Pearl Harbor AAR
“Yesterday, December 7th, 1941, a date which will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
I thought it fitting to have a few guys over yesterday for a scenario representing a small slice of the Pearl Harbor attack. We simplified a few things to keep it playable and to get in two waves of attacks.
First Wave – Japanese: 3 Vals, 3 Kates carrying torpedoes, 3 Zeros. United States: 2 P-40s and anti-aircraft fire.
Second wave – Japanese: 3 Vals, 3 Kates carrying bombs, 3 Zeros. United States: 2 P-40s and anti-aircraft fire.
A quiet Sunday morning…
First Wave
As swarms of Japanese planes attack, two P-40s rise to meet them.
A Kate torpedoes the California while two others head toward the Oklahoma.
Two torpedoes race toward the Oklahoma while a Val drops a bomb on the Maryland.
Second Wave
Nevada is underway down the channel as a Kate (far right) disintegrates after being struck by anti-aircraft fire.
A P-40 is flamed by pursuing Zeros, but his wingman takes revenge by splashing a Val next to the Arizona.
As the second wave departs, Maryland, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Tennessee have all taken bomb hits.
A few notes:
The ships are printed from drawings I found on the internet, printed at 1/800 scale and mounted on cardstock. I like using flat ships because they are easily flown over.
The Kates and P-40s are Air200.
Anti Aircraft Fire –During the first wave attack, the Japanese were allowed their first three moves without any anti-aircraft fire to simulate the surprise attack. Thereafter, to simplify anti-aircraft fire, at the end of each movement the American player rolled 1d10 for each Japanese plane on the board. On a roll of “10” the Japanese plane took a C damage token. The scenario outcome was more severe on the Japanese than the historical losses. During the first wave attack, there were 9 AA hits, with no planes brought down by AA fire. During the second wave attack, there were 18 AA hits resulting in AA destroying 2 planes. One Kate drew an explosion token on its second turn on the board and another Kate went down due to accumulated AA damage.
In the actual attack 29 of 351 attacking planes were lost (8.3%). In this scenario, 3 of 18 planes were lost (16.7%), two to AA fire and one to a P-40. Next time maybe we’ll have a B token drawn for an AA hit or allow extra time before we roll for AA fire.
Ship Damage – Again, to simplify things, each bomb or torpedo hitting a target did 20 + 2d10 points of damage. Battleships were given 100 hit points. Therefore 1 hit would cause between 22 – 40 points of damage, 2 hits 44 – 80 points, 3 hits 66 – 120 points and 4 hits 88-160 points. Based on this, 3 - 5 hits would be required to sink a battleship.
Of the 12 chances for bomb/torpedo hits, there were eight hits and one near miss causing damage. There were two misses and one Kate was shot down almost immediately without getting a chance to drop.
Ship damage was as follows:
California: 1 torpedo hit – 30 points of damage.
Oklahoma: 2 torpedo hits – 26 and 37 points of damage, 2 bomb hits – 24 and 34 points of damage. Total: 121 points of damage – Oklahoma sunk. (I gave Oklahoma a 30% chance of capsizing after 2 torpedo hits due to the historical fact that it was opened up for inspection that morning – it passed the roll and did not capsize.)
Maryland: 1 bomb hit – 30 points of damage.
West Virginia: 1 bomb hit – 37 points of damage.
Tennessee: 1 bomb hit – 29 points of damage.
Arizona: no damage.
Nevada: 1 near miss – 13 points of damage (we allowed a 2d10 roll to give some proximity damage for a bomb that missed by a couple millimeters).
Neosho and Vestal were not attacked.
With three Japanese players controlling three planes each and one American player controlling two planes and the anti-aircraft fire, we were able to complete both attack waves in about four hours.
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A very nice touch playing it on the very day!
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