What I’m saying is that merchant navy is one thing and military navy is another.
As long as a given Power is caught unprepared, they use merchant ships to convey troops.
But, giving time and resources, which Allies have, they design and built specific troopships and landing ships for military purpose. And as military goes, they put the most cost and weight effective weapons on these troopships. They favored AAguns as being the best defense they can put to not undermine other functional aspect and probably see no other way to deal efficiently against Subs than relying upon escorting Destroyers, Frigates and Corvettes.
Now, about game depictions, it feels strange that Transports are supposed to be civilian units carrying furniture and wartime supplies, while all other units are typical military ones.
In game, the typical behaviour of Sub combat against taken last transport does not depict Subs against merchant convoy tactics at all. Instead, it describe the typical situation about naval invasion when many escorting ships keep a secure net to prevent Subs from sinking troopships.
In game, also, Allies are building TPs to make specific landing and invade directly enemy’s TTs. I’m just asking what kind of transports were built by Allies to this specific purpose?
What I’ve found yet is a typical unarmored troopship armed with limited AA capacity.
I’m no more into the abstract idea that a TP is a typical civilian cargo ship.
We don’t see TP going from EUSA coast past by Iceland and delivering into Murmansk or Archangel, or going South past Cape Horn then land into Persia to deliver Trucks to Moscow.
This part of war is totally abstract and included into Convoy Disruption.
I’m just comparing what was the facts around what the game is actually depicting.
And the more I look into it, at least from the Allies side, the more the abstract idea about typical Transport seems to provide a distorted picture.
About AA armament effectiveness, it is another point to discuss.
From an abstract POV, it says that designing such was a loss of resources and time.
But, if there was no relevance at all, why did they systematically built such on troopships, or take time to convert merchant liners with such?
Edit: From Germany POV, it seems they took an armed merchant cruiser as a typical TP sculpt.
But Merchant raiders were not meant for landing troops or tanks…
Since, Kriegsmarine was caught off-guard, after France invasion success, and unprepared to launch an amphibious assault on England. The little I see, is they see no relevance after calling off The Battle of England to built troopships. And most of resources went to U-boats. But, if instead of going East into Soviet Union, Hitler stayed on course toward England, the sketches and designed I saw from landing crafts and landing ships seems all requiring AA guns armaments.
EDIT 2: With CWO Marc identification charts, I now can see what kind of ship was this TP unit sculpt Dithmarschen:
Dithmarschen was being overhauled at the beginning of World War II. From June to November 1940, she supported the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau during Operation Weserubung, the invasion of Norway. In November, she refueled the cruiser Admiral Hipper during her operations in the Atlantic Ocean. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were again supported in the Atlantic Ocean during Operation Berlin in early 1941. Between October 1941 and December 1942, Dithmarschen operated in the Baltic Sea, supporting German ships during Operation Barbarossa. For the remainder of the war, she operated off Norway. At the end of the war, she had returned to Bremerhaven, where she was taken over by the British.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Conecuh_(AOR-110)
Such German military Tanker used for amphibious assault of Norway was also equipped with AA armaments or dual purpose:
Armament Germany: 3 x 150 mm, 2 x 37 mm, 4 x 20 mm;
armament once taken by US Navy: 8 x 40 mm guns
For Japan, there is less infos…
At least, it seems they have done same things than Allies on their Merchant Cruiser Liners and add a few deck guns and AA armaments.
I saw that Japan give AA armament to merchant ship converted into troop ship on a much lesser extent than Allies.
I’m still looking into it.
So, it seems that this poorer Power get no real opportunity to built armed designed troopships or landing ships.
They gave weapons to warships.
And use merchant passengers ships converted into troopships as they were.
Resources were scarce.
Italy seems to follow this direction too.
Another case which showed how Allies and US get better Troopships to deal with aircraft:
@Der:
Wow - just got back from vacation to see this.
I’ve been reading Richard Frank’s historic account called Guadalcanal. On pp 79-80 he describes a Japanese air raid on US transports:
“Twenty-three Bettys …burst out of the East in several groups to charge the fat transports just before noon…the Japanese suffered grievously at the hands of the ship’s gunners. The Bettys rippled the sea surface from an altitude of only 20 to 40 feet in accordance with tactics that brought success early in the war against weak AA defenses. But now the Japanese faced more heavy guns guided by sophisticated fire control systems and, more important a proliferation of the deadly 20 mm antiaircraft machineguns…12 or so adorned each of the sluggish transports, and from some vessels came a further barrage of automatic rifle and submachinegun fire…only five of the attacking Bettys fluttered back to Rabaul…”
That is history. Under global transport rules, it would have read something like this: “then a single Japanese Betty flew over and all the transports were auto-sunk without firing a shot.”
To answer some of the requests for more details of our game, what happened was people would decide that they would invade somewhere, then buy ENOUGH TRANSPORTS TO DO THE JOB, and quit. That makes sense - at $10 a pop you are not going to keep spamming transports to use in battles when you can be twice as effective using DDs which cost $8 and attack and defend @2.
