Amphibious Assault Scenario?

Imagine this:

A large island has a semi flat beachhead. One team has to escort an amphibious assault ship to the island who would realese a landing craft and then smaller gunboats would protect it as it attempted to land on the island.

This scenario would involve large ships attempting to protect/sink the carrier, and then smaller ships protecting the landing craft.

What do you guys think?

 

I don't think that there is a workable scale for this as you describe it. At 1:144 the small boats would be too small to make reliable, and at the scale that they would work the large ships would be too large to transport easily to the pond.

Also you have to look at the scenario tactically. I would leave the landing forces in port until I could be reasonably assured of their safety. The last thing I would do is bring the transports in with my main battle line because they would be shot to pieces.

Maybe the attackers could ambush a landing that's already in progress like the battle of Leyte Gulf.

 

Yes, the WWCC had a functional LST that could land a small tank on the shore, built in 2005. It was even used during the campaign battle that year. Unfortunately, Rob had not tweaked the speed in, and it was way over speed, so the Axis complained mightily. It still sailed, and no axis vessel was able to catch it. It pulled up to the beach, but the mechanism jammed, and the tank failed to come out. It had successfully demonstrated the ability earlier in the day, so it just choked under pressure, I guess. Regardless of why the mechanism failed, the mission was a failure.

Landing beach
Doors open, ramp down
Tank on the beach

After the battle, pretty much everyone agreed that although it was very cool, it was not suitable to form a whole combat scenario around. The biggest problem was that it added too much complexity to the game without adding much to the fun-factor. Before the battle, there had been discussion about shore defense guns, dock targets, tank traps on the beach, and other stuff. Rob was particularly worried about someone shooting the tank. It was a real mess beforehand. Everyone loved to see the clam shell doors open, the winch lower the ramp, and the tank roll out. It was an amazing accomplishment, but it was better suited for model shows and maneuvering events than battle.

It sounds like you're trying to design a scenario that will encourage ships to fulfill a particular role: the big ships cover the transport and the little ships provide close fire support for the landing craft. What you probably don't realize is that ships already tend to have jobs to perform on the battlefield based on their handling characteristics and armament.

I can think of a few examples of ships and their roles. I build a Gascoigne with 2x4 1/4" guns, meant to stand toe-to-toe and slug it out with the Iowa or any other big bruiser. I also had a Viribus Unitis dreadnought which was slower than a snail but could out-turn anything and use its six stern guns to good effect. I often ran it close to shore to further limit the maneuverability of attackers, pummeling any ship that ran aground. One guy built a Kreuzer P which could (barely) outrun any battleship. He used it as a fast raider, swooping in to join a fight and tip the odds before running away with minimal damage. It was also effective at running down cargo ships. Kotori had a Spahkreuzer, flagship of a torpedo cruiser squadron that devastated battleships and efficiently finished off any disabled ships. He later built a Z-boat destroyer that he used to hunt the torpedo cruisers he had used earlier.

I think what I'm really trying to say here is that there is plenty of variation on the basic scenario of "put holes in the other guy's boat," so the beach landing isn't necessary to have a fun and interesting battle.

 

Yeah. It pretty much spurred from the idea of a joint force operation of army and navy battle but that seemed a little much. Nevertheless, I am putting this idea on hold until I can fully think it through. In the meantime I have a secondary question:


Facilitator Note: This topic was split, to view posts on SlyFly's ship selection for his needs and circumstances, go here: What format and ship should I choose? | R/C Warship Combat

 

Lol vool

 

*cool

 

Gascan's memory may be confused with a previous attempt in a trial run to demonstrate the technology I used to build the ship. In that battle, the LST's doors did not open far enough to lower the ramp. If my LST had failed to perform in the actual campaign scenario, the Allies couldn't have won, and there would have been no controversy. The fact is that the LST and the tank performed flawlessly, and won the battle for the Allied forces.

