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As a future Japanese player, what is to be done about this island? If the Allies move on it, do I fight as the French?

Anyone know?

Historically the French fought but I'm not sure how much or effectively. The game couldn't handle it though since pretty much all the Vichy types everywhere put up a more or less honorable resistance then switched sides to the Allies when the demands of French Honor had been met. That certainly never included fighting to the death against impossible odds for the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

I'm pretty sure that the game system just couldn't handle that kind of un-Japanese behavior.

Just checked it out on Wiki and it appears that after two days fighting near the landings (May 5, '42) the French (colonial) troops withdrew to the hinterland and such action as occurred after that was pretty confined to occasional skirmishes between patrols until Nov when all the French (except those directly supervised by the Japanese in Indochina) went over to the Allies. Three IJN subs and a couple of midgets got involved and damaged HMS Ramillies.

OK - in RHS there are restrictions on Japan. These are cleverly arranged by a few simple rules:

1) The primary RHS house rules is in effect big time: if you don't think the FRENCH commander would do it, do NOT do it.
Mainly that comes up in the form of taking everything you can and running with it off the Madagascar mini map. There isn't too much you can do as the French that would otherwise be out of bounds:

a) You can defend when attacked
b) You can attack anything you can reach with your few units
c) You can move to FRENCH islands in the mini-map (or the approaches) - and defend from them or raid from them

2) Japan CAN send stuff to the Madagascar mini map - but the movement restriction in the shipping tracks to this map pretty much limits you: you may not send any ship larger than a CL in the shipping tracks between the Indian Ocean and the Madagascar Mini Map. But that means there are lots of things you can do (which, mostly, you won't because you don't want to lose them for little gain - but all of them are legit):

a) You can move submarines onto the mini-map - and the ship tracks BETWEEN it and the Indian Ocean (the track along the South edge of the map is out of bounds for ALL Japanese naval units)
b) You can send transport ships, fast transport ships including destroyer and CL types, and anything they can carry - including land units, air units, supplies, resources, oil and fuel.
c) You can attack anything the forces you have in the area may attack - observing the peculiar restrictions for this mini map area. [Air units on ships IN the ship tracks on both sides MUST range limit to ONE hex; Air units on ships or bases on Madagascar, South Africa, in the Madagascar mini map ocean hexes, or in the Indian Ocean MUST range limit to the distance TO the FAR edge of the NEAREST barrier (i.e. you may not attack by air a unit in the Indian Ocean from Madagascar nor may a unit in the Madagascar mini map or South Africa attack by air any target in the Indian Ocean on the big map] This means you CAN air attack Durban and Capetown - or ships IN the ship tracks from the Indian Ocean to the Madagascar mini map.

These two principles conspire to mean there is a rich and wide range of options open to the Japanese side - but these do NOT include sending aircraft carriers or battleships. The need for units in other places probably restricts truly big forces from being sent - can Japan afford to commit vast amounts of shipping, troops and aircraft to the mini map area? I doubt it. And the penalties for doing so are my favorite kind: they are not available in other places, they risk being lost en route or in the area - which cannot support them on its own resources, and the "tyranny of distance" means that the lost shipping capacity for different operations is very severe. [I like trade offs that make unwise play come with "natural" penalties much better than some rule people must remember]

IRL the campaign on Madagascar was anything but a cake walk. It lasted a remarkably long time - and required a remarkably large Allied force. The Vichy forces professionally exploited the mountainous terrain along the islands main axis of communitations in a way that effectively bought time for the regime in Tenereive to do whatever it could - and anyway stay in power as long as possible - which is all that can reasonably expected of wholly outnumbered and outclassed colonial levies. The naval forces - regular and auxilary - paid dearly - on a much higher basis than we did for any territory - losing virtually every vessel in combat. The outnumbered and outclassed air units - amounting to only two squadrons and a detachment from one of them in terms of planes we represent in the game - certainly didn't act like Iraqis.

There are uncertainties built into the mod - intentionally: it is up to you as a player to decide what you think is appropriate:

1) Is a seaplane carrier (CS) a CL or below? This is explicitly NOT defined. A CVL or CV is defined as out of bounds. The ALLIES have NO restrictions of this sort - and they HAVE a CS in the area when the game starts as well. Wether or not Japan can send one is for the JAPANESE player to decide WITHOUT informing the Allies. And this is different from the choice to actually send one - which might not be made even if it could be made.

