Pascal Stalder, a Command at Sea player, wrote in with a fascinating question: I have a question on Aircraft Endurance which was not clear in the example on page 5-13 of the third edition of the rules. This was very confusing. The rules state in 4.11.1 that the range indicated in Annex B for all aircraft is the maximum range for aircraft flying at Combat Cruise. I assume this means with a 'No Ordnance' load as defined in 4.11.2. The Endurance Modifier Table in 4.11.3 includes factors that are used as divisors for the range in nm or the total time aloft possible at Combat Cruise (= range in nm of Annex B / Combat Cruise speed)? The Endurance Modifier Table is used on the range value, as described in the previous paragraph. "...take the distance flown at Combat Cruise and multiply it by the Full Power Modifier." Now comes the confusion with the example. The range at Combat Cruise is 1260 nm. Lightly loaded this comes to 1109 nm, (88% of full), not 1134 nm as in the example. Now Range Cruise at Medium Altitude was 130 knots according to Annex B, not 120 as in the example. At Light Load the Range Cruise speed is 117 knots. At Range Cruise the range should go to 1848 nm (=1109 / .60). A 15% reserve is about 277 nm. Thus we have a range of about 1571 nm left, or a radius of about 785 nm. This is a little fishy. I'm just out to help to understand these rules and make them more complete and clear in the examples. I'm no rules lawyer but I do like things to be coherent and clear from end to end. Regards, Pascal Stalder My reply: Okay, I see what happened. You are right about the 1134/1109 and the 120/130 nm errors. The correct value is 1109 nm at 117 knots. This is the value for range cruise, and it would take the Dauntless 1109/130 or 9.5 hours to fly this distance. With a 15% reserve of 166 nm, the effective search range is 471 nm. At 117 knots, the search plane will take 4 hours to reach the limit of its search radius. The problem with your calculations came when you divided the 1109 nm range by the value in the Endurance Modifier table. The table is wrong. It assumes that the range values in Annex B are Combat Cruise, but they should be Range Cruise, since that is what the calculations were based on. The correct table should be: Propulsion Range Cruise Cbt Cruise Full Power Jet 1.0 2.0 6.0 Piston 1.0 1.6 5.0 Engine HP 50% 75% 100% I am sorry that so basic an error has remained undetected for so long. I suspect that many players have not been using the Endurance Modifier Table, and in many cases it can be ignored. Only your faithful interpretation of the rules brought it to our attention. I will add these corrections to the errata for the rules, and will also include a correction in the next (April) Naval SITREP. BT Back to The Naval Sitrep #18 Table of Contents Back to Naval Sitrep List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 by Larry Bond and Clash of Arms. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com