PBY Catalina and Combat Examples

[safisher]

General War Game RPG Advice: Don't design your war game any different than a typical RPG. If you wouldn't put first levels against a dragon, don't put a Cat against AAA. Design your mooks and boss fights accordingly. The Cat can bomb or strafe a barge or a civilian ship. It can hit a village or dock or an unarmed convoy or train, but not a military installation ringed with guns. It can land anywhere and has a long range, so it often has the element of surprise. Which it needs. It's most useful for transporting the group around so they can do exciting things away from the Cat. It's a good idea to figure out what it can do ahead of time, but as a rule always put it into a situation where it can win most of the time. War games are no different than any other RPG campaigns, the GM has to manage the threats just the same.

[GameDaddy]

Flying boats are pretty awesome! When I first moved to Miami in 1996 I lived on NE 14th street, right downtown just a couple blocks from the Port of Miami, and just across the Miami bay from there was the Miami Seaplane Base.

About every day I would watch the Mallard Flying Boats of the Pan Am Air Bridge take off and land. They mostly flew to Bahamas, and Bimini, and they flew to other locations in the Caribbean as well. They were very impressive. Never did fly on one although I did take cruises out of Miami and Fort Lauderdale.

They went bankrupt in 2005 shortly after a seaplane crashed losing everyone aboard. NTSB Investagtion revealed cause of the crash was the structutal failure of one of the wing struts. The Mallards had been flying since the 1970's.

Miami Seaplane Base (2014 from the deck of Carnival Glory)
http://i.imgur.com/8083gGI.jpg

The seaplane base is right in the center just in front of the bridge from this view. You can still see the water ramp slightly left, the terminal, and one of the hangars in this 2014 photo.

PanAm Seaplane Base, Coconut Grove
(2014 flying into Miami on the MD-80 for Spring Break. Now this is Miami city hall. Back in 97 when I visited here it was a run down artists enclave with a few hot Nightclubs. PanAm had long since been gone...)

http://i.imgur.com/xv2bfYW.jpg

Coconut Grove is just above the wing. You can still see one of the PanAm Hangars. Coconut Grove Yacht club is right next to where the PanAm Seaplane Terminal was originally located. When I was there in 1997 I was looking at buying a sailboat. They used to let people live on their boats in the harbor, but they don't anymore, you have to have a registered land address now, even if you have a boat anchored in the harbor.

Reference:
PanAm Seaplane Base, Coconut Grove (Now the Miami City Hall) Website
This was pretty run down when I visited in 1997. It looks way better these days!
http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/aviation/pam.htm

Chalks Airlines Wiki Page (Bought back from PanAm after PanAm went bankrupt in 1999)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalk%...ional_Airlines

Chalks Airline Website (From the Wayback Machine)
http://web.archive.org/web/200502120...flychalks.com/

Some other photos from my Spring Break 2014 Miami collection including
Starr Island, mansion & Retreat for Al Capone in Miami, Port of Miami, Miami Coast Guard Station and one image of the Bahama Islands from 20,000 feet.

http://imgur.com/a/WtexP

[adm]

In 1937 PBYs did not have wheeled landing gear yet, that was the PBY 5A and later, first built in October 1941. The earlier ones had to use trolleys. Note that the non-wheeled PBY 5 was still built until 1943.

[Engurrand]

Originally Posted by safisher

General War Game RPG Advice: Don't design your war game any different than a typical RPG. If you wouldn't put first levels against a dragon, don't put a Cat against AAA.... Snip snip.

Sound advice.
Understanding the limitations of the hardware is why I set out to model the airplane instead of just handwave. I had a sense that pitting it against a serious attack craft was a Bad Idea, but just how much so was not known to me.

In the table below, range is ground distance. Actual distance was Pythagorean of altitude and ground distance, plugged into this equation for altitude adjustment and using Douglas Cole's equation for speed penalties.

Against a stationary ground target at altitude 40. Does not include accuracy (clamped to 3 by SR), RoF, or target SM.

	Airspeeds					
Dist	0	33	50	63	98	
33	-7	-10				
50	-8	-10	-11			
70	-9	-11	-11	-12		
100	-10	-12	-12	-12	-13	
150	-11	-13	-13	-13	-13	
200	-12	-13	-14	-14	-14	
300	-13	-15	-15	-15	-15	
500	-15	-16	-16	-16	-16	
700	-15	-17	-17	-17	-17	
1000	-16	-18	-18	-18	-18	
1500	-18	-18	-18	-18	-18	<- Half damage range of an MG34
2000	-18	-19	-19	-19	-19	<- Half damage range of a Browning M2HB
3000	-19	-19	-19	-19	-19	
5000	-21	-21	-21	-21	-21	<- Max range of MG34
7000	-22	-22	-22	-22	-22	
10000	-22	-23	-23	-23	-23	<-Max range of Browning H2HB

If I understand correctly, relative airspeed of close to 0 is possible when the pilot is nose on target. The ground will object strenuously to any attempt to do this at ranges below current airspeed.

