A brief Wake Island AAR

[JWW]

Just to show how exciting things can get in a hurry. This is the second scenario I played. In the first one, the Japanese won decisively.

I began by directing the Saratoga south of Wake and the Enterprise and Lexington north of Wake covering the Tangier. I had no surface contacts the first day, though there was an air raid on Wake.

When the second day dawned, I found that the Saratoga was sitting in the middle of the Japanese invasion force. The transport force was about 20 miles to the north and the cruiser force about 10 miles to the south. I immediately launched a strike and began whittling down the invasion force. My pilots btw ended up targeting both forces even though I sent them after just one. I guess as soon as they gained altitude they just saw targets all around them. At the same time I had to avoid surface combat twice over the next two hours with the cruisers. As noon approached Saratoga was attacked by Japanese carrier planes, though I had not yet spotted the carrier force. Saratoga endured two attacks and was eventually sunk near dusk.

Meanwhile I finally spotted the Japanese carriers southwest of Wake and launched immediate strikes at longe range from Enterprise and Lexington. These damaged both carriers. I was able to recover my planes and launch another attack from both carriers while the Japanese carriers concentrated on Saratoga. Both were damaged but still operational when the sun set.

Thet night the Saratoga task force engaged the Japanese cruisers in a night battle that ended, amazingly, in the destruction of the Japanese force, though I lost all my cruisers and half my destroyers in return.

The next day I found the Japanese carriers at dawn and launched cohesive attacks from both carriers. They damaged both carriers heavily, but not before the Japanese damaged Enterprise. Two more rounds of attacks from Lexington against the now defenseless Japanese carriers sent them to the bottom.

At this point the Tangier made port at Wake and completed its resupply mission.

I then engaged the Japanese transport force and sank the remaining transport. The Saratoga had already gotten the other two.

The last day there were no Japanese contacts. I won a decisive victory.

I attribute the victory to the luck of the draw. I blundered into the invasion force and was able to hit it hard at virtually point blank range before the Japanese could react. And I was then able to hit the Japanese carriers while they concentrated everything they had on Saratoga.

I was most surprised at winning the night surface battle, with my destroyers sinking two (already damaged) Japanese cruisers.

[The Warden]

Nice to see more AARs here. I'm surprised the Saratoga survived the first Japanese strike, was she under clouds at the time?

[JWW]

Why, yes.  Saratoga was under clouds, not by design but just that her destination happened to be under clouds when the sun rose.  And I tried to stay under the clouds all day.  Thanks for mentioning that.  I didn't think of that at the time but noticed that the Japanese were missing a lot more than they did the first time I played.  So that makes more sense now.
 
And I attribute my success to the fact that the Japanese carriers concentrated on Saratoga all day while apparently never spotting my other carriers. 
 
I was also surprised by the result of surface battle, but then the Saratoga's planes had sunk one cruiser and damaged the others as well as some destroyers when the surface battle happened. Of course I lost all my cruisers and several destroyers, but I would still call it a victory. I had one surface battle in my first game, running a carrier TF, minus the already sunk carrier, into the cruiser force full strength, just to see what a surface battle looked like, and my TF was quickly annihilated.