What can clobber ships?

[PoorOldSpike]

Question- can ground units attack ships?
Patch 4 (v1.1.1) random battle below - my King George battleship gets mad and starts bombarding German units along the coast with it's massive 5-hex range guns, (and its spotting range is also 5 hexes, they can run but not hide, I LURV it)..
It came under AI air attack over the following turns and had to head back to a port for replacements, but on the way I moved it adjacent to the enemy coast to see if artillery or anything else would shoot at it, but nothing did, so can't ground units attack ships?

[SineMora]

Anything with a ranged attack; ships are not magically different. Of course, having strong defences and being single entities mean they're not good targets for artillery in general. Ships are sunk with bombers.

[Schlack]

Submarines do a fair bit of damage when used effectively and dont have to worry about air attack and support fire.

[uneducated]

What SineMora said: Strategic Bombers. Heinkels are nice for taking out ships.

If your ship is in dock for repairs, Engineers can not only damage them, they can force them out of the dock before they have a chance to fully repair.

[uneducated]

Dive Bombers do OK on smaller ships, but on larger ones they suffer from Anti-Aircraft fire.

[Blade0]

It came under AI air attack over the following turns and had to head back to a port for replacements, but on the way I moved it adjacent to the enemy coast to see if artillery or anything else would shoot at it, but nothing did, so can't ground units attack ships?

Actually, proper repair of battleship damage takes months, so just "getting replacements" is kinda a gimmick this case. Nothing with the "single entity" trait should have replacements enabled - as damage is not repaired with getting a few hundred extra sailors on board!
Smaller damage which damage controls can deal with is more like "suppressed" value - the crew will fix locked turrets, drain flooded compartments, puts out fires, etc. when the ship is not on high alert.

[PoorOldSpike]

Actually, proper repair of battleship damage takes months, so just "getting replacements" is kinda a gimmick this case..

Yeah historically warships needed weeks/months to repair in port, but at least PC2 goes some way to simulating this because it takes time (and turns) to sail a damaged ship to port and more time/turns to sail it back to the combat zone.
Also I'm finding that even battleships are not as tough as I thought because they can lose around 2 strength points after every air attack, so after a few turns of taking hits they have to skedaddle back to port for replacs/repair before they're whittled down to nothing.

Question- just to digress, can any naval experts here tell us why historically around a thousand crewmen were killed when the Tirpitz was sunk in the Norwegian fiord?
I've got two books about the sinking and have googled around but still can't find an answer.
I mean, the Tirpitz had 36 guns of all calibres and surely they didn't need over a thousand men to man them?
So I'm wondering why the surplus men weren't safely billeted on the shore?

Tirpitz clobbered vid- https://youtu.be/feDAf0lrpeA

[Schwarzvogel]

Question- just to digress, can any naval experts here tell us why historically around a thousand crewmen were killed when the Tirpitz was sunk in the Norwegian fiord?
I've got two books about the sinking and have googled around but still can't find an answer.
I mean, the Tirpitz had 36 guns of all calibres and surely they didn't need over a thousand men to man them?
So I'm wondering why the surplus men weren't safely billeted on the shore?

Tirpitz clobbered vid- https://youtu.be/feDAf0lrpeA

I wouldn't claim to be a naval expert, but I do believe that large warships like the Tirpitz had a lot of jobs that the crew need to handle--there's much more to do on board than just manning the guns! Remember that the ship needs people to do everything from operate radar systems, comms, range finders, swab the decks (and swab them some more even after they have a mirror finish), plot the ship's course, conn the ship, keep the engines fueled, and even to cook the slop that barely passes for food to keep the crew somewhat well fed. Add that you'd also need officers to coordinate the efforts of the crew and more men to keep everything working from guns to turbines to even the heads (i.e. toilets to landlubbers) throughout the crew quarters, and these are just the more mundane jobs I can think of from the top of my head. Consider a ship that size as a bit like a floating base, and it makes sense why there would be so many men on board.

Of course, a battleship like the Tirpitz could definitely operate and fight with a much smaller skeleton crew, but that would lead to a corresponding loss in efficiency since the men would need to all wear multiple hats. As for surplus men, remember that there are only 24 hours in a day, and no amount of Pervitin can permanently eliminate the need for sleep. The Tirpitz himself doesn't sleep, but the men on board certainly need to (or risk very unpleasant consequences for ship and his crew), so having a redundancy of men on board means they can work in shifts to keep him afloat and battle-ready.

NB: I refer to the Tirpitz as "he" because if I recall correctly, the Kriegsmarine convention was to use the masculine pronoun with the Bismarck and Tirpitz rather than the feminine pronoun normally used with ships.

[PoorOldSpike]

Thanks Schwarzvogel, I agree that a ship would need a full crew if it was at sea, but the Tirpitz was anchored in a fiord and not going anywhere, so if I was captain I'd only keep enough officers and men aboard to man the AA guns and radar and do some cooking and engineering maintenance, and send the rest of the crew ashore out of harms way..

[Blade0]

Thanks Schwarzvogel, I agree that a ship would need a full crew if it was at sea, but the Tirpitz was anchored in a fiord and not going anywhere, so if I was captain I'd only keep enough officers and men aboard to man the AA guns and radar and do some cooking and engineering maintenance, and send the rest of the crew ashore out of harms way..

The Tirpitz have survived several similar attacks before. This might have given the crew some false sense of security - namely that they're more safe on a floating fortress than in wooden homes several hundred meters from it. Which, kinda makes sense.
The crew's place is in its battle stations in case of a combat situation - the only exception is when the captain's orders are different. But again, this case the captain could have faced court-martial in this situation. So even if they were sure the ship won't survive, they had no choice but to die at their stations.