In the new naval setting, BBs need not fear transports - remember they can take the first hit free, and in some versions they are auto-repaired at the end of the battle. If you’ve bought five 10 IPC transports that is $50 worth of shipping there - do you think sane people will run them into battle situations as a regular strategy? We didn’t - it might have happened in dire situations but spamming transports was never strategy used in our group, with DDs available.
Remember, we’re not talking about going back to the old classic game world with 1 hit BBs and no DDs. We are advocating bringing the classic-type transport into the new global world which is a whole different story.
Can it be a usual results against an Allied Troopship convoy?
The He 177As carried Henschel Hs 293 radio-guided, rocket-boosted glide bombs, an estimated 60 of which they launched at the convoy. The convoy’s combined anti-aircraft fire seems to have impeded most of the attackers’ attempts to guide their glide bombs onto their targets. Rohna’s DEMS gunners contributed with her machine guns, Oerlikon autocannons and about 20 rounds from her 12-pounder gun. The convoy shot down at least two aircraft and damaged several others.
Rohna was the only casualty. About 1715 or 1725 hrs a He 177A piloted by Hans Dochtermann released a glide bomb that hit Rohna on her port side, at the after end of her engine room and Number Six troop deck. Men poured on deck, many of them badly wounded.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMT_Rohna
It seems a lot of Merchants ship were equipped with AA armaments:
Old naval guns had been stored since 1918 in ports for possible use. In the Second World War the objective was to equip each ship with a low-angle gun mounted aft as defence against surfaced submarines and a high-angle gun and rifle-calibre machine guns for defence against air attack. 3,400 ships had been armed by the end of 1940; and all ships were armed by 1943.
The low-angle guns were typically in the 3-inch to 6-inch range (75�150 mm) depending on the size of the ship. Rifle-caliber machine guns were augmented or replaced by Oerlikon 20 mm cannon as they became available. The high-angle QF 12pdr Mk V mount was the most common anti-aircraft gun and later ships sometimes received Bofors 40 mm guns.
Untrained gunners posed significant risk to friendly aircraft in the absence of efficient communications. DEMS guns were manned by 24,000 Royal Navy personnel and 14,000 men of the Royal Artillery Maritime Regiment. 150,000 merchant sailors were trained to assist by passing ammunition, loading and replacing casualties. Initially, Royal Artillery personnel provided anti-aircraft protection by bringing their own machine-guns aboard ships operating close to the British Isles. DEMS gunners were often retired military personnel and young Hostilities Only ratings, commanded by a petty officer or Royal Marine sergeant. Large ships sometimes embarked a junior naval officer to command the DEMS gunners. Canada placed guns on 713 ships, while the Royal Australian Navy provided gun crews for 375 Australian and other Allied ships.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensively_equipped_merchant_ship
On D-Day, there was so many AA-guns on Converted Merchant ships that many feared friendly fires upon Allied aircraft
In 1944, during preparations for the invasion of France called Operation Overlord there was deep concern over the danger to Allied aircraft from the large number of DEMS involved in the landings. A request for volunteer aircraft recognition experts from the Royal Observer Corps produced 1,094 highly qualified candidates, from which 796 were selected to perform valuable aircraft recognition duties as seaborne volunteers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensively_equipped_merchant_ship
Even Japan with his meagre resources try to add such AA cover to troopships:
The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) established several shipping artillery units during the Pacific War. These units provided defensive guns and gun crews for the transport ships operated by the Army, as well as merchant vessels chartered by the service.
In December 1941 the IJA had a single shipping artillery unit, the Shipping Artillery Regiment. The regiment comprised two anti-aircraft battalions, a machine cannon battalion and a depot responsible for training replacement personnel.
By early 1944 the Shipping Artillery Regiment had been reorganized into two units, the 1st and 2nd Shipping Artillery Regiments. The 1st Shipping Artillery Regiment was based in Japan. The 2nd Shipping Artillery Regiment was initially based in Singapore, but moved to Manila in the Philippines in July 1944. Each regiment’s table of organization strength was 15 anti-aircraft batteries, three light anti-aircraft batteries, three surface gun batteries, two sea watch companies, a mortar company, a machine gun company, a depth charge company, a hydrophone company and an air watch company. A total of 2,300 soldiers were allocated to each unit. However, the actual strength and organization of the regiments varied.
Small detachments from the regiments were allocated to individual ships to protect them against submarines and aircraft. As a result, the battalion, battery and company headquarters primarily performed administrative functions.
The IJA also established the 1st and 2nd Shipping Machine Gun Cannon Regiments to protect small ships. Each of these regiments comprised two light anti-aircraft battalions and a machine gun company. The Imperial Japanese Navy’s Central Pacific Area Fleet also raised small air defence squads from April 1944 which were assigned to individual ships.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Japanese_Army_shipping_artillery