Derailing the New Swiss, or : Is it plain how explain the many planes?

[Logi]

Consider the RRC's airforce is 3600 airplanes. My army is 46 corps. So basically I have 78 airplanes per corp. But that number's not really right.

1000 of those 3600 are old scout planes (literally the first planes I've ever build) and they are quite obsolete. 900 of the remaining 2600 are old fighter planes that have only one MG, that's it. Terribly slow speed to boot. 600 of the remaining 1700 are old bombers which have only a few hundred pounds in payload and very short range and speed. The rest are "modern" fighters where perform at level to their tech (previous ones were pretty bad in that respect) and only at 1914 tech. I have 1916 tech and I haven't built any planes with it so far.

So if I don't count the old scout planes, I have 56.5 planes per corp. If I only count the "modern" airforce, I only have 24 planes per corp.

What you fail to understand is the current building in the RRC of the airforce is PRECISELY because there hasn't been any major wars. We built 900 planes per year (although in reality it was clustered on certain years) certain less than France's 4000 per year production. Lookat the big picture, France over the course of the war built a total of 67,987 planes. What is misleading in the fact that France also lost 52,640 planes in the war. Although they produced alot, the majority were destroyed.

It don't think tis getting out of hand, we haven't seen people produce even close to wartime productions. Hell France produced more than my whole nation's airforce in just a year of WW1 and that's not even considering our difference in population and land area.

[Tanthalas]

No, your first fighter will be the 200+ Cessna-Martin's with two handheld revovlers.  ;D

no thats a Primary Trainer... as I have told everyone Rohan will be building its own Aircraft, but for now ill be using them for the Primaray trainer role

[Desertfox]

I view it kind of as an alternate Naval Arms Race.  That said Rohans first "Fighter" (I view it more like an armed scout) will be a knock off of the Eindecker.

Naval Arm Races were with battleships which were THE source of power for God knows how many years. These races are with glorified toys.

It don't think tis getting out of hand, we haven't seen people produce even close to wartime productions. Hell France produced more than my whole nation's airforce in just a year of WW1 and that's not even considering our difference in population and land area.

During war...

Do not look at wartime production rates at all. Look at how many planes where built before and after WWI.

Some numbers, the post-WWI RAF had 25 squadrons (at say 20 planes a squadron) that comes out to around 500 aircraft. A proposal to increase the RAF's size to 150 squadrons (~3,000 airplanes) was shot down in flames as being way too expensive (75 million pounds a year).

[Kaiser Kirk]

For my part the air force size is related to buying planes in 100-unit batches.   I have six airfields scattered about to give coverage. 100 fighter/scouts per airfield.  I didn't think a second 100 was appropriate (i.e. 1200 AC) so went with 50 trainers each. Thats 900.  Toss in the seaplane base and it's 950.

Likewise, the more I split squadrons, the more to track. Which resembles effort. So I'm likely to have 100-200 planes per airfield.  As a result, as I build more airfields to provide better coverage and fall back spots, I can see the airforce growing even faster.

One question though - from the RAF numbers, having several thousand aircraft requires tens or hundreds of thousands of aircrew and groundcrew and support.  At that level it could easily effect the maximum manpower available.  Perhaps not for the big countries, but for little Bavaria, it could be an issue.

[Guinness]

Right now, we have no standardized unit structure for air power as we do for land units. For that matter, we don't really have such a thing for navies either (other than the fairly arbitrary crew numbers SS2 reports).

For aircraft, I'll think on some sort of standard size for squadrons, groups, and wings and get back to everyone. For ships, if we need it, I think I'd just assign X number of crew per ton of displacement or something to make it easy to guestimate at force size required to crew and maintain ships by total displacement fielded. I think the last time this came up for navies the consensus was that we didn't need it, yet...

[TexanCowboy]

We really don't, it is covered in the upkeep rules.

[Sachmle]

We really don't, it is covered in the upkeep rules.

He's not talking about upkeep or additional costs he's talking about you have X% of your population available for military service. Use to much and you don't have enough to run factories, farm, run businesses, etc.

[Guinness]

Sachmle: correct. Though if we do this, we might end up with a new and improved upkeep system based on units instead of individual aircraft count as a byproduct.

[Guinness]

Here's a quick and dirty first pass of manpower numbers. This is based on each unit being 1/4 the size of it's equivalent infantry unit. These numbers seem to jibe well with the RAF numbers presented upthread:

Squadron: 8-24 Aircraft (depending on size and type), 416 men total
Wing (or Regiment): 3 squadrons: 1250 Men
Group (or Divsion): 5 Wings: 6250 Men
Air Force (or Air Corps): 2 Groups: 12,500 men

(An Air Force really ought to be 3 groups, as a Corps probably out to be 3 divisions, but I don't really want to reopen that discussion here now. This is at least consistent with what we have for Army Units).

