From: Markus Stumptner Subject: Carrier replay (pretty long) This is a replay of a game of Carrier that I played in small bits over the evenings of the last weeks (having had no time for ftf play to continue our Pacific War campaigns). Since I hadn't played Carrier for several years, I chose an easier scenario (the Oct-Dec 42 time period). Note that "easy" is a relative term. The forces setup indicated an average sized battle, with 2 CVs on my side and 32 points for purchasing escorts and other ships. I set up the US forces as follows: TF 18 Carriers Wasp, Saratoga Escorts: Atlanta, San Diego, 12 DD TF 64 Washington, Northampton, 4 DD My goal was to use TF 18 for a sweep northeastwards (kind of a Santa Cruz situation), while TF 64 was supposed to be on station near Guadalcanal at dusk to intercept arriving transport and surface forces. I also had 6 SBD and 6F4F steps on Henderson Field (corresponding to 24 planes each). (One Japanese air point is 8 planes, a US air step is 4 planes.) The Japanese Objective was Guadalcanal (DR 8). Carrier commitment was 14, surface commitment 20, transport commitment 4. I set the retirement limit at 15 in accordance with general practice (the retirement limits given by the setup tables are far too high and compared to their historical performance let the Japanese hang around far too long in the face of reverses). And I started the first turn. 05:20: Japanese forces started appearing on the board. Henderson Field was immediately hit by an air attack from Rabaul (which was actually illegal this early as I found out later - I had misinterpreted the table). This cost me most of the SBDs on Guadalcanal. I retained just enough to maintain it as an Air Source and so keep the Japanese TFs from closing in on it rapidly during the day. (Later strikes from Rabaul did only negligible damage.) TF18 started moving north from its starting position SW of Ndeni. TF64 started moving towards Guadalcanal from S of Rennell Island. I launched four steps of search planes (16 planes) from the carriers and another four steps a turn later, so as to not take any chances. Since my two carriers were among the smaller ones in the inventory, they carried few fighters, and I used a small CAP of 8 steps (32 planes) total. At 08:00 my search planes detected an enemy carrier force (C8) 300mi NE of Malaita (hex 1919), within easy strike range. Good luck! I had been readying strike planes, gambling on such an occasion, and at 8:20 launched the first wave of a massive strike: 40 SBD's, 8 TBF's, 16 F4F as escorts (in steps: 10,2,4). At 9:00, a second wave followed, with 16 SBD, 16 TBF, 8 F4F (steps: 4,4,2). Nothing happened for some time while my strikes moved towards the target, while I was waiting breathlessly for a Japanese strike to arrive, but none did. Apparently I had not been found yet. At 10:00, the first wave struck what proved to be a force of 2 CVL's - Taiyo and Hiyo. There were no losses to CAP or AA fire, and my attackers reported 4 hits on Taiyo and 2 on Hiyo. Note: I played with the hit confirmation rules that double all hits initially but require them to be confirmed later, so these impressive-sounding results were actually the result of horrible dierolling (2,3,4 on three attack rolls with a ten-sided die!). Ironically, all my strikes against carriers throughout the day later were always confirmed to the average result or below, so Taiyo had 2 hits and Hiyo 1 and neither had been knocked out of the battle by the attack. At 10:00 I launched my first group of returned search planes (4 steps only) as a third wave against C8, hoping that whatever small damage they might do would be enough to offset the apparent (and later confirmed - see above) failure of the first wave. 20 minutes later, the second wave reached C8 and, again without suffering losses, reported they had managed to plant 6 hits on Hiyo (which were later confirmed as 2 - sufficient for Hiyo to be rated heavily damaged and therefore unable to operate aircraft). Taiyo was missed, but could only operate 1 air point (8 planes) with the damage she had taken earlier. That air point from Taiyo was launched into a strike and at noon arrived over TF 18. Turned out to be easily shot down without doing damage, but caused an unpleasant change in my plans, as I had 16 planes (four steps) on the flight decks when it arrived, and since these could have had painful effects if a carrier was hit, I emergency launched them. I formed them into a fourth wave aimed at C8, since the emergency launch meant they could not be used for my afternoon search as planned. There were quite a few contacts within range to the northwest that might have been surface forces aimed at Guadalcanal and would have been interesting to look for, but I stayed calm in the knowledge that there were virtually no contacts within range out on the high seas. If any would appear, I would soon be ready to deal with them, as my first strike was being rearmed in the hangars and the second wave was just landing. At the same time that the last vestiges of C8's airpower were wiped from the seas, the third wave hit C8 again, reporting a crippling 8 hits on Taiyo. The worst confirmation result (1 hit) would still have resulted in Taiyo being heavily damaged, so the danger from C8 was finally neutralized, and C8 started retiring. As