Carriers when?

[freeboy]

ok, just want u guys at SSG to know I hope all is well, looks like a winner for a summer release or sooner!

[jimi3]

Let's hope it's in time to celebrate the 65th anniversary of Midway in June

[Marc gto]

YEAH THAT WOULD BE COOL

[Sonny II]

Or even sooner so we could get familiar with the game in time for a Midway re-enactment.

[kverdon]

Really would like to hear from someone from Matrix on this. Is this game scheduled for this year? This quarter? This month? A little more information from the publishers would be nice.

[freeboy]

anyone besides myself think Midway is a one sided affair if modeled accurately? IE the Japs "should" Destroy the us fleets and capture Midway, Surely the luckiest of all battles sees the US sending the JAps down.

If you modeled this the only way to get historical results would be to force the Japs to load there decks and give the US a free attack with all the cap gone, as was the cas the cap chasing the torpedo planes!

I think a 43 Midway, with Shokoku and Zsuikaku,sp?. againt a stronger US force would actually be more interesting and chjallenging as the JAps would get two more heavies and the us would face an armada of BB's behind them, with the beafed up us Fleat.. add five carriers and better planes/pilots. Of course this would be an Ahistorical battle. But is that not one reason, to ask "hat if?"

[pasternakski]

ORIGINAL: freeboy

anyone besides myself think Midway is a one sided affair if modeled accurately? IE the Japs "should" Destroy the us fleets and capture Midway, Surely the luckiest of all battles sees the US sending the JAps down.

If you modeled this the only way to get historical results would be to force the Japs to load there decks and give the US a free attack with all the cap gone, as was the cas the cap chasing the torpedo planes!

I think a 43 Midway, with Shokoku and Zsuikaku,sp?. againt a stronger US force would actually be more interesting and chjallenging as the JAps would get two more heavies and the us would face an armada of BB's behind them, with the beafed up us Fleat.. add five carriers and better planes/pilots. Of course this would be an Ahistorical battle. But is that not one reason, to ask "hat if?"

This has been hashed, rehashed, fried sunny side up with hash browns, given up on, and fed to the dogs eons ago. Not everyone agrees that United States forces won only due to luck at Midway.

You taking spelling lessons from Brady?

[JSS]

ORIGINAL: kverdon

Really would like to hear from someone from Matrix on this. Is this game scheduled for this year? This quarter? This month? A little more information from the publishers would be nice.

Have you read the development diary?

[denisonh]

ORIGINAL: pasternakski

ORIGINAL: freeboy

anyone besides myself think Midway is a one sided affair if modeled accurately? IE the Japs "should" Destroy the us fleets and capture Midway, Surely the luckiest of all battles sees the US sending the JAps down.

If you modeled this the only way to get historical results would be to force the Japs to load there decks and give the US a free attack with all the cap gone, as was the cas the cap chasing the torpedo planes!

I think a 43 Midway, with Shokoku and Zsuikaku,sp?. againt a stronger US force would actually be more interesting and chjallenging as the JAps would get two more heavies and the us would face an armada of BB's behind them, with the beafed up us Fleat.. add five carriers and better planes/pilots. Of course this would be an Ahistorical battle. But is that not one reason, to ask "hat if?"

This has been hashed, rehashed, fried sunny side up with hash browns, given up on, and fed to the dogs eons ago. Not everyone agrees that United States forces won only due to luck at Midway.

You taking spelling lessons from Brady?

[kverdon]

Yes I have read the dev diary but the tone there is rather vague and gives the impression that CAW is still back-burnered and that not alot of active developement is going on. Just some tweeking here and there. I'm just wondering when they are planning to release it. From the tone of the dev diary I'd guess late summer / fall.

[JSS]

ORIGINAL: kverdon

Yes I have read the dev diary but the tone there is rather vague and gives the impression that CAW is still back-burnered and that not alot of active developement is going on. Just some tweeking here and there. I'm just wondering when they are planning to release it. From the tone of the dev diary I'd guess late summer / fall.

