Guadalcanal Battles

So, with the european theatre reinforced by the French and Italians, it seems about time to revisit the Pacific.

Obvious choice for the next OOB is the battles around Guadalcanal:

- Battle of Savo Island
- Battle of the Eastern Solomons
- Battle of Cape Esperance
- Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands
- 1st Naval Battle of Guadalcanal
- 2nd Naval battle of Guadalcanal
- Battle of Tassafaronga
- Battle of Rennell Island

To prevent the OOB to be too generic or too large, one idea would be to group the battles into two OOB, surface actions and carrier battles? Since there is a lot of overlap in the OOB's it allows the focus of the first to be around cruisers and battleships while the second focuses on the carriers.

Any more ideas or suggestions?

That sounds like a reasonable way of doing things, particularly in light of the fact that each of those actions would be getting a small writeup in the history section. I would suggest though including a timeline of all the actions in each of the two halves so that people can still have a better appreciation of where each one fits within the whole. (And if, say, they thought about running each of the scenarios as part of persistent campaign, it might be easier)

Ok, I think I figured out the US ships for the Guadalcanal battles, is anyone able to double check these?

Maybe I missed them, but were there any US subs active in these battles? Or were they already busy sinking the Japanese merchant fleet by then?

For those that want to give the Guadalcanal battles a try already, I've uploaded the datacards for the US Guadalcanal ships in the US zip-file.

I got swamped with the Holidays between work and family, and I'm just now getting some free time to start looking at things again. What sorts of things could people be doing to help along this OOB?

Hope you have enjoyed the holydays. One thing that would be really helpfull is scenario's... I'm not that great at coming up with them and the Guadalcanal battles really scream scenario's or even mini-campaign.

Furthermore there are ofcourse some stuff that can speed up the process:
- I still need to complete the Japanese list of ships involved
- Suggestions are welcome on the makeup of the OOB's for both the US and the Japanese
- General descriptions about the campaign and the battles to add some fluff to the OOB

Here are the previews for the first two OOB's. The carrier lists for Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz:

[<<Snip>>] Check below for the newer previews [<<Snip>>]

Nice.

I've already got USS Wasp. USS Washington, a pair of suitable cruisers and a triplet of suitable destroyers are also on their way, so I should be able to deploy an Eastern Solomons force in some time.

I'm also expexting the various non-carrier elements in here to pop up for the surface forces sent to fight around Ironbottom Sound once those orders of battle are set up.
Should be a really interesting set of lists.

Ok, so here are the previews for the US fleet lists. As it looks now the US part of the Guadalcanal OoB will contain four fleet lists covering the battles from Savo Island all the way to the battle of Rennell Island.

Two major carrier lists to cover the battle of the Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz Islands. Since most of the US Fleet carriers were involved here it opens up some nice possibilities for including Hornet, Enterprise and most importantly, Wasp in your games. It was the only possible fleet list to be able to include Wasp since she sank so early in the campaign.

(Also note the new layout for carriers and their airgroups)

<<Snip, finished OOB is up for download in the download section>>

Then of course there are the battles around Guadalcanal itself. I've managed to make one fleet lists that can cover any of the fleet actions around guadalcanal instead of making many tiny fleet lists. This should give some flexibility while still retaining the feel of a Guadalcanal cruiser force.

<<Snip, finished OOB is up for download in the download section>>

Finally I made a seperate fleet list for the battle of Rennell Island. I included it even though it was not much of a fleet action. Still, the lists sees the introduction of quite a different variety of ships including the cleveland class, the baby-flattops of the sangamon class and the first time the Fletcher class destroyers can be fielded in serious numbers.

<<Snip, finished OOB is up for download in the download section>>

All in all these lists greatly expand the US Navy in Naval War, increasing their fleet lists from 2 to 6. I'm looking forward to encountering them on the table

Now back to work on to the Japanese....

Looks like fun! I've been wanting some way to get my North Carolina on the table, and now there's definitely one. Gives me an excuse to finally pick up some US carriers and some more destroyers now, that's not a very well developed part of my collection just yet.