Really good idea and a brave attempt. Just too much discrepancy between what's available in DCS and the actual aircraft available at the time. Hopefully the mod makers will fill the gaps eventually although I can't see a modder relishing making a Brewster Buffalo!
Think you did a great job with what you had to work with, but remember they came in two waves about an hour apart. Also would it be possible to trick the game by making the zeros do low level skip bombing profile to simulate torpedo planes maybe? Heck you may be able to arm them with Harpoon and just adjust range to fire to like 200 yards? Same with dive bombing set altitude to 2000 feet and the level to I think it was 6000 feet?
In the real battle, some of the ships started moving. With 30 minutes notice, many ships would be moving out to sea. Moving ships are much harder to hit.
The battlewagons had half their crews ashore...and most of the senior officers. Getting everyone back on board takes time. Raising steam enough to move something that big can take better than an hour. You are correct that moving ships are harder to hit, but getting the fleet out of the confines of Pearl Harbor and out into open sea would have taken better than an hour, had they moved immediately upon receiving notice of an incoming attack.
@@mattbalboa1349 The real attack came in two waves nearly an hour apart, and some ships did manage to get underway before the second wave. With a 30 minute preparation period, this mobilization could have been more significant.
@@j4s0n39 You still have not gotten the word to the folks ashore that there is an emergency. How easy is it to hunt men out of their houses, homes, bars, brothels, etc., and get them aboard from all over the city? No cell phones, no television broadcasts... Patrols cruising around in jeeps, shouting. Not every house had a telephone. Civilian radio stations, maybe, but you'd have to get their management to let you break into their programing... after you drove to the radio station. Now get steam up in the boilers which might take a couple of hours... before they can even move. Let's assume that the ships are fully manned and steam is raised.. You still have to get under way. That might take as many as 4 tugboats per battleship, just to turn 24,000 tons of dead weight through the water. There were not enough tugs at Pearl to turn the battle line all at once... and each ship might take 15 minutes just too get aimed in the right direction to head for the channel. also, while a destroyer might get up the channel at higher speeds, a battlewagon is hard to steer, and the channel in and out of Pearl is not that damned wide. It is wider nowadays, because ships are bigger, but in 1941? Sorry, but you can't make all that happen short of waving a magic wand
@@j4s0n39 The time given by the others aren't entirely accurate. Depending on what readiness the ship is, 1 hour is way too optimistic. Generally you need 1 hour to build up pressure in the boilers. But that is just one part of a very complex and long process. First, off you need to call back the crew from the Sunday service. This alone is probably going to take awhile. Probably more than the 30 minute notice to be honest. The officers might be on shore leave which takes even longer. They need to get briefed, and have the information passed down. The communications are going to be a nightmare in such short notice. Secondly, starting up the boilers take several hours. The Littorio class for example takes 4 hours to start up the main boilers. An hour to build up steam in the boilers, before the crew then heat up and build up pressure in the turbines, which also takes time. Then you can finally remove the mooring lines and raise anchor, which takes several minutes at least with large ships. Depending on which ship we are talking about, some of them are moored in awkward positions and may need tug boats to assist (measured in tens of minutes at least). Then they have to navigate out of the harbor area (also measured in tens of minutes) before taking up to HALF AN HOUR to build up anywhere near max speed for battleships. However lone ships out in the open ocean while better than stationary is still very vulnerable. If you want to have an effective air defense, you need to do this for almost every ship in Pearl Harbor, avoid traffic jams, quickly rendezvous everyone, and organize them into an effective anti-air formation. This stuff normally take DAYS after an order is handed down to a fleet, doing it in an hour and a half is unrealistic. Destroyers and cruisers can start up and gather speed much faster, and don't need to rely on tugs as much. However they weren't the primary targets anyways, the battleships were. With all this in mind, most of the battleships would still be sitting ducks. They probably would have active anti-air defenses which certainly helps but not underway. The few ships that actually managed to get underway were in ideal conditions, boilers pressurized and turbines regularly heated. Most of the ships were not and in various state of readiness. tl;dr, vast majority of the ships would still be stationary even after the second wave had gone and left.
"Officially" There was one pilot, Shigenori Nishikaichi, who crash-landed his Zero fighter on the Hawaiian island of Ni’ihau after the attack and was later killed during an altercation with the locals. The only Japanese POW at Pearl Harbor was Kazuo Sakamaki, the lone survivor of the force of five midget submarines that was lost in the attack
@@grimreapers It was this incident which led to the justification of the internment of Japanese on the West Coast of America. *Second Generation* Japanese living on Ni’ihau harbored the downed pilot, arming him, and hiding him from American forces.
I know you are limited to P51s but using those paired with early warning, it's kinda easier than using a p40 or p36 which were outclassed by the zero. Maybe redo this once more aircraft options are available in DCS
als medium and high altitude bombers have little hope of success against a ship that can turn unpredictably between the time the plane drops the bomb and the bomb reaches the water.
@@KrisH-kp9vx He said DCS AI... not real life. But Japanese dive bombers were extremely accurate IRL anyways.. well until the skilled pilots all died later on, but that's not Pearl Harbor. Still not 100% though.
Still don't buy it. Bombers we're slow and cumbersome. The slowest and worst handling of any plane. Easy targets. My grandfather told me the same. They missed more than they hit and he was there in the Pacific during the whole war.
With 30 minutes warning, all the ships could have been at General Quarters and would have set Material Condition Zebra -- all watertight doors, hatches and fittings secured. Likewise, damage control teams would be manned and ready. So, even with successful hits, the odds of sinking the ships drops greatly.
They also would have been underway and harder to hit. That was one of the issues I saw with the simulation, with 30 minutes warning there wouldn't have been a Battleship row for them to line up neatly on. They would have been steaming hard for those carriers. We might have gotten to see Battleships vs Carriers to open up the war.
True. That would have helped a bunch, and maybe save3d more ships, but Oklahoma took many torps 7, maybe 8, in her Starboard side. She had never been designed to withstand that kind of damage and her water tight integrity was toast. None of the battle ships really would have done better. You are counting on 30 minutes warning that no one got because no one expected an attack.
At 29:50 for his historical question The losses for the Japanese were so insignificant here that the admirals actually expected to lose a lot more airmen when they first took off. The admirals at best expected maybe three or four carriers worth of men to come back
THE old military leadership didn't understand the new tech they had and how it works. They were told that Japan would have to attack the Philippians first before attacking Pearl, that the aircraft on radar were friendly and not to worry. Friendlies don't fly to Pearl from the north.
Had they heeded that radar warning, the American P-40 fighters would be up in the air and there would have been an immediate scramble to move the battleships. There would have been less damage to the ships because a large fraction of the attacking force would have been attacked by P-40's.
But in the tragic case that morning, the arriving B17s actually were arriving "just a few degrees" (Wikipedia article cites) apart from the direction of a large group of the first attack wave.
Using Japanese A6M "Zero" fighters totally unbalances the simulation from the very beginning!!! The Achi D3A "Val" only had a 7.7mm machine-gun in a fixed forward firing & one 7.7mm machine-gun in a flexible rearward firing. (7.7mm = 0.303 inch). The Nakajima B5N "Kate" had NO forward firing armament at all(!) and only a 7.7mm flexible rearward arc machine-gun. Big difference in Weaponry!!! (The "Zero" had a pair of 7.7mm machine-guns AND a pair of 20mm machine-cannons!!! Not to mention the difference in maneuverability between a extremely maneuverable fighter and a slow and noticeably less maneuverable dive and torpedo bombers!!) The big reason (perhaps) why the USS Oklahoma rolled over so rapidly, is that she was going to have an inspection of the insides of part of her torpedo protection system on Monday, 08DEC1941. Since these were normally "buttoned up" with no air flow to them (and certain bacteria can cause the air in such places (and in abandoned mines) to go so low on Oxygen to be fatal to humans, they had unbolted all of the covers and had flexible ductwork attached to portable fans blowing good air into them and other fans sucking out air to ensure safety of the Fleet & Shipyard Inspectors on Monday.... This effectively robbed her of her torpedo defenses since the trapped air would have prevented her from rolling so quickly, perhaps even from capsizing at all!
Damp: Remember, the IJN combat pilots were the cream of the crop. They would not have been pissed away on a suicide mission sacrificing all their planes and pilots. That being said Coral Sea and Midway pretty much wiped out Japanese ship-based combat aviation. Shokaku and Zuikaku eventually rebuilt their aviation complement, but they were a mere shadow of the pilots they replaced and were wiped out off the Marianas in a series of carrier air battles. The Kamikaze units didn't come into being until the last two years of the war.
It was as much an issue that the Japanese didn't rotate out their veterans to debrief with the eggheads and train their fallen comrades' replacements. They left their best pilots out on the pointy end, and a combination of battle fatigue and eventual bad luck did for them before they could pass on what they'd learned.
Seconded. I remember doing Tarawa in PBJ modified B25 Mitchells. It has all the missions fully modeled out in IL-2. From the ANZAC south pacific to VJ day. It was a long game.
@@notagooglesimp8722 longest single game I ever played on it had me going from the island north of Guadalcanal to Henderson, fighting a pair of P-40's, then out of ammo, maneuver killing a P-38 as I was wave hopping to my cv. Once there it took me a dozen tries before I snagged a wire.
Come on Cap, with a 30+ lead time the boilers would have at least minimal steerage speed for the biggest ships, and many would have a reasonable movement speed and the smaller ships would be fully mobile. If you are going to do a video about given warning, most ships would have enough steam in 45-60 minutes to be moving at a reasonable level because they were not "cold iron" they had boilers lit but at low power mode using only one boiler so when in port, the ships were not stone cold. One of the six large boilers was always lit and burning to provide power onboard. To light a new boiler took many hours to build up full steam, but with one running, and them all prepped as they were in a "semi-wartime" footing they would not go by the book and would have taken another boiler to full in 6 hours down to 1-2, but with one full boiler and one at the minimum started when detected could have enough power in less than an hour to move. In the case U.S.S. Nevada, the only battleship to get underway during the attack, the ship had one boiler going and had started the 2nd boiler about an hour before the attack an Ensign noted that the same boiler had been used for the entire time the ship had been in port instead of rotating with alternating use of other boilers. So on his own initiative he ordered a second boiler lit. When the Japanese attack force arrived the second boiler was well into its build up of steam pressure. With two of its boilers lit the vessel had just enough steam to begin to get underway- though at a reduced speed, but with battle flag flapping and AA guns blazing. The ensign noted that if they knew about the attack he could have started emergency starts on ALL the boilers and it could have saved many of the ships and even the Nevada, could have had enough speed to go to open ocean. In his book, “Day of Infamy" Walter Lord wrote that many present considered it the most inspiring thing they saw that day. Sailors cheered when they saw her underway. The Destroyers and Frigates COULD have been in the fight.
Nice detail. Very interesting, but I also heard it was faster to recover in shallow water, so getting underway might result in more total losses. The Japanese seemed to have plenty of skill to hit moving ships, particularly at the first battle.
