LEYTE GULF: A NAVAL CHESS GAME -- PART B.: COMMENTARY c 2001 Louis R. Coatney VII. Designer's Advice on Assembly and Play of the Game: A. Assembly: Glue the units onto the back of posterboard--red for Japanese and blue for Allies--in two-row strips, being careful that there are no marks or stains on the colored side (back) which might identify them. Before cutting out the individual units, it might be wise to spray-coat the units' front and back with something, to waterproof them. I recommend sizing the units so that ship units are 1 inch (2.54 cms) square and the mapboard 11x17 (28x43). B. Play of the Game: Even though they "burn easily" -- are easily shot down -- the most dangerous weapons the Japanese have are their air units. The American fleet carriers must attack the land air bases to destroy/suppress air attacks on the vulnerable Allied transports. And the fleet carriers should be concentrated, to mutually support each other for antiaircraft -- combat air patrol/intercept -- purposes. Until Japanese airpower is suppressed, the transports should be held back. Imperial Japanese Navy surface battle ships are not only a battle threat, they can divert some of the U.S. attacks against the Japanese air units. The Japanese air range advantage can enable them to stand off and attack with the possibility of avoiding retaliation. Of course, their planes have far less chance of succeeding/surviving, and their ships' pre-plotting may put them in harm's way anyway. The Phillipine archipelago can act both as a barrier and as a shield for both sides. This is a much more involved situation than a strictly-at-sea battle like the Battle of the Phillipine Sea for the Marianas Islands was in June 1944. I have tried many strategms as the Japanese, and the most successful still seems to be having the carriers in the north as an airstrike threat to distract or bait the American fleet carriers away to the north, while keeping the heavy units in the center, threatening Leyte Gulf with attack from the Sibuyan Sea or Surigao Straits. (Actually, that was the Mindinao Sea and the straits were the hexside between it and Leyte Gulf, but it is important to the game that the U.S. combat ships be able to be drawn away from Leyte Gulf itself.) One alteration of history I make is to keep "Fast" units like the heavy cruisers (CAs) and HARUNA and KONGO to the north with the carriers. They can make better use of the open seas to threaten an "end run" past the first-line USN units, toward Leyte Gulf. The Japanese player must be patient and inscrutable, tantalizing and tormenting the American player(s) with task forces, dummy or real, dangled in and out of Allied striking range. Young players especially are prone to the Halsey-like impatience which can lose everything. Submarine attacks are best -- most survivably -- made at night, when air cover has subsided. In most cases, USN subs orders should be "Passive," considering their victory point value and effectiveness when "Passive." IJN subs are probably doomed anyway, so "Active" orders are more justified. The USN PT boats are quite useful as early warning sentinels in and around the archipelago, being invulnerable to air and sub attack. And indeed, Damaged surface ships without air cover are usually doomed if within enemy air range. Other than the above, I really have no idea what to tell you. Despite its relatively simple mechanics, LEYTE GULF NAVAL CHESS GAME's composition is very much a combined arms game and how these mediums and variables can be best orchestrated and coordinated is left to a far better game player than I. I do know I can lose to my son, Robert, playing either side. Most wargame players are "wannabe" designers (and everyone should do their own game), but it is seldom realized that most of us designers are frustrated, wannabe winners ... who usually lose anyway. It is terribly unfair. Any feedback on the game's realism and balance will be most appreciated. VIII. Designer's Notes on the Design of the Game: I've worked on this design for over 10 years. Casting relative ship speeds in conjunction with the large sea areas and turn times was a dilemma I was able to solve only at the 11th hour of the design, with intense concentration and analysis. Some may find this game's antiship combat results table an odd contrast to my Guadalcanal campaign game, SKY, SEA, AND *JUNGLE*. In the latter, hits were determined by the target('s armor), not by what ship was firing as in this game where a ship( unit)'s survivability seems the same for everyone. The reason is that by the time of Leyte Gulf, airpower had become the dominant weapon in Pacific land, sea, and air combat and that here we are dealing with units of major ship types and a number of escorts: these aren't just individual ships (or subgroups of same) needing specific armor factors for close-range surface night battle. Paradoxically, whatever the ship types in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, as long as