Anyone Here Ever Served On Ships Like These?

It would be great to learn about how game and the real world are the same or different as far as ship handling, weapons performance and damage, particularly for the destroyers.

Charlie

i have extensive experience of firing 40mm bofors and also of 20mm oerlikons as i was a gunner in the royal navy during the 80's and 90's.What exactly would you like to know about the weapons performance?

I served on the USS Oklahoma City, which was a CG (Guided Missle cruiser, CG-5) that was converted from an old WWII CL (Light Cruiser, CL-91). She had a triple 6" forward gun turret, which at the time of her decommisioning was the last gun turret left in the US Navy (1980). She also had a double 5" gun mount above/behind the turret, that DID fire AA rounds. She served as the flagship of the 7th fleet from the early 1960's until she left the Pacific, passing the flag to the LCC USS Blue Ridge, an Amphibious Command and Control ship. The USS Oklahoma City had 4 boilers and 4 screws, with a top speed of 32 knots. She had 6" thick armor plating on her hull along with a double hull system to try to protect her from torpedoes. At full speed, she would take almost a full mile to complete a 180 degree turn. She was 610 feet long, with a crew of 1200 ships company and 300 flag personell. She was first commissioned in 1944, and was present in Tokyo Bay with the USS Missourri for the signing of the surrender treaty with Japan.

She was sunk as a target hulk off the coast of California in 1986, and took 3 harpoon missles and 2 ships firing modern 5" guns into her for over an hour to finish her off. Sad end for a fine lady, considering Oklahoma City wanted her as a memorial, but was refused.

Tiki and Malot,

What parts of enigma do a good job of reflecting your first hand experience?

the difficulty of aiming close range weapons at a moving target from a moving platform is pretty realistic with the ship movement being affected by the swell and manouevering the guns are as close as you can get i think since the only things that seem to be missing are the recoil and the smoke

cant comment about the depth charges since the only underwater weaponry i ever deployed was a couple of blocks of TNT which accidentally blew up a dolphin in the straits of gibraltar

overall i think E.RT is a pretty close simulation that doesn't get too technical

(Dangerous Waters I'm looking in your direction) lol

certainly manning the 20mm and 40mm has been a blast from the past for me lol

the only underwater weaponry i ever deployed was a couple of blocks of TNT which accidentally blew up a dolphin in the straits of gibraltar

Was this done on porpoise?

naaah it was pure chance.....a flipper the coin you might say

Well, as a Flagship, the USS Oklahoma City mostly controlled the operations, and she didn't have any ASW capability at all. We could control ASW assets from other ships, but the Helo we had was a huge SH3 that was used to ferry the three star Vice Admiral around. We also had no close-in weapons, except the ceremonial piece we had, that looked more like a throwback to WWI. The second ship I was stationed on never left port before I completed my time in the Navy was up. She was the FFG1 USS Brooke....another old relic of a ship that was later leased to Pakistan for a decade or so before being sold for scrap. When I left the Navy, the first AEGIS cruiser was still being built, but while on the Oklahoma City, we used our Talos/Saros missles for target practice for the AEGIS missle system test platform...a converted Amphib ship used a test platform for various weapons system. Those missles were HUGE compared to what we now use! They were almost 30 feet long, about 2 1/2 to 3' in diameter. Late 1950's/early 1960's technolgy. Since that was the last ship with this missle system, it was used to simulate ballistic missle firings and all sorts of other simulations. We fired off over 60 missles in a couple of days before we brought her into San Diego, ending her last trip as a commissioned ship in the US Navy. We had about 10-15 'duds'...missles that blew chunks of solid propellent out the rear and went haywire and had to slef-destruct. We even had one that flipped over and came back at the ship! That one shook the whole ship when it self-destructed! Anyways, even with old 1960's tech., there really isn't any similarity, since Nuke subs can travel over 30 knots (way over), and ASW and ASuW has changed so much so as not to really even resemble WWII warefare.

My dad was a engine guy on a Fletcher class destroyer. USS Wren 568. He says it had only a 3 blade screw enabling it to go 39.9 knots. This was quite a bit faster than most in her day which for him was 1952 - 1956. Korea.

Re: Was this done on Porpoise? Good one Old Yellowstain.

Mitch

I served aboard the USS Iwo Jima LHD-7, a Wasp-class Multipurpose Amphibious Assault Ship modeled after the Essex-class Fast Attack Carrier.

It displaces 40,500 tons, and has a top speed in excess of 20 knots (classified). 2 steam boilers, 2 geared steam turbines turning 2 screws. She measures 844' by 106' at the flight deck and has a navigation draft of approximately 35'.

Performing what in Enigma would be classified as a "pivot turn" she can turn in only a few boat lengths, but never actually comes to a stop and just spins in place. Note that these turns were only ever performed with Ahead Full on one engine with Back Two Thirds on the other. Using Ahead Flank and Back Full produces far too much torque on the shafts to be safely conducted in non-emergency situations so this information does not necessarilly represent the maximum turning ability of the ship.

The only ships of similiar tonnage to the Iwo I've gotten to drive in the game are not good representations yet due to the inaccurate turning abilities I mentioned earlier. I do not have any personal experience driving "smallboys" however. I would say the pivot turns need to be "tweaked" slightly, or perhaps just manuable independant control of the screws of a ship (also known as Manuevering Combinations) instead.

As for pitch and roll in heavy seas I'd say the game does an excelent job with that, however as my ship only mounted 4 .50 caliber Brownings and 3 Mk-38 25mm Heavy Chainguns for its crew serve mounts, I am not qualified to pass judgement on the gun training accuracy.

All in all, I have greatly enjoyed playing E:RT and hope to see some additions really soon. I read earlier that one of the reasons that the US doesn't get a "battleship" at the end of their campaign is because the ship model wasn't ready ahead of time. Perhaps a small patch can be done to correct the horrid manueverability of the Hood-class ships and to add a USN equivalent, perhaps a Tennessee-class (BB43) class ship?

Small tidbit, the USS Tennesse BB43 was completed in 1920 and mounted the following:

Main Battery: 12 14"/50 in four triple-turrets

Secondary Battery: 14 5"/51 guns in single casemate mountings (seven guns on each side of the ship). Later in the 1920s, two 5"/51 guns were removed and eight 5"/25 anti-aircraft guns were added.

Modest improvements during the 20's and 30's also included .50 caliber anti-aircraft guns in addition to the new 5"/25 anti-aircraft guns.

32,300 tons standard displacement

26,800 to 28,500 horsepower steam turbines with electric drive, producing maximum 21 knot speed.

Perhaps if this class of ship is "too old" to keep up with the Hoods the Colorado-class could be used instead?

Well there's my two coppers, enjoy.