Ex Battleships

[el cid again]

Hi,

simply reduce the cargo capacity of the tankers of the Kido Butai Replenishment TF at start and give them an upgrade with higher (historical) capacity (upgrade 12/41 or 01/42, whatever you want). Thus this replenishment TF will only supply limited fuel to KB, but the ships will have their true max capacity later after the upgrade. You'll only have to create one new class, and there should be enough class slots left to do this.

K

That is pretty clever. It has problems - the tanker task group is a very unusual one and it does not suffer disbanding. Players who elect to upgrade would lose the task group - which in my view ought to be typical instead of unique. ALL the Shiretokos can do what it does (and NONE of them are in it). Unless they understand that they need to transfer a different tanker into the group - which might work to preserve it. I do like this idea. I am testing my idea right now. But this is worth thinking about and possibly experimenting with. Anyone else like it as much as I do? Leaving the KB with too much fuel is not an option I will consider. It amounts to science fiction (appear mid ocean with full tanks - neat).

[el cid again]

I was going to mention that whatever the idea, it need to be universally applied. There is more at stake here than just the KB, as there are other taskforces at sea in the first turn.

Are there any TANKER task groups at sea? I was not aware of any. Also, for Japan, I have started task forces in port. That means they have to sail all the way - expending fuel.

Now the Allies are different - there are a few far at sea. I don't think it matters though. No tankers to mess with. But in theory we could do this to a transport of some kind - if it might matter.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: el cid again
On Dec 8, 1941 (US time) IJN Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto decided the historical hit and run raid was a MISTAKE. That the Kiddo Butai should have STAYED in Hawaiian waters, hunting carriers and damaged ships fleeing to the US West Coast - and cutting the line of supply for Hawaii. Once the carriers had been neutralized, and certain land facilities as well (air bases, and open to air observation major coast guns at Fort Ruger - which could prevent landing on any coast), a follow up force should have landed three divisions on Oahu. The Battle of Midway was an attempt to correct this "mistake" - just being phase one. In this sense - that the Japanese fleet commander THOUGHT they SHOULD have stayed - and also that MANY US naval officers AT THE TIME thought they SHOULD have done - it IS a reasonable option that players do so.


CID. Can you supply a source document for this statement? It seems rather odd that after months of planning and gaming Yamamoto would have suddenly had this "brainstorm" the day after the attack. And as the IJA wasn't offering 3 divisions for any Hawaiian advanture (look at what they were willing to make available for Midway with six months of victories behind them..., basically a regiment), the "landing" is just a pipedream.

This is not the way history is taught in the West - and you may imagine my surprise when I first read it. It was in a history of Hawaii called something wierd like "I Heard the Sea Call My Name". But it was a real history, and it cited the official Japanese history, an amazing (and almost impossibe to read) collection more than 100 volumes long which took decades to publish. Since then I have found a few more authors who have noted the basic story, including one actually naming the three divisions, in English. Probably the best brief way to become familiar with the massive materials without spending about a dozen years learning Japanese is to use University of Hawaii materials (they specialize in all Central Pacific history, as you might imagine), starting with The Pearl Harbor Papers and Hawaii Under the Rising Sun. These are scholarly - meaning you get good cites - and you then can follow up if you must in Japanese - or in archives (good luck there! we are not preserving the docs). [Commercial translation of Japanese costs $3000 a page, or $2000 if you order many pages. And it is almost never up to translating material of this age: no one understands the terms of art. The best path is to do it yourself and associate with scholars and linguists with an interest - that is everyone helps each other without charge - something you can only do if YOU bring something to the table. But such a process never ends - it only gets closer and closer to a sense of the material.]

For practical purposes, we do not understand what the Battle of Midway was about - and so we completely put it in terms of its initial phase - which at least we saw attempted. The real operation was to continue for many months, with wave after wave of units, and, given what we know about the situation on Hawaii - it is only a question of which wave was defeated. While I believe in a Japanese invasion of Hawaii (planned since 1910) - and I even think it may have been better politics once upon a time (given 70% of the people were Japanese - we are supposed to be democrats - right? ) - I ONLY believe in it if they did it up front, in Dec 1941 - not in November 1942. It is very had to do it right - I once did it and won the battle BUT LOST THE WAR because I committed too much shipping! To do it right you have to be like Yamashita in Malaya - go in with less than offered - I find about half of three divisions works best - but ONLY in 1941. Not a year later.