they weren't too slow they outmaneuvered most air attacks, even massed ones -- until they *were* damaged. The exception was the Kamikaze attack -- made by as few as half a dozen planes -- which was devastating. The Americans' overwhelming airpower seemed amateurishly applied, with pilots ganging up on one or two targets (especially if they were already damaged) rather than spreading their targets and even then having limited success. The massed U.S. air attacks on the Japanese battleline in the Sibuyan Sea is an example: only MUSASHI was sunk. Contrast this with the Battle of Midway, where far fewer U.S. Navy pilots were far more effective and -- also with the Kamikaze in mind -- I think we have the answer for the difference: national desperation and pilot determination. IX. Historical Notes The Japanese people are a great and good people with a unique, fascinating culture. Japan is now a superpower of peace, exercising leadership on issues like preservation of the atmosphere, as evidenced by the Kyoto Treaty. However, the Japanese people (still) feel the pressure of being crowded on their barren and seismically unstable islands, and in the first part of the 20th Century were vulnerable to the temptations of militarist aggression of the kind they had seen during the colonial age and were seeing spawned in Nazi Germany and Communist Russia. By the 1930s, fascist militarism had taken control of Japan -- a nationalist cult movement built upon the worship of Emperor Hirohito, presumptively describing itself as "Bushido" -- and was on the march in China. Although claiming to be establishing a "Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere" defending Asians against Euro-American colonialism, the Japanese warlords' "liberation" soon proved to be even more exploitative and brutal. (By contrast, America was in the process of granting and supporting Filipinos' independence.) Victories in China were balanced by a devastating defeat by mobile-doctrine Red Army forces under the command of future Red Army Marshal Georgi Zhukov, in a secret Japanese-Soviet war on the Mongolian border in the fall of 1939 (After this trauma, a nonaggression pact was signed which the Japanese did not dare to violate even when their Nazi Germany ally had the Soviets almost beaten in 1941- 42.) As the power of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) and Army grew and the China war widened, so did the Japanese need for raw materials, especially oil. However, the American people became deeply moved by the suffering of the Chinese people, graphically portrayed in magazines like LIFE, and recoiled against the racism and savagery they were thus witnessing -- which included torture and execution of prisoners, wholesale massacre and rape, and ruthless subjugation. (Japanese militarists were easily the equal of the Apache warriors, in savagery.) Responding, President Roosevelt imposed an oil embargo against Japan, denying it the fuel vital to its war machine. Unwilling to forfeit the potential gains of future military aggression and believing Americans to be weak-willed and soft-- from Christianity and democracy, having seen the military draft passed in Congress by only 1 vote after bitter debate--the Japanese junta ordered the attack on Pearl Harbor, to begin its war against the Western Allies in the Pacific. The December 7, 1941, "Day of Infamy" massacre was a thoroughly planned and treacherously executed submarine and aerial surprise attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet in the middle of diplomatic peace negotiations: a "sneak attack." (The Japanese could have taken Hawaii right then, if they had planned to.) Although there had been political dissension and even street riots in America about our rearmament and involvement in the coming world war, Pearl Harbor united everyone in shock and outrage in a way President Roosevelt never could have. The 3,000 Pearl Harbor dead spread that grief and anger throughout the land. (See what Harrison Ford's "Jack Ryan" has to say about the motiving power of rage, in the movie "Patriot Games.") Some of the anger became cultural and racist--in human reaction to the Japanese treachery and viciousness. On our West Coast, American citizens of Japanese ancestry were forced into prison camps as unjustly and unconstitutionally as President Jackson had force-marched our eastern Indians to Oklahoma. (Later, the 442nd Infantry Regiment of Japanese-Americans became the most decorated American unit of the war. Recently, our government finally apologized to Japanese-Americans and offered token compensation.) However, our leadership generation of World War I Americans never lost sight of the "Four Freedoms" we were fighting for, and that we were fighting for the liberation of Axis peoples, as well. (For example, Secretary of War Stimson--a tough-minded Presbyterian--intervened to make sure that Japan's spiritual/cultural capital, Kyoto, was removed from the atom bomb targets list, late in the war.) For six months after Pearl Harbor--as U.S.