There´s a lot going on in the naval sector of Battlegroup42, and therefore we begin with our biggest addition: The good old "Prince of Wales" has been retired - at least in american use. The US fleet will be strenghtened by a real american battleship in BG42 1.5, namely the USS Washington (BB-56). She was one of two vessels of the North Carolina class and was commissioned in May 1941. After a short service time in the northern Atlantic she was reassigned to the pacific theatre and participated in the operations around Guadalcanal. There she fought out a duel with the japanese battleship Kirishima, taking only minor damage, while the Kirishima was hit so badly that she was abandoned and sank one day later. Later the Washington participated in nearly every important operation of the US fleet in the Pacific, where she used her nine 16 inch guns mainly for artillery support during landing operations. She survived the war without losing a single crewmember in combat.
The model was build and skinned by Cabrio and coded by Sarge31FR. Besides the many details of the model it has some very unique features. The range finders placed on the superstructure rotate together with the gun turrets they belong to. All upper decks are accessible through stairs or ladders. The secondary armament consists of ten 5inch guns in five turrets on each side and three quad 40mm aa guns on each side. Another feature are the Wildcatfish floatplanes placed on the stern of the Washington which can be launched via catapult. The planes were made by Bommel. They can be used for artillery spotting.
On our new map "Across the Reef", which we introduced in our last news release, the Washington will encounter the two japanese 8 inch batteries on Betio Island. These batteries got new bunkers and gun emplacements created by Geronimo|Ger. These unique statics improve the realistic scenario on this map even more!
With the beauty of the Washington on one side it became unbearable to us to leave its future counterpart in its current state. Therefore we took the old DICE Yamato into dry dock and improved it quite a bit. First of all it got additional platforms for aa guns which were made by Bommel. Cabrio created new turrets for triple 25mm aa guns, from which 12 (!) are now placed on each side of the ship. To give planes at least a small chance the amount of rounds actually fired from those guns has been reduced to one third. Furthermore we have refitted the secondary artillery to match the historical accurate configuration of the last years of the war, bringing the amount of 5inch gun turrets to six for each side. Cabrio also reworked the main gun turrets a bit. The Yamato also got seaplanes of the type Aichi E13A "Jake" which were made by Bommel.
New armament can also be found on the japanese aircraft carriers. We replaced the single 25mm aa guns with a more realistic and powerful dual mount version, deleting the Oerlikon battery on top of the island for that.
Last but not least we want to show you our new german S-Boot. Our old "E-Boat" which was from the abandoned Anubis Mod got decommissioned. The new, very detailed model was made by Cabrio and represents a german Schnellboot of the first series which was used with some success in the English Channel, the North Sea and Baltic Sea, the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea. It was coded by Sarge31FR and is armed with a 20mm gun, a dual machine gun and torpedoes. It´ll come in two flavors: As minelayer and as submarine hunter.
This concludes our trip to the sea for today. The next news will cover the new land based content, so stay tuned and visit our website at www.battlegroup42.de
Nice models guys... looking good...
nice work lads