Actually this is accurate as hell to what would likely happen. Modern fighters are all but useless against the abyssals, but the cludge fighters flown by the volunteers and mercs exact a bloody toll because they are too similar to the WWII aircraft that would have flown against the abyssals.
@Librarian
i would imagine so, also we have to remember that one of the main things about the KC universe is that modern radar and other tech has a very hard time targeting abyssal fighters. The way I am seeing this is more like the US defense of Guadalcanal, where you had maybe a half hour to get to your plane and get up to altitude before the Japanese came in, and you only had that when the Coastwatchers were able to spot the flight and get a radio call out. otherwise you had maybe 5 minutes of warning due to radar coverage
This all depends on how your verse and its rules operate. There is no leveling effect in canon, and the two Kmajor Kancolle fanworks that have have a leveling effect do things with subtle differences:
- Kant-o-celle Quest, by planefriend, uses the leveling effect to compare like to like and level the effective playing field between equivalent modern and WW2 tech.
- Belated Battleships, by theJMPer, uses its leveling effect differently; the BelaBatt leveling effect works on
results, and specs the abyssals against the top performing modern equivalent in 2014 - so the Shinden and Me-232 perform even with the F-22, for example. This is why Burkes have a mixed showing in surface actions, because they're not the super absolute best DDGs for Anti Surface Warfare in 2014 (it's fair to say the ASuW mission had atrophied somewhat in the USN at that time), but absolutely rekt Abyssal air, because Burkes have been the gold standard for AAW since 1991.
If you play by the anime rules, which is what The Greatest Generation did, you have the challenge in that abyssal fighters are roomba sized. Good luck trying to get a missile seeker to lock onto a target that small, when it's programmed for a fighter-sized target. You wanna do WW2 dogfighting guns style shens? Okay, sure, you can try that, now
you try to fly your prop bird and aim your guns at a roomba-sized target.
Operating costs, perhaps? Seeing as the countries concerned (Malaysia, Indonesia, Philipines, etc) aren't exactly First World military powers in the first place, their regular military equipment might have to be jealously hoarded for protecting their mainland regions and/or being sent abroad to hotspots such as SommeJapan. Kuala Lumpur/Sumatra is pretty much considered "border territory" to the countries affected, and likely will have lower priority.
This is not correct, for several reasons.
- First:
Kuala Lumpur is the national capital of Malaysia. It is not some "border territory" with lower priority. I grew up in that border territory, and it's called Sabah. (And even then Sabah is getting a fair bit of focus from MINDEF what with pirate incursions by Abu Sayaff and the
Lahad Datu standoff.)
- Secondly: Nobody in SEA is going to send the cream of their air force far away to defend Japan, not when they will want to hoard their fighters to protect their own nations, and not when people still teach about the evil Imperial Japanese that tried to rape and pillage their way to empire in SEA.
- Third: Japan won't want their help anyway, because they have no way to support SEA's Air Forces. RMAF's toppest fighters are: Su-30MKM, F/A-18, MiG-29N. TNI-AU: F-16, Su-27, Su-30. Singapore: F-16C/D Block 50/52, F-15SG. It's an utter logistical nightmare.
- Fourth: The whole point of Japan being under the American security umbrella is so that when things like this happen, America steps in to defend Japan.
Secondly? Speed.
Even not counting MSSB that lets older model Zeros shoot down F22s, most jets of this era are simply too fast to do much to Abyssal locust-hordes befote overshooting completely. Sure, missiles (whenever they deign to work at all) and heavy vulcans make them unmatched in a direct clash, but Air-to-Air missiles are designed and intended for single targets alone; four Su-30s are a plain bad matchup against 50 takoyaki fighters on any day of the week.
Ten MiG-21s for the same price, though? How about four flights of rotorfighters, all trucking cheap heatseekers like jousters of old?
Regardless, as I've stated by the "Battle of Greece" theme this is very much an "everthing and the kitchen sink" scenario. The Coalition forces are very much on the brink of being overwhelmed already and are all too willing to send off eager fighters with a slap on the back, especially since they're (relatively) so cheap to train and deploy.
Speed is not the weakness you make it out to be. There is this device in fighter cockpits called a
throttle. Fighters can adjust their speed between anything from 150 to 800 knots. Furthermore, while a Zero can outturn a Hornet in a turning fight, that Hornet can light afterburners, climb, and has the energy to boom and zoom the Zero and dictate the terms of the engagement - which was historically how Zeroes died in droves WW2: The faster guy with more thrust can break away from an unfavorable fight and reengage on his own terms. And the Hornet is, as far as modern fighters go, sluggish to accelerate - it'll be even worse if you send that Zero against a turn and burn monster like the F-15, let alone the F-22 or the Rafale.