I had in mind some sort of standardized ratio for aircraft counts per squadron based on number of engines. So 24 single engine types, 16 twin engine types, or 8 aircraft with 3 or more engines per squadron. That would mean there are 17 or 18 men per single engine aircraft, 26 men per each twin engine aircraft, or 52 men per muli-engined aircraft.

[Kaiser Kirk]

Looks reasonable to me.  I might suggest a wing be 4 squadrons. 96 aircraft is close to what we had. Group would then be 4 Wings - 16 squadrons (384 AC) instead of 15.
Alternately, round to the siege art/ fort numbers, 500 men for a squadron etc. 

I really don't have the knowledge base to rule on that though :) 

[Desertfox]

I would suggest keeping it simple, 15 men per single engine, 25 per twin, 50 heavy. You take the number of each plane you have and multiply it by the above. Mainly because each of us will probably have different definitions of what a squadron might be. Right now Im having 10 plane squadrons for NS just to keep the math easy.

[Guinness]

Well I think we may be gearing up for buying aircraft by the unit instead of individually. In the long run that would probably make the bookkeeping easier including handling attrition automatically via upkeep.

[ctwaterman]

http://www.navalism.org/index.php?topic=3950.msg43460#msg43460

The Above link is incomplete as some of the Airbases I just noticed are wrong.  But it gives you the Gist ouf how I have broken the 100 Plane Single Aircraft up into 4 Squadrons of 25 each for deployment purposes.  In addition I have broken up the 50 Plane Twin Engined Aircraft up into 2 Squadrons of 25 Planes the Heavy Bomber where you only get 25 Aircraft get to be a single squadron of Aircraft.

The Real limiting factor on my deployment of planes has been the BP to build a sufficent number of 1916 and soon 1918 type airfields.  But realistically I went as hight as the number of Aircraft that I have simply because I need aircraft in Ost Africa and in the Mediteranian and North Africa.   I have a tendency to keep my Old Aircraft as trainers.

So lets say a lucky roll here soon gives me a new aircraft tech.  I will in all likelihood produce around 900 New Aircraft in a that year to replace all my 1916 Aircraft retire all the Historic 1914 Aircraft being used as trainers and use half the 1916 aircraft to replace those trainners particulairly the 2 seater single engined aircraft.  At that point there may very well be around 400 gently used 1916 Aircraft available on the open market all with between 4 and 5 years of useful life left.

I dont think we have too many aircraft considering that my Force in Ost Africa is out numbered at least 2 to 1 by Orange Aircraft and my Force in Italy is similarly out numbered by Bavarian Aircraft.

I dont however see Italia currently increasing the size of its airforce except maybe in Maritime Reconisance Aircraft with Radio :)

Charles

[Kaiser Kirk]

[quote author=ctwaterman link=topic=4515.msg51806#msg51806

I dont think we have too many aircraft considering that my Force in Ost Africa is out numbered at least 2 to 1 by Orange Aircraft and my Force in Italy is similarly out numbered by Bavarian Aircraft.

[/quote]

This is actually where things like Planebuilder to tailor range- so that you could ensure they ferry over the med so they are not effectively two separate bodies. - have some advantages. You might be able to find historic fighters that capable, it really isn't that far.

For my part, to reinforce the 200 planes in Friuli, outnumbered by the Italian hordes  :) , I have to be able to fly over the Alps.

However that does bring up another consideration...how many planes is reasonable per "airfield"?  I haven't a clue, and don't know how big these airfield complexes are.  I expect there are a primary and some secondary fields, and a central maintenance area.

As for attrition, was looking at an old  'Flight Journal' earlier today and it had a fair amount of numbers on US WW2 aircraft losses and manpower casualties outside of combat...which were staggeringly high. The US lost 14,903 aircrew and 13,873 aircraft within the continental US. Nearly 1,000 were lost in transit overseas, and then 20,633 to non-combat causes overseas.  Considering combat losses were 22,948, that's a huge number.

Also has a fair number of production numbers by plane type and country.  Interestingly while Japan/Germany/UK/USSR managed 31-56planes/day, the USA cranked out 113 planes/day during the war, 170/day after 1942, and ended with nearly 80,000 planes and 2.6 million personnel !  Yee-gads

[miketr]

Something else to keep in mind if we move to an air unit instead of individual aircraft is we will then need to make sure the aircraft unit group size works with aircraft carriers.

Michael