So What if the Carriers are not in BOP ?

[Feathered_IV]

I've just been thinking, navigating with no aids over Stalingrad etc is easy as you have numerous visual references and your map, how on earth does one navigate over endless ocean?

 

Wings of Puberty will have the intermediate flyers covered.

[216th_Jordan]

Well also as you could see ships 50km out in many cases it would be managable to find your carrier group even after some navigation mishap. I Wonder how this is going to be addressed.

[Barnacles]

Wings of Puberty will have the intermediate flyers covered.

 

I'm in pain!   

[Plurp]

US and IJ naval aviators used dead reckoning as the most basic form of Navigation, something that is still taught in flight school in the US.

 

So basically the Carrier (Mom) would be at a certain Lat/long, turn into the wind and launch aircraft.  The flight leads would set a course usually in the direction Scout planes had reported the enemy and they flew that heading at a constant Airspeed.  Morning Weather briefings would also provide general wind patterns and trends so when navigating Aircrew could estimate how wind affected their outbound track over the ocean.  They timed their legs, keeping the plane trimmed up and in balanced flight as a matter of course, and plotted their presumed progress on a plotting board.  If you watch old WWII films of Carriers at war, like "The Fighting Lady" you might notice pilots walking or running to their planes carrying a large square board.  This is the Navy Mark 3A plotting board.  It typically slid into a slot in the dash in front of the Aviator in the cockpit so he could pull it out and track his progress.  Computations of Time/distance were done on a whiz wheel "computer" which also is still a basic skill taught today in the USN Aviation training.

 

If you ever happen to see old Japanese films of Nell or Betty Bombers, you'll see footage of aircrew eating their hot noodles and fish out of a can and taking readings using a sextant.  They would use dead reckoning as well, flying a constant heading and airspeed and update their position from time to time with the sextant. Turns were tracked and new heading marked with time and distance carefully logged so a return leg or another turn could be made and eventually a rough position would be known at all times so the return leg flown on a heading that took them back to where their carrier was known to be waiting, often times not necessarily the same position the ship was in when the plane left.

 

If returning to and island chain and you were off course one could use the terrain and coastline features on a chart to geo-locate actual position based on visual cues and matching terrain to chart, kinda like we do in BoS with rivers/lakes/forest shapes.

 

The USN Airman was also fortunate to have a beacon called a YE-ZB.  It was a ship mounted transmitter "YE" and aircraft mounted reciever "ZB.  It widened the radius of success for the return to "Mom".  All one had to do was dial the correct channel and listen.  When in range a morse code signal could be heard correlating to a certain radial from the ship.  "A" for instance or . _  (dot dit) meant the 000-030 radial, and "code of the day" information would indicate that to the pilot.  Each day the letters arranged around each 30 degree radial slice would change, but the pilot always had the coded translation, so IJN snoopers who might also recieve the signal couldn't trace a path back to the ship as they had no idea what radial slice a given morse letter was paired to.

 

All the aviator had to do once he knew what letter sector he was in, was to fly a reciprocal heading from 000-030 in this case.  As he got closer he might cross into a neighboring sector as the slices converged on the Carrier, and then he'd know where to look... 

 

The navigating of aircraft during WWII was not a sure thing.  The history of the Second World War in the Pacific is replete with incidents of aircraft never returning to the ship or making it from one island to the next.  In fact of all the aircraft lost in WWII (including the pacific) more were lost to operational loss than to combat loss.  That is errors in navigation, flying into clouds or thunderstorms and being lost at sea.  It happened quite often.  There are stories of entire squadrons of F4U Corsairs disappearing on a ferry flight to the Slot for example.  Some 24 planes and pilots...gone.

 

Japan lost approximately 60% of their total aircraft to non combat causes (training, ferrying, etc.) the US lost approximastely 32% of their aircraft to operational non-combat causes.

Demo and explanation from IL2 1946

 

[Feathered_IV]

What if the in-game text refers to aircraft as airplanes and their ships as airplane carriers?

[=SIM=Ruttley]

US and IJ naval aviators used dead reckoning as the most basic form of Navigation, something that is still taught in flight school in the US.

 

So basically the Carrier (Mom) would be at a certain Lat/long, turn into the wind and launch aircraft.  The flight leads would set a course usually in the direction Scout planes had reported the enemy and they flew that heading at a constant Airspeed.  Morning Weather briefings would also provide general wind patterns and trends so when navigating Aircrew could estimate how wind affected their outbound track over the ocean.  They timed their legs, keeping the plane trimmed up and in balanced flight as a matter of course, and plotted their presumed progress on a plotting board.  If you watch old WWII films of Carriers at war, like "The Fighting Lady" you might notice pilots walking or running to their planes carrying a large square board.  This is the Navy Mark 3A plotting board.  It typically slid into a slot in the dash in front of the Aviator in the cockpit so he could pull it out and track his progress.  Computations of Time/distance were done on a whiz wheel "computer" which also is still a basic skill taught today in the USN Aviation training.

 

If you ever happen to see old Japanese films of Nell or Betty Bombers, you'll see footage of aircrew eating their hot noodles and fish out of a can and taking readings using a sextant.  They would use dead reckoning as well, flying a constant heading and airspeed and update their position from time to time with the sextant. Turns were tracked and new heading marked with time and distance carefully logged so a return leg or another turn could be made and eventually a rough position would be known at all times so the return leg flown on a heading that took them back to where their carrier was known to be waiting, often times not necessarily the same position the ship was in when the plane left.

 

If returning to and island chain and you were off course one could use the terrain and coastline features on a chart to geo-locate actual position based on visual cues and matching terrain to chart, kinda like we do in BoS with rivers/lakes/forest shapes.

 

The USN Airman was also fortunate to have a beacon called a YE-ZB.  It was a ship mounted transmitter "YE" and aircraft mounted reciever "ZB.  It widened the radius of success for the return to "Mom".  All one had to do was dial the correct channel and listen.  When in range a morse code signal could be heard correlating to a certain radial from the ship.  "A" for instance or . _  (dot dit) meant the 000-030 radial, and "code of the day" information would indicate that to the pilot.  Each day the letters arranged around each 30 degree radial slice would change, but the pilot always had the coded translation, so IJN snoopers who might also recieve the signal couldn't trace a path back to the ship as they had no idea what radial slice a given morse letter was paired to.

 

All the aviator had to do once he knew what letter sector he was in, was to fly a reciprocal heading from 000-030 in this case.  As he got closer he might cross into a neighboring sector as the slices converged on the Carrier, and then he'd know where to look... 

 

The navigating of aircraft during WWII was not a sure thing.  The history of the Second World War in the Pacific is replete with incidents of aircraft never returning to the ship or making it from one island to the next.  In fact of all the aircraft lost in WWII (including the pacific) more were lost to operational loss than to combat loss.  That is errors in navigation, flying into clouds or thunderstorms and being lost at sea.  It happened quite often.  There are stories of entire squadrons of F4U Corsairs disappearing on a ferry flight to the Slot for example.  Some 24 planes and pilots...gone.

 

Japan lost approximately 60% of their total aircraft to non combat causes (training, ferrying, etc.) the US lost approximastely 32% of their aircraft to operational non-combat causes.

That's fascinating, brave men were those pilots. I hope these methods are available in game and not just, 'press 'i', view map. Thanks for that great read.

[wtornado]

You could make a Henderson airfield/Rabaul  type scenarios providing you have the planes or if you had a Corsair you could make island hopping scenarios

before they were cleared to be able to operate on aircraft carriers.