Hey guys, love the concept. I truly think this is one worth revisiting, but I believe it would work best using a proportionate scale. We saw what a full-scale version would do, but given current tech, you'd need a supercomputer to do this on full-scale. So, now you have the perfect reference video to link to when the valued viewers want to see what a spectacle of forces were involved on that day. A tweaked second attempt could provide us with a better conclusion. Now, I think it's worth a re-do with tweaks to see if it had any chance at ultimate success. While the chaos is likely accurate, I don't believe the US fighters would readily allow so many bombers into the harbor while getting themselves caught up in dogfights. I think the only solution to fix this is by doing the following: 1. set the US fighter cap to hold position within ~5 miles of center harbor in three even groups, on the west, north, and east. 2. Set the Japanese bombers and fighters to take off in alternating groups (one fighter group, then one bomber, another fighter, and ultimately all bombers) from both carrier groups in order to give a decent spread of fighter and bomber coverage incoming - it's not super historically accurate, but better for these purposes I think? 3. I believe (could easily be wrong) that it would be more accurate to favor more Japanese planes heading to the harbor, perhaps 70% overall given the Pacific fleet was the primary target, and then 15% each of overall aircraft going to the two airfields. If #2 and #3 are done, in addition to lowering the overall fighter and ship count by half, I believe it will still be an amazing spectacle and be smooth enough to see what's going on, represent more effective flak (even if there's some friendly fire on US fighters) and result in a better overall defense versus allowing those untouched Japanese bombers in. Getting those human pilots right into the melee versus baiting the Japanese fleet would be cool too, but I'm sure we didn't see much of them due to the server lag - maybe this would fix that too and they can get some dogfights going for you to film? 4. With the forces reduced by half but in the correct overall proportionate percentage of forces (including US ships), I believe two things should be changed to complete this second attempt and make the extra effort worth it. The "Ace" WWII AI level is pretty insane. I believe setting both sides down one level would result in more accurate drawn out dogfights and more importantly, throw in some legit misses on the Japanese bombing end, as I know they put down some devastating effect on the ships, but even without full AA coverage and fighter CAP, the Japanese were not this accurate in placing their bombs and torpedoes. I'm hoping one skill level down should result in some pretty accurate drops still, but also add in the human nature of imperfection? 5. Finally, if the US knew the Japanese were coming in 30 minutes, I think at least some of the ships would have begun moving slowly out of the harbor based on their mooring site. I know it's not much warning, but the crews were mostly sleeping on the ships, so I believe battlestations would get them up and moving. Perhaps all of the outer ships can begin heading towards the exit of the harbor as long as other ships aren't immediately in their way. So, now the bombs would be a bit less accurate with less AI skill and some of the ships would also be moving out of the deathtrap of a harbor and also be somewhat evasive as a moving target. I truly hope these items are given a few minutes of testing in a server to see how the sim reacts, as I think it would be an equally amazing spectacle! Thank you.
You failed to take into Consideration the USS Enterprise and her Task Force that was inbound to Pearl Harbor and should have been a Part of this Sim as her Aircraft were arriving from the West at roughly the same time as the Attack.
@@Uriel77200 In testing? The early Marine Corsairs wouldn't enter service for another year, and the version that flew off carriers wasn't developed until years after that. The F4F Wildcat was still in the process of replacing the F2A Buffalo.
There was only one Japanese POW from Pearl Harbor, Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki, whose midget submarine (HA.19) ran aground. His "crew" (Chief Warrant Officer Kiyoshi Inagaki) drowned. They were going to slip into the harbor, fire torpedoes, and then scuttle the sub. They had a faulty gyrocompass so they kept grounding.
Yep Taranto Harbour was also shallow like Pearl. We also modded our torpedos. Admiral Genda was in Italy a the time and went to view the Damage. Its Was November 1940.
It was USS Enterprise that was near by when the attack happen just 215 miles away and also the first planes to Encounter the Japanese Fighters at pearl Harbor
USS Enterprise arrived at Pearl Harbor after the attack. I think eight planes from Enterprise came in ahead of the carrier and some were shot down by trigger happy gunners. Admiral Halsey was very upset by what he saw.
I'm not a gamer at all but I love your videos. Your humor, wit and camaraderie with your team is just very pleasing. And the ability to do endless what if's. Just amazing! I bet there are many like me who so appreciate the huge amount of work you do!
Can't forget the AAA that the US Army had. Also remember, the Army had the responsibility to defend the fleet at PH. The Japanese lost 29 planes during PH, 9 in the first wave, 20 in the second (by the time, people were awake and manning the guns).
@@grimreapers Yes. And regarding timing, both services had been on some full alerts in the prior weeks. But during the _first_ wave: "...guns unmanned (none of the Navy's 5"/38s, only a quarter of its machine guns, and only four of 31 Army batteries got in action).[97]...." From Wikipedia of the battle.
@@polpotnoodle7441 Yep. To-Ra, To-Ra, To-Ra. The US was completely surprised, which was why Gen Short was relieved. The US Army was caught flat footed, which should not have happened. The CoS of the Army sent out a message "This dispatch is to be considered a war warning" on 27 Nov....
Oh btw, back in the day the makers of IL2 released a version of the same game called Pacific Fighters. It was awesome, it had all of the assets you'd want to use for a battle like this. I doubt that you'd be able to import any of that into whatever the modern IL2 game is now though.
US Fleet problem 13 (also known as the Army/Navy Grand joint exercise #4) was to be staged as mock attack by a “militaristic Asian island nation” on Pearl Harbor. i'm not sure if this was the exercise yamamoto attended. Rear Admiral Harry Yarnell designed an attack plan that utilized carrier aviation to launch a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. he left his battleships behind and advanced with the carriers and to a point north-northeast of Hawaii. At dawn, on Sunday February 7, 1932, Yarnell launched his attack with a force of 152 planes from the two carriers. His attack force first attacked the airfields and then proceeded to attack the ships along battleship row. US military rejected the threat, even after taranto, because they felt air-drop torpedoes would fail in the shallow depths of pearl. Just saying.
WOW. I was honking spellbound. Ok, yea, it crashed, but wow, until it did - damn fine production and story. One suggestion - purely as a "pilot" (many years ago - civilian) and avid air guy - your P-51's are great aircraft, it's got a higher speed - my point is "Slashing Attacks" - invade their bubble to make 'em drop the bombs .... " then zoom away - don't dogfight. Just get "inside their awareness bubble" and dash away - they've either dropped their bombs (that's a kill) - or - you can just regain distance and speed (bit of altitude ) and zoom through their formation - and out the other side - DO NOT dogfight, lol Why would you? You guys so totally rock and loved the vid. AMAZING - just wow.
Could the US have defended Pearl Harbor if they had warning. Answer yes. The Japanese expected to lose most of the attacking aircraft, the A6M2 pilots fully expected not to return.
fun fact, the Japanese ships were detected by radar, but the US thought it was a patrol returning. though if you look deeper, it was clear that it could not have been.
@@mattbalboa1349 Well seeing how the US only really lost like 4 ships in the real life battle and was able to repair most other ships damaged due to the shallow harbour. With early warning the US would have gotten some of the smaller ships out and picketing. Also would have radioed the Carriers who were still at sea to provide air support. Also all the US Army AA guns would have been manned and ready. On top of that the Japanese losing at least half if not more planes. the japanese would have "won" but it would have been a pyrrhic victory.
@@wizardemrys .Make sure your get the facts straight, please. The Japanese ships were never seen, period. Radar could not yet pick up ships at sea, and even now, it cannot see over the horizon. No one knew where the Japanese task force was when the attack was launched, or which direction it sailed after recovering aircraft. The attacking wave of planes was seen on radar. No one expected any attack...especially from the air, and from that direction. Most experts, Admirals, included thought the Japanese carriers somehwere else..
U.S. navy pilots often used SBD-3Dauntless dive bombers as fighters because their low speed meant that they were the only planes in the fleet that could dogfight Zeros at low altitudes
A little known fact is the battleships had little to no a.a. ammo onboard! It would not have been loaded in peacetime until orders to depart we're ordered! I learned this from the battleship new Jersey records.
I see this as a US victory of sorts since the IJN would loose vastly more pilots and planes, still not hit the fuel storage or carriers! With an advance warning the ships may not have been so lined up in a row and our carriers could have begun to intercept the home bound IJN fleet.
5 minutes into the video, I expect some destroyers well into the bay if not actually at sea in a semicircle providing a AAA ring (perhaps two circles) . The larger ships will be moving by the time the enemy is actually over head. Guessing less than half the losses to the Navy and almost twice as much to the Japanese.
One thing that could have impacted the attack with warning was Task Force 8 with ", the heavy cruisers (CA-26), (CA-27), and (CA-24) and nine destroyers under Vice Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr." were approx 200 miles west of Oahu
My Grandfather was aboard the first carrier to reach pearl after the attack, I believe it was the Enterprise. Later during the Pacific theater his carrier was hit by a kamikaze and my grandfather took home a war trophy, a cockpit dial from the japanese plane, now sitting in a display case in my living room.
Not exercises per say. iirc Lexington was returning from Wake and Enterprise was returning from Midway. Both had just completed delivering marine fighters to both. Saratoga(also assigned to PacFleet at the time) was just completing a refit on the west coast (Seattle?) and her air group was at San Diego I think. Enterprise was the only one that was close enough to even attempt to participate in the search for the IJN fleet.
@@srcrewchief89 Lex went to Midway and never delivered the planes as they cancelled her mission. Enterprise returned from Wake, not Midway, and 2/3 of the fighters dropped at Wake were destroyed in the first bombing raid.
@@billwalker9509 Yep. I basically had the missions backwards. Enterprise was roughly 200 miles west of Oahu on her return leg. Lex was about 500 miles southeast of Midway having yet to complete her mission. But the point I was making is that neither was on "exercises"(implying training), both were on ferry missions. It's really a minor distinction, both were out of position to have any direct effect on the attack.
With early warning, the US would have tried to move their battleships out to sea. There weren't enough P40s in Hawaii to fend off the superior Zeros and their better pilots, so the attacks would have happened anyways with possibly fewer US losses.
Good effort on this one, Cap! Quite a few things should have been taken into consideration with the early warning aspect but I’m not going to pile on here with everyone else. Interesting to see the results with what you put on the drawing board on this one :)
I'd actually like to see you set up a modern AA defence system just guns to see how many it would take to defeat the attack or if the number of attackers were just too many. always love your videos and the effort that goes into them from all GR members.
This actually shows a proof of concept that if the military would have followed through with the Radar Warning it would haven't been as one sided. Just allowing the ships to go to Action Stations would have cut back severely on the damage the Navy received and would have allowed the Pacific Fleet to be in fighting force more than a year earlier. However, something that you missed was that it wasn't just the Naval Base that was under attack. The Japanese also attacked the Air Bases. If that would have been put into the mix even less number of ships would have been taken out on Your initial run through. I have recently found Y'all's videos and I love them. I am definitely now addicted to them.