[el cid again]

Players can make use of "hindsight" to do a lot of things the original participants never seriously considered. Would be more realistic if there were some unknown variables involved. How bold would the Japanese player be if there was a chance that US subs MIGHT come out and be as effective as German U-Boats from day one? It's always easier to look back and say should of, would have, could have than to peer into the unknown.

We are in harmony here. ONCE we get the basic WITP right with respect to history, I will explore how to do this. It is hard. The best way is to let players do some creative set ups. I may offer veteran players a service - tell me your plan and I will code it in that way (where it is impossible in the base scenario) - just for that campaign. For both sides. Neither then will know what the other set up was. And in such a case, we could have a table for torpedoes - and I would roll a die - and set the value - and you would be stuck with it. But players could "cheat" and look in the editor - to have fun you must remain ignorant - creating uncertainty.

The near term way to get some of this is to do RHSPPO - where you get lots of political points - but so does the enemy.

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: el cid again
CID. Can you supply a source document for this statement? It seems rather odd that after months of planning and gaming Yamamoto would have suddenly had this "brainstorm" the day after the attack. And as the IJA wasn't offering 3 divisions for any Hawaiian advanture (look at what they were willing to make available for Midway with six months of victories behind them..., basically a regiment), the "landing" is just a pipedream.

This is not the way history is taught in the West - and you may imagine my surprise when I first read it. It was in a history of Hawaii called something wierd like "I Heard the Sea Call My Name". But it was a real history, and it cited the official Japanese history, an amazing (and almost impossibe to read) collection more than 100 volumes long which took decades to publish. Since then I have found a few more authors who have noted the basic story, including one actually naming the three divisions, in English. Probably the best brief way to become familiar with the massive materials without spending about a dozen years learning Japanese is to use University of Hawaii materials (they specialize in all Central Pacific history, as you might imagine), starting with The Pearl Harbor Papers and Hawaii Under the Rising Sun. These are scholarly - meaning you get good cites - and you then can follow up if you must in Japanese - or in archives (good luck there! we are not preserving the docs). [Commercial translation of Japanese costs $3000 a page, or $2000 if you order many pages. And it is almost never up to translating material of this age: no one understands the terms of art. The best path is to do it yourself and associate with scholars and linguists with an interest - that is everyone helps each other without charge - something you can only do if YOU bring something to the table. But such a process never ends - it only gets closer and closer to a sense of the material.]
[/quote]

Well, I don't read Japanese, so that's a non-starter. But I do know that the IJA absolutely limited the number of it's units it was willing to commit to the Pacific Expansion, and I've never seen anything to imply that they were willing to commit 3 Divisions to Hawaii. But I'm sure the IJN did a number of case studies for attacks on Hawaii, Australia, New Caledonia, Fiji and all sorts of places---provided the Army would supply the troops. Which the Army virtually always refused to do. Might be the explanation for the "Plans" you mention above. I've seen "official" US plans to invade Mexico. But they are "official" only in the sense that the Army "WarPlans" Staff drew them up and periodically updated them for practice.

Given the confusion of materials and languages, it wouldn't be suprising that someone stumbled on some of these "Navy staff proposals" and thought he'd struck gold research-wise.

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

Players can make use of "hindsight" to do a lot of things the original participants never seriously considered. Would be more realistic if there were some unknown variables involved. How bold would the Japanese player be if there was a chance that US subs MIGHT come out and be as effective as German U-Boats from day one? It's always easier to look back and say should of, would have, could have than to peer into the unknown.

We are in harmony here. ONCE we get the basic WITP right with respect to history, I will explore how to do this. It is hard. The best way is to let players do some creative set ups. I may offer veteran players a service - tell me your plan and I will code it in that way (where it is impossible in the base scenario) - just for that campaign. For both sides. Neither then will know what the other set up was. And in such a case, we could have a table for torpedoes - and I would roll a die - and set the value - and you would be stuck with it. But players could "cheat" and look in the editor - to have fun you must remain ignorant - creating uncertainty.

The near term way to get some of this is to do RHSPPO - where you get lots of political points - but so does the enemy.

