That would be normal and logical.Dave Saxton wrote: I'm sure you understand that aircraft have to fly through several hot/kill zones to reach the primary target when several warships are arranged in an AA formation regardless of the effective range of their light AA. There's a big difference between fighting alone and fighting within a group.
The hystorical results , however , seem to point out that the Japanese fleet could not protect herself from enemy air attacks, either in groups or with individual ships. Battle of Samar comes to mind - with that great concentration of Japanese surface forces, under attack from warplanes coming from several US carriers. The sinking of the Yamato [which, allthough not a part of a very large group, was nevertheless escorted by 8 DDs and 1 CL, which had a good deal of AA weapons on board also], and others, indicate poor effectiveness of ship AA ...
Looking more into Friedman, I counted that:This isn't very good light flak for 1942. The 1.1 were almost useless, and the 20mm Oelikon wasn't that effective, nor very accurate. As for .50cal MGs... well... POW probably had equal or superior flak capability in Dec 41.
- North Carolina fought very welll during the battle of Eastern Solomons.
[from the action report:
The North Carolina fired 841 rounds of 5-inch (127 mm) shells, 1037 rounds of 1.1-inch ammunition, 7425 rounds of 20-mm shells, and 8641 rounds of .50 caliber machine gun bullets during the attack.[15] The gunners of her 5-inch antiaircraft guns "...estimated that the rate of fire exceeded 17 rounds per minute on all guns...", but they reported that vibrations hampered their optical range-finding and that the Mark 4 FD radar had difficulty acquiring targets]
- South Dakota yielded 57x20mm Oerlikons + 20 x 1.1" + 16 x 40mm Bofors by Oct 1942 (battle of Santa Cruz)
- of course, both had the additional radar-directed 20 x 127mm guns.