They did actually see them, but the radar operators when they told the command that a large fleet of aircraft where coming the were told that it probably the fleet of B-17 that were expected that day
For some, maybe. But the battleships were steam powered and it took a long time to get the boilers up to temperature. Until then, no steam pressure and they aren't moving.
@@ThubanDraconis Some of them did move. I presume they keep maybe one out of six boilers (or something) going to run the generators, fire pumps, etc and in a pinch the battleship can slip anchor and putt putt outta there at 2 knots.
Most of them would not be moving. At 136 nm, the US would still have about an hour head start at best, probably less. The ships would need to receive orders on what they need to do and where to go. Recall all sailors, start up boilers (can take up to 4 hours), build up steam (one hour), heat up turbine, build up pressure on turbines (at least another hour), cut mooring lines, and raise anchor. Then depending on where the ship is moored (inside or outside row), it need to wait for the other ship to get moving first. Which likely require tug assistance before navigating out of the harbor. Once outside, battleships need up to 30 minutes, to get up to full ahead. Although 20 minutes should be enough for combat speeds. Nonetheless, it is a long process. Some ships historically did get to move, but likely because they had most of their boilers pressurized and turbines periodically heated. The ships would all take various amount of time to get underway, and likely most won't be moving at all for hours.
@@neurofiedyamato8763 These are all excellent points and I was not sure about the steam. I know WW-I surface ships all had to have steam up to get rolling. One of the benefits of the age of sail was a level of autonomy not regained until the advent of nuclear power. I was thinking that if I was on one of these ships I would have been attempting to row with a paddle rather than sit still and take it, regardless of a lack of orders or anything else. Though they had their hands full. I guess a good question is: how much early waring? An hour, a week? "Early" is a relative term and time buys you options. Part of the effectiveness of the attack had been the complete surprise. It's a worthwhile exercise in my view to see how differently this would, go as a series of videos, with progressively increasing time between foreknowledge and the attack. That sort of foreknowledge contributed to the US victory at Midway thought luck played a key role. Also, more Midway vids please!
There were also alot of bombers there an the IJN fully expected to lose1/3 of their total force ships and planes again research. I also grew up with first hand accounts of the morning as I grew up on Oahu an my dads family lived about 2 miles away his dad hitched a ride to the base and his ship which did get under way
If anyone wants more pearl harbor things to listen to WW2tv has wonder long discussions in what they called Pearl Harbor Week. The video with Drach is well worth listening to
I think it would have been very different had the ammo lockers been unlocked. The number of ships all clustered together within a confined area. The AAA fire would have been ferocious.
I wish you would allow the US Carrier force to enter the fray. Probably at the 30 min mark to reflect the delay incurred changing planes from peacetime to wartime, refueling, rearming, sailing + flight time . i agree with those that say the ships could move. Overall Great Job.
SUPER CAP.... I don't remember who it was but someone was commenting from GR about the American aircraft carriers. The Enterprise launch planes that afternoon as she was approaching Pearl Harbor. Those planes were to land at Pearl Harbor and quite a few of them were shot down by jittery AA Crews. The Enterprise snuck into Pearl Harbor after dark that night resupplied and then went back to see to try to look for the Japanese who they obviously never found. As a Avid and lifelong historian of World War, 40-plus years of studying oh, this was a reasonably good simulation. I know CAP put a lot of work into it and you can tell 👍👍👍👍 The only other thing I might suggest is if you re-ran the simulation instead of letting the Japanese aircraft take off one by one could you not spawn them all in as a group that actually simulate how they attack instead of straggling in? That way you would simulate when the Americans identified the large bogeys on radar and then have the Americans actually scramble to take off
"Say, all you guys on shore leave, swim out to your ships! We'll keep them moored until you get aboard." For your next video. How about the Battle of Midway? Let's assume that the Japanese naval code had not been broken.
Midway would of Fallen, but I don't think the US would have fallen for the trap that was going to be set up for the carriers, Nimitz would of kept the Carriers back near Hawaii to protect it from an invasion, Guadalcanal would of been pushed off till after Midway was taken back.....war would of Ended in 46, maybe even 47.
Most the Japanese pilots made it back to their carriers. There were very few losses on their end. However, most of those same pilots died during the Battle of Midway when their carriers were hit and sunk.
At Midway most of their (Japanese) lost planes had to ditch, but within sight of the supporting vessels, so most of their pilots were in fact recovered. Thanks to @WY Chief for this correction some weeks ago. 👌
Hi, I'm new to all this. My grandfather taught physics to Navy "90 Day Wonders" at Murray Kentucky 1940-1945, and I grew up with glass slides of fighter silhouettes, used for quick-recognition, etc. My dad was six when the war ended, and we would watch WWII movies together in the 1970s. Dad didn't care what actors were in it, for him, it was all about the hardware, especially engines, radio and automated fire control. I've grown up as a computer programmer, in business and industry, not gaming, although I have written games in my time. I want to learn more about the nuts and bolts of how these games are built, specifically the physics and modeling engine. I can read at a high technical level, and worked as a sysadmin in a 3D studio in 1996, so I'm not entirely a newbie when it comes to 3D graphics: I know what a shading algorithm is. (I know real physics, matrix algebra and calculus as well). Where would be a good place to start?
Indeed. Most were destroyed on the ground, or while attempting to take off. You should understand that the early war Zero was a superior ACM platform to all of the aircraft you cited. Additionally, the effective tactics for the P40B to counter the A6M Zero, which were developed by Claire Chenault and the 1 AVG "Flying Tigers", had not yet been developed.
There were no Japanese prisoners of war at Pearl Harbor. All the pilots who were hit and not killed picked a juicy target and tried to ram it with their wounded airplanes. The sole exception was the survivor of a minisub drifted and beached on some island. He repeatedly asked to be shot or allowed to commit suicide. The Japanese were so furious and dismissive of him (although he did not surrender), that in the parade for the dead of Pearl Harbor (they held such a triumphant parade in Japan), with portraits of all the pilots killed in the attack, he wasn't even shown, or his name mentioned. Being caught alive? Oh, the horror!
Would you commemorate(if that's the right world) some one who did die during D day together with some one who did not, and (as far as I know) did not succeed in taking part of the taking of the beach and survie it all?
if anyone is mad over p51s being shot down by zeros, you need to understand that most of these are AI. AI doesn't understand that the p51 is going to be much more successful energy fighting a zero than turn fighting it. They have no control over how AI fights. Also it's entertainment, not a what-if documentary. He's doing this in his spare time for us, so chill out with all of the complaining and appreciate the time that went into this. We're all entitled to our opinions, but chill
im an alternate history nerd and i love these kinds of scenarios. so much better to have a simulation behind the speculation rather than just someone pontificating.
even with a good alert, Americans wouldn't have been able to put up a quarter of the defense you did. a peacetime Sunday morning? the ships were about half crewed at best off the top of my head, and there simply weren't enough alert aircrews staffed to have made any difference.
Just a question, but wouldn't it have made more sense to meet the Japanese over open water instead of waiting till they were overhead the target? If they never make it to the target they can't drop any bombs...
The US Pacific Fleet would have suffered the same fate as HMS Prince of Wales, and HMS Repulse, which were sunk by Japanese bombers and torpedo planes on December 10th. Those ships were in open sea and had much faster top speeds and the US battleline. As it is, we were able to bring most of those ships back to battle because they were sunk in shallow water. In the open ocean, they would have gone down in deep water, and crew losses would have been much higher
It’d be interesting to see some hypothetical scenarios, like if it was the British fighting in the pacific with their 1941-42 aircraft and fleet (without having lost anything from the European and Atlantic theatres. If the models are there than great, if not then in future would be a cool little thing 😊
This was a lot of fun to watch. I think in the Mustang you are going to want to enter the fray at as high an altitude as possible and initiate slashing attacks at the Zeroes. Getting sucked in to furballs is a losing tactic, even in a capable aircraft like the P51D. Had Pearl Harbor gone down like this it may well have shortened the pacific war a tad. The Japanese attacking a prepared Pearl Harbor would have suffered reasonably heavy losses, probably inflicting heavy damage still, but as it proved later on in the war, the US could take losses, the Japanese couldn't.
I agree the grim reaper pilots did not use the planes to good effect, but the models are terrible too. Bomb laden Zeros were keeping up with clean P51D mustangs in level flight and dives, which is completely preposterous. The Zero was a great early war fighter, but it was actually very slow...over 100mph slower than a Mustang. The mustangs wouldve been able to make a pass then extend and escape at will.
Has anyone computed the actually numbers from 1941 for bombing accuracy? I'd guess the number of bomb hits and the number launched from the carriers should be easy to get, but the actual number dropped vs discarded or shot down might be harder to come up with.
USS Enterprise entered Pearl Harbor the evening of December 8 after delivering fighters to Wake Island. Also, in air-to-air combat, American fighters were significantly heavier than Japanese planes. While they could not out-climb the Japanese, they could out-dive them. If the Japanese attack had taken out the fuel storage tank farms and the drydocks, the U.S. fleet would have been forced back to San Diego to operate.
It takes normally 2 to 3 hours to raise steam from cold to ready to answer bells on a steam powered ship. You can do it faster however you run the risk of major problems with your steam plant in short order. Most ships at Pearl were hooked into shore power and steam generators. They could light the boilers and try but it wouldn't have been easy without risking turbine damage and that would have been months in drydock afterwards.
I seem to recall that the American pilots were told NOT to dogfight a zero. The Zero outclassed all allied planes in maneuverability. The reason the Hellcats were successful against the zero was they could outlive and out climb the zero. That’s the trick, dive then climb.
Points of interest: 1. As others have pointed out, the F4F was a fighter. There weren't a lot at Pearl, but a few belonging to USMC VMF-211 were there. 2. The Curtis A-12 was not a fighter, but it did sport 4 forward facing .30 caliber machineguns and one rearward facing .30 caliber machinegun. While not ideal for the task, it was capable of dogfighting, especially against aircraft tasked with similar missions. In fact, A-12 Shrikes operated by the Chinese Air Force engaged in a dogfight with Japanese Aichi D1A1 dive bombers, shooting down two to four of the Japanese planes. At least one of the Aichi bombers returned to the carrier Kaga with battle damage and a fatally wounded crewman. 3. The SBD Dauntless, while also not a fighter, is equipped with two forward firing .50 caliber machineguns and two rear firing .30 caliber machineguns. Most of those stationed at Pearl were destroyed on the ground, but some did see action in the air there. The Dauntless was also often employed as CAP against torpedo bombers that were sent to attack the carriers the SBDs were stationed on. Swede Vejtasa earned the Navy Cross after shooting down three A6M Zeros while driving a Dauntless on May 8, 1942 (the day after he participated in the sinking of the Japanese carrier Shōhō) before being transferred to an F4F Wildcat squadron, where he earned another Navy Cross for shooting down 7 Japanese aircraft in one day.
Captain. At the outset of the attack of Pearl Harbour the Americans were comparatively poor pilots and their planes totally outclassed. I feel you actually did a great recreation. Respect, that was awesome. I’ve never been a fan of computer games but you have me addicted to yours. My one issue is with the ships, they would have/should have been underway.