I've never been able to figure out how to actually introduce uncertainty into a game and still have anyone want to play it. Players generally tend to be historians in one sense or another (even if only to the extent of detailed knowledge of unit organization), and they don't want to not know what they "know". Can you imagine the screams of the Japanese player if the"die-roll" produced the result I postulated? Yet all it would have taken was a half-dozen "live fire exercises" pre-war to find out the Mark XIV torpedo was a flop as issued..., and a few months engineering work to correct it. A far less costly and involved process than the Japanese actually developing the infrastructure for a reasonable pilot training program (another historical "what if" that has a lot of support in some areas). Be happy to help you try to do it if the chance ever arises, but I'm afraid too many "sacred cows" would be involved.

[el cid again]

Well, I don't read Japanese, so that's a non-starter. But I do know that the IJA absolutely limited the number of it's units it was willing to commit to the Pacific Expansion, and I've never seen anything to imply that they were willing to commit 3 Divisions to Hawaii. But I'm sure the IJN did a number of case studies for attacks on Hawaii, Australia, New Caledonia, Fiji and all sorts of places---provided the Army would supply the troops. Which the Army virtually always refused to do. Might be the explanation for the "Plans" you mention above. I've seen "official" US plans to invade Mexico. But they are "official" only in the sense that the Army "WarPlans" Staff drew them up and periodically updated them for practice.

OK - we got lucky. Adm Ugaki mitted suicide (he led a kamakaze raid if I remember right - a big one) - and he left his diary to be destroyed to someone who didn't. This has been translated by a university - so we have his daily diary - and in English- done at a time people understood technical Japanese naval jargon of that period. The title is Fading Victory. Anyway, this diary shows you are prefectly correct: Ugaki himself ordered exactly the staff studies you speak of - moves toward Fiji, New Caledonia, Australia, Hawaii. And you can read it in his private musings he never intended us to see. But the plan adopted - according to official history - elements of which you can now see for yourself in University of Hawaii materials - and more will be out next month (Pacific War Papers is on the way to printers) - was that three divisions were to invade Hawaii after the US Pacific Fleet was decimated. The best available material on this right now in English is Hawaii Under the Rising Sun. It is not a staff study - it was an operational plan - or set of plans actually. But when phase One failed, - actually the rest were NOT dropped until some thing like 1944! But they SHOULD have gone out the window!

[el cid again]

I've never been able to figure out how to actually introduce uncertainty into a game and still have anyone want to play it. Players generally tend to be historians in one sense or another (even if only to the extent of detailed knowledge of unit organization), and they don't want to not know what they "know". Can you imagine the screams of the Japanese player if the"die-roll" produced the result I postulated? Yet all it would have taken was a half-dozen "live fire exercises" pre-war to find out the Mark XIV torpedo was a flop as issued..., and a few months engineering work to correct it. A far less costly and involved process than the Japanese actually developing the infrastructure for a reasonable pilot training program (another historical "what if" that has a lot of support in some areas). Be happy to help you try to do it if the chance ever arises, but I'm afraid too many "sacred cows" would be involved.

Actually, I know professional military officers who LOVE to play with uncertainty - because it simulates real life challenges. Start recruiting players at military bases and among veterans.

The torpedo story is ironic. Seems our torpedo was STOLEN (by two enlisted men at Great Lakes Naval Training Base - the worlds largest training base with a torpedo school ) by Germany. [This tale is taught there in school]. Anyway, seems they didn't test either - something about limited budgets - and they had more or less the same problems BEFORE we did - except we didn't realize their torpedo was our torpedo! There are wonderful details of how we fixed the problems - and devised other torpedoes - in Hellions of the Deep.

[akdreemer]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

I was going to mention that whatever the idea, it need to be universally applied. There is more at stake here than just the KB, as there are other taskforces at sea in the first turn.

Are there any TANKER task groups at sea? I was not aware of any. Also, for Japan, I have started task forces in port. That means they have to sail all the way - expending fuel.

Now the Allies are different - there are a few far at sea. I don't think it matters though. No tankers to mess with. But in theory we could do this to a transport of some kind - if it might matter.

Now you have confused me. The Japanese were already moving their Malaya assault troops by sea before Pearl harbor as they had, in some cases, a few days to get to their war positions. And yes, I was also referring US task forces and all other things ones at sea. The ones in the game are not all of them, having discovered at least one more US one.

