Battle of Midway (US Pacific)

[koopanique]

2017-01-04 - Order of Battle WW2: US Pacific -- Battle of Midway, difficulty 2/5

Oh wow! Great victory at Midway. The entire Japanese carrier force has been sunk, and as far as air action goes it happened basically like IRL... if I remember correctly at least.

First we deployed 4 carriers ourselves, complete with at least five torpedo-bombers and one dive-bomber, plus three or four Wildcats. First order of business, to sink the Japanese Midway Invasion Fleet. We sent several warships South to meet with the invasion fleet (several cruisers, a destroyer, and a battleship). We sunk most of it, but not all of it unfortunately (that secondary objective wasn't completed).

In the meantime, we advanced our main carrier fleet West to meet with the main Japanese fleet. Problem was, we didn't know where it exactly was. It was stated that our primary objective was to destroy at least two Japanese carriers -- but I knew we could do better than that...

We advanced our carrier fleet as much as we could without risking a decisive engagement with the huge Japanese fleet looming West of us. They did spot us but we manage to hold our position. After a while, I had several squadrons of torpedo-bombers take off from our carriers.

After a few turns, the Japanese carrier planes were on us! And they even sunk one of our carriers, the northernmost one... Fortunately, I had many Wildcats in the air, so the Japanese squadrons were quickly dispatched and soon retreated. The loss of one of our carriers was a severe blow though, especially considering it was part of our Core Forces.

After this initial engagement, I launched all my strike planes West, towards the estimated position of the enemy fleet... And we did find the enemy fleet. The first few turns were good for us, with one carrier quickly sunk and two others crippled, against only one of our squadron of torpedo-bombers shot down.

After that, it became messy. The torpedo-bombers deal massive damage to enemy large warships, but they require 3 turns to reload their "torpedo" capacity, meaning they were useless and vulnerable after the attack... I had them retreat, but not too far, and I had my only squadron of dive-bombers attack again one of the Japanese carriers. In the meantime, Japanese Zeros took down and crippled a lot of Allied planes.

Three or so turns passed; I attacked again with the torpedo-bombers, and soon sunk two more Japanese aircraft carriers. Our primary objective was complete, but we were only one Japanese carrier away from completing our secondary objective too...

However, the last carrier had vanished. The fighting took place not far from the Japanese Exit Hexes so I feared the last carrier had simply retreated off-map. I sent a few squadrons do recon North and South, but to no avail. Soon I understood it would be useless to keep the fighting going on: my squadrons were all crippled, and most importantly, running out of fuel... So I had all planes retreat, except the dive-bombers, that I decided to sacrifice for the sake of reconaissance.
I began advancing my carriers West again to recover my withdrawing aircraft, but unfortunately the Japanese had a huge fleet of at least five destroyers and three battleships just West of our position.

So I had my carriers retreat East towards Midway.

And on turn 29 or so (out of 35 max)... our submarine located the last enemy carrier! Two turns away from exiting the map through one of the Exit Hexes! Holy damn! I had my carriers go West again, and the squadrons of torpedo-bombers repaired as quickly as possible, then launch. That would take far too many turns though...

The submarine torpedo-ed the enemy carrier, which HPs went from 4 to 2. I had two squadrons of Wildcats in the area -- they were no strike planes, but they could still inflict damage on enemy warships. The strike planes proper, the torpedo-bombers and dive-bombers, were too far away East, and most of them still being repaired on the carriers.

The next turn, the Japanese carrier was ON an Exit Hex, and had 3HP after in-the-field repair, or maybe because of a supply ship (they had many oil tankers around). I had a crippled Wildcat (the last in the area) bomb it... and SUCCESS! The last Japanese carrier was sent to the bottom in one last, daring strike.

After that we just regrouped the fleet near Midway (see screenshot, the only screenshot of that session unfortunately), and the sacrificed dive-bomber squadron bombed as much as it could before completely running out of fuel. You will be remembered ;_;7


All in all, that last carrier action was freaking great and heart-racing. Two secondary objectives completed out of four (destroy all Japanese carriers and at least 6 other warships -- lol, we sunk at least 12 in that mission...).

[Geoffrey.P.Smith]

Awesome commentary thanks koopanique. I could almost hear your submariners cheering as the crippled wildcat finished the fleeing Jap carrier they'd tagged but not quite managed to bag. Well written war correspondence; really getting across what a difficult battle that was for everyone involved.

[koopanique]

Thanks Geoffrey, next time I plan on adding screenshots and/or pictures and less texts, so it looks less like a wall of texts... I mainly write those reports for myself because I love reading them several months after, but for other people, reading reports that long must certainly be boring, so with pictures and maybe less text it will be more enjoyable for everyone.

[GiveWarAchance]

Ya pictures would be good. And the amount of text is fine, especially if there are pictures to add immersion value to the reading experience.

Those torpedo bombers in real life were obsolete and never scored any hits while the Dauntless dive bombers took out all 4 carriers. I don't know how much of the torpedo planes' failure was due to bad luck or hopelessly slow planes that were easy pickings for zeros and AA fire. The newer American torpedo bombers were much better but came later. Their dive bombers were powerfully destructive slamming bombs onto the flight decks and setting off Japanese planes like dominos.

It is lucky that you finished the last carrier with a damaged Wildcat slinging 50 cal machine gun fire at the flatdeck. I guess there were holes in it and fires raging so the Wildcat's fire mowed down the fire-fighting crews on the ship which allowed more bombs and fuel to explode to finish the carrier. I dunno. Or the Wildcat cut down the ship captain so everyone else was like 'yah he's gone! let's abandon ship now!'.