AFAIK there were NO Japanese POWs taken from the Pearl raid, nor were any Zeros recovered. The first Zero recovered by the US was from a crash SOMEWHERE in friendly US terf but I don't recall the details. Somewhere in 1942 I believe. Definately was not from Pearl Harbour though. Great video, unknown even in the archives the GR team has some great vids.
Well lets say a DD, submarine or Catalina flying boat spots the IJN fleet and radio's this in with say three hours worth of preparation for the U.S. forces. This allows planes to be fueled prepped, armed and put into the sky, ships to be moved out of port and AA guns and the like to be prepped. The simulation really did very little of any of this. While the fleet may have not ben countered there would have been a large loss of IJN aircraft and the like. Possibly a counter attack with a surface fleet hours later.
Few win a vertical scissors on the Zeros. The Mustang is too heavy to turn in the horizontal with a zero. The Zero has a limit on the diving speed. They have to force the zeros to dive and pull out before they break up. Then you shoot them.
The US possibly could have mitigated the damage. The planes wouldn't have been bunched up on the runways and the anti aircraft guns would have been loaded and waiting for the attack. Ships also would have been prepared and not surprised. What about the American CVs? They would know exactly where the Japanese attack fleet is this time.
In one of the movies during Pearl Harbor America. America had a radar system mounted on top of a mountain. The guys inside knew that there was gonna be a flight of bombers coming in that day. When they saw the large blip on the screen, they made the assumption that it was the bombers coming in. And never called the tower with their information. Had that information been sent the majority of the men and women on that base would still be alive today.
Classic example of forcing the enemy to acknowledge a threat… even with out classed planes, if the aviation troops had gotten airborn, that would have forced the zero pilots to waste time on them, vs attacking the much more valuable ships. Any comments re: the Japanese not hitting the drydocks / POL facilities?
In the actual attack, Nagumo felt that since the element of surprise was lost, it wasn't worth the additional risk to his aircrews to launch a third wave, despite the fact that he now had an even greater tactical advantage with so many aircraft and ships destroyed or seriously damaged.
If you look at photos of Pearl harbour the AAA was firing and you can see the rounds bursting - even without warning it didn't take long for people to start firing the guns in defence. (Probably not all of them but definitely a decent amount).
During the _first_ wave, "....guns unmanned (none of the Navy's 5"/38s, only a quarter of its machine guns, and only four of 31 Army batteries got in action).[97]"
2 things of note. Some of those ships would have sailed with that notice, and a fair amount of that massive group of aircraft did NOT attack ships, they spread all over to attack air fields.
not really at 136 nm, that's an hour max, but likely less. For battleships, it can take up to 6 hours or more to get underway if none of their boilers are lit. Some ships did get underway thanks to being at a higher state of readiness, but most ships weren't. You still need to account for passing down orders, recalling the crew, 6 hours from lighting the boilers to heating up and pressurizing the turbines. Then cut mooring lines, raise anchor, get tug boats to assist navigating out to sea... and 20-30 minutes of acceleration for battleships to get in to combat speed. And all of this need to be done without traffic jams, a rendezvous point, and getting in to combat formation. It would be a miracle if the US could shorten what normally take days and do it in an hour. At best they would only get a couple of ships out to sea, and few would even be the battleships which is what the Japanese went after since there's no carriers.
Always fun to watch. I agree with all the comments about the ships getting up steam and moving out. In this sim with the P51 the real pilots should have got up high and B and Z's the Zeros as the 51s were 100 mph faster and certainly much faster in dive where the Zero's had issues with their controls at high speeds. In reality with the fighters the US had on hand, it was likely they would have been decimated by the superior Zero and the attack would have been pressed home. The big issue besides the carriers not being there was the fact the Japanese did not hit the fuel dumps which would have caused the fleet to abandon PH for the West Coast of the US.
That was AMAZING. I wonder if the first group that dropped bombs in the sea would be able to re fuel and re arm and attack again? But yeah, one thing back then as a defender plane, only mk1 eyeballs used to find the enemy's planes in the air once up there, was really realistic that way too with the ai defenders seems like. This defence is with all planes fuelled and armed on the ground, as well as pilots and sea men right there, right? Still Really fun to see the simulation. Did you all have aa ammo limits on the ships? Amazingly cool, great work. :D
Because of the US Army Air Force SOPs at the time, the aircraft were not even fueled and armed. So in order to mount a realistic defense a 4 hour warning would be necessary. By realistic defense I mean scrambling fighters and getting ships underway. A full defense with ships and AA manned and bomber counter attack would require a 8-12 hour warning.
To answer a question raised in the video: only two Japanese were captured during the battle. Kazuo Sakamaki was captured after being forced to abandon his midget submarine. Shigenori Nishikaichi crash landed his damaged Zero on an outlying island and was taken in by a group of Hawaiian natives unaware of the attack. After briefly being their guest, then (after they learned of the attack) their prisoner, he broke free and was killed by the people who he had taken as hostages.
I can only assume that the DCS AI planes ignore flight physics the same as in IL2 where you cannot keep up to your own AI flight? Watching this I cannot understand how a 1941 Zero can keep up and kill a 1944 Mustang.
Isn’t the Zero in DCS just a P51 flight model with a Zero skin and guns? Which if that’s the case, it means putting a perfect robot P51 pilot up against pilots who aren’t used to flying the P51.
@@jewbybrother579 Well that would explain it then wouldn't it. And now that I think on it, if it were 1941 vs 1944 the Mustangs would have wiped the sky of the Japanese.
I wonder if just one temporally displaced Seawolf-class fast-attack nuclear submarine could stop the Japanese Navy from attacking Pearl Harbor in 1941.
Probably. It would at the very least cripple all the capital ships. If the seawolf class submarine has tactical nukes onboard that can be loaded into its tomahawk cruise missiles then its game over for the IJN fleet. Japanese military leaders in Tokyo would be left scratching their heads wondering how their entire carrier strike force disappeared.
@@joshuaortiz2031 Not to mention one can only imagine the terror of their sailors as their ships start blowing up with seemingly no explanation, unless they were to spot the torpedoes.
hey cap, what do you recommend for hardware to be able to keep up in dcs? do you have a wrteup somewhere? obviously you have a contoller recommendation, but what about video and monitor size? does the game play well on multiple monitors? how about an arc of curved monitors?
Could you do a simulation of a follow up attack after the attack on Pearl Harbor? Start off with the damage to everything after the actual attack and use whatever planes survived for a second attack? Either on the oil fields or the remaining ships or both? This is great work you're doing.
Cap, thank you for running this. however to really see the effect of early notice would not be to compare the model to real world. You must run a second model without the warning and compare the two. I also would suggest scaling back all numbers by a factor of three to help the computer deal with the model. So divide everything by 3 including ships to be attacked, all aircraft, etc. also was the Japanese planes you used the number in the first phase only? I don’t think Admiral Y of Japan would have sent a second wave if he knew the first attack was not a surprise and were getting heavy losses. Thus only use the planes from first wave and see what happens.
I think we should wait until the game gets full multicore CPU support, then we'll be able to run the full simulation with no probs. Will create much better viewing.
@@grimreapers Hi Cap, any idea when multicore support might happen? The DCS graphics are compelling. But geez that is no trivial coding job. You probably have sheet of FAQs to address common questions like this. Like: I’m very curious why the simulations are always done at other locations. I can think of many good reasons for that, but I would like to know your thoughts. Also curious whether Kortana has military flying experience. Her flying ability, SA, and broad familiarity with systems make me think so. But I’m _not_ seeking any further info, just a yes/no response if you or she chooses to answer. Thanks again for running these simulations, they are fascinating.
Most of the American planes were destroyed on the ground, which means that their pilots survived. The fact that the ships were in the harbor increased the odds of survival for their crews as they were in relatively shallow water and rescue efforts were made simpler. If the fleet had made it to open water and been ambushed their fate would likely have been similar to that of the British Force Z.
QUITE A LOT of complaints about this vid, and rightly so. I will go back to the drawing board and re-create it with your comments in mind :)
Still worth the watch and one of the classic “what ifs”. Good work.
Really good idea and a brave attempt. Just too much discrepancy between what's available in DCS and the actual aircraft available at the time. Hopefully the mod makers will fill the gaps eventually although I can't see a modder relishing making a Brewster Buffalo!
Good vid. Still awaiting a "BRRRT VS CARRIER" scenerario : how many rogue A-10s you need to take out a modern U.S carrier group.
video fine, dcs modeling of slower ships moving in a striaght line during WWII unrealistic
Think you did a great job with what you had to work with, but remember they came in two waves about an hour apart. Also would it be possible to trick the game by making the zeros do low level skip bombing profile to simulate torpedo planes maybe? Heck you may be able to arm them with Harpoon and just adjust range to fire to like 200 yards? Same with dive bombing set altitude to 2000 feet and the level to I think it was 6000 feet?
In the real battle, some of the ships started moving. With 30 minutes notice, many ships would be moving out to sea. Moving ships are much harder to hit.
Those ships would have taken a while to get going, building up boiler pressure etc. Modern Diesel power can ready within minutes
The battlewagons had half their crews ashore...and most of the senior officers. Getting everyone back on board takes time. Raising steam enough to move something that big can take better than an hour. You are correct that moving ships are harder to hit, but getting the fleet out of the confines of Pearl Harbor and out into open sea would have taken better than an hour, had they moved immediately upon receiving notice of an incoming attack.
@@mattbalboa1349 The real attack came in two waves nearly an hour apart, and some ships did manage to get underway before the second wave. With a 30 minute preparation period, this mobilization could have been more significant.
@@j4s0n39 You still have not gotten the word to the folks ashore that there is an emergency. How easy is it to hunt men out of their houses, homes, bars, brothels, etc., and get them aboard from all over the city? No cell phones, no television broadcasts... Patrols cruising around in jeeps, shouting. Not every house had a telephone. Civilian radio stations, maybe, but you'd have to get their management to let you break into their programing... after you drove to the radio station. Now get steam up in the boilers which might take a couple of hours... before they can even move.
Let's assume that the ships are fully manned and steam is raised.. You still have to get under way. That might take as many as 4 tugboats per battleship, just to turn 24,000 tons of dead weight through the water. There were not enough tugs at Pearl to turn the battle line all at once... and each ship might take 15 minutes just too get aimed in the right direction to head for the channel. also, while a destroyer might get up the channel at higher speeds, a battlewagon is hard to steer, and the channel in and out of Pearl is not that damned wide. It is wider nowadays, because ships are bigger, but in 1941? Sorry, but you can't make all that happen short of waving a magic wand
@@j4s0n39 The time given by the others aren't entirely accurate. Depending on what readiness the ship is, 1 hour is way too optimistic. Generally you need 1 hour to build up pressure in the boilers. But that is just one part of a very complex and long process. First, off you need to call back the crew from the Sunday service. This alone is probably going to take awhile. Probably more than the 30 minute notice to be honest. The officers might be on shore leave which takes even longer. They need to get briefed, and have the information passed down. The communications are going to be a nightmare in such short notice.