2) Can Vichy forces send units to Indochina???? Submarines????? Something loaded on an AK???? It is NOT defined - and it is up to the JAPANESE player to decide WITHOUT informing the Allies. If wholesale evacuation is out of bounds (and impractical as France lacks the ships to try) - sending a token air element - or the small, Caucasian battalion of infantry - might not be - if deemed of political value. And - note - to try only permits the attempt: the chances of actually getting to Indochina while the Malay barrier is held by the Allies should be remote. Only a submarine might have a good shot at it.

3) Can Vichy forces establish a base in the Indian Ocean - on French territory??? Amsterdam is far from anything - and might not be very supportable by land based air. Mauritious and Reunion generate a modest amount of local supply. These might provide surprise locations for submarine operation bases or even air raids. It is up to the JAPANESE player to decide WITHOUT informing the Allies. Whatever is sent hurts the defense of the big island. It is sent at some risk - depending on date and Allied patrols in the area (air, surface, submarine). It might be coordinated by things sent by Japan too. This is the sort of thing Churchill worried about - and it is not inherantly possible for the Allies to feel entirely sure the area is "safe" until their forces secure ALL these locations.

Bottom line: the addition of Madagascar does not add very much to the game in terms of great strategic significance. But it DOES add to a significant degree the strategic complexity involved because Axis forces hold the area and have no intention of cooperating with the Allies. The various options available to both sides all involve relative costs - units sent to this area are not available somewhere else. And a significant Allied LOC crosses the area - and it just isn't safe for unescorted transports until it is secured - if it is safe even then (from submarines). Enemy submarines actually based in the area - able to do maintenance, rearm and refuel - and supported by land based air recon - are probably too much a threat for the Allies to tolerate. But the area is not undefended - and just how much is "enough" to deal with the defenses is a choice the Allies must make - and then live with. Madagascar has a de facto division in defense (two regiments, one battalion, and one significant static defense unit) with its own organic air group (one fighter squadron, one bomber squadron, one fighter detachment) and its own naval group (including four submarines, two colonial sloops, and an auxiliary cruiser, as well as several transports). It is not a strong force - but it is a whole long way from nothing - and it has some logistic assets feeding it supplies. A small enough landing party might be in mortal danger from such a force. This is a proper operational problem - and exactly how to solve it is left to the ALLIED player to decide - without informing the Japanese (except as he detects what is sent). And the penalty for sending too much is - it isn't available other places where - early in the war - surely those units will be badly needed. This is a very nice sideshow - and it remains a sideshow no matter how it is played out. There is some potential for surprises - they may or may not pan out - and they won't matter much in the long run unless the Allies are grossly incompetent: the Allies will end up securely in control of this area. That fact - more than any other - probably limits what Japan will send: it must write off everything sent except submarines - and they too might be lost. How much can you afford not to have somewhere else - and probably NEVER get back? This is my favorite way to do scenarios: passing the hard choices to the players - who are given all the assets - and lots of reasons to want to use them somewhere else. A lot depends on player philosophy: if you think Japan was unwise not to engage in SLOC warfare - you probably should contest this area - in principle. But not with so much you risk losing more than you hurt the enemy.

Thanks for the imput.  I rarely abuse the rules.

I simply had no clue as to what to do.

Go back and reread - the article is expanded - and now concluded.

I am not very worried about abusing the rules: the only important ones are those about the ship tracks - which represent vast distances not easily handled by the game code not written for them. Ships INSIDE a track may only run airplanes ONE hex - range limit the air group.

ORIGINAL: spence

Historically the French fought but I'm not sure how much or effectively. The game couldn't handle it though since pretty much all the Vichy types everywhere put up a more or less honorable resistance then switched sides to the Allies when the demands of French Honor had been met.

It wasn't the demands of French honor so much as a certain French regulation that men serving over six months in a war zone would be entitled to a bonus in their pensions. When the six-month mark had been reached, Vichy resistance melted away. See "World War II +55" at:
http://www.usswashington.com

Did not the Vichy Forces on Madagascar sit quietly on their island, letting all those Allied convoys to and from the Middle East sail on by from June 1940 until the Allied invasion? Vichy was neutral. The government might have laid on "a big spread for Der Fuhrer whenever he came to dinner" but they weren't aligning themselves actively with the Axis. A couple of German bombers landed in Syria in the Spring of 41 and the only thing Vichy got out of the deal for that cooperation was another loss of territory. At the time there weren't a lot of folks betting heavily on the Brits even holding on to their empire, let alone taking somebody else's away from them (however, in spite of the bad odds the bookies were floating; the fact is, that they did exactly that to both the French and the Italians (the Levant and Ethiopia/Eritrea).

