@Shakespeare:
Timerover
You seem to have so much knowledge about the Guadacanal campaign, having visited there and all that:
Did any carriers go up and down the slot or manuever thru the islands or did they only stand off from afar and send their planes from the periphery/safe positions?
Were any carriers lost in the actual Guadacanal campaign?
How would you house rule that?
Increase the fighters range?
Carriers did not operate in the slot, there were two carrier battles in the guadalcanal campaign,
Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz Islands
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Eastern_Solomons
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EasternSolomonsChart.jpg
At Eastern Solomons the IJN Carrier Ryūjō was sunk and the USN Enterprise damaged.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Santa_Cruz_Islands
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SantaCruzChart2.jpg
At Santa Cruz the USN Hornet was sunk and the USN Enterprise was damaged. The IJN Shōkaku was damaged.
Also the USS Wasp was torpedoed and sunk by the IJN Sub I-19
From Wikipedia;
**On Tuesday, 15 September, those two carriers and North Carolina—with 10 other warships—were escorting the transports carrying the 7th Marine Regiment to Guadalcanal as reinforcements. Wasp had drawn the job of ready-duty carrier and was operating some 150 miles (240 km) southeast of San Cristobal Island. Her gasoline system was in use, as planes were being refueled and rearmed for antisubmarine patrol missions; and Wasp had been at general quarters from an hour before sunrise until the time when the morning search returned to the ship at 10:00. Thereafter, the ship was in condition 2, with the air department at flight quarters. There was no contact with the Japanese during the day, with the exception of a Japanese four-engined flying boat downed by a Wasp Wildcat at 12:15.
About 14:20, the carrier turned into the wind to launch eight fighters and 18 SBD-3s and to recover eight F4F-3s and three SBDs that had been airborne since before noon. The ship rapidly completed the recovery of the 11 planes, she then turned easily to starboard, the ship heeling slightly as the course change was made. The air department at flight quarters, as they had done in earlier operations, worked coolly at refueling and respotting the ship’s planes for the afternoon mission. Suddenly, at 2:44, a lookout called out, “three torpedoes … three points forward of the starboard beam!”
A spread of six Type 95 torpedoes were fired at the Wasp at about 14:44 from the tubes of the B1 Type Japanese submarine I-19. Wasp put over her rudder hard-a-starboard, but it was too late. Three torpedoes smashed home in quick succession about 14:45. In an odd occurrence, one torpedo actually broached, left the water, and struck the ship slightly above the waterline. All hit in the vicinity of gasoline tanks and magazines. Two of the spread of torpedoes passed ahead of Wasp and were observed passing astern of Helena before O’Brien was hit by one at 14:51 while maneuvering to avoid the other. The sixth torpedo passed either astern or under Wasp, narrowly missed Lansdowne in Wasp’