While I don't have any idea of a date (only SSG & Matrix can comment on this anyway), Eddy's post on War-Hist seems insightful in the big picture [:D]

[pasternakski]

I hate to be the one always throwing water on the Kumbaya Kampfire, but what is this game, really?

A rehash of the "several days" battles approach of the original with the option to extend it into a "campaign consisting of several days battles in sequence with you being assigned random numbers of carriers?"

Please, folks (not to be confused with halflings), persuade me why I should want to buy this game - when it actually does see the light of day here in Mordor.

[spence]

anyone besides myself think Midway is a one sided affair if modeled accurately? IE the Japs "should" Destroy the us fleets and capture Midway, Surely the luckiest of all battles sees the US sending the JAps down.

If you modeled this the only way to get historical results would be to force the Japs to load there decks and give the US a free attack with all the cap gone, as was the cas the cap chasing the torpedo planes!

You appear to have bought Fujita's account hook, line, and sinker. If Yamamoto had made an operational plan that made any sense, if A6Ms had more than 60 rounds for their 20mm's, if Japanese CVs could have warmed up strike aircraft in their hangars, if their CAP had had any sort of direction other than smoke signals, if their carriers had had any sort of flak support from the other ships in the TF, if the Japanese had broken with doctrine and committed sufficient search a/c (meaning bomber types) to adequately protect their flank, and only if Japanese SNLF/Army troops were immortal (somehow twice the force that very nearly didn't capture Wake capturing Midway with 10 times the number of defenders doesn't sound like favorable arithmetic); then your point might be well taken.

The American mistakes and f---ups were plentiful enough and but were recognized and ultimately corrected. The wartime Japanese covered the whole thing up (if Nimitz had lost do you really suppose he would have remained CINCPAC the way Yamamoto did) and Fujita's "Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan" was mostly a post-war continuation of that same coverup. Luck WAS a factor in the sequence of events and the outcome but a substantial part of the LUCK involved was AMERICAN BAD LUCK. Consider this: by the time the Japanese were becoming aware that there might be US Naval Forces nearby the Americans had already had more than 175 strike aircraft (excluding fighters) in the air enroute Nagumo's force. For so many of them to get lost or show up piecemeal was incredibly GOOD LUCK for the Japanese. Like all other commodities in that war, the Japanese ran out of it first.

[pasternakski]

ORIGINAL: spence
if Nimitz had lost do you really suppose he would have remained CINCPAC the way Yamamoto did

What - Yamamoto was CINCPAC?

Consider this: by the time the Japanese were becoming aware that there might be US Naval Forces nearby the Americans had already had more than 175 strike aircraft (excluding fighters) in the air enroute Nagumo's force. For so many of them to get lost or show up piecemeal was incredibly GOOD LUCK for the Japanese. Like all other commodities in that war, the Japanese ran out of it first.

Yeah, you know? And let's not forget the "good luck" imparted to American success by the torpedo plane crews flying in those awful TBD crates who gave their lives gallantly in pressing home their attack, not even knowing that their deaths made it possible for those SBD crews to accomplish their work in no less gallant fashion and blazon their names in the archives of the history of desperate struggles in defense of freedom against tyranny for all time.

Sorry. I always get a little worked up when I think of what my fellow veterans have accomplished.

[spence]

What - Yamamoto was CINCPAC?

I knew you'd pick up on that but was too lazy to edit. Yamamoto had the equivalent position in the IJN and he didn't lose his job (until he got killed but that was by Americans so it doesn't count except to him).

[pasternakski]

ORIGINAL: spence

What - Yamamoto was CINCPAC?

I knew you'd pick up on that but was too lazy to edit. Yamamoto had the equivalent position in the IJN and he didn't lose his job (until he got killed but that was by Americans so it doesn't count except to him).

[freeboy]

ok, final comment re Midway, Add two, the US did get lucky, or God intervened in the TACTICLE battel, but one could argue ineptitude and pride in the Jap commanders, if that is fair I do not know.