The whole Madagascar Operation was probably the product of some mid level IJN/Kreigsmarine staffies' fantasies
combining with some mid level RN/USN staffies' doomsayings and was probably unnecessary. For the IJN to think about supporting an operation closer to London than to Tokyo at the same time that they were proving they couldn't even keep one division supplied on Guadalcanal is approaching the absurd. A token force of Japanese would not have provided the French garrison with a viable claim of "Force Majeure": the Japanese would not have been welcomed as allies or even co-belligerents. The French would have fought the Japanese (except that the Allies invaded first).

ORIGINAL: spence

Did not the Vichy Forces on Madagascar sit quietly on their island, letting all those Allied convoys to and from the Middle East sail on by from June 1940 until the Allied invasion? Vichy was neutral.

Yes they did. Yes they were neutral. It is probably a travasty of justice that the place was invaded at all. But there is a saying among historians (of the British anyway): "Britannia waves the rules." They never even talked to the governor - who had permitted no bellegerant acts - nor the sort of spy activities that went on in Portugese Goa for example. Churchill just looked at his globe - got paranoid - and decided to take it out. It ranks with his theories about "the soft underbelly of Europe" and how easy taking the Bosphorus and Dardanalles would be. Now I like Churchill - but he was not always right.

On the other hand, in geostrategic terms, the POTENTIAL was there for a significant Axis base. But as far as I know - it was NOT on the table as an op in Germany, Italy or Japan. The nearest thing was an expedition to get the Shinklobwe uranium tailings (far richer than any other ore in the world except the 2000 metric tons sent - 50-50 - to the US and Europe - by Union Mines - actually Union Minere du Hout Katanga - to insure there would be an atomic arms race) by Japan. The expedition was not mounted by Japan at all - and was by the USA in fact a year later. But it MIGHT have refueled at Diego Suarez.

The silly thinking was in London - not in Tokyo - Japan did not plan to take the island. But HAD they thought about it - politics was on the Japanese side: the governor could not easily ignore instructions from Paris - and Japan did exactly that to get Indochina. So Spence is probably wrong about the French fighting an occupation force. Then too, he is wrong that one was dreamed up by Japan - it was not. We don't have to guess either: Churchill comes as clean as he ever does on this one - he takes full and personal responsibility. He is sure it is the right thing to do - however - even late in life.

Spence has a slightly more valid point about Guadalcanal: one Japanese military historian estimates that Japan's effective logistic reach was about the distance of Rabaul. I find that isn't correct - and also that it is perfectly possible to support much more than a division on Guadalcanal. Guadalcanal was also a fools errand for the USA - "operation shoestring" was made out of range of land based air (we never did that again) - with a Navy willing to abandon troops ashore because it could not effectively engage even inferior enemy forces. [The worst defeat in US naval history in actual naval battle is Savo Island - and that is the official USN version of the story] The Japanese might be forgiven for not expecting such major forces so far from Allied bases. Once we put a reinforced division ashore - against a construction battalion - the situation was never one Japan could have won. They sent too little too late - and did not understand it until about 20 minutes after Tsuji personally landed. He said he had been "completely wrong" - that "I diserve 1000 deaths" for ordering Japanese troops into "conditions in which they could not possibly cope with." He said that personally to the theater commander - Count Teruchi. Bad luck, an enemy that got lucky being reckless, and awful generalship do not equate to "could not have the logistic capability" - it is just "they didn't commit their logistic capability."

French colonial governors could and did ignore instructions from Paris (Algeria/Morocco 1942). The cooperation of the French in Indochina had very little to do with Paris's instructions and much more to do with Paris's impotence if in the face of Japanese military regional superiority: Force Majeure. That same idea of Force Majeure allowed the French in Morocco and Algeria to switch sides to the Allies in 1942 when the big kid on the block was the Anglo-American 1st Army. That circumstance would not apply upon the arrival of a token Japanese force in the region of Madagascar and a large Japanese force was not logistically possible. As I mentioned before, a similar miscalculation by the French governor of the Levant in 1941 had cost Vichy its holdings there.

