I dropped by Mike Welsh's nice house for a game of LGNC on Monday night. Mike has redone the map and ship units -- it seems like everyone has, by now! -- and they look very nice.
Mike had everything set up and wanted me to be the Japanese. I inferred (maybe incorrectly) that he thought "we" didn't have a chance in the game. Uh huh.
I started the battleline (consisting of YAMATO, MUSHA SHI, NAGATO, ISE, HYUGA, FUSO, and YAMASHIRO) in Brunei, along with the AOBA fast transport. ZUIKAKU, KONGO, HARUNA, and the 3 cruiser units I had off-board in the North. Land-based air units and the ISE/HYUGA seaplane unit I held back at Brunei, Hong Kong, etc.
Mike likes to use hidden submarines, and I deployed mine in the coastal hex on the east shore of Luzon and the hex NE of that, to harass his carriers trying to hit targets west and northwest of Luzon. (Despite me designating them "Passive," USS ENGLAND was apparently on the scene, because both were quickly sunk.) Mike's USN subs were ... typically ... in the bottleneck hexes SW and NE of Palawan Island. Unhistorically, they too got no hits.)
Naturally, I used all 7 of my task force markers immediately, actually sending out only FUSO and YAMASHIRO in Southern Force to get them moving since they are so slow. Mike had his fast carriers and IOWA, NEW JERSEY, and AUSTRALIA/cruiser (groups) moving around ENE of Luzon as I expected. However ... to my astonishment ... my Brunei-based land-based air search discovered his other 4 modern battleships with fleet carrier Task Force 38.1 -- new WASP and HORNET? -- sortie-ing around the south of Mindanao Island and east of the archipelago! ... activating my additional land-based air unit per turn reinforcement and the additional Kamikaze (when *they* became available).
At first, luck was with me, because I not only spotted/confirmed the group but when I attacked TF38.1 with my (very flammable) Betty, I damaged it! Mike was perturbed, to say the least, especially when he saw new task force markers issuing from Brunei like Komodo dragons.
I had indeed sortied the Main Body, and meanwhile my Bettys went berserk again, sinking TF38.1 (and incidentally destroying its also-valuable if now-weakened air unit). Meanwhile, Main Body is closing in on Mike's overeager task force.
Without air cover for Mike's marauders and with me reinforcing my land-based air on Brunei, I next scored damage on MASSACHUSETTS -- which I singled out purely for political reasons -- and Main Body is all the time getting closer.
Meanwhile, I've sortied the fast attack group down from the northeast corner of the board, but Mike was more suspicious of a task force marker coming out of Hong Kong to the west of Luzon instead.
With the Main Body now identified and bearing down on him, Mike left the crippled MASS behind ... to "catch up," he said ... and withdrew his surviving 3 modern battleships through Surigao Strait to join his old Pearl Harbor battleships in Leyte Gulf.
Having scouted and verified my "A Force" in the north being real, Mike's naval air units attacked it, but ZUIKAKU's naval air attack crippled Taffy 3 -- Clifton Sprague's historically heroic escort carrier unit. ZUIKAKU and then cruiser (group) ASHIGARA were crippled, and for the following day's sailing, I split up my A Force into cruisers (ATAGO and KUMANO) cutting west and then south toward Leyte -- overrunning crippled TAFFY 3 in the process, which wounded KUMANO as it went down fighting -- and KONGO and HARUNA heading south down the east side of the theater, to later cut west and go in for Leyte (and MacArthur's transports) too.
(After he had them finish off ZUIKAKU and ASHIGARA, Mike had IOWA and NEW JERSEY come back west to finish off KUMANO before heading down to the upcoming big action ... but KUMANO managed to damage/cripple NEW JERSEY! before being finished off itself.)
So it transpired ... *perfectly* ... that on the afternoon of October 23, 1944, all 3 of my attack groups with all my surviving ships rendezvoused at Leyte Gulf to fight 9 U.S. Navy battleships and get MacArthur!
My luck was still hot: US naval air "couldn't hit a bull in the butt with a bass fiddle" and on the first battle round, YAMATO and MUSASHI both rolled 6s and vaporized ALABAMA and WASHINGTON! Mike was looking decidedly ill and fatalistic (presumably recalling similar runs of my good luck in our past games) -- Hey! They were his dice! -- while I was happily chomping away on his wife Pam's excellent popcorn and guzzling Pepsi -- a favorite here in the Midwest.
And then everything went bad.. Japanese shooting went off -- I am convinced my luck with his dice had been because I was using both hands to roll them, instead of one-handing them because of popcorn butter on my right hand.
Losses were proving even, and Mike suggested we call it an evening since tornado watches were out, so we counted up our victory points. They were fairly even except for the penalty against me for losing most of the Japanese battleline (including Y and M) -- only FUSO and YAMASHIRO survived the game, having been too slow to make Leyte Gulf so quickly -- and then I remembered that after the first battle round I *could* have just bypassed his battleships to have gone on in and annihilated his transports to win a strategic victory.
So although I had surpassed the historical Japanese surprise and success, I had still lost the battle for the very same reasons the Japanese had lost Pearl Harbor: I was mesmerized by the prestige battleship targets!
I'm an historian. We of all people are supposed to learn from history! -- and I designed the game!
Mike was disappointed that US naval air power had been so unproductive against my warships but I reiterated my contention (in the historical summary and design analysis) that it was very hard to hit or cripple fast-moving warships from the air. The only serious Japanese loss prior to the decisive day, historically, was the sinking of MUSASHI in the Sibuyan Sea, when all the aircraft of all our first-line carriers mobbed that ship and finally sent her down ... and there are lots of photos of ISE and HYUGA and even old FUSO and YAMASHIRO nimbly evading both bombs and torpedoes during the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
Of course, once a ship was crippled/SLOWED, it became easy meat for finishing off in a variety of ways.
Anyway, it was a memorable game which had lasted 2.5 hours until the decisive moment ... and then a severe storm watch was declared in real life!
By the way, Tetsuya says his Japanese (language) magazine edition is right on schedule and will be out in June. I have little understanding of how they have changed it ... lost in translation? ... but it is *pretty*, so who cares?
LEYTE GULF NAVAL CHESS GAME I is available for free as an educational game at lcoat.tripod.com/leytpage.htm
Back to Table of Contents -- Game! # 6
To Game! List of Issues
To MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 2004 by George Phillies.
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com