rereleased (ASL was picked up by someone else, Axis & Allies and similar games are coming out under the AH label now, but I think there are a few original AH games that are back in production), but I don't think either one of these games is back out.
 
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