He said that personally to the theater commander - Count Teruchi. Bad luck, an enemy that got lucky being reckless, and awful generalship do not equate to "could not have the logistic capability" - it is just "they didn't commit their logistic capability."

I suppose they did not "commit their logistic capability" to Guadalcanal because they were committing it elsewhere. I think a fair question would be where were they committing it in that Fall of 1942? Their fairly limited troop commitment to the campaign in New Guinea wasn't eating all that well either. Not much happening in Burma or China to explain why there just wasn't enough to do Guadalcanal too.

Well then, maybe the answer is that they didn't want to win so they withheld their otherwise abundant logistical support.[8|]

ORIGINAL: spence

French colonial governors could and did ignore instructions from Paris (Algeria/Morocco 1942). The cooperation of the French in Indochina had very little to do with Paris's instructions and much more to do with Paris's impotence if in the face of Japanese military regional superiority: Force Majeure. That same idea of Force Majeure allowed the French in Morocco and Algeria to switch sides to the Allies in 1942 when the big kid on the block was the Anglo-American 1st Army. That circumstance would not apply upon the arrival of a token Japanese force in the region of Madagascar and a large Japanese force was not logistically possible. As I mentioned before, a similar miscalculation by the French governor of the Levant in 1941 had cost Vichy its holdings there.

I don't think we know what happened in Morocco in any clear and detail sense? [Who is coming out and saying "I - or he - ordered xyz to do this or that?] But it appears to me that someone - probably Allied agents of some stripe or other - murdered the senior Vichy military officer [Admiral Darlan if I have the right name] - and that was a major factor in creating a disorganized and confused situation which could be exploited by the major forces present. By the time the smoke cleared, there was not much option to resist.

More - indeed all I have seen - histories of Indochina say that the local regime had no options there - politically or militarily. And I know of a colonel from there who went to Washington in 1941 to get arms and political support - and failed to get either - because WE didn't want them to have options either.

You are trying to make a flat, categorical statement about all possible operations - and for that reason you are almost certainly wrong. [The same statement, with qualifiers to allow for possible major forces, might be perfectly resonable]What if the major player in/off Madagascar was a Japanese Admiral - with more forces than the locals could match? And what if that were combined with instructions from "Paris" to "cooperate" with them? Nothing I know of the governor indicates he had any sort of Allied sympathies - and if he did have - why didn't he change sides - ever? In New Caledonia we had a similar governor - but he was set aside by the presence of some warships - and AFTER he was out of the way - his attitude didn't matter. UNTIL he was out of power, his attituded DID matter.

Vichy France and its officers have big time problems in 1941 and 1942. It is not clear that most/many of the options available to them were happy ones. When that was not the case - they joined the Free French. But the fact remains - that was by far the exception - not the rule. Quoting Ike, "France is a collaborationist enemy power - but we won't act like it is." And if you know anything about the Free French in general, or de Gaulle in particular, you might reasonably say "the French as Allies are harder to deal with than the French as enemies are." I think it might have been wisest to have left Madagascar a nominally neutral, isolated territory which was not hurting anyone or anything. I am not myself clever enough to think of a way to exploit Madagascar for Japan which might have been worth the costs and risks involved just to attempt it. Submarines make some sense - but long range submarines don't need a lot of local cooperation - and are not (early in the war) very likely to be lost in transit - going or returning. More than that - the risks are grave that the costs will exceed the gains. And I don't see how Japan could trust the locals very much either? I think Churchill was overreacting to HIS way of thinking when he looked at the globe in front of him - and not at all familiar with conditions on the ground in country - nor with thinking in Japan (or Germany or Italy). And he never admitted he got it wrong either, probably not even to himself.

ORIGINAL: el cid again

ORIGINAL: spence

French colonial governors could and did ignore instructions from Paris (Algeria/Morocco 1942). The cooperation of the French in Indochina had very little to do with Paris's instructions and much more to do with Paris's impotence if in the face of Japanese military regional superiority: Force Majeure. That same idea of Force Majeure allowed the French in Morocco and Algeria to switch sides to the Allies in 1942 when the big kid on the block was the Anglo-American 1st Army. That circumstance would not apply upon the arrival of a token Japanese force in the region of Madagascar and a large Japanese force was not logistically possible. As I mentioned before, a similar miscalculation by the French governor of the Levant in 1941 had cost Vichy its holdings there.