If you look at the quality of planes pilots and ships available, between the two sides, any realistic replay with FOREKNOWLEGE allows the japs to crush the US..

If you allow them to add the two carriers attackingthe Alutioans, sp?, then they would have an even greater advantage. I challenge anyone here to a game of Carriers Midway to see ! if we ever get this released!

[NimitsTexan]

ORIGINAL: freeboy

ok, final comment re Midway, Add two, the US did get lucky, or God intervened in the TACTICLE battel, but one could argue ineptitude and pride in the Jap commanders, if that is fair I do not know.

If you look at the quality of planes pilots and ships available, between the two sides, any realistic replay with FOREKNOWLEGE allows the japs to crush the US..

If you allow them to add the two carriers attackingthe Alutioans, sp?, then they would have an even greater advantage. I challenge anyone here to a game of Carriers Midway to see ! if we ever get this released!

I completely disagree. For one thing, based on numbers alone, the forces were evenly matched for a carrier battle; the IJN had one more carrier but the US had the airbase at Midway and a slight advantage in planes. Had the IJN brought along Shokaku or kept Hiyo and Ryujo in the Mobile force, things might have been different, but that would have required a change in Japanese carrier fleet doctrine I doubt they were capable of making prior to Midway. But, numbers aside, the USN, while still the tactical underdog, was much less at the mercy of "miracles" than most think.

1: The idea that there was a vast qualitative disparity between the IJN and USN carrier forces in early 1942 is one of the most common and pernicious myths of the battle. If you were to actually examine the components of those carrier forces, you will find they were much more evenly matched. The USN Yorktown carriers were better designed, carried better AAA, and had much better damage control capabilities than the IJN Akagi, Kaga, and Hiryu classes. To top it, the USN carriers and cruisers also carried air search radars, allowing FDOs to scramble and control the CAP and use the radio to vector fighters against incoming raids. The IJN fleet had no radar and ship to plane radio communications were extremely poor; so that often IJN CAP, dependent on visual reports and flag hoists from outlying destroyers, often scrambled late and simply flew towards the nearest flak bursts in an effort to spot incoming bombers.

The IJN aircraft were overall slightly superior to those of the USN, but that advantage is again often exaggerated in the popular perception. The Zero was better fighter than the F4F Wildcat, but only by a small margin. The Zero was faster (slightly), more maneuverable (particularly at lower speeds), and much longer ranged, but the F4F had a better armament, more armor, self-sealing fuel tanks, better speed in a dive, and a decent roll rate. As dive bombers were concerned, the SBD was superior to the D3A despite being slight slower and less maneuverable, as it was longer ranged, better armed and armored, and carried a higher payload. The D3A's only other real advantage over the SBD was that it was supposedly more stable in the dive, allowing for better bombing accuracy. Only in torpedo bombers did the IJN have a clear advantage, the B5N being much longer legged, and faster than the TBD, and, most importantly, carrying the aerial version of the Long Lance torpedo, which was faster, more dependable, and had a better warhead than the that toted by the TBD. The American aerial torpedo at this point in the war was so unreliable that it almost rendered moot whether or not the TBDs actually survived to make their run or not.

In terms of pilots, the USN and IJN were again more evenly matched than is generally acknowledged. The USN fighter pilots of early 1942 were, as a group, probably the best trained set of pilots among the Western Allies, and were just as good as the IJN's Zero drivers. According to John Lundstrom's research (in which he went back and compared kills claimed to those the other side actually recording loosing), in the period of Feb-Jun 1942, the USN F4F pilots actually had a positive kill ratio against the IJN's A6M2 and A5M4s, so it could be argued that the USN fighter pilots actually had an advantage over the IJN. The IJN dive and torpedo bomber pilots were, on the other hand, more effective than those of the USN, but again if you were to compare accuracy rates (allowing for the fact that USN torpedoes often missed their target even if dropped perfectly), the difference would not be extreme.

