Considering the flight deck were made of wood, the heat wave from the blast would be enough to put nearby carriers on fire. And IJN carrier had poor damage control. I called that a win!
Seeing this it'd be interesting to compare a nuclear penetration strike on a target in Russia/USSR. 50's/60's tech vs modern. Would likely show how big a difference stealth makes in the outcome and why so much was invested in it towards the end of the Cold War.
Yes, there are several effects a nuclear warhead would have that don't get modelled in DCS. Not only would everyone be deafened, but anyone who happened to be looking in the wrong direction when the warhead detonated would be blinded, and a lot of a ship's electrical systems would be damaged by the EMP. You'd very likely take out most of the fleet in terms of combat effectiveness.
I wonder if the Sidewinder would lock onto the FRONT of a warbird more readily than from the rear, since the full face of the engine is visible? Maybe you could test that with the various warbirds and IR missiles. Now I'm curious. Also, mmmm I love some GR boom boom in the morning.
The Genie has a "tiny" nuclear warhead 1.5Kt so about the same force as the Beirut explosion. Seems realistic the damage is only critical to a carrier when lands within a few hundred meters.
@@itsjustme8947 My thought was along this line. If the carriers were able to still operate and decided to press the attack anyway many of the surviving pilots/crew would die of radiation poisoning. Even the ones in the air at the time of the blasts would be exposed once they land.
When we are only talking about a 1.5Kt plutonium fission bomb at a range of 500m you would be exposed to 350 rads in the open (on deck) and 155 rads behind 5cm om steel. The thermal pulse would be a really bad day for anyone on deck but anyone inside the effect would be minor. On the ship itself the thermal pulse would cause anything on the exposed side to catch fire, but would think the shockwave would extinguish much of this and the remaining crew should be able to take care of the rest after. Though if this was one of the tankers it would be toast. @@itsjustme8947
In Operation Crossroads, Test Able, in 1946, the aircraft carrier USS _Saratoga_ stayed afloat after being subjected to a 20-kiloton airburst. Didn't look too pretty, mind, but she stayed afloat. She even stayed afloat for a couple of hours after Test Baker, an underwater explosion.
Hey Cap, love these “What-If” videos! They’re so well done and fun to watch. If you ever need a break from DCS though, it’d be great to get another CC2 campaign!
I’d love to see a series comparing AGM62M5 (Walleye II), GBU-15, Harpoons, and LRASMs in a period appropriate anti-ship missions so that we can see differences in performance. Well, we’ve seen the Mavericks, Harpoons and LRASMs many times, so I’m mostly curious how much baby-sitting the TV guided gliders require vs the modern fire-and-forget missiles in a maritime strike. Presumably they would be used soon after SEAD strikes from Shrikes or HARMs.
A nuclear tipped falcon missile with equivalent 250 ton tnt would do little to no damage on a ship yet a few 1000 lb anti ship missiles would send a carrier to the bottom? WAGNERRRRRRRRRRR
Assuming the shockwave, heat blast and radiation didn’t turn the entire crew into a puddle on the deck, there’s a good chance of bursting the aviation fuel tanks and igniting the contents which would almost certainly destroy the carriers. A close hit like Poosh’s rocket would cave the hull in like a tin can.
There's a huge problem with your videos. I cant sleep because I keep watching them. :) Great job architecting amazing scenarios! Keep up the wonderful entertaining work.
Another fun scenario. Cap, you're a natural narrator. I'd love to see a re-creation of the USS Laffy vs 50 kamikazes, but a modern destroyer in its place. Guns only though...obviousy missles would make short work of the warbirds.
Roger, here's what we've done on Laffey so far: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-M_FUGKxWkAo.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-B9LQtkUYoBw.html
Those carriers would be disabled from the blast effects and thermal pulse. Warped superstructures, burning decks, AAA ammo lockers cooking off or just outright obliterated and in the case of the one carrier that had a Genie detonate maybe 100 feet away from the hull, it might get clipped by the fireball and get turned into radioactive shrapnel. Its keel would definitely shatter from the mechanical stresses alone from a point blank nuke going off even one thats only 1.5kt.
Cap you can use Nukemaps to get a map view with a BUNCH of data on any yield of nuclear blast you like, including the 1.5kt of the Genie warhead. This would show the radius of the fireball, heavy, medium and light overpressure, radiation exposure and 3rd degree burns. The fireball would just about vaporize a ship if it landed within a few hundred meters. Anyone in the fleet looking towards the explosions at that distance would have been blinded. Many would be exposed to radiation (many mortally, especially with that many warheads detonating) and anyone not behind something would receive third degree burns. That fleet would be absolutely devastated. The carriers would all be critically damaged. The wooden decks of every ship would be on fire. It would be chaos.