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

Well, I don't read Japanese, so that's a non-starter. But I do know that the IJA absolutely limited the number of it's units it was willing to commit to the Pacific Expansion, and I've never seen anything to imply that they were willing to commit 3 Divisions to Hawaii. But I'm sure the IJN did a number of case studies for attacks on Hawaii, Australia, New Caledonia, Fiji and all sorts of places---provided the Army would supply the troops. Which the Army virtually always refused to do. Might be the explanation for the "Plans" you mention above. I've seen "official" US plans to invade Mexico. But they are "official" only in the sense that the Army "WarPlans" Staff drew them up and periodically updated them for practice.

OK - we got lucky. Adm Ugaki mitted suicide (he led a kamakaze raid if I remember right - a big one) - and he left his diary to be destroyed to someone who didn't. This has been translated by a university - so we have his daily diary - and in English- done at a time people understood technical Japanese naval jargon of that period. The title is Fading Victory. Anyway, this diary shows you are prefectly correct: Ugaki himself ordered exactly the staff studies you speak of - moves toward Fiji, New Caledonia, Australia, Hawaii. And you can read it in his private musings he never intended us to see. But the plan adopted - according to official history - elements of which you can now see for yourself in University of Hawaii materials - and more will be out next month (Pacific War Papers is on the way to printers) - was that three divisions were to invade Hawaii after the US Pacific Fleet was decimated. The best available material on this right now in English is Hawaii Under the Rising Sun. It is not a staff study - it was an operational plan - or set of plans actually. But when phase One failed, - actually the rest were NOT dropped until some thing like 1944! But they SHOULD have gone out the window!

Glad you found that..., it's nice to know my "nose" hasn't lost it's touch. Discovered in Grad School that when a newly arrived "fact" doesn't "fit" into the general flow of information on a subject it's always worth backtracking the new source to check for other possible explainations. One of the problems of Historical research is that everyone want's to contribute something "new". And something "new" can be hard to come by after 50 years of others have "raked over" the same ground ahead of you. Which unfortunately can lead even the most serious researcher to "grasp at straws" of hope when they turn up..., and the less careful ones to try to run with them.

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

Actually, I know professional military officers who LOVE to play with uncertainty - because it simulates real life challenges. Start recruiting players at military bases and among veterans.

Might very well be. But those are "professional soldiers"---the ones who "study logistics" rather than "discuss tactics". Have you ever heard of a best selling simulation game called "Shovin' supply up the ol Burma Road"? Or "Mastering combat loading of Liberty Ships"?

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: el cid again
The torpedo story is ironic. Seems our torpedo was STOLEN (by two enlisted men at Great Lakes Naval Training Base - the worlds largest training base with a torpedo school ) by Germany. [This tale is taught there in school]. Anyway, seems they didn't test either - something about limited budgets - and they had more or less the same problems BEFORE we did - except we didn't realize their torpedo was our torpedo! There are wonderful details of how we fixed the problems - and devised other torpedoes - in Hellions of the Deep.

Haven't heard this one, but it sounds a bit "iffy"..., more like a "sea story" for the trainees. After WWI all the Western "victors" were taking German U-Boats apart looking for ways to improve their own technology. What I've seen shows basically the Germans. the British, and the US all independently (and secretly) trying to develope a "magnetic pistol" detonator for torpedoes..., and all three discovering that the thing didn't work in practice. The US was the last and the slowest, the Brits seem to have been the first and the quickest. Of course, we couldn't accept that just because their's didn't work, ours wouldn't.
This is the infamous NIH (or BLOCKHEAD) Factor.

[el cid again]

Now you have confused me. The Japanese were already moving their Malaya assault troops by sea before Pearl harbor as they had, in some cases, a few days to get to their war positions. And yes, I was also referring US task forces and all other things ones at sea. The ones in the game are not all of them, having discovered at least one more US one.

While there are famous movements of eight troop ships from Japan to IndoChina waters and then Malaya, most of the ships came from Hainan, others from Cambodia. In WITP the famous eight ships are not a convoy, and there is enough time to move from Hainan with the special first turn rules - so the ships all start in port and all consume fuel for the voyage.