The other issue is
why the old stuff works and
if it works at all and
what rules are you using. Are you using the roomba-sized abyssals of the Anime and GG? Forget it then, nothing you do is going to work, and your prop fighters are going to die even faster and more uselessly than 4th gen fighters. Are the abyssals 1:1 sized manifestations that fuck with radar and sensors as a sort of natural interference because magic? That's basically fighting under jamming, and that means your modern weapons can still be viable, you just need to get closer in and give up more of the safety margin that is range.
There's another problem to your idea of using these old cold war fighters: sure, a surplus MiG-21 looks cheap on the open market at maybe 30,000 USD. That's just the aircraft, not counting fuel, spares, maintennance - all of which is going to be super hard to come by because this is a super old aircraft. The only air force that seriously uses the Fishbed, the Indian Air Force, wants to stop using it because it's a deathtrap falling apart in the skies killing the pilots who love to fly it. That's why nobody serious is trying to build an air force with old Cold War birds, because they're old and worn out and nobody makes the parts for them. The oldest Fishbed (if it hasn't crashed already) would be 60 years old; the youngest newbuild Fishbed is 33 years old. Which is a liveable age with if you're an American F-15 built to last. A lot less so if you're a MiG that was only meant to last long enough for nukes to fly.
On the other hand if you'd gone for pure old school Cold War memes with the A-4 Skyhawk, sign me up, Heinemann's hot rod was sweeeeeeeeeeeeet. Plus, well, pulling old A-4s and F-5s outta boneyards gives us those Area 88 memes.
But mostly because the Skyhawk is mu favorite 3rd gen loght attack bird.
Modern gunfighters with armour and/or low-speed maneuverability might be useful as coastal/city defence, freeing up AirSup!Fighters for naval and interational airspace theaters where they have more space to play with. The way I see it, in a theoretical port defence scenario:
- No-fly-zone, landbased SAM opens up on all targets in the area. General alarm goes up.
- AirSup jets engage at long range, harrassing the incoming fighter swarm with BVR missiles to scatter the formations. AirSup close in with slashing hit-and-run attacks before retreating.
- Main gunfighter wave goes up. AirSups land and rearm under cover of their slower kin.
- Gunfighters engage. SAMs switch to long range/priority targeting while fighter cover defends the main coastline.
- AirSups rearm, head to high altitude and missile truck and/or dive on enemy bombers, gunfighters keep enemy fughter escort tied down and unable to engage while AirSups climb again.
- Shipgirl response (hopefully) arrives.
The way things work is that an enemy bombing group detected coming in is going to be painted with AWACS first, then hit with long range SAMs if your country has invested in being able to datalink picture from your AWACS to your SAMs. Once your own air enters the airspace, your SAMs
immediately stop firing because you don't want a SAM accidentally chasing after friendly fighters. If you have the fighters to do this, you can then either send a massed formation up, or do what RAF Fighter Command did over dover and what the Israelis did in the Bekaa Valley Turkey shoot: send a flight of fighters in at speed, shoot everything they see, RTB, next flight slots in and does the same, again and again and again - paradoxially, you make the enemy's numbers work against them because your fighters have a free sky to engage, and because you have AWACS or good Ground Control Intercept, you can have your fighters take off with combat loads, wait in a waiting area in the sky, and then vector them to attack. Do it right, and by the time the bomber formation arrives at the port, it's a shadow of its former self.
Anything that's big enough to need guns to take down is going to be big enough to go down to a blast frag or continuous rod warhead from an AAM.
The way I see it, modern jets in a WW2 scenario would be akin to heavy cavalry, fast and powerful but not very good at low speeds or altitudes. Without sufficient escort they'll either be bogged down on all sides and slaughtered by faster-turning proppers, or be forced to disengage from the main combat area and leave the port undefended while they turn around.
Something like that, yes?
...you
have seen Top Gun, right, and all the low altitude flying they did there? Modern jets are
quite adept at all sorts of speeds and altitudes, and more importantly have the thurst to boom and zoom and seek engagement on their own terms. It's going to be a repeat of the boom and zoom runs on bomber formations in WW2.
Now, if I'm being honest, I'll admit that part of my opposition to your idea would go away if, instead of wanting to make new gun-armed prop fighters, you went all the way old school.
Able Dog, I choose you!
God I love the Skyraider. It's like Ed Heinemann never made a bad plane ever.
