Radar and smoke rules question

[aman]

It appears that USN ships with radar basically ignore smoke and fire normally - did we play that right?

IJN ships with no radar but seaplanes get a +1.

Part of me think that it has to be more difficult to shoot through smoke even if you've radar as you really can't see anything and are firing blind. and the seaplanes don't seem like they'd be terribly effective, altho they would act as an enabler.

Would +1 firing thru smoke be reasonable?
Would +2 using a seaplane be reasonable?

The Komandorski scenario was played with all recommended optional rules. As the USN commander, I aggressively used smoke at every opportunity. The nullified the IJN DD completely as they couldn't fire thru it, same with the CLs. The CAs used their seaplanes and stilll wreaked havoc thru the smoke.

I guess the question is, what's the penalty for using a seaplane and not observation by your own fire control staff? 10% worse or 20% worse?

[regiamarina]

You played it correctly I believe. This is an issue that has been discussed quite extensively in a few other posts and doesn't really have a resolution.

The problem is that WW2 fire control radar was effective enough to fire through smoke realtively accurately however the individual commanders of the fleets rarely used this tatic as radar was very new and still not entirely trusted. The old Mk1 eye ball was still a favourite for men who were born in the previous century. Therefore you have a legitimate tactic that could have been used but wasn't. So you either remove it from the game which puts unhistorical limits on play or you allow the gamers themselves to decide how to deal with it.

If you do a search on this forum there should be a few other threads where people have suggested possible alternatives and home rules for this issue. I think Shigure posted a link to a very good article on US radar in and around Guadalcanal.

Martin