Secondly, starting up the boilers take several hours. The Littorio class for example takes 4 hours to start up the main boilers. An hour to build up steam in the boilers, before the crew then heat up and build up pressure in the turbines, which also takes time. Then you can finally remove the mooring lines and raise anchor, which takes several minutes at least with large ships. Depending on which ship we are talking about, some of them are moored in awkward positions and may need tug boats to assist (measured in tens of minutes at least).
Then they have to navigate out of the harbor area (also measured in tens of minutes) before taking up to HALF AN HOUR to build up anywhere near max speed for battleships. However lone ships out in the open ocean while better than stationary is still very vulnerable. If you want to have an effective air defense, you need to do this for almost every ship in Pearl Harbor, avoid traffic jams, quickly rendezvous everyone, and organize them into an effective anti-air formation. This stuff normally take DAYS after an order is handed down to a fleet, doing it in an hour and a half is unrealistic.
Destroyers and cruisers can start up and gather speed much faster, and don't need to rely on tugs as much. However they weren't the primary targets anyways, the battleships were. With all this in mind, most of the battleships would still be sitting ducks. They probably would have active anti-air defenses which certainly helps but not underway. The few ships that actually managed to get underway were in ideal conditions, boilers pressurized and turbines regularly heated. Most of the ships were not and in various state of readiness.
tl;dr, vast majority of the ships would still be stationary even after the second wave had gone and left.
"Officially" There was one pilot, Shigenori Nishikaichi, who crash-landed his Zero fighter on the Hawaiian island of Ni’ihau after the attack and was later killed during an altercation with the locals.
The only Japanese POW at Pearl Harbor was Kazuo Sakamaki, the lone survivor of the force of five midget submarines that was lost in the attack
Thanks Craig! Amazing.
That’s a cool story. It’s a shame it’s not better known
@@grimreapers It was this incident which led to the justification of the internment of Japanese on the West Coast of America. *Second Generation* Japanese living on Ni’ihau harbored the downed pilot, arming him, and hiding him from American forces.
@@heyerstandardsI was unaware of this. Is there any proof I can find online?
@@ETC213 Yes, nearly all of the written history of the world is available online for free.
I know you are limited to P51s but using those paired with early warning, it's kinda easier than using a p40 or p36 which were outclassed by the zero. Maybe redo this once more aircraft options are available in DCS
10,000 F-16s :D
When he said p51 I stopped watching .
Honestly with how lethal the zeros were in this I'm not sure how big of a difference it would make. Unless they put the Kates in too.
@@djangoapple8230 yeah
I agree with a redo if you can get all the aircraft working
The bombers had superhuman accuracy. Ace pilot settings might be a bit too much. Interesting idea, though.
Yeah, high altitude, high speed bombing was nearly 100% successful in this simulation.
Yes somehow with advanced notice, the Japanese destroy more ships.
@@BillyBob-js3ei part of the reduced US losses in the actual battle was multiple planes / flights attacking the same ships.
I don't see the bombers being that accurate under stress.
als medium and high altitude bombers have little hope of success against a ship that can turn unpredictably between the time the plane drops the bomb and the bomb reaches the water.
AI DCS bombs are nearly 100% accurate I think also being max skill level helps that out too. Only misses was when the plane was hit and drop early.
@@calmterror If they were 100% accurate they would have won the Pacific.... Just sayin'
@@KrisH-kp9vx He said DCS AI... not real life. But Japanese dive bombers were extremely accurate IRL anyways.. well until the skilled pilots all died later on, but that's not Pearl Harbor. Still not 100% though.
Still don't buy it. Bombers we're slow and cumbersome. The slowest and worst handling of any plane. Easy targets. My grandfather told me the same. They missed more than they hit and he was there in the Pacific during the whole war.
With 30 minutes warning, all the ships could have been at General Quarters and would have set Material Condition Zebra -- all watertight doors, hatches and fittings secured. Likewise, damage control teams would be manned and ready. So, even with successful hits, the odds of sinking the ships drops greatly.
They also would have been underway and harder to hit. That was one of the issues I saw with the simulation, with 30 minutes warning there wouldn't have been a Battleship row for them to line up neatly on. They would have been steaming hard for those carriers. We might have gotten to see Battleships vs Carriers to open up the war.
True. That would have helped a bunch, and maybe save3d more ships, but Oklahoma took many torps 7, maybe 8, in her Starboard side. She had never been designed to withstand that kind of damage and her water tight integrity was toast. None of the battle ships really would have done better. You are counting on 30 minutes warning that no one got because no one expected an attack.
Many of the sailors were not on the ships. It was a Sunday morning and lots of the crew were ashore.
At 29:50 for his historical question
The losses for the Japanese were so insignificant here that the admirals actually expected to lose a lot more airmen when they first took off. The admirals at best expected maybe three or four carriers worth of men to come back
THE old military leadership didn't understand the new tech they had and how it works. They were told that Japan would have to attack the Philippians first before attacking Pearl, that the aircraft on radar were friendly and not to worry. Friendlies don't fly to Pearl from the north.
Had they heeded that radar warning, the American P-40 fighters would be up in the air and there would have been an immediate scramble to move the battleships. There would have been less damage to the ships because a large fraction of the attacking force would have been attacked by P-40's.
But in the tragic case that morning, the arriving B17s actually were arriving "just a few degrees" (Wikipedia article cites) apart from the direction of a large group of the first attack wave.
Using Japanese A6M "Zero" fighters totally unbalances the simulation from the very beginning!!! The Achi D3A "Val" only had a 7.7mm machine-gun in a fixed forward firing & one 7.7mm machine-gun in a flexible rearward firing. (7.7mm = 0.303 inch). The Nakajima B5N "Kate" had NO forward firing armament at all(!) and only a 7.7mm flexible rearward arc machine-gun. Big difference in Weaponry!!! (The "Zero" had a pair of 7.7mm machine-guns AND a pair of 20mm machine-cannons!!! Not to mention the difference in maneuverability between a extremely maneuverable fighter and a slow and noticeably less maneuverable dive and torpedo bombers!!)
The big reason (perhaps) why the USS Oklahoma rolled over so rapidly, is that she was going to have an inspection of the insides of part of her torpedo protection system on Monday, 08DEC1941. Since these were normally "buttoned up" with no air flow to them (and certain bacteria can cause the air in such places (and in abandoned mines) to go so low on Oxygen to be fatal to humans, they had unbolted all of the covers and had flexible ductwork attached to portable fans blowing good air into them and other fans sucking out air to ensure safety of the Fleet & Shipyard Inspectors on Monday....
This effectively robbed her of her torpedo defenses since the trapped air would have prevented her from rolling so quickly, perhaps even from capsizing at all!
Damp: Remember, the IJN combat pilots were the cream of the crop. They would not have been pissed away on a suicide mission sacrificing all their planes and pilots. That being said Coral Sea and Midway pretty much wiped out Japanese ship-based combat aviation. Shokaku and Zuikaku eventually rebuilt their aviation complement, but they were a mere shadow of the pilots they replaced and were wiped out off the Marianas in a series of carrier air battles. The Kamikaze units didn't come into being until the last two years of the war.
It was as much an issue that the Japanese didn't rotate out their veterans to debrief with the eggheads and train their fallen comrades' replacements. They left their best pilots out on the pointy end, and a combination of battle fatigue and eventual bad luck did for them before they could pass on what they'd learned.
Have you thought of doing this using IL-2 1946?
I remember that had almost all of the aircraft involved.
Will do
Seconded. I remember doing Tarawa in PBJ modified B25 Mitchells. It has all the missions fully modeled out in IL-2. From the ANZAC south pacific to VJ day. It was a long game.
@@notagooglesimp8722 longest single game I ever played on it had me going from the island north of Guadalcanal to Henderson, fighting a pair of P-40's, then out of ammo, maneuver killing a P-38 as I was wave hopping to my cv. Once there it took me a dozen tries before I snagged a wire.
"Tora!" X3: th-cam.com/video/thFj23l0GQY/w-d-xo.html
Come on Cap, with a 30+ lead time the boilers would have at least minimal steerage speed for the biggest ships, and many would have a reasonable movement speed and the smaller ships would be fully mobile. If you are going to do a video about given warning, most ships would have enough steam in 45-60 minutes to be moving at a reasonable level because they were not "cold iron" they had boilers lit but at low power mode using only one boiler so when in port, the ships were not stone cold. One of the six large boilers was always lit and burning to provide power onboard. To light a new boiler took many hours to build up full steam, but with one running, and them all prepped as they were in a "semi-wartime" footing they would not go by the book and would have taken another boiler to full in 6 hours down to 1-2, but with one full boiler and one at the minimum started when detected could have enough power in less than an hour to move.
In the case U.S.S. Nevada, the only battleship to get underway during the attack, the ship had one boiler going and had started the 2nd boiler about an hour before the attack an Ensign noted that the same boiler had been used for the entire time the ship had been in port instead of rotating with alternating use of other boilers. So on his own initiative he ordered a second boiler lit. When the Japanese attack force arrived the second boiler was well into its build up of steam pressure. With two of its boilers lit the vessel had just enough steam to begin to get underway- though at a reduced speed, but with battle flag flapping and AA guns blazing. The ensign noted that if they knew about the attack he could have started emergency starts on ALL the boilers and it could have saved many of the ships and even the Nevada, could have had enough speed to go to open ocean.
In his book, “Day of Infamy" Walter Lord wrote that many present considered it the most inspiring thing they saw that day. Sailors cheered when they saw her underway. The Destroyers and Frigates COULD have been in the fight.
Roger noted.
Nice detail. Very interesting, but I also heard it was faster to recover in shallow water, so getting underway might result in more total losses. The Japanese seemed to have plenty of skill to hit moving ships, particularly at the first battle.
Yes!
Hey guys, love the concept. I truly think this is one worth revisiting, but I believe it would work best using a proportionate scale. We saw what a full-scale version would do, but given current tech, you'd need a supercomputer to do this on full-scale. So, now you have the perfect reference video to link to when the valued viewers want to see what a spectacle of forces were involved on that day. A tweaked second attempt could provide us with a better conclusion.
Now, I think it's worth a re-do with tweaks to see if it had any chance at ultimate success. While the chaos is likely accurate, I don't believe the US fighters would readily allow so many bombers into the harbor while getting themselves caught up in dogfights. I think the only solution to fix this is by doing the following:
1. set the US fighter cap to hold position within ~5 miles of center harbor in three even groups, on the west, north, and east.
2. Set the Japanese bombers and fighters to take off in alternating groups (one fighter group, then one bomber, another fighter, and ultimately all bombers) from both carrier groups in order to give a decent spread of fighter and bomber coverage incoming - it's not super historically accurate, but better for these purposes I think?
3. I believe (could easily be wrong) that it would be more accurate to favor more Japanese planes heading to the harbor, perhaps 70% overall given the Pacific fleet was the primary target, and then 15% each of overall aircraft going to the two airfields.