it happened, when I rolled for confirmation for Taiyo at night, it turned out she had actually suffered 4 of the 8 hits and had so had foundered before her consort, Hiyo, started the trip back. All the Japanese carriers I knew about were out of the fight. Immediately afterwards, TF 18 was hit by a 40-plane (5-point) strike from contact C19, an unlocated force 100 miles NE of C8, at range 7. They were missed by my CAP and AA, and produced fearsome carnage on my Carriers with unmodified attack dierolls of 10 and 8. The dierolls were modified further up by the fact that both carriers had the second wave's just landed planes on deck and the first wave's planes were being readied in the hangars for the next round. Saratoga suffered 5 hits and Wasp 3, and overall, 14 air steps (56 planes) were destroyed. Worse, a second wave was under way. I thought about redirecting my two strikes and the CAP to Guadalcanal, which would have been barely within range, but decided not to in the hope that one flight deck would be operable when they had to land. Repair crews on Saratoga made good progress (-1 for DR 7), but fires on Wasp spread through part of the ship (+1 for DR 1). Strike 4 did not find C8 and started its return trip, while Saratoga regained use of her flight deck (another -1 for DR 7) and the damage on Wasp seemed to be temporarily under control (0 for DR 5). At Henderson Field, history repeated itself as I had to launch my last remaining SBD planes on a strike to avoid their being endangered by a strike from Rabaul. I launched them at transport force T3 which had just been located near the northern tip of Santa Isabel, but that meant they could not search the increasing number of surface forces that was amassing NW of Guadalcanal. At 13:00, the 2nd Wave from C19 arrived (32 planes of which 8 were shot down, or 1 point out of 4). Only Wasp was attacked and suffered a further 2 hits (DR 7). Neither Saratoga nor Wasp (the latter now with 2 Inoperable Deck markers, and 8 steps of my reduced plane strength locked belowdecks) made progress repairing anything. I started moving TF 18 southwards to gain time for repairing my flight deck, and, by keeping the range at 7 hexes, minimizing the chance of another large strike. At 13:20, the strike from Henderson reached the supposed location of T3, but did not find the enemy and turned for home. Saratoga repaired all remaining repairable damage (-2 for DR 10), but all hopes of saving Wasp were wiped out by a massive internal explosion (well, that's what it must have been :-) that caused +1 damage for a roll of 1 on the repair table, and another 2 hits on the critical hit table. The crew quickly abandoned the burning wreck and it went down during the afternoon. Over the next hour, I landed the remaining two waves on Saratoga, sent off a 2-step SBD search as quickly as possible to find C19. Luck was with me as I received a report on it from a PBY search, and the SBDs located it again at 14:40. The PBYs were getting effective, locating a number of surface and transport forces NW of Guadalcanal as well, but I had no strike aircraft left to hit them. Instead I moved my surface task force TF 64 west from Guadalcanal in the hope of neutralizing part of the Japanese while it was still daylight. The Japanese carrier commitment limit had been reached with the strike from C19, so there was no fear of another carrier lurking in ambush for TF 64 far to the west. At 15:20 I launched my fifth strike, this time at C19. 8 F4F, 16 SBD, 8 TBF (2,4, and 2 steps) were what I could muster. This was the time when the strikes that had sunk Wasp would be landing on the carrier decks of C19. Unfortunately, the strike missed C19 (on contact dierolls of 3 and 1), and a . At 17:20, TF 64 engaged contact C2 W of Cape Esperance - it turned out to be a weak 5-destroyer force. Against a hit on Northampton, I sank one DD, damaged two heavily and one light. C2 turned to flight and retired from the battle. Still, this was a bad coincidence - TF 64 was now at Battle Exhaustion 1 and for the pleasure of beating up a weak destroyer force. Certainly worse enemies were coming at me. At 17:40, the last strike missed C19 and attacked the DD's of C8's screen that had remained behind when C8 retired. The day ended with the Japanese leading 29.5:17 (a marginal victory), and I considered it wise to end the scenario there since it could only get worse during the night. In summary, what did me in (after a lucky early detection gave me a break early on) were my bad strike results, and the fact that after finding C8, I concentrated too much on finishing it to avert any danger this particular force might pose, instead of hunting for other forces in the vicinity. By the time I wanted to start searching again, C8's sole and very weak strike arrived and forced me to divert that search again, so that C19 could hit me out of the blue. Good dierolling on the part of the Japanese and the damage on Wasp going out of control did the rest. Japanese TF logs ---------------- C8 Strikes Turn Land 7 Strength 1 Loss 1 Surv 0 c19 Strikes Turn 6 Land 8 Strength 5 Loss 1 Surv 4 Turn 6 Land 8 Strength 1 Loss 1 Surv 0 Turn 2/2 Strength 5 Loss 1 Surv 4 Turn 2/4 Strength 4 Loss 1 Surv 3 Rabaul Strikes Turn 1 Land 5 Strength 5 Turn 5 Land 9 Strength 7 Loss 2 Turn 6 Land 10 Strength 1 