I don't think we know what happened in Morocco in any clear and detail sense? [Who is coming out and saying "I - or he - ordered xyz to do this or that?] But it appears to me that someone - probably Allied agents of some stripe or other - murdered the senior Vichy military officer [Admiral Darlan if I have the right name] - and that was a major factor in creating a disorganized and confused situation which could be exploited by the major forces present. By the time the smoke cleared, there was not much option to resist.

Admiral Darlan was assassinated Dec 24th 1942, about six weeks after 'Torch'. He had been acquiesced by Eisenhower as French High Commissoner for North and West Africa on Nov 14th (he had self-nominated himself some days earlier) and was cooperating with the Allies.

Admiral Darlan was assassinated Dec 24th 1942, about six weeks after 'Torch'. He had been acquiesced by Eisenhower as French High Commissoner for North and West Africa on Nov 14th (he had self-nominated himself some days earlier) and was cooperating with the Allies.

As Petain's appointed successor one can conclude that Admiral Darlan was privy to the Vichy government's instructions regarding Allied attack. As CINC of the French Fleet in 1940, and in spite of a firm belief that Germany would win the war; he ordered that any French ship threatened with capture by those same Germans should be scuttled. Imagining that any Frenchmen was going to die on behalf of or at the behest of somebody else's emperor is fantasy.

The Japanese gained French acquiescence in Indochina because they could bring overwhelming power to bear in that place. That was the very best that they could get.

ORIGINAL: el cid again

On the other hand, in geostrategic terms, the POTENTIAL was there for a significant Axis base. But as far as I know - it was NOT on the table as an op in Germany, Italy or Japan. The nearest thing was an expedition to get the Shinklobwe uranium tailings (far richer than any other ore in the world except the 2000 metric tons sent - 50-50 - to the US and Europe - by Union Mines - actually Union Minere du Hout Katanga - to insure there would be an atomic arms race) by Japan. The expedition was not mounted by Japan at all - and was by the USA in fact a year later. But it MIGHT have refueled at Diego Suarez.

Sometimes your statements confuse me: Shinklobwe is located in the Kongo (Katanga province).[&:]

ORIGINAL: spence

He said that personally to the theater commander - Count Teruchi. Bad luck, an enemy that got lucky being reckless, and awful generalship do not equate to "could not have the logistic capability" - it is just "they didn't commit their logistic capability."

I suppose they did not "commit their logistic capability" to Guadalcanal because they were committing it elsewhere. I think a fair question would be where were they committing it in that Fall of 1942? Their fairly limited troop commitment to the campaign in New Guinea wasn't eating all that well either. Not much happening in Burma or China to explain why there just wasn't enough to do Guadalcanal too.

Well then, maybe the answer is that they didn't want to win so they withheld their otherwise abundant logistical support.[8|]

Read the chapter "Managing the Resource" in The Japanese Merchant Marine and World War Two for a general sense of the nature of things. About the only thing comparable to the mismanagement of Japanese shipping resources was (gasp) Allied mismanagement of shipping resources! Curiously, when WTIP began, both the USA and Japan had three different bodies independently controlling shipping - and exactly the same three as well: Army, Navy and Civilian. Curiously, the Allies were horribly inept at figuring out any reasonable shipping schedule for ports like Noumea - where the typical merchant road at anchor for five months waiting its chance to load - due to congestion that can only be blamed on incompetent management. Now - consider that the Japanese had a lot less shipping to manage - and were even less disposed to cooperate with other Japanese than (say) the US Army and US Navy were. A ship bound for a port with a partial cargo would not consider taking cargo for another institution - not ask if there was any even if it was obviously piled up a mile high. A ship inbound for Japan after dropping a cargo would not take back resources - even if they existed at exactly the same point - that was some other guy's job. Triangle routings were almost never used. It is quite possible only a single IJA general was logistically oriented in his thinking (Yamashita) - and his is the ONLY case we know of that a decision was made to run an op with forces commenserate with the sealift available. All of these factors - and many more of a similar sort - caused the potential sealift of Japanese shipping to be a tiny fraction of its actual capacity. To that add another problem - covered by a different chapter in the Japanese Merchant Marine book: grossly inadequate protection for the ships. Too few aircraft and escorts, too few convoys, and too little priority to protecting them (so an escort or aircraft could be diverted - and often was - no matter how desperate the need for its protection mission). This lack of protection certainly caused a wholly different kind of inefficiency: a ship sunk NEVER AGAIN carries any cargo; a ship damaged carries no cargo for a long time - if it is able to return to service at all.