Let me state categorically that my LST did not outrun the Axis ships. It looked faster because it is so small, and its blunt bow creates a huge wake. I was called on the speed, and demonstrated that it ran at legal speed according to the WWCC speed chart. The truth is that the Allied fleet blockaded and distracted the Axis fleet, per design, to keep them busy. I waited for the ideal moment to make my run. Only a single, slow coastal defense ship stood in my way, along with two shore batteries defending the beach. My LST took a huge amount of damage, but running aground - required in order for an LST to operate as designed - prevents the ship from sinking. That was controversy #1.

Once the LST hit the beach, the clamshell doors opened as designed, the ramp came down, and the tank rolled down the ramp and onto the beach:



The tank rolled up the beach, onto a scale road, and climbed to the top of a scale hill to a flag pole. The tank drove into the flag pole, and "captured it." At that point, the battle was over, and the Allies had won. That was according to the clearly-defined scenario rules. That was controversy #2: winning an RC Warship Combat battle with an RC tank. That controversy and the resulting bad blood, Axis vs Allies, is what caused me to retire the LST. Nobody wanted to revisit the bad blood. I still have the LST and tank, and they still work. But our hobby is about warship combat. When we start messing with it, and begin to simulate combat, rather than "Deal in Steel," the game suffers.

Here's the backstory:

I was challenged by the late WWCC member Gene Gaeta to build a functioning, 1:144 LST. No one, as far as we were able to determine, had ever done it. I decided to meet the challenge. I spent 3 solid months, over 300 hours, researching how LSTs actually functioned, even to the point of contacting the crew that saved and restored the last functioning 1:1 LST 325 for help. They even climbed inside the space delineated by the closed clamshell doors to take photos of the mechanisms that keep the water out of the ship at sea.

I was hoping that there might be an RC shortcut that I could use to make the whole thing work, but as it turned out, due to 1:144 space limitations, only an actual 1:144 scale solution was possible. Not only that, the rudders and props of the LST have to be built scale as well, or the ship can't maneuver, and it can't run up on the beach:



Here's how an LST works:

The outer, clamshell doors do not keep the water out of the hull. That seems pretty obvious when you look at how beat up many of those doors look in old photos. The clamshell doors are there to prevent the full force of the sea from breaking against the ramp. It's the ramp, pulled tight against a rubber seal (tested at 150 PSI), that keeps the tank deck watertight:


The LST runs up on the beach, or as close as possible, and a rack and pinion gear (see above) on each side of the ramp pushes the clamshell doors open, and the ramp is lowered down by a chain. My LST works exactly the same way. I had to make my own rack and pinion gears to make it work, and find a way to keep the ramp pulled tightly against the miniature rubber seal to maintain watertight integrity.

The ramp on my LST is held tight against the rubber seals around the bulkhead by setting the end point adjustment on a hi torque servo while running, just like the real thing, and then cables lower the ramp to the beach via gravity, also like the real thing. The tank is a micro RC tank that took weeks to find, and both the LST, with its clamshell doors and functioning ramp, and the RC tank, were operated by yours truly. The coastal defense batteries and battleship virtually shredded the LST hull as it sat on the beach, but in the end, the Allied invasion was successful.

This is an incredibly difficult set of requirements that all need to be met in order to pull this off. I doubt that a 1:72 LST and tank would fare any better, although there are 1:72 RC tanks available. The LST could have been sunk on its way into the harbor, and that would have been the end of it. As it was, its small size and highly effective twin screws and twin rudders kept it alive long enough to run up on the beach.

I'm proud of the success of my project, and the adrenalin rush of getting that tank out of the ship and up the road to the Axis flag is one I will never forget. But was it worth the cost? Probably not. It's a novelty piece, interesting in and of itself, but that's about it.

Rob

 

Yep, a decade will cause some of the details to fade. I must be getting old... I was on the Allied team, running a borrowed KGV, and Kotori was running Scharnhorst on the Axis. I remember there was some controversy about the ship, but I've obviously gotten the details wrong. Thanks for clarifying that, Rob.

I remember seeing photos of a 1/72 scale Japanese LST, but I don't remember who built it.