2. As far as battlefield "luck" went on June 4, the IJN actually had more than its fair share up until the Enterprise and Yorktown SBDs arrived overhead. First, the carriers had survived unscathed the attacks of few dozen TBFs, B-26s, SBDs, SB2Us, and B-17s from Midway. Second, the famous Tone scout had sighted the American carrier forces precisely because it had taken off late and flown the wrong route; had it taken off on time and flow its pattern correctly, the USN task force would not have been spotted until much later, if at all. Thirdly, somewhere between a fourth and a third of the USN strike against the Japanese carriers flew off in the wrong direction and completely missed the IJN task force, with all the fighters and several of the dive bombers being forced to ditch from lack of fuel, while another flight of escort fighters attached itself to the wrong TBD squadron and never got involved, so that of 3 flights of fighters, 5 dive bomber squadrons, and 3 torpedo bomber squadrons, only 1 escort flight, 3 dive bomber squadrons, and the 3 torpedo bomber squadrons got in action. Finally, two of the torpedo bomber squadrons arrived well ahead of the dive bombers and without fighter escort, so that the IJN CAP were able to annihilate most of them before they could even make a run.

[pasternakski]

From now on, if you hear it from NimitsTexan, it's 5x5 by me.

One small thing to add: due to the big 20s-30s interservice brawl over whether high-altitude precision-bombing of ships or dive-bombing was superior, the USN dive-bomber pilots and their superiors came into WWII with a chip on their shoulder. Their training was exhaustive, their tactical innovation exemplary, and their weapons, the SBD and that much-maligned-here GP bomb, excellent.

The results speak for themselves.

[spence]

{In response to Freeboy}

You should read "Shattered Sword". It certainly appears from your post that such knowledge of the Battle of Midway comes for the most part from the popular accounts such as Prange's "Miracle at Midway" or Lord's "Incredible Victory" or even Fujita's "Midway The Battle that Doomed Japan". The first two certainly promoted the idea that the battle should not have turned out as it did. Oddly both author's appear to have failed to analize the battle as a Carrier Battle because the Americans were only heavily outnumbered in total ships but actually held an advantage in a/c available. In addition the Japanese units were badly disposed to support one another to such an extent that other than the Kido Butai, no other unit was ever in position to enter the battle as a meaningful entity. (Further, and mostly as a historical aside relating to the whole Midway concept; the Japanese landing force that was supposed to capture the island was a patheticly inadequate joke in relationship to the opposition they would have faced: two battalions with no weapon heavier than an 81 mm mortar, with no liason with each other or the fleet, committed against two different objectives which could only reached by wading a minimum of 200 yards through the surf).

As far as Fujita's account is concerned; in the 50 yrs since he published his book much of what he wrote has been proven by Japanese contemporaries to be self serving distortions or even lies. Unfortunately the debunkings were never translated to Englisih.

I have serious reservations about "Carriers at War". Matrix's UV and WitP depict carrier operations as essentially identical in the US Navy and IJN (and to a lesser extent the RN). In actuality the 3 navies all developed unique ships, planes, and doctrines and capabilities. If CAW, like UV and WitP depicts carrier warfare as the US USN against the USN that has "funny sounding" ship names then it will in my estimation be a complete failure as a simulation.

"Shattered Sword" deals with the battle from the Japanese side much more thoroughly and convincingly than any previous book on the battle from either side. The luck of the Japanese was incredibly good for 3 hours the morning of the 4th of June. The Americans launched 175 bomber type planes (of all sorts) before the Japanese had launched even one on an anti-ship mission. That they arrived on a single vector one squadron at a time for 3 hours and unescorted was pretty damn lucky for the Japanese. In the minute by minute account in "Shattered Sword" it is quite easy to discern that even that sequence of events had completely deprived them of the initiative and was straining Kido Butai's ability to defend itself to the utmost. THE IJN DISASTER AT 1020-1025 THAT MORNING APPEARS TO BE ALL BUT INEVITABLE.