Also I'm just curious where you keep coming up with the information that there were two carrier fleets? I've studied this battle many times and I have never heard that they were in two separate fleets. They were in one large Loosely formed Fleet
The Japanese attack force-which included six aircraft carriers and 420 planes -sailed from Hitokappu Bay in the Kurile Islands, on a 3,500 mile voyage to a staging area 230 miles off the Hawaiian island of Oahu. According to Twomey, the Japanese sailed without radar or reconnaissance planes overhead, in an effort to avoid detection.
7 miles is way outside blast radius. 14 miles is merely a light show for carrier class ships. Get them a mile apart and then you can sink them by the dozen, but spread out , you will kill escorts and a piece of the flotilla, but not all of them.
Six squadrons of US Navy Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers armed with nuclear-tipped torpedoes. Provide escort with six squadrons of US Navy F4F fighters employing the "Thatch Weave" anti-Zero tactic.
Me at the start of the video - "Based on the 29 minutes run time, I'm gonna say 'Yes'...". I'd still love you guys to build me a high altitude/low orbit space force to simulate hypersonic missile and aircraft fighting at huge altitudes and speeds!
Cap, I have some suggestions for more nuclear missions. 1. S-300P nuclear air defense, the P could could have a nuclear warhead on it . 2. B-52 strike with AGM-129a ACM (stealth nuclear cruise missile) 3. B-61 strike (numerous platforms capable of carrying missile.
Is the B61 Nuke bomb available in DCS? If yes, could you maybe do some vids with it? Would be interesting to strap that one to a F-104 or Tornado like Luftwaffe would have done in war times, the US still has some of them stored at Büchel AB in Germany for use with Luftwaffe Tornados (and F-35 eventually?).
@@itsjustme8947 LOL, what?!? It’s been around for more than 60 years literally everyone knows about it or can know about it. There is a freaking Wikipedia page even. The New York Times has written on it, los alamos National lab has written about it, atomic energy commission has/had a RU-vid video on it. You’re such a troll.
Hey Cap, did you once try a MOAB against the IJN fleet? It would be difficult I know, but dropping them from a C-130, and I'll say it again, maybe attack with the AC-130. Yeah, the Zero's would be a problem, but if you began/appeared not too far from the fleet (like a mid-air start), possibilities. Really like these what-if missions.
Grrrreat fun (and science ;) ) as usual gents ! So arr the Genie and Nuke Falcon GR creations only? I cant find those weapons downloads or as part of the VSN mods??? Thanks
Has anyone ever made a mod that adds a proper weapon effect to nuclear weapons? Maybe it's like adding crash effects to planes in flight simulators post 9/11. Developers and publishers have some sort of overly cautious aversion to both. Worried about the videos people might make of planes crashing into skyscrapers, or in the case of nuclear weapons, a general taboo they don't want to violate. That somehow it would be wrong to simulate how quickly and completely NATO, Russian or Chinese surface fleets would disappear in the opening hour (singular) of an all out nuclear war.
My reasons for this are as stated before-- The P-80 is America's 1940's first production Jet Fighter! First flight was only 3 years after The Me-262 first flight! If you guys had access to Me-262 in DCS you'd be going crazy with it lol all I'm askin is you treat The P-80 with a shred of the same respect and interest! Lol plus it was too easy for The F-84's hence the additional 4 flights of escorting bandits ;)👍
I'm pretty sure it would do more than that RL, the shockwave should propagate pretty well through the water and do some messy things to their hulls. I can understand why DCS wouldn't simulate that though.
Ngl it bothers me every time you feather the Vulcan. Pretty sure it’s more likely to jam if you fire it in bursts like that. Long bursts with time for it to spool down would be more realistic.
I think a great idea would be to launch a raid similar to the last raid you posted into Crimea but the goal of this raid would be to land some hinds or other helicopters somewhere near the kerch bridge in an attempt to sabotage it, the question is with the f-16s and the more modern missiles being given to Ukraine can they have a chance of performing a good enough SEAD mission and suppress the s400s long enough to land a special forces team to at least do something
Hi Cap. Iran managed to strap SAMs on their F-14s. Can you make a video how effective SAMs would be if launched air-to-air. Also if they can intercept SR-71. Thx
Just as an aside the Japanese didn't have radar at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese were reluctant at first to adopt the technology. Why? Well you can detect radar (as average for the time) 3 times further out than its actual useful range.
I would have thought that even back then the concept of toggling radiation off to avoid detection and passively receiving until needed would have been considered. It was early though so idk.