In any game, players are never as divided against their own side as real world institutions are (and were on both sides).
IF the players devote attention to efficient management of their shipping, they will easily multiply the effective thruput of cargo several times. When a person who has done this many times for several decades reports that the capacity is present - this general context should make it clear why that is an honest and accurate report.

Another factor is timing. When the war begins, every Japanese merchant ship was in home waters - RN intel established they would ALL be there by "Dec 8, 1941" Singapore time - and so advised Admiral Hart (in spite of instructions from Churchill not to inform the USA). Large amounts of ships were riding at anchor or otherwise in Japanese ports - awaiting later assignments. Many of them could have been lifting one time cargos to the area under discussion - but they were not lifting any cargo anywhere at all. Consider when the Japanese moved into Guadalcanal - or even into Rabaul? The forces there in 1941 were far less than they were later: Rabaul has more or less a reinforced battalion instead of a brigade - and a single special operations company has 5 scattered platoons from New Guinea all the way to Fiji (including a whole platoon on Tulagi - next to Guadalcanal). Port Moresby does not yet have a coast defense battery - nor even a composite brigade - but only a battalion not supported even by the two six inch guns Rabaul boasts. The Allies were stretched far too thinly, under far too much pressure in other places, and had too few ready forces to defend this area properly: witness how little had been moved in during the several months before the Japanese did invade. This is one area in which tiny forces would have reigned surpreme - had they been sent when shipping was still sitting idle - and not yet lost, or sent on inefficient runs of many sorts. So one answer to your question is: in the initial phase of the war, much of the Japanese logistic capability was simply not committed at all - period. Japan has (and always had, even in 1945) a bigger army than the US - or bigger than the US plus all its Allies other than China and the USSR. But at that stage the whole area only was given a single regiment - the South Seas Detachment. This was not something determined by the size of the Army, by forces of nature, or by any other physical limitation: it was a choice - and a poor one IMHO.

Note that later in the war, the same IJA is willing to send a division to Tarawa, to create simultaneously six South Seas Detachments (= 1.5 divisions) and assign them to naval commanders - and to commit multiple divisions to New Guinea, Guadalcanal, and nearby areas. It was also able to lift them. What it was not able to do was lift them effectively in the presence of enemy air operations. So the answer more generally is this: Japan's effective logistic capability was limited by the location of enemy air bases. UNLESS and UNTIL enemy air is in range, lifting was purely a matter or proper planning and organization. And the very same thing can be said for our side. Lots of players complain about the fate of ships sent with reinforcements to Malaya early in the game - but that is not so much because the game has things wrong (due, as alleged, to too effective torpedo bombers) as because the game is a simplifiation of reality - and players are operating combinations of recon and bombers far enough forward to matter. [To limit that, CHS and RHS restricted the size of some air bases in this area] If all the bombers carried bombs, almost exactly the same ships would go down. It is not easy, safe, wise or practical to send slow merchant ships where the enemy contests the skies effectively. In the end, it is a red herring to allege that Japan has no logistical capability forward of a certain point when the issue is entirely one of air operations. If the Allies were not present - there would be no problem lifting the troops. The problem IRL is that because the Allies were not near enough to worry about - there seemed to be no need to lift the troops. Had a Japanese division defended Guadalcanal - the situation would have been reversed. The airfield was complete enough to use - and with a serious ground defense - they could have flown in aircraft and ground support elements. Owning what we called Henderson Field, with a real combat unit ashore, we would almost certainly have been defeated. And our logistic ability to send divisions forward would have been very restricted. This is not really a discussion of logistic lift - it is of an air-naval campaign. Logistic sealift by transport ships is never practical UNLESS you can deal with enemy aircraft. I do not understand how one leaps from that sort of situation to "they had no lift because they didn't lift effectively into Guadalcanal AFTER we had two airfields operating there."

Cobra will love me for this..Wonder how hard it would be to put a "legend" box near the channel with a simplification of the "restrictions"..Maybe a different color of blue for the restricted movement hex, or an "x" in the hex??
Something like "Only CL or smaller",etc)..
Just a thought..
If it were a boardgame, we players would be using a template or a chart...

Only after Cobra sorts out his computer problems - which are big time. But we have continuously added features of this sort - player aids we call em. But remember - the restriction in the channel is only for Japan. The Allies can always go anywhere with anything - excepting only the Queens (Elizabeth and Mary) - too big to pass from Colon to Panama City.