In 1941, commander John Thatch of the U.S. Navy was in command of Fighter Squadron 3. In the spring of 1941 he received intelligence about the new Japanese fighter, the Zero. The Zero was faster, turned tighter and climbed faster than American naval aircraft. Commander Thatch looked at the report and decided to work out tactics to deal with this new threat. He went home and each night studied the problem. Using match sticks on his dining room table to represent planes, he analyzed formations and tactics. He was playing a solo wargame with a deadly purpose, saving American lives and winning the war. As a result of his experiments he devised a new formation and the tactic called the "Thatch weave." He broke his planes into two-plane sections which were part of a four-plane division. He separated the two-plane sections by the turn radius of the aircraft. Each section watched the other's tail. The left section only looked right to protect the right section's tail. The right section only looked left. If an enemy plane attacked, the lookout plane simply turned toward the enemy. That was the signal for the "target" plane to turn. This would spoil the attacker's aim and give the lookout plane a shot at the enemy. If the enemy tried to follow his original target, the lookout place was on his tail. If the enemy turned to meet the new threat the lookout got a head on shot. Either way the American fighters got a shot at the Zero. This allowed American fighters to use their one advantage, good guns and the ability to shoot quickly and accurately. If the enemy attacked from the side, the Americans would turn toward them and widen out the distance between the sections. When the enemy selected one of the sections as a target, the other section would weave closer and catch the enemy in a crossfire. After working this out on his dining room table, Thatch took the idea to his squadron and tested it in the air. The pilot who flew the mock enemy plane reported that he couldn't make an attack without seeing the nose of a fighter pointed toward him. The "Thatch weave" became the standard tactic used in the squadron. Later in the Battle of Midway, Thatch led the fighter cover for planes attacking Japanese carriers. This was the first time Thatch used his tactics in combat and it worked. This is the only case I know of when an air wargame helped win a battle. If some SWA member knows of others, I would be interested. The Battle of Midway has another wargame connection. The Japanese gained the operation as part of their planning. This is widely known as is the fact that they cheated a bit to win the game. They did a similar exercise when planning the Pearl Harbor attack. While these games included planes, I consider them naval games. Perhaps that's too arbitrary. If you have any questions, or suggestions about air wargames, feel free to contact me. The above is based on The Pacific War Remembered by John T. Mason, Jr. It includes Admiral Thatch's accounts of the development of the Thatch weave and its combat testing. Back to Table of Contents -- Lone Warrior #126 Back to Lone Warrior List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by Solo Wargamers Association. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com