-educated IJN commander-in-chief Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto had predicted--Japan sailed, invaded, slaughtered, and conquered for itself a vast sphere of the Pacific. Only in May 1942 was the Imperial juggernaut slowed, in the first-ever aircraft carrier battle in the Coral Sea. Then, on June 4, 1942, the United States Navy surprised and annihilated most of Japan's principal offensive weapon, the IJN's carrier Striking Force ("Kido Butai"). The desperate Battle of Midway (Island) was decided by Americans' "Magic"/ULTRA code-breaking, skill, and suicidal courage. Interestingly, the Japanese failure at Midway was attributed to the complexity of their plan, designed to bait America's superaggressive Admiral William F. ("Bull") Halsey into a trap. Unfortunately for the Japanese, Halsey was beached for medical reasons and our principal commander was the restrained, wily, and analytic Raymond Spruance, seconded by the wary Jack Fletcher. Although Midway tripped up the Japanese onslaught and momentum, extension of Imperial airbases down into the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific (threatening American life lines to Australia and New Zealand) finally forced a major, strategic Allied countermove. The U.S. Marine 1st Division landed on Guadalcanal at the foot of the Solomon Islands, grabbing its strategic (Henderson) airfield in August 1942, and what ensued was a desperate and bloody battle of attrition for that island, lasting 6 months. No less than 5 nightime surface battles were fought in what came to be known as "Iron Bottom Sound," while out to sea 2 more aircraft carrier duels were fought. Guadalcanal finally showed that the previously irresistible Imperial Japanese Army and marines could indeed be stopped and beaten, with adequate command and air and sea support. Taking over command of the Guadalcanal campaign, ADM Halsey inspired his troops with bloodthirsty exhortations like "Attack. Repeat -- ATTACK!" and "Kill Japs, Kill Japs, Kill More Japs!" which made a transformative impact on the men in cockpits, conning towers, and foxholes. In 1943, while Halsey's forces fought their way up the Solomons to isolate the Japanese fortress at Rabaul (on New Britain), General Douglas MacArthur led one of the most successful campaigns in U.S. military history along the north coast of New Guinea, moving our bases toward the Phillipines. Then came Spruance's Central Pacific campaigns, clearing the Marshalls and Gilberts and taking the Marianas after his overwhelming naval air Battle of the Phillipine Sea -- nicknamed "the Marianas Turkey Shoot" -- which broke the back of Japanese naval aviation. The "island hopping" strategy envisioned by British naval commentator Hector C. Bywater in his 1925 book THE GREAT PACIFIC WAR was indeed being implemented, with the Japanese superfortresses of Rabaul and Truk (in the Palau Islands) being isolated rather than stormed. And so it was in late July 1944, that President Roosevelt presided at a meeting with the U.S. Navy Commander in Chief, Pacific, ADM Chester Nimitz and General MacArthur. The latter's irresistibly eloquent pleas for the liberation of the Phillipines shelved any plans for a Navy-proposed attack on Formosa/Taiwan, and Leyte Gulf was chosen as the initial landing point. Thus it was that an American invasion fleet dropped its anchors in Leyte Gulf and, on 20 October 1944, General MacArthur followed his troops ashore with the exclamation "I have returned." in fulfillment of his (and our) early war pledge to the Phillipine people to do so. The ground fighting proved hectic, with bad weather and typically stubborn resistance. However, on Leyte as well as everywhere else in the Phillipines, thousands of Allied lives were saved by the help and heroism of the Filipino people against whom the Japanese army committed numerous atrocities. Meanwhile, Admiral Nimitz commanded the naval forces from back at his home base. The Japanese Navy expected the invasion (thanks to a tip from the Soviet Union) and had prepared another elaborate plan to trap the Americans -- "SHO-GO," meaning "Victory Operation" -- worthy of the Midway scheme in its complexity. Weakened by aircraft losses, IJN carriers would strike at long range, their planes landing on Luzon after attacking. They would then feint, to draw the aggressive Halsey north, away from the invasion fleet of transports. Most of the Japanese fleet was statoned in Brunei in northwest Borneo, because of the proximity of fuel, albeit much of it incompletely processed and volatile. The old battleships FUSO and YAMASHIRO, to be joined by a group of heavy cruisers confusingly circling behind the archipelago from the north, would attack Leyte Gulf from the south, through the Surigao Strait, to draw any other surface fleet units screening the transports. Meanwhile, the main Japanese battleline would steam through the Sibuyan Sea in the center, to