This would require:
Sourcing, completing, painting, and developing house rules for aircraft not available from ARES;
Researching and preparing Ship counters (2D representations) of the Capital Ships of Japan and USA, and rules for using the same.
Establishing the conditions under which Air to Air, and Air to Ship combat would occur
Victory Conditions
We'll start with Aircraft, since this is primarily a modeling Blog ;-)
Aircraft required:
USN: SBD "Dauntless", available from ARES
These models are available online and off-the-shelf at select game store, and most only need some repainting to get them backdated to Midway (or Coral Sea as shown here). In the above case, the canopy was opened and a rear gun fabricated and installed.
TBD "Devastator", available as kits from Trumpeter
These are nice little kits, lacking only a representation of the distinctive ribbed wing surfaces. Like the ARES SBD, however, it has a fully closed canopy, so opening it, and adding guns and crew are extra. The kit also lacks a torpedo, which was sourced from Shapeways and modified to hang at an angle as per the prototype.
Don't be put off by the yellow canopy. I managed to lose one in the carpet almost immediately, and had to mold a replacement out of resin. Shown before painting the canopy frame. Torpedo installed, though ;-)
TBM "Avenger", available from Armaments in Miniature (AIM)
There were in fact a handful of TBMs launched from Midway Island during the battle (to no effect) These are from AIM, painted in the Midway era 2 tone scheme.
F4F "Wildcat" available from ARES
As with the SBD, these are available as a Wings of War miniature (precursor to Wings of Glory/WOG) but are not in production and can command a premium on the secondary market.
B-17 "Flying Fortress" available from ARES
Available from ARES, we used these without modification (not wanting to Specialize an aircraft for a single use scenario :-) )
PBY "Catalina" available from AIM
A nice kit from AIM, can be built in the air (floats up) or on the land or water (floats down). Above decorated as "Strawberry 7".
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IJN: Mitsubishi "Zero" available from ARES
As with the F4Fs above, this is an older Wings of War (WOW) mini, no longer in production, and pricey on the secondary market.
Aichi D3 "Val" available from ARES
The Vals are also older WOW miniatures. I once had a chance to buy a handful at $6 each as they were slow movers at an online retailer. Let's just say I should have bought them out.
Nakajima B5N "Kate" available from AIM
The iconic Kate torpedo bomber was a must. The Japanese "long lance" torpedos were the best arrow in their quiver, and we had to have them on the table. These from AIM were all painted as from a single squadron from Hiryu.
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How to reflect the surface fleets? It's not Midway without flying over and targeting surface ships, while their AAA batteries seek you out.
As a long time member of the Wings of Glory Aerodrome Forum (Highly recommended if your'e into WOG, or are thinking of getting into it - visit here: ) I looked at the available House Rules posted there. Some had already developed a workable ruleset for Torpedos (a must) and there were various approached to creating "Ship Targets" as well. I settled on a ruleset developed by WOG Forum User Skafloc as a basis. I would need to consider the following:
- Settle on a scale to represent the ships;
- Find and add game details to graphics for every capital ship on both sides
- Reverse engineer and extrapolate a damage value for all ships
- Reverse engineer and extrapolate AA arcs and values for all ships
- Reverse engineer and extrapolate Hit Zones for all ships.
This means for 42 ships. Fortunately, they re not all unique, but still....
IJN NAGATO
- We need a ship of the correct length fro the scale, on a card of the correct dimensions, because those parallel lines determine hit from miss; full damage from part damage for bombs and torpedos;
- We have to identify and quantify the AA batteries (for Midway - all ships on both sides changed AA batteries over the course of the war)
- We have to know how much damage the ship can absorb.
Who said you'd never need math again :-)
The Excel spreadsheet of Ship Data
Identify all ship larger than destroyers on both side, check.
Include a number of ships already evaluated according to the "Skafloc Rules"
Research the key published characteristics of all ships
Using the available ship, determine the relationships between published characteristics and game values, e.g., how Standard displacement in long tons relates to damage points for a class of ship (BB, CV, CA, etc.)
Identify the type, number, and location of AA batteries. Again using the Skafloc examples, extrapolate out the damage table to include more types of AA guns in more combinations. Some combination and simplification is inevitable, but only playtesting would reveal the strengths and areas for improvement.
Here is the AAA effectiveness table we worked out:
This is as played, not including feedback from the Playtest. More on that below.
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How many Planes?
In order to maintain the ratio of aircraft between sides, while maintaining a reasonable number of aircraft to manage for our league of gamers, how many aircraft will be need of each type?
We go back to published sources for the strengths of the opposing air armadas and ratio it down to a number small enough to manage but large enough to reflect proportions of types to totals. We ended up here:
| USN: | Midway Island | Hornet | Enterprise | Yorktown | ||
| F4F: | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | ||
| SBD: | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | ||
| TBD: | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||
| TBF: | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| PBY: | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| B-17: | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| B-26 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| IJN: | Akagi | Kaga | Hiryu | Soryu | Zuiho | Hosho |
| B5N "Kate" | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| D3A "Val" | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| A6M "Zero" | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
Obviously not many planes considering the actual numbers, but manageable and proportionate
The scarcity of aircraft and the multitude of AA guns, even in simplified fashion, contributed to the decision to revise the AA strengths for the future, given the impact of a single loss due to AA.
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How to conduct the battle? We made a simplifying assumption - the detection of the opposing fleets would NOT be part of our scenario (Except...see below); we would focus on refighting the air to sea battles in a number of consecutive phases, the results of which could affect the starting conditions of the next.
Phase 1: Japanese Main Force strikes Midway Island.
Phase 2: USN Detects Japanese Fleet: PBYs must ovefly a Japanese Carrier and Return to its point of entry without being shot down.
Phase 3: TBF, B26, SBD, B17 from Midway strike Main Force
Phase 4: TBDs attack main force; once all downed or attacks complete, SBDs attack main force
Phase 5: IJN attacks Yorktown (3 Val, 2 Zero)
Phase 6: IJN Second wave attacks Yorktown (5 Val, 3 Zero)
We didn't work out specific victory conditions, just to compare results to the actual battle. Did you do better or worse, in toto?
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Playtesting
TO BE CONTINUED
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