If #2 and #3 are done, in addition to lowering the overall fighter and ship count by half, I believe it will still be an amazing spectacle and be smooth enough to see what's going on, represent more effective flak (even if there's some friendly fire on US fighters) and result in a better overall defense versus allowing those untouched Japanese bombers in. Getting those human pilots right into the melee versus baiting the Japanese fleet would be cool too, but I'm sure we didn't see much of them due to the server lag - maybe this would fix that too and they can get some dogfights going for you to film?
4. With the forces reduced by half but in the correct overall proportionate percentage of forces (including US ships), I believe two things should be changed to complete this second attempt and make the extra effort worth it. The "Ace" WWII AI level is pretty insane. I believe setting both sides down one level would result in more accurate drawn out dogfights and more importantly, throw in some legit misses on the Japanese bombing end, as I know they put down some devastating effect on the ships, but even without full AA coverage and fighter CAP, the Japanese were not this accurate in placing their bombs and torpedoes. I'm hoping one skill level down should result in some pretty accurate drops still, but also add in the human nature of imperfection?
5. Finally, if the US knew the Japanese were coming in 30 minutes, I think at least some of the ships would have begun moving slowly out of the harbor based on their mooring site. I know it's not much warning, but the crews were mostly sleeping on the ships, so I believe battlestations would get them up and moving. Perhaps all of the outer ships can begin heading towards the exit of the harbor as long as other ships aren't immediately in their way. So, now the bombs would be a bit less accurate with less AI skill and some of the ships would also be moving out of the deathtrap of a harbor and also be somewhat evasive as a moving target.
I truly hope these items are given a few minutes of testing in a server to see how the sim reacts, as I think it would be an equally amazing spectacle! Thank you.
You failed to take into Consideration the USS Enterprise and her Task Force that was inbound to Pearl Harbor and should have been a Part of this Sim as her Aircraft were arriving from the West at roughly the same time as the Attack.
Where are the Corsairs?
@@Uriel77200 In testing? The early Marine Corsairs wouldn't enter service for another year, and the version that flew off carriers wasn't developed until years after that. The F4F Wildcat was still in the process of replacing the F2A Buffalo.
There was only one Japanese POW from Pearl Harbor, Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki, whose midget submarine (HA.19) ran aground. His "crew" (Chief Warrant Officer Kiyoshi Inagaki) drowned. They were going to slip into the harbor, fire torpedoes, and then scuttle the sub. They had a faulty gyrocompass so they kept grounding.
Yep Taranto Harbour was also shallow like Pearl. We also modded our torpedos. Admiral Genda was in Italy a the time and went to view the Damage. Its Was November 1940.
It was USS Enterprise that was near by when the attack happen just 215 miles away and also the first planes to Encounter the Japanese Fighters at pearl Harbor
USS Enterprise arrived at Pearl Harbor after the attack. I think eight planes from Enterprise came in ahead of the carrier and some were shot down by trigger happy gunners. Admiral Halsey was very upset by what he saw.
I'd be pissed off, very posswd off.
It would have set the tone for the rest of the war.
I'm not a gamer at all but I love your videos. Your humor, wit and camaraderie with your team is just very pleasing. And the ability to do endless what if's. Just amazing! I bet there are many like me who so appreciate the huge amount of work you do!
Can't forget the AAA that the US Army had. Also remember, the Army had the responsibility to defend the fleet at PH.
The Japanese lost 29 planes during PH, 9 in the first wave, 20 in the second (by the time, people were awake and manning the guns).
Were those AAA separate to the ships?
@@grimreapers Yes. And regarding timing, both services had been on some full alerts in the prior weeks. But during the _first_ wave: "...guns unmanned (none of the Navy's 5"/38s, only a quarter of its machine guns, and only four of 31 Army batteries got in action).[97]...." From Wikipedia of the battle.
Is this true 29 all together?
@@polpotnoodle7441 Yep. To-Ra, To-Ra, To-Ra. The US was completely surprised, which was why Gen Short was relieved. The US Army was caught flat footed, which should not have happened. The CoS of the Army sent out a message "This dispatch is to be considered a war warning" on 27 Nov....
@@RossOneEyed wow appreciate that sir I always thought there way like atleast 100 enemy aircraft to do so much damage
Oh btw, back in the day the makers of IL2 released a version of the same game called Pacific Fighters. It was awesome, it had all of the assets you'd want to use for a battle like this. I doubt that you'd be able to import any of that into whatever the modern IL2 game is now though.
"Tora! Tora! Tora!" IL-2: th-cam.com/video/thFj23l0GQY/w-d-xo.html
In actuality having the ships sink in harbor helped with salvage efforts, be better than sinking in the open seas or the harbor channel
That harbor channel would have looked like Interstate 95 at 5pm.
US Fleet problem 13 (also known as the Army/Navy Grand joint exercise #4)
was to be staged as mock attack by a “militaristic Asian island nation”
on Pearl Harbor. i'm not sure if this was the exercise yamamoto attended.
Rear Admiral Harry Yarnell designed an
attack plan that utilized carrier aviation to launch a surprise attack
on Pearl Harbor. he left his battleships behind
and advanced with the carriers and
to a point north-northeast of Hawaii. At dawn, on Sunday February 7,
1932, Yarnell launched his attack with a force of 152 planes from the
two carriers. His attack force first attacked the airfields and then
proceeded to attack the ships along battleship row.
US military rejected the threat, even after taranto, because they felt
air-drop torpedoes would fail in the shallow depths of pearl.
Just saying.
WOW. I was honking spellbound. Ok, yea, it crashed, but wow, until it did - damn fine production and story.
One suggestion - purely as a "pilot" (many years ago - civilian) and avid air guy - your P-51's are great aircraft, it's got a higher speed - my point is "Slashing Attacks" - invade their bubble to make 'em drop the bombs .... " then zoom away - don't dogfight. Just get "inside their awareness bubble" and dash away - they've either dropped their bombs (that's a kill) - or - you can just regain distance and speed (bit of altitude ) and zoom through their formation - and out the other side - DO NOT dogfight, lol Why would you?
You guys so totally rock and loved the vid. AMAZING - just wow.
Could the US have defended Pearl Harbor if they had warning. Answer yes.
The Japanese expected to lose most of the attacking aircraft, the A6M2 pilots fully expected not to return.
Defended successfully? No. The Japanese would have suffered greater losses, but the outcome of the attack would be much the same.
fun fact, the Japanese ships were detected by radar, but the US thought it was a patrol returning. though if you look deeper, it was clear that it could not have been.
@@wizardemrys planes, not ships. Thought they were a flight of B24(?)s.
@@mattbalboa1349 Well seeing how the US only really lost like 4 ships in the real life battle and was able to repair most other ships damaged due to the shallow harbour. With early warning the US would have gotten some of the smaller ships out and picketing. Also would have radioed the Carriers who were still at sea to provide air support. Also all the US Army AA guns would have been manned and ready. On top of that the Japanese losing at least half if not more planes. the japanese would have "won" but it would have been a pyrrhic victory.
@@wizardemrys .Make sure your get the facts straight, please. The Japanese ships were never seen, period. Radar could not yet pick up ships at sea, and even now, it cannot see over the horizon. No one knew where the Japanese task force was when the attack was launched, or which direction it sailed after recovering aircraft. The attacking wave of planes was seen on radar. No one expected any attack...especially from the air, and from that direction. Most experts, Admirals, included thought the Japanese carriers somehwere else..
U.S. navy pilots often used SBD-3Dauntless dive bombers as fighters because their low speed meant that they were the only planes in the fleet that could dogfight Zeros at low altitudes
A little known fact is the battleships had little to no a.a. ammo onboard! It would not have been loaded in peacetime until orders to depart we're ordered! I learned this from the battleship new Jersey records.
I see this as a US victory of sorts since the IJN would loose vastly more pilots and planes, still not hit the fuel storage or carriers! With an advance warning the ships may not have been so lined up in a row and our carriers could have begun to intercept the home bound IJN fleet.
5 minutes into the video, I expect some destroyers well into the bay if not actually at sea in a semicircle providing a AAA ring (perhaps two circles) . The larger ships will be moving by the time the enemy is actually over head. Guessing less than half the losses to the Navy and almost twice as much to the Japanese.
Depends. MacArthur had about 9 hours warning between the attack on Pearl and the attack on his forces and he managed to goon it.
One thing that could have impacted the attack with warning was Task Force 8 with ", the heavy cruisers (CA-26), (CA-27), and (CA-24) and nine destroyers under Vice Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr." were approx 200 miles west of Oahu
My Grandfather was aboard the first carrier to reach pearl after the attack, I believe it was the Enterprise. Later during the Pacific theater his carrier was hit by a kamikaze and my grandfather took home a war trophy, a cockpit dial from the japanese plane, now sitting in a display case in my living room.
The carriers and part of the fleet were out doing exercises.
Kamikaze was a tactic used later on in the war.
Not exercises per say. iirc Lexington was returning from Wake and Enterprise was returning from Midway. Both had just completed delivering marine fighters to both. Saratoga(also assigned to PacFleet at the time) was just completing a refit on the west coast (Seattle?) and her air group was at San Diego I think. Enterprise was the only one that was close enough to even attempt to participate in the search for the IJN fleet.
@@srcrewchief89 Lex went to Midway and never delivered the planes as they cancelled her mission. Enterprise returned from Wake, not Midway, and 2/3 of the fighters dropped at Wake were destroyed in the first bombing raid.
@@billwalker9509 Yep. I basically had the missions backwards. Enterprise was roughly 200 miles west of Oahu on her return leg. Lex was about 500 miles southeast of Midway having yet to complete her mission. But the point I was making is that neither was on "exercises"(implying training), both were on ferry missions. It's really a minor distinction, both were out of position to have any direct effect on the attack.
With early warning, the US would have tried to move their battleships out to sea. There weren't enough P40s in Hawaii to fend off the superior Zeros and their better pilots, so the attacks would have happened anyways with possibly fewer US losses.
I agree but the president wanted a reason to convince the country to enter the war.
Good effort on this one, Cap!
Quite a few things should have been taken into consideration with the early warning aspect but I’m not going to pile on here with everyone else.
Interesting to see the results with what you put on the drawing board on this one :)
Great video, Cap! Really enjoyed this concept.
I'd actually like to see you set up a modern AA defence system just guns to see how many it would take to defeat the attack or if the number of attackers were just too many. always love your videos and the effort that goes into them from all GR members.
Good idea.
Zero's airlerons locked up above 300 mph so the model that has the Zeroes unable to turn in a high speed fight is historically correct.
thx
This actually shows a proof of concept that if the military would have followed through with the Radar Warning it would haven't been as one sided. Just allowing the ships to go to Action Stations would have cut back severely on the damage the Navy received and would have allowed the Pacific Fleet to be in fighting force more than a year earlier. However, something that you missed was that it wasn't just the Naval Base that was under attack. The Japanese also attacked the Air Bases. If that would have been put into the mix even less number of ships would have been taken out on Your initial run through. I have recently found Y'all's videos and I love them. I am definitely now addicted to them.