emerge from the San Bernadino Strait behind Halsey's ships and steam down to Leyte Gulf to massacre the invasion fleet. Although the first reaction to anything so complex is to assume it was doomed from the start because something had to go wrong somewhere, its complexity also enabled something to go right somewhere ... and it did. However, initial surprise was lost when U.S. subs DACE and DARTER ambushed the Center Force in Palawan Passage on 23 Oct 44. Flagship heavy cruiser ATAGO was sunk, although ADM Kurita was rescued, along with MAYA, while TAKAO was badly damaged to return all the way to Singapore. (See Morison's "Chapter IX, Moves on the Naval Chessboard, 17-24 October 1944.") After repeated raids on Japanese airfields on Okinawa, Formosa/Taiwan, and the Phillipines, to bleed Japanese air strength which they did -- albeit at the cost of light carrier PRINCETON -- Halsey's Task Force 38 detected and attacked Center Force advancing through the Sibuyan Sea, on 24 Oct44. Hundreds of U.S. Navy planes attacked Kurita's ships, concentrating on the 65,000 ton superbattleship MUSASHI which eventually sank after losing speed and being hit by no less than 19 torpedoes and 17 bombs! However, the rest of Center Force was basically untouched, and after the battle ADM Halsey stated, "The most conspicuous lesson from this action is the practical difficulty of crippling by air strikes, alone, a task force of heavy ships at sea and free to maneuver." On the other hand, Center Force second-in-command ADM Ugaki, on the receiving end, said "if we are attacked by planes as often as this, we will have expended ourselves before reaching the battle area." It should also be remembered that the task force of the British captial ships PRINCE OF WALES and REPULSE was more than just "crippled" on 10 Dec 41. After Kurita's Center Force was seen to turn back in the late afternoon, Halsey began to think about striking north, after the carriers reported up there. Meanwhile, the Japanese was steaming up toward Surigao Strait, to be met by everything from PT boats to our old Pearl Harbor battleships (CALIFORNIA, MARYLAND, MISSISSIPPI, PENNSYLVANIA, TENNESSEE, and WEST VIRGINIA). ADM Nishimura lead his ships headlong into this ambush from which only the everlucky SHIGURE would survive. His senior, ADM Shima, followed in with his heavy cruisers from the north but turned back after being met (and one of his healthy ships rammed and crippled) by the slowed and sinking Midway survivor MOGAMI, another heavy cruiser. Thus, noone save the little escort carriers -- also termed "Woolworth carriers" (as in dime stores, "baby flattops," "jeep carriers," and (by their often exasperated sheparding destroyers and destroyer escorts) "Dumbos" -- were left to defend the transports and other treasures of the invasion fleet from the main Japanese battleline of the Center Force, when it was discovered emerged from the Sibuyan Sea and coming down the coast of Samar the following dawn. As is so dramatically shown in the "Victory at Sea" television program on Leyte Gulf, the escorting destroyers made copious quantities of smoke and threw themselves at the Japanese dodging shellfire and launching torpedoes, while the baby flattops' planes assailed the enemy like sparrows defending their nests. Incredibly, just as his ships were breaking through "Taffy 3" (as Task Force 3 was called), Kurita recalled his ships to turn a last time and leave. His retreat seems inexplicable, considering the suicidal nature of the other Japanese attacks. Badly disorganized and already having suffered heavy losses, he may have decided to save what was left of Japan's naval power. He may also have been exhausted himself. Whatever the reason, the invasion fleet wasn't massacred as it could have been. Meanwhile, "Bull" Halsey was consumating his carrier quest, sinking Pearl Harbor villain ZUIKAKU and 3 accomplices and nearly catching battleship-carriers HARUNA and ISE. However, in a rage he had to pull back his modern battleships and their escorts to try -- futilely -- to catch Kurita's now-fleeing Center Force. The source of that rage was a telegram from Nimitz demanding to know where he was and ending with the call sign "The world wonders." And so the battle ended, with Japanese losses at 4 carriers, 3 battleships, and enough lesser ships that Japan's status as a naval power was ended and its fleet a fugitive. Halsey was blamed for the heavy losses to "Taffy 3," but Nimitz had neglected his greater responsibility to be on the scene to rein in his most publicly headstrong admiral. Regardless, the Allied advance would now be inexorable -- to victory. X. Bibliography The Battle of Leyte Gulf. [videorecording] Alexandria VA: Time-Life Video, 1996. Bergerud, Eric M. Touched with fire: the land war in the South Pacific. NY: Viking, 1996. Craven, Wesley F., and James L. Cale. The Army Air Forces in World War II. Washington DC: Office of Air Force History, 1948-58. Cutler, Thomas