Now the Americans at sea are different. Turns out this idea is not a good one - making classes that convert is hard - you need to do it with unique ships and then upgrade to unique ships - and these ships are by and large part of classes - not unique. There are also costs involved in the upgrade - time and supply. It may be easier to ignore it for the Allies and to time delay half the tankers for the Kiddo Butai. Need to evaluate todays tests.

[el cid again]

Glad you found that..., it's nice to know my "nose" hasn't lost it's touch. Discovered in Grad School that when a newly arrived "fact" doesn't "fit" into the general flow of information on a subject it's always worth backtracking the new source to check for other possible explainations. One of the problems of Historical research is that everyone want's to contribute something "new". And something "new" can be hard to come by after 50 years of others have "raked over" the same ground ahead of you. Which unfortunately can lead even the most serious researcher to "grasp at straws" of hope when they turn up..., and the less careful ones to try to run with them.

Glad you are glad. But did you catch the part that while there were a whole series of staff studies ordered, one was implemented? The decision to Move East was more or less cast because of reaction to the raid by Doolittle. The existence of an aggressive - if small - US carrier fleet and fleet base seemed dangerous to tolerate. This was poor strategy - this is a vast desert - the only resources are 2 miles down and beyond recovery in that era - except for this: a vast reserve of oil at Oahu. Hawaii was also a strategic position and it was once a kingdom, and it was not legally annexed (according the the US president at the time it was annexed) - so it could become a nice neutral buffer state post war - or even returned to the US in exchange for peace. Or it could be fought over and lost - nice to know where the enemy will attack - and then fight a battle over something you don't need. Anyway- wise or foolish - the decision was to go East. Its only really sound logistic foundation was that it would severely restrict the line of supply to Australia. A follow up op into Fiji, Samoa and New Caledonia was to compound that.

[el cid again]

Might very well be. But those are "professional soldiers"---the ones who "study logistics" rather than "discuss tactics". Have you ever heard of a best selling simulation game called "Shovin' supply up the ol Burma Road"? Or "Mastering combat loading of Liberty Ships"?

Jim Dunnigan once wrote (in Strategy and Tactics) "No one will ever buy a game on logistics." But he designed one - called War In The Pacific! And it did sell - a game in which you did movement of supplies almost all the time - taking breaks to fight an occasional battle (quoting Joe by the way).

[el cid again]

This is the infamous NIH (or BLOCKHEAD) Factor.

I know it well. It is particularly strong in the Pentagon. We didn't adopt the Italian Compact 76 mm gun for almost a generation - although it was the finest in the world - because NIH. We do this sort of thing fairly often. Only when you get emergency funding (that needs no approval by Congress or bureaucrats) can you buy whatever you wish - and that is very unusual. You will hear it hotly denied, but some technologies were flying in the USSR 10 and 15 years before they were flying here. Meanwhile, our "experts" were saying they were only copying our concepts and designs. The first time a British aviation expert got to fly an Su-27 family member, it was clear this was not a copy of anything in the West. His name was Bill Gunston and he said so. As a reward, he got to tour Russia, meet all the surviving designers, and see the archival documents, which he used to publish The Osprey Encyclopedia of Russian Aircraft. I once got to work on some original documents with a number of US and Japanese experts on atomic science. It was not at all what you would expect - they were better at theory than anyone - and solved problems with theory we only solved - later - by measuring. Even the hydrogen bomb was first proposed by a Japanese physicist - although we didn't know it during the war. Sort of the opposite of what you read in the usual "they were poor, fifth rate, Johnny come lately, and never did anything worthy of respect." IJN tied for first place designing an SSN - with RN - both began work in 1942 - we did a paper study in 1945 - by only three men - only to "produce a recommendation re post war development" - with no intention to produce anything useful near term. But we never admit (and probably do not know) that SSN work had been done in Britian and Japan - and probably in France - even before it was done here. There are now allegations that Germany did some in the German press - but I think that is just a misinterpretation of Heisenberg's concept "an atomic boiler to power a submarine is the only practical way atomic science might impact this war." There is no evidence of actual design work - much less of more than that. While we have misrepresented German reactor work (we got to examine the site of a failed reactor experiment that was hot - and didn't say so) - there is no evidence these projects were related to propulsion. They seem to have been related more to basic research, radiological weapons, or plutonium production (depending on which one).