@@hybrid_grizzly I was thinking that, but modelling the effects of hydrostatic shock would be a nightmare. would upset any sub drivers floating around under the fleet though. I just looked up the underwater test the US Navy did. The biggest problem wasn't the initial blast, though that did sink and damage a number of ships, it was the irradiated water that soaked the ships of the target fleet.
@@hybrid_grizzly The US Navy did sub-surface tests in 1946. The Baker test. Whilst the ship immediately above the detonation was vapourised, there was not much damage to the test fleet as a whole. Some were damaged and a few did sink. However, by far the biggest impact was the huge amount of irradiated water that soaked everything and contaminated the ships beyond use. Fun fact: one of the ships that was damaged and ultimately sank was the Prinz Eugen. The partner to the Bismarck in the battle of the Denmark strait. She actually survived the war and was taken by the US navy. She's capsized in shallow water in the Marshal Islands. She survived two nuclear tests Able and Baker. One air burst and one submarine burst, being just over 1km away from each epicentre. Which I guess goes to show that nukes vs fleets isn't a good solution. An air burst where the fireball doesn't hit the surface, reducing fallout, but the EMP effect would trash all non-EMP protected electronics might be effective as a precursor to a conventional attack. By leaving the fleet blind and unable to track incoming threats?
Yeah, you would have easily destroyed them. Realistically a low-level airburst or even underwater shot would have caused enough damage. I would have trusted your boys more and assigned high angle carrier shots, each going for a specific carrier. They performed your dive manuever well enough and that's why they mostly hit center-mass and only got the three. Sploosh had a nice low angle shot nearly hitting the carrier dead-on, so basically that x5/x6 would have been an awesome site! These nukes are fun even without the blast animation. Want to reverse the scenario and see if the Genie's could take out the Pearl Harbor fleet?
GRIM REAPERS, please try my idea of Operation Vengeance and defend Yamamoto. I've been asking for several months. I have several other ideas but it's hard to communicate with Cap and GR.
Just curious why you keep using the Yamamoto for these scenarios?. The Yamamoto did not come into service until 1942. I mean a 70000 ton battleship is not very realistic when most of their battleships at that point we're only about 30,000 Max. You better off using some of their other battleships or the Italian ones
This kinda reminds me of the way the Germans F-104s were meant to take out the Russian ships during the Cold War. Maybe a comparison of that effectiveness with different NATO a/c would be a cool scenario. Compare the F-104 (Germany), the Viggen (Sweden), the F-18 (Finland), the F-16 (Norway), perhaps others against the same typical Soviet invasion force to see what would have worked and what would have been suicide?
On this video though... hit or miss (literally) because as you said, the ships themselves would be tough to destroy with contact (tests of Bikini Atoll showed that) but everything on DECK would have been blown off including people and planes. So they couldn't launch any planes and later they'd be covered in radiation so the carriers at least would be out of commission. The escorts... radioactive outside but functional..ish. Radars, sights, etc would be damaged so they prolly couldn't shoot accurately. I'd say it's wreck the Japanese fleet with "soft kills" making them mission ineffective.
@@jimrussell4062 i saw a video on the "fire" suppression systems were to be used in the event of a nuclear attack to literally wash the radioactive particles away so they could maintain mission
Thanks for the videos. Could you do Russian and North Korea against a USA carrier group. Would the North Korean pilots be at max skill level? Thanks again.
Ok Cap, I have an idea: Could you get in close with the carrier, fire the missile, overtake it and have it lock on yourself thereby dragging it to target? So the missile looks onto your widow maker and you fly it into the carrier?
@@grimreapers Disclaimer: None of the suggestions I offer are classified. Test it again on single player. This time, target the zeros at takeoff. The air burst effects to a carrier would result in a single shot kill and that's from the falcons. It will require some practice and some good timing, but that's one way to successfully use air-to-air weapons on a surface target. Now, since a heat-seeker should have no problems locking on to the smaller ships stack heat, why aren't you doing that? Is that modeled? You might want to give that a look-see because it definitely should! You could go in with a squadron armed with Falcon's only and take out at least two dozen ships. Ignore the zeros. Their squadrons can be destroyed with a single aircraft if the pilot is good enough. Also, factor in that you're using atomic weapons. A hit close enough to start fires on the deck is a kill. Thermal pulse range is about half the distance of the radiation pulse. The crews would be dead or dying, thus leaving the ships as nothing more than navigation hazards. If you try anything similar to this in the future, see if you have or can get gravity bombs. B61-12's, locked in at 5kt yield (even though they are capable of 'somewhere around' 50kt). Those maneuvers I can explain much better as this was the Strike Eagle's 'one-way/doomsday' mission profile. Also, it's not classified. It's simple physics and quick math.