Ultimately, I became so curious though about what could have happened at night that I chose to play the night through before setting up a rematch. Stay tuned... Markus From: Markus Stumptner Subject: Carrier replay part 2 (Night) OK, here is the night part of my Carrier replay (also contains the morning hours of the second day). As you may remember, the first day effectively ended with a marginal Japanese victory, with Wasp sunk in exchange for Taiyo (what a deal), and with Hiyo being heavily damaged and retiring northwards. Since only the Carrier Commitment level had been reached, Japanese surface and transport forces started clustering madly on the approaches to Guadalcanal. All force markers were on the board. We are starting with TF 64 (containing Washington, the slightly damaged Northampton, and three DD's) waiting for the Japanese at Cape Esperance, at Battle Fatigue 1 after its skirmish with a Japanese destroyer force in late afternoon. At 23:00 TF 64 meets another force (C9) which turns out to contain only 5DD's. DD Maury is sunk, DD Ariake heavily damaged. TF 64 retreats eastwards. J+1 While the battle did not do much actual damage, that it happened at all is a major disaster after my rash decision in the afternoon to charge a close by surface TF. The result is that my crews are spent, being now at Battle Exhaustion 2, after shooting up a few destroyer TF's and I will have a very hard time if more should show up. TF 64 will not be able to engage any more, so the only thing to do with it is keep it on the route to Guadalcanal and hope its very presence (as a Large TF) will keep off the Japanese till dawn. Several small forces including C9 do indeed choose to retreat at this time rather than engage TF 64. Otherwise, for the next two hours, nothing happens except for lots of potential Japanese contacts slowly encroaching on Guadalcanal. As their courses converge, they start to stack higher - something definitely must be out there. At 1:00, the big boys appear out of the darkness. C18 engages TF 64 near Savo Island, and turns out to contain the BBs Haruna and Kirishima, one CA and 3DD. The first round ends with DD Cushing sunk, 3 hits on Washington, and Washington scoring 4 hits on Kirishima (J+1 VP for Cushing). Not bad - if I can keep this loss ratio up, it might work out after all. The US forces retreat towards Henderson Field. The Japanese follow, and at 2:20 engage again. This time, the outcome is annihilation. The combined strength of the three larger ships sinks Washington (17 hits in addition to the previous 3) and 2 destroyers sink Northampton. Kirishima suffers heavy damage by Washington's guns (7 hits). The remaining DD (Barton) retreats towards Lunga Roads. (J+6 VP, US+2 VP) Ironically, C18 retreats from Barton on the next turn because it has reached Battle Exhaustion 2, but Barton is subsequently sunk at 4:40 by other forces moving in C18's wake (totalling 2 CA, 1 CL, 7DD). (J+1 VP) This is early enough for C18 to reverse course again and join in the bombardment. Henderson Field suffers quite a bit. By now two transport forces have started unloading and bad luck would have it that they are huge: 7 and 14 transports! With me powerless to stop the flood of unloading Japanese troops, morning came with no less than 51 victory points handed to the Japanese overnight, and there's not really a victory level in the game to aptly describe the 4:1 VP fiasco I found on my hands. The additional commitment dierolls on the 5:20 turn gave the Japanese 3 additional carrier and 4 transport points. The last chance was to sink the carrier(s) in C19 quickly - launch a large search in the morning and hope my strike would go in before theirs. With 20 plane steps left on Saratoga, I basically had one full carrier complement left, which might just do the job. My search located C19 nearby at 5:40, and an 8-step (32 plane) first wave went out at 6:00. As luck would have it, that strike arrived at the same time as the Japanese strike against Saratoga. My strike lost 2 steps (8 planes) to AA fire, and on a dieroll of 10 scored 8 reported hits on Zuiho - but these were only confirmed to have been 2 at game's end, not even enough to have Zuiho cease flight operations, so I was still bedevilled by bad luck in my strikes. The Japanese 4-point strike lost one air point to AA fire, but scored 3 hits on Saratoga, an average result. The Saratoga repair crews had only started dealing with the damage, when at 7:40 the 2nd wave attacked and with a DR of 9(+1) scored 4 hits, sending her to the bottom. Game over. In summary, not only did I lose the larger part of my forces, but the Japanese also managed to unload what must have been the better part of two divisions on Guadalcanal. With hindsight, the wisdom of stopping the game after the first day becomes apparent. :-) The situation was exacerbated by the fact that some fairly high level 3 to level 4 dierolls led to quite drastic overruns of the transport (7 over 4) and surface commitment levels (26 for 20). My bad search strategy of the first day came home to haunt me as I had detected no surface forces near the carriers and left most of the surface commitment free to appear near Guadalcanal. My having sent TF64 into battle prematurely also contributed to its being swamped. This definitely calls for a rematch. Markus