PBY Catalina and Combat Examples

[weby]

Originally Posted by Engurrand

Hmm... we're in 1937 so no radar yet. But could WWII era radar detect you at mast height? I was given to understand it would have some trouble, but maybe over the ocean? Not sure. Will research.

No, radar at 1937 was not a thing you would likely have to face on the Med. But as your original writeup seemed to have a later Catalina and a FW-190, I assumed war years.

Basically there were radars in 1937, but they were experimental beasts with a lot of downtime and low coverage. They also existed only in few places.

A late WWII era radar can detect things quite well at mast height as long as you are not behind horizon, but the early air warning radars could generally not. As example the radar chain covering the channel in 1940 for the Battle of Britain could not detect thing really low.

[adm]

Yeah, the FW-190 threw me as well, since it was a post Battle of Britain aircraft. Quick look up, August 1941.

[adm]

Originally Posted by Engurrand

That's very interesting. Source?

Years of reading on the subject, although I did grab Wiki dates instead of getting one of my books.

Since this was a game, I was ignoring that it was unlikely that you would have Cats in the Mediterranean Theater before January 1943, until then they were used in either the Atlantic, or the Pacific, due to their long range ability.

[Dustin]

Originally Posted by Engurrand

Armament was typically two MG34 [Ht134] machine guns in the nose and one in the ventral turret, plus one Browning M2HB machine gun [Ht133] in each "blister" turret.

Nitpick: Instead of MG34s, I think you'll want the M1919A4 (High-Tech p.132) in its AN/M2 variant.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by weby

Well, there are forces tasked with just that.

Yeah, and being part of those forces is often considered to be a pretty bad idea...

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Engurrand

In our first adventure we encountered a Nazi rigid air-ship carrier which produced it's own smoke-screen. What sort of aircraft it was carrying is still a little hand-wavy (It would be relevant to this thread to consider suitable mooks against a Cat) but it has become evident they had cthuluium powered engines, so comparisons with the Acron are not apt - this one was super-science.

A super-science zeppelin that doesn't consume any significant weight of fuel solves one of the basic problems of normal ones: they have to release gas to keep themselves from becoming uncontrollably buoyant as they burn fuel.

Making it a lot faster would be difficult without a super-science way of building its structure: they are pretty fragile. And keeping it fairly slow makes it hard for it to carry high-performance aircraft, because they can't fly slowly enough to hook on without stalling and falling out of the sky. That's the best way to keep it from having fighters that will shoot the Cat down rapidly and easily, while still leaving them competitive with the Italian CR.32 and other mid-thirties biplanes.

Such biplanes are slow enough that if the Cat runs on sighting them, their overtake speed is limited, which keeps them from getting good attacks from above or below. The Cat's blister guns then actually cover the arcs from which attacks are possible, so if the pilots are real mooks, defence should be practical.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Engurrand

TL	Vehicle		ST/HP	Hnd/SR	  HT	Move	LWt.	Load	SM	Occ.	DR	Range		Cost		Locations	Stall
6	Catalina	110	-2/3	  12	3/98*	17.7**	2***	8	9A	3	2,520†		$1,500,000	g,rR2,rW,Wi,t4	33

Thanks for this. We were using this statline yesterday in a Weird War II campaign, doing air-to-air combat.

To be fair, this was air-to-air against one Focke-Achgelis Fa 330 at a time, in poor visibility where the towing submarines didn't appear to be aware of us. Overtaking an Fa 330 while the nose and blister gunners shoot at it would be very unsporting if their pilots weren't magicians. Got two of the submarines as well, with depth charges.

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by johndallman

To be fair, this was air-to-air against one Focke-Achgelis Fa 330 at a time, in poor visibility where the towing submarines didn't appear to be aware of us. Overtaking an Fa 330 while the nose and blister gunners shoot at it would be very unsporting if their pilots weren't magicians. Got two of the submarines as well, with depth charges.

If the submarines were aware of you, their options were:

1. Cast loose the magician in the rotor kite, crash dive, and try to explain it to their superiors when they got home
2. Stay on the surface and hope for the best, against a depth-charge-armed Catalina

I'm not at all sure which of those is safer.

[Engurrand]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Thanks for this. We were using this statline yesterday in a Weird War II campaign, doing air-to-air combat.

Hooray!

Originally Posted by johndallman

To be fair, this was air-to-air against one Focke-Achgelis Fa 330 at a time, in poor visibility where the towing submarines didn't appear to be aware of us. Overtaking an Fa 330 while the nose and blister gunners shoot at it would be very unsporting if their pilots weren't magicians. Got two of the submarines as well, with depth charges.

Yes, rather unsporting indeed! Like a clay pigeon shoot with a person strapped to the pigeon. Glad to know my write-up got used. Happy hunting!

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

1. Cast loose the magician in the rotor kite, crash dive, and try to explain it to their superiors when they got home
2. Stay on the surface and hope for the best, against a depth-charge-armed Catalina

I'm not at all sure which of those is safer.

To a truly dedicated naval officer, option 1 saves his boat and crew for further service. Option 2 probably loses them. It also means the fact that the enemy have figured out this operation goes unreported, which is likely to cost more boats and crews. This should be enough to avoid the captain being executed for taking option 1, although he'll probably be punished.