Aircraft attack clarification

Hi,
Wanted to see if I had grasped the complexity of the attack sequence for aircraft.

Aircraft attack sequence
Attacking aircraft are formed into a group of no more than 8 flights including escorting fighters.
Attacking aircraft select targets.
Intercepting fighters are assigned to bombers, up to 2 interceptors per flight.
Escorting fighters are assigned to interceptors, up to 2 escorts per flight.
Escort vs. interceptor dogfights are resolved.
Winning escorts may engage any, hitherto, unengaged interceptors.
Escort vs. interceptor dogfights are resolved. Escorts must now break off.
Remaining interceptors may now engage initial targets.
Dogfights are resolved.
Any interceptor that has only fought one dogfight, may engage another flight.
Dogfights are resolved. Interceptors must now break off.
AA fire is resolved. Here I am a little confused. On page 22 the target score is given as 5, yet only the actual 5’s rolled are deemed as hits, surely the 6’s would be hits too.
Any remaining bombers resolve attacks on their targets. Are escorting fighters allowed to strafe targets if there were no interceptors?
After the attack all interceptors and escorts that fought at least 1 dogfight must return to base as well as all bombers that actually engaged a target. Any remaining bombers may stay and attack again next turn.

Is that correct?
Andrew

Hello Andrew!

I'm really sorry, this post must have slipped under my radar. Here's the answer. Most of your example is perfectly correct.
You are correct, I'll look into the example.

Yes, if there were no interceptors to engage, or there were so many escorts that the interceptors could not engage them all the remaining unengaged escorts can strafe.

Interesting, this is typically something that 'I must have mentioned that somewhere right?" and turns out is not described in the rules anywhere. Every flight involved in the attack is considered to have spent their ammo. Flights that have broken off decided to drop their payload and break off the attack. So every flight involved in the attack must return to base afterwards. I'll add it in the next version.

Thanks for the clarification. I have just played 4 carrier games, 2 different scenarios playing each side. 2 of the games were night actions set around the Indian Ocean Raid, the other 2 were the Coral Sea. Strangely all the games ended with very similar outcomes. The five Japanese carriers surprised at night lost a carrier each time, with others damaged. The US Forces lost both carriers on each occasion, without much to show for it, Shoho sunk in one game and Shokaku on fire and nearly sunk in the second.

The discrepancy regarding the flights that were forced to break off being able to initiate another attack on a subsequent round did not seem that detrimental. I am redoing Midway next and will go with the mantra of if it breaks off it must return to base.

However this does bring me on to a couple of questions regarding the scouting and carrier squadrons.
How exactly should a flight designated as a scout from a carrier operate? Is the same as submarines, you place the flight in the first scouting phase and then they are treated regular aircraft with the scout ability? Also, would they need to be launched?
Ships like Tone & Chikuma, do their tokens just bounce around with out being the chance of being intercepted?
Can you voluntarily reveal a contact marker?

Once deployment is done, do the rules regarding how many ships can accompany a carrier be disregarded? Can you reassign additional ships from the escort squadron to a carrier squadron?
Similarly as long as it is within your squadron limit, can you divide the escort squadron once deployed?

One thing I realized I was doing wrong, was not generating an order token for each carrier, makes dealing with planes a bit easier....

Thanks

Wow, very interesting observations, and a lot of stuff that I need to think about (and describe better in the next version). I'll get back to you as soon as I have figured everything out

The general idea was that the carrier ‘donates’ a flight to the scouting pool. These flights work just like the tokens of Tone and Chikuma, and are placed in the scouting phase and removed at the end. At inception, the scouting phase was supposed to be a ‘mini-game’ without direct links to the operational game on the table.

I found out myself too that this works, until the first squadron has been spotted. After that, it becomes an awkward mix of mini-game taking place at the same time as the operational game on the table. I’m currently trying to work the scouting phase into the operational game for the next version, with scouting flights needing to move into position and needing to launch and land.

So currently, no launching or landing is needed, the scouting tokens are just placed at the start and removed at the end of the scouting phase. Only subs have operational relevance for the following game turns.
As written above, the scouting phase was not designed with operational interference like AA and interceptors in mind, so yes, currently they work like that. In the next version, I envision that Tone will need to launch a scout flight just as a seaplane tender would (or the flight would start the game in the air) after which it contributes to scouting just like any other flight.

Here’s the version I’m working on now (so work in progress)
- Flights, subs and even ships, can be assigned as ‘scouts’ at the end of the indirect activations phase, under certain conditions.
- Flights, subs and ships that are set to scouting, add to the initiative roll of the subsequent turn, and can spot in the scouting phase, if the scenario has a scouting phase.
- Any unit that is scouting at the start of the turn cannot activate during the direct activations phase of that turn.

In this version, you need to move your scouts into position like in the normal game, after which they can spot in the next turn. They can be shot at, and intercepted, but I imagine this will also have repercussions for the carrier that launched the interceptors (probably revealing the contact, only requiring confirmation).
Yes you can, you just need to break radio silence for you opponent to pinpoint your location

Yes, the deployment rules are irrelevant after deployment itself. So you could sail an extra escort towards your carrier fleet, or break up your formations just as in a normal game. I really haven’t found a solution yet to this loophole. If you keep the escort squadron close to your carriers, you can substantially bolster the AA defenses of your carrier groups. If you have any interesting suggestions on a solution to this I’m all ears

Sorry, edited because I forgot to answer the last bit.

A couple of things come to mind.

First rather than use a token, use a physical flight of aircraft (even from Tone & Chikuma), keeps thing simple. What I’m thinking of doing in my upcoming Midway game is perform a support roll for each sides airborne scouts. Any fails arrive on table edge during the 1st turn, successes are placed as the current rules. Any scouts from carriers follow a similar procedure. They are treated as normal aircraft for the entire game.

Second most carriers had a CAP up. What about doing a similar support roll with 1 or 2? flights of fighters from each carrier and placing them right after contact tokens within 20cm of a contact token. Any failed rolls are not airborne until launched. If a scout, scouts a contact token within intercept range the CAP may intercept.

Any scout actively engaged in scouting is not included in the initiative scout bonus and does not activate in the direct portion of the turn.

Regarding the carrier groups maybe double the escort allowance? From what I can tell most carriers in the early part of the war separated from their escorts to perform air ops. What about making the number of escorts allowed dependant on the year?

Have you thought about allowing AA to fire upon flights within 10cm?

I’ll give you more feedback after next weekends game.

I think the improvements suggested for the next version, ie. integrating the scouting with the rest of the game, thereby removing the need for tokens (I'm painting up Jakes for Tone as we speak), will cover a lot of the suggestions you make here.

CAP is already allowed to be up in the air when the carrier group is placed. One thing that is important to remember is that it was not common for a CAP to intercept a scout (unless spotted prematurely or shown on radar) since they would operate at different height levels and since it is pretty difficult to track a lone scout. I would not want to encourage to actively go hunt scouts with a CAP.

I'm not sure if I follow your thinking about the escorts. Wouldn't doubling your escort allowance cause even móre escorts to be around the carrier to buff the AA to insane levels compared to an other scenario?

Keep me posted on your games please, your efforts are appreciated!

Question: Do we have any accounts of scouts being downed by AA? I can't find any that I know of and I image it would be a pretty dumb scout to shadow a ship from within the AA range? Not talking about scouts that decided to make an attack run and subsequently got shot down.

The only thing I can think of are the pictures of the Catalinas trailing the Bismarck, but that just might artistic license....

I have another clarification regarding the attack group. Do escorting fighters count towards the 8 limit to an attack group?