Edit: After testing altitude from 10 to 200 in steps of 10, I've observed there isn't much variance due to altitude except at ranges which would result in a crash, so I've updated the table to altitude 40 (from the original 50). This table will serve as an approximation for any altitude under 40y. Over 40y the very lower numbers get marginally worse out to 100y altitude and above that it's all pretty bleak. I've also snipped values that would result in a crash.

Second edit: whoops forgot the gun ranges on the table

[Engurrand]

Originally Posted by adm

In 1937 PBYs did not have wheeled landing gear yet, that was the PBY 5A and later, first built in October 1941. The earlier ones had to use trolleys....

That's very interesting. Source?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Engurrand

That's very interesting. Source?

Wikipedia has this. Versions described as "flying boats" can only land on water; "amphibians" have wheels as well. Amphibians were mostly a USN thing; the only amphibians that saw RAF service were 12 ex-USN aircraft.

[Engurrand]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Wikipedia has this. Versions described as "flying boats" can only land on water; "amphibians" have wheels as well. Amphibians were mostly a USN thing; the only amphibians that saw RAF service were 12 ex-USN aircraft.

Sheepishly, that represents a rather major failure of my understanding of the researched material. Chalk it off to wishful thinking. I'll edit the original write-up.

[johndallman]

A bit more description of the campaign would probably help. I didn't realise at first it was set in 1937; there may be other things that would provoke useful suggestions.

[Engurrand]

Originally Posted by johndallman

A bit more description of the campaign would probably help. I didn't realise at first it was set in 1937; there may be other things that would provoke useful suggestions.

I had intended this thread to host a generic write-up of the PBY Catalina, but since you ask...

The game (not mine, I'm the player whose PC owns the Cat) is 1930s pre-war alt-timeline pulp. 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. In our second adventure we encountered a 4 ton albino gorilla at which point all bets were off. Two of the PCs have superpowers, mine has mundane background and lots of money.

[weby]

Originally Posted by Engurrand

Which is the 5-A.

Interesting! and potentially important to know for those emergency long distance flights.

Also a neat trick that might be needed at some point when it is calm: You can also taxi on the surface for a long distance if you have too much load to take off... It was used historically by OS2U Kingfishers in the pacific to rescue several pilots at time more than once.

Yours are the results I've discovered in running the game math. I've just got my excel sheet sorted out, so standby for actual numbers. In brief: Heroes can shoot stationary ground targets, but their attack ranges must be close enough such that they would stand no chance against AA guns.

You noted that it was 1937, so there is no full war yet except the Spanish civil war. So actual deployment of AA guns is low, so you have a lot more space for heroics that way. Basically outside of war zones the only likely AA you will face unless attacking something like a warship is machine guns. If you do it for long, then some more air defenses might be brought to play.

Also as noted above the 5A is a 1941 production. In 1937 you are likely looking at PBY-1 or if just from the factory maybe PBY-2. Neither is ambifian, being only able to operate from water. The top speed is also lower: 184 mph at height. Also they do not have the side blisters, that came later(pby-4 or so)

Minions have a low chance of success even at close ranges. It should be possible to improve these odds to a degree by adding MOAR GUNS, but since the AA can do the same and they will almost always be bigger, you should not play chicken with AA guns in a Catalina. Not on purpose, anyway. Actually, do not play chicken with AA guns is a good flight rule no mater what you're flying. Right up there with do not argue with the ground.

Well, there are forces tasked with just that.

Originally Posted by Engurrand

The game (not mine, I'm the player whose PC owns the Cat) is 1930s pre-war alt-timeline pulp. 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. In our second adventure we encountered a 4 ton albino gorilla at which point all bets were off. Two of the PCs have superpowers, mine has mundane background and lots of money.

Suitable mooks are any of the interwar biplane fighters, basically they are agile, not much faster than the cat, but often armed only with 2 machine guns and fragile. So a catalina pilot that is more skilled could force the fighter to come on a tail chase, giving time to shoot down the lighter plane.

An example German fighter would be the Arado Ar 68 at 2 light machine guns and 208 mph at height.