They did actually see them, but the radar operators when they told the command that a large fleet of aircraft where coming the were told that it probably the fleet of B-17 that were expected that day
Early waring would have meant that the ships would not have been all lined up in a nice row wouldn't it?
For some, maybe. But the battleships were steam powered and it took a long time to get the boilers up to temperature. Until then, no steam pressure and they aren't moving.
@@ThubanDraconis Some of them did move. I presume they keep maybe one out of six boilers (or something) going to run the generators, fire pumps, etc and in a pinch the battleship can slip anchor and putt putt outta there at 2 knots.
Most of them would not be moving. At 136 nm, the US would still have about an hour head start at best, probably less. The ships would need to receive orders on what they need to do and where to go. Recall all sailors, start up boilers (can take up to 4 hours), build up steam (one hour), heat up turbine, build up pressure on turbines (at least another hour), cut mooring lines, and raise anchor. Then depending on where the ship is moored (inside or outside row), it need to wait for the other ship to get moving first. Which likely require tug assistance before navigating out of the harbor. Once outside, battleships need up to 30 minutes, to get up to full ahead. Although 20 minutes should be enough for combat speeds. Nonetheless, it is a long process.
Some ships historically did get to move, but likely because they had most of their boilers pressurized and turbines periodically heated. The ships would all take various amount of time to get underway, and likely most won't be moving at all for hours.
I was not sure how long it would take to get them moving?
@@neurofiedyamato8763 These are all excellent points and I was not sure about the steam. I know WW-I surface ships all had to have steam up to get rolling. One of the benefits of the age of sail was a level of autonomy not regained until the advent of nuclear power. I was thinking that if I was on one of these ships I would have been attempting to row with a paddle rather than sit still and take it, regardless of a lack of orders or anything else. Though they had their hands full. I guess a good question is: how much early waring? An hour, a week? "Early" is a relative term and time buys you options. Part of the effectiveness of the attack had been the complete surprise. It's a worthwhile exercise in my view to see how differently this would, go as a series of videos, with progressively increasing time between foreknowledge and the attack. That sort of foreknowledge contributed to the US victory at Midway thought luck played a key role. Also, more Midway vids please!
Anderson AFB, is in Guam
For the resources you had available, this was a valiant effort!
There were also alot of bombers there an the IJN fully expected to lose1/3 of their total force ships and planes again research. I also grew up with first hand accounts of the morning as I grew up on Oahu an my dads family lived about 2 miles away his dad hitched a ride to the base and his ship which did get under way
If anyone wants more pearl harbor things to listen to WW2tv has wonder long discussions in what they called Pearl Harbor Week. The video with Drach is well worth listening to
Glad I'm not the only one who highlights things on my desktop for fun.
lol yeh that's how I think.
I think it would have been very different had the ammo lockers been unlocked. The number of ships all clustered together within a confined area. The AAA fire would have been ferocious.
and more Japanese planes would gone down, perhaps half of them... and we would still lose the fleet.
I wish you would allow the US Carrier force to enter the fray. Probably at the 30 min mark to reflect the delay incurred changing planes from peacetime to wartime, refueling, rearming, sailing + flight time . i agree with those that say the ships could move. Overall Great Job.
SUPER CAP....
I don't remember who it was but someone was commenting from GR about the American aircraft carriers. The Enterprise launch planes that afternoon as she was approaching Pearl Harbor. Those planes were to land at Pearl Harbor and quite a few of them were shot down by jittery AA Crews. The Enterprise snuck into Pearl Harbor after dark that night resupplied and then went back to see to try to look for the Japanese who they obviously never found.
As a Avid and lifelong historian of World War, 40-plus years of studying oh, this was a reasonably good simulation. I know CAP put a lot of work into it and you can tell 👍👍👍👍
The only other thing I might suggest is if you re-ran the simulation instead of letting the Japanese aircraft take off one by one could you not spawn them all in as a group that actually simulate how they attack instead of straggling in? That way you would simulate when the Americans identified the large bogeys on radar and then have the Americans actually scramble to take off
"Say, all you guys on shore leave, swim out to your ships! We'll keep them moored until you get aboard." For your next video. How about the Battle of Midway? Let's assume that the Japanese naval code had not been broken.
Midway would of Fallen, but I don't think the US would have fallen for the trap that was going to be set up for the carriers, Nimitz would of kept the Carriers back near Hawaii to protect it from an invasion, Guadalcanal would of been pushed off till after Midway was taken back.....war would of Ended in 46, maybe even 47.
Most the Japanese pilots made it back to their carriers. There were very few losses on their end. However, most of those same pilots died during the Battle of Midway when their carriers were hit and sunk.
At Midway most of their (Japanese) lost planes had to ditch, but within sight of the supporting vessels, so most of their pilots were in fact recovered. Thanks to @WY Chief for this correction some weeks ago. 👌
Will Smith🤣 thought this was in December, not on independence day 😭🤣
on that day only 2 of the entire islands AAA guns were even set up , the rest of which were not even set up with or loaded with ammo
P51Ds weren’t in service then. The US mainly had P40s which were out matched by the zeros.
Great work, great videos. I enjoy every time I watch something. Thy guys. Greetings from Croatia.
thxx
If given warning, the US still couldn't defend Pearl Harbour because of lag.
LMAO...:)
Hi, I'm new to all this. My grandfather taught physics to Navy "90 Day Wonders" at Murray Kentucky 1940-1945, and I grew up with glass slides of fighter silhouettes, used for quick-recognition, etc. My dad was six when the war ended, and we would watch WWII movies together in the 1970s. Dad didn't care what actors were in it, for him, it was all about the hardware, especially engines, radio and automated fire control. I've grown up as a computer programmer, in business and industry, not gaming, although I have written games in my time.
I want to learn more about the nuts and bolts of how these games are built, specifically the physics and modeling engine. I can read at a high technical level, and worked as a sysadmin in a 3D studio in 1996, so I'm not entirely a newbie when it comes to 3D graphics: I know what a shading algorithm is. (I know real physics, matrix algebra and calculus as well). Where would be a good place to start?
I would start with DCS forums and the DCS website.
P-26s, P-36s, and P-40s are capable of taking on Zeros much maligned as they are.
Indeed. Most were destroyed on the ground, or while attempting to take off. You should understand that the early war Zero was a superior ACM platform to all of the aircraft you cited. Additionally, the effective tactics for the P40B to counter the A6M Zero, which were developed by Claire Chenault and the 1 AVG "Flying Tigers", had not yet been developed.
There were no Japanese prisoners of war at Pearl Harbor. All the pilots who were hit and not killed picked a juicy target and tried to ram it with their wounded airplanes. The sole exception was the survivor of a minisub drifted and beached on some island. He repeatedly asked to be shot or allowed to commit suicide. The Japanese were so furious and dismissive of him (although he did not surrender), that in the parade for the dead of Pearl Harbor (they held such a triumphant parade in Japan), with portraits of all the pilots killed in the attack, he wasn't even shown, or his name mentioned. Being caught alive? Oh, the horror!
Would you commemorate(if that's the right world) some one who did die during D day together with some one who did not, and (as far as I know) did not succeed in taking part of the taking of the beach and survie it all?
if anyone is mad over p51s being shot down by zeros, you need to understand that most of these are AI. AI doesn't understand that the p51 is going to be much more successful energy fighting a zero than turn fighting it. They have no control over how AI fights. Also it's entertainment, not a what-if documentary. He's doing this in his spare time for us, so chill out with all of the complaining and appreciate the time that went into this. We're all entitled to our opinions, but chill
I tell a lot of my friends that stuff like this needs to be taken in for it's amusement factor.
im an alternate history nerd and i love these kinds of scenarios. so much better to have a simulation behind the speculation rather than just someone pontificating.
Is it just me, or should Seena(sorry about spelling) be telling us about space. Wicked impression of Brian cox!
even with a good alert, Americans wouldn't have been able to put up a quarter of the defense you did. a peacetime Sunday morning? the ships were about half crewed at best off the top of my head, and there simply weren't enough alert aircrews staffed to have made any difference.
Just a question, but wouldn't it have made more sense to meet the Japanese over open water instead of waiting till they were overhead the target? If they never make it to the target they can't drop any bombs...
Another idea is have the ships deployed out of the harbor in formation to fight the Japanese aircraft.
The US Pacific Fleet would have suffered the same fate as HMS Prince of Wales, and HMS Repulse, which were sunk by Japanese bombers and torpedo planes on December 10th. Those ships were in open sea and had much faster top speeds and the US battleline. As it is, we were able to bring most of those ships back to battle because they were sunk in shallow water. In the open ocean, they would have gone down in deep water, and crew losses would have been much higher
Many of those “sunk” ships were raised, repaired and put back into service.
Because they were “sunk” at the pier; had they been sunk at sea they’d have been lost forever.
In fact, all but three were repaired and returned to the war. U.S.S. Utah (old battleship, then a target ship,) U.S.S. Oklahoma and U.S.S. Arizona.
@@CorsetGrace some of the USS Utah is still there. It’s on the opposite of Ford Island of the Arizona
@@lohrtom Yes. There is a plaque there as well, if you can get a special boat to take you to see it.
Most of the sunk ones were mostly still sticking out of water in game. lols
It’d be interesting to see some hypothetical scenarios, like if it was the British fighting in the pacific with their 1941-42 aircraft and fleet (without having lost anything from the European and Atlantic theatres. If the models are there than great, if not then in future would be a cool little thing 😊
This was a lot of fun to watch. I think in the Mustang you are going to want to enter the fray at as high an altitude as possible and initiate slashing attacks at the Zeroes. Getting sucked in to furballs is a losing tactic, even in a capable aircraft like the P51D.
Had Pearl Harbor gone down like this it may well have shortened the pacific war a tad. The Japanese attacking a prepared Pearl Harbor would have suffered reasonably heavy losses, probably inflicting heavy damage still, but as it proved later on in the war, the US could take losses, the Japanese couldn't.
I agree the grim reaper pilots did not use the planes to good effect, but the models are terrible too. Bomb laden Zeros were keeping up with clean P51D mustangs in level flight and dives, which is completely preposterous. The Zero was a great early war fighter, but it was actually very slow...over 100mph slower than a Mustang.
The mustangs wouldve been able to make a pass then extend and escape at will.
I do think those bombers were unrealistically accurate. Seemed like they were hitting nearly 100% of what they dropped before being shot.
Has anyone computed the actually numbers from 1941 for bombing accuracy? I'd guess the number of bomb hits and the number launched from the carriers should be easy to get, but the actual number dropped vs discarded or shot down might be harder to come up with.
I don't think the Zero's even had bomb sights, as they were designed as a fighter, and they already had purpose built bombers and (torpedo bombers).
USS Enterprise entered Pearl Harbor the evening of December 8 after delivering fighters to Wake Island. Also, in air-to-air combat, American fighters were significantly heavier than Japanese planes. While they could not out-climb the Japanese, they could out-dive them. If the Japanese attack had taken out the fuel storage tank farms and the drydocks, the U.S. fleet would have been forced back to San Diego to operate.
