I had been considering adapting the Wings at War rules for the War in the Pacific in 1942. I already have a large collection of painted aircraft and ship models as “targets” and had used a very simplified version of “Bag the Hun” till now. Having now used all the Wings at War rules sets aside from those for Korea and over Suez in 1956, I wanted to refight the carrier battles between the Imperial Japanese Navy and the United States Navy in 1942. I just needed to adapt the rules. 😇 Most gratifyingly Karl Schafer has done it for me and yesterday put a copy of his rule adaptions on Facebook. I could not have been more pleased.
Eagerly printing them I decided not to do the Ancient Galley battle I had planned for last night and instead quickly set up a simple air raid by the Japanese on Henderson Field on the island of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands during 1942.

A “Chutai” of nine Mitsubishi Navy Type 1 G4M1 bombers (known as the “Betty” to US airmen) was escorted by a “Chutai” of nine Mitsubishi A6M2 “Zero” fighters. Their target was Henderson Field and any US Freighters anchored off shore. The “Cactus Air Force”, warned by Australian coast watchers as the Japanese flew from Rabaul down “The Slot” to Guadalcanal, scrambled twelve Grumman F-4F “Wildcat” fighters to defend their airfield.

This time I had placed the airfield and freighters in the centre of the table allowing action to be joined very quickly and it was very swift and very brutal. Both Japanese aircraft types are more vulnerable to fire from the Wildcats while the Zero’s superior fire power and manoeuvrability proved effective against the US fighter.
Brutal I said and indeed it was with the US Defenders losing nine Wildcats shot down and two more damaged. Only one survived unscathed.

However the Japanese suffered desperately too. Six Betty bombers were shot down – two by anti aircraft fire from the gritty US Marines at Henderfield Field- and one more was damaged, also by Flak.

Four Zeros were lost and two more damaged. The damaged Japanese planes now faced a very long flight back to Rabaul far to the north west. Surely some more of the Japanese would succumb to their damage and be lost on the way back to base.

The Betty bombers did achieve a bomb hit on one of the freighters and one bomb hit on Henderson Field, a meagre result for the effort to carry out the raid. However the efforts of the Zero fighters was much more rewarding. Another raid – assuming the Japanese had some more bombers – would find only one or possibly three defending fighters.

So a cracking game and one I will repeat probably replicating USN or IJN Air attacks on their enemy’s carriers at Coral Sea, Midway or the Santa Cruz Islands.
I thought the rules worked well. The Zero was devastatingly superior but vulnerable to return fire – as it should be. The Zero carried comparatively little 20mm ammunition for its two cannon so I think should become low on ammo on a “two” as well as a “one”. I do wonder if the Wildcat should be a little sturdier and resistant to fire. Lots of aircraft suffered damage but this seemed a little ineffective particularly when more than one damage was inflicted. It required a “five” to destroy a twice damaged aircraft. It was more successful in causing a fatal spin into the ground which caused me to lose two of my damaged Wildcats. We tried rolling for Aces but neither of us could roll 2 x 6!
I didn’t use torpedoes as I think some extra work is needed there as at least US doctrine required a long, slow and straight approach for a torpedo attack. Doing that in a “Devastator” did not prove a success, particularly for “Torpedo 8” (VT8) from USS Hornet at Midway where all 15 of its Devastator torpedo bombers were shot down without scoring a single hit.

Mr Michael Lane

WW2 expert and stunt advisor to Cardiff Dice Studz