J. The Battle of Leyte Gulf, 23-26 Oct 1944. NY: HarperCollins, 1994. Falk, Stanley L. Decision at Leyte. New York: W.W. Norton, 1966. Hara, Tameichi. Japanese destroyer captain. New York: Ballantine, 1961. Hoyt, Edwin P. The Battle of Leyte Gulf, the death knell of the Japanese Fleet. NY: Weybright and Talley, 1972. Karig, Walter. Battle report. Washington, DC: Council on Books in Wartime, 1944-52. An excellent multi-volume contemporary battle narrative with well-chosen photographs depicting the ships and other equipment and conditions of Guadalcanal. Morison, Samuel Eliot. History of United States naval operations in World War II. V. 12, Leyte, June 1944-January 1945. Boston MA: Atlantic, Little, Brown, 1958. Morison is still the standard naval history. Considering the complexity of the events, he and his team made excellent sense out of them so soon after the war. Polmar, Norman, in cooperation with General Minoru Genda, Captain Eric M. Brown OBE, and Robert M. Langdon USNA. Aircraft carriers: A graphic history of carrier aviation and its influence on world events. Garden City NY: Doubleday, 1969. Excellent, detailed, large-format, 788-page pictorial and statistical narrative of the development and employment of aircraft carriers in peace and war. Sears, Stephen W., with Rear Admiral E.M. Eller, consultant. Carrier war in the Pacific. American Heritage Junior Library series. New York: American Heritage, 1966. Stewart, Adrian. The Battle of Leyte Gulf. NY: Scribner, 1980. Victory at Sea, no. 19, The Battle for Leyte Gulf. New York: NBC TV, 1952. Zedric, Lance Q. Silent warriors of World War II: the Alamo Scouts behind Japanese lines. Ventura CA: Pathfinder, 1995. Created by 6th Army's General Walter Krueger these 19 recon teams went out on 104 recon and special operations without losing a single man. MacArthur's success in avoiding, surrounding, and isolating Japanese troop concentrations owed much to the Alamo Scouts who also rescued civilians and killed about 500 Japanese in the course of their operations. One team was commanded by Lt. Rafael Ileto, a West Point graduate who later went on to become the Phillipine Minister of National Defense. Boardgames, chronologically listed: Battleship. The grandfather of naval boardgames, popular with children, it requires the best of random search strategy to win. Bismarck. Baltimore MD: Avalon Hill, 1962. The father of naval boardgames, this used concealed movement, ranged naval airstrikes, and a battle board, among other things. Midway. Baltimore MD: Avalon Hill, 1964. Progenitor of naval air warfare games, its mutually concealed movement enabled enemy forces to sail through each other! Coral Sea/Guadalcanal and Leyte Gulf variants. USN. NY: Simulations Publications Incorporated (SPI), 1971. The first Pacific campaign game having land, sea, and air warfare. A large hexagon map, spanning from the Hawaiian Islands and Alaska down past Southeast Asia. All ships except carriers in "divisions." War at Sea. Baltimore MD: Avalon Hill, 1976. Previously published in Australia by the brilliant, original John Edwards, this game used sea areas: Mediterranean, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, etc. Individual ships were specified down to heavy cruiser level, with U-boats -- airpower abstracted. This game is eminently playable, although sometimes derisively called "dice at sea." Solomons campaign: air, land, and sea warfare, Pacific, 1942. NY: SPI, 1973. A fascinating plotted movement game theoretically enabling players to play each day of the Guadalcanal campaign, although little happens most of the time. Island war: four Pacific battles: Bloody Ridge, Saipan, Leyte, Okinawa. NY: Simulations Publications Inc., 1975. Although possessing a bizarre "differential" combat resolution system, these games were intriguing and often the only ones on their subjects. Tsushima: "Wooden men and iron ships." [part of The Russo-Japanese War land-sea game] Bloomington IL: Game Designers' Workshop, 1975. An innovative naval game design by GDW's Mark Miller, concentrating on ranges rather than position, given both sides' rigid adherence to line of battle tactics. Featured tiny but accurate silhouettes of cruisers and above. Victory in the Pacific. Baltimore MD: Avalon Hill, 1977. This was the Pacific version of War at Sea, with the air and amphibious wars specifically treated. (There was an expansion kit to link the two.) Many more dice. Carrier strike. Eton Lodge, Essex, England: World Wide Wargamers, 1981. A very detailed treatment of Solomons area naval air operations, strategically and tactically, which includes side views of hanger and flight decks. Surface battle too. Sky, sea, and JUNGLE: The horror of Guadalcanal, August-December 1942. Macomb IL: Louis R. Coatney, 1997. My treatment of the campaign covered land, sea, and air, but focused on surface naval battles and the fog of war. Ship combat is by classes, without need of numerical factors. Only 9 action-packed turns.