It takes normally 2 to 3 hours to raise steam from cold to ready to answer bells on a steam powered ship. You can do it faster however you run the risk of major problems with your steam plant in short order. Most ships at Pearl were hooked into shore power and steam generators. They could light the boilers and try but it wouldn't have been easy without risking turbine damage and that would have been months in drydock afterwards.
great vid, outcome same with the exception of japan losing at least 50% of the aircraft sent. that would have really hurt japan a month later.
Loosing all those veteran crews and airframes that early in the campaign would have been devastating for Japan.
I seem to recall that the American pilots were told NOT to dogfight a zero. The Zero outclassed all allied planes in maneuverability. The reason the Hellcats were successful against the zero was they could outlive and out climb the zero. That’s the trick, dive then climb.
Points of interest:
1. As others have pointed out, the F4F was a fighter. There weren't a lot at Pearl, but a few belonging to USMC VMF-211 were there.
2. The Curtis A-12 was not a fighter, but it did sport 4 forward facing .30 caliber machineguns and one rearward facing .30 caliber machinegun. While not ideal for the task, it was capable of dogfighting, especially against aircraft tasked with similar missions. In fact, A-12 Shrikes operated by the Chinese Air Force engaged in a dogfight with Japanese Aichi D1A1 dive bombers, shooting down two to four of the Japanese planes. At least one of the Aichi bombers returned to the carrier Kaga with battle damage and a fatally wounded crewman.
3. The SBD Dauntless, while also not a fighter, is equipped with two forward firing .50 caliber machineguns and two rear firing .30 caliber machineguns. Most of those stationed at Pearl were destroyed on the ground, but some did see action in the air there. The Dauntless was also often employed as CAP against torpedo bombers that were sent to attack the carriers the SBDs were stationed on. Swede Vejtasa earned the Navy Cross after shooting down three A6M Zeros while driving a Dauntless on May 8, 1942 (the day after he participated in the sinking of the Japanese carrier Shōhō) before being transferred to an F4F Wildcat squadron, where he earned another Navy Cross for shooting down 7 Japanese aircraft in one day.
Thanks
Captain. At the outset of the attack of Pearl Harbour the Americans were comparatively poor pilots and their planes totally outclassed. I feel you actually did a great recreation. Respect, that was awesome. I’ve never been a fan of computer games but you have me addicted to yours. My one issue is with the ships, they would have/should have been underway.
Need that multi-core coding Cap :) Great job!
yup
AFAIK there were NO Japanese POWs taken from the Pearl raid, nor were any Zeros recovered. The first Zero recovered by the US was from a crash SOMEWHERE in friendly US terf but I don't recall the details. Somewhere in 1942 I believe.
Definately was not from Pearl Harbour though. Great video, unknown even in the archives the GR team has some great vids.
I think the recovered Zero was in the Aleutians…I think.
You are the best TH-camr I ever subscribe keep it up Grim reaper
Well lets say a DD, submarine or Catalina flying boat spots the IJN fleet and radio's this in with say three hours worth of preparation for the U.S. forces. This allows planes to be fueled prepped, armed and put into the sky, ships to be moved out of port and AA guns and the like to be prepped. The simulation really did very little of any of this. While the fleet may have not ben countered there would have been a large loss of IJN aircraft and the like. Possibly a counter attack with a surface fleet hours later.
Also assumes coordination between the Navy and the Army? Which was not there.
Few win a vertical scissors on the Zeros. The Mustang is too heavy to turn in the horizontal with a zero. The Zero has a limit on the diving speed. They have to force the zeros to dive and pull out before they break up. Then you shoot them.
The US possibly could have mitigated the damage. The planes wouldn't have been bunched up on the runways and the anti aircraft guns would have been loaded and waiting for the attack. Ships also would have been prepared and not surprised. What about the American CVs? They would know exactly where the Japanese attack fleet is this time.
The CV's were out delivering Wildcats to Wake Island.
In one of the movies during Pearl Harbor America. America had a radar system mounted on top of a mountain. The guys inside knew that there was gonna be a flight of bombers coming in that day. When they saw the large blip on the screen, they made the assumption that it was the bombers coming in. And never called the tower with their information. Had that information been sent the majority of the men and women on that base would still be alive today.
Classic example of forcing the enemy to acknowledge a threat… even with out classed planes, if the aviation troops had gotten airborn, that would have forced the zero pilots to waste time on them, vs attacking the much more valuable ships.
Any comments re: the Japanese not hitting the drydocks / POL facilities?
In the actual attack, Nagumo felt that since the element of surprise was lost, it wasn't worth the additional risk to his aircrews to launch a third wave, despite the fact that he now had an even greater tactical advantage with so many aircraft and ships destroyed or seriously damaged.
If you look at photos of Pearl harbour the AAA was firing and you can see the rounds bursting - even without warning it didn't take long for people to start firing the guns in defence. (Probably not all of them but definitely a decent amount).
During the _first_ wave, "....guns unmanned (none of the Navy's 5"/38s, only a quarter of its machine guns, and only four of 31 Army batteries got in action).[97]"
2 things of note. Some of those ships would have sailed with that notice, and a fair amount of that massive group of aircraft did NOT attack ships, they spread all over to attack air fields.
not really at 136 nm, that's an hour max, but likely less. For battleships, it can take up to 6 hours or more to get underway if none of their boilers are lit. Some ships did get underway thanks to being at a higher state of readiness, but most ships weren't. You still need to account for passing down orders, recalling the crew, 6 hours from lighting the boilers to heating up and pressurizing the turbines. Then cut mooring lines, raise anchor, get tug boats to assist navigating out to sea... and 20-30 minutes of acceleration for battleships to get in to combat speed. And all of this need to be done without traffic jams, a rendezvous point, and getting in to combat formation. It would be a miracle if the US could shorten what normally take days and do it in an hour. At best they would only get a couple of ships out to sea, and few would even be the battleships which is what the Japanese went after since there's no carriers.
Always fun to watch. I agree with all the comments about the ships getting up steam and moving out. In this sim with the P51 the real pilots should have got up high and B and Z's the Zeros as the 51s were 100 mph faster and certainly much faster in dive where the Zero's had issues with their controls at high speeds. In reality with the fighters the US had on hand, it was likely they would have been decimated by the superior Zero and the attack would have been pressed home. The big issue besides the carriers not being there was the fact the Japanese did not hit the fuel dumps which would have caused the fleet to abandon PH for the West Coast of the US.
With the early warning and the threat of the times. The ships should not of been harboured. They should of been at sea on coastguard duty
That was AMAZING.
I wonder if the first group that dropped bombs in the sea would be able to re fuel and re arm and attack again?
But yeah, one thing back then as a defender plane, only mk1 eyeballs used to find the enemy's planes in the air once up there, was really realistic that way too with the ai defenders seems like.
This defence is with all planes fuelled and armed on the ground, as well as pilots and sea men right there, right?
Still Really fun to see the simulation.
Did you all have aa ammo limits on the ships?
Amazingly cool, great work. :D
Because of the US Army Air Force SOPs at the time, the aircraft were not even fueled and armed. So in order to mount a realistic defense a 4 hour warning would be necessary. By realistic defense I mean scrambling fighters and getting ships underway. A full defense with ships and AA manned and bomber counter attack would require a 8-12 hour warning.
To answer a question raised in the video: only two Japanese were captured during the battle. Kazuo Sakamaki was captured after being forced to abandon his midget submarine.
Shigenori Nishikaichi crash landed his damaged Zero on an outlying island and was taken in by a group of Hawaiian natives unaware of the attack. After briefly being their guest, then (after they learned of the attack) their prisoner, he broke free and was killed by the people who he had taken as hostages.
I can only assume that the DCS AI planes ignore flight physics the same as in IL2 where you cannot keep up to your own AI flight? Watching this I cannot understand how a 1941 Zero can keep up and kill a 1944 Mustang.
Isn’t the Zero in DCS just a P51 flight model with a Zero skin and guns? Which if that’s the case, it means putting a perfect robot P51 pilot up against pilots who aren’t used to flying the P51.
@@jewbybrother579 Well that would explain it then wouldn't it. And now that I think on it, if it were 1941 vs 1944 the Mustangs would have wiped the sky of the Japanese.
We don;t have any Japanese planes in game, they are actually all just P-51 Mustangs in disguise. Closest we can get.
I wonder if just one temporally displaced Seawolf-class fast-attack nuclear submarine could stop the Japanese Navy from attacking Pearl Harbor in 1941.
Probably. It would at the very least cripple all the capital ships. If the seawolf class submarine has tactical nukes onboard that can be loaded into its tomahawk cruise missiles then its game over for the IJN fleet. Japanese military leaders in Tokyo would be left scratching their heads wondering how their entire carrier strike force disappeared.
@@joshuaortiz2031 Not to mention one can only imagine the terror of their sailors as their ships start blowing up with seemingly no explanation, unless they were to spot the torpedoes.
hey cap, what do you recommend for hardware to be able to keep up in dcs? do you have a wrteup somewhere? obviously you have a contoller recommendation, but what about video and monitor size? does the game play well on multiple monitors? how about an arc of curved monitors?
About to do a vid on this :)
@@grimreapers cap, really, just write a paragraph, no big whoop?
Could you do a simulation of a follow up attack after the attack on Pearl Harbor? Start off with the damage to everything after the actual attack and use whatever planes survived for a second attack? Either on the oil fields or the remaining ships or both? This is great work you're doing.
What are your PC specs, if you don't mind? Wonder how this engine would handle a Threadripper or (dual?) Xeon with a buttload of cores?
AMD 5900
Cap, thank you for running this. however to really see the effect of early notice would not be to compare the model to real world. You must run a second model without the warning and compare the two. I also would suggest scaling back all numbers by a factor of three to help the computer deal with the model. So divide everything by 3 including ships to be attacked, all aircraft, etc. also was the Japanese planes you used the number in the first phase only? I don’t think Admiral Y of Japan would have sent a second wave if he knew the first attack was not a surprise and were getting heavy losses. Thus only use the planes from first wave and see what happens.
I think we should wait until the game gets full multicore CPU support, then we'll be able to run the full simulation with no probs. Will create much better viewing.
@@grimreapers Hi Cap, any idea when multicore support might happen? The DCS graphics are compelling. But geez that is no trivial coding job.
You probably have sheet of FAQs to address common questions like this. Like:
I’m very curious why the simulations are always done at other locations. I can think of many good reasons for that, but I would like to know your thoughts.
Also curious whether Kortana has military flying experience. Her flying ability, SA, and broad familiarity with systems make me think so. But I’m _not_ seeking any further info, just a yes/no response if you or she chooses to answer. Thanks again for running these simulations, they are fascinating.
Most of the American planes were destroyed on the ground, which means that their pilots survived. The fact that the ships were in the harbor increased the odds of survival for their crews as they were in relatively shallow water and rescue efforts were made simpler. If the fleet had made it to open water and been ambushed their fate would likely have been similar to that of the British Force Z.
Remember that winwing technology is your ultimate hardware solution :) 127
00:17 "Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for me!" - Kenneth Williams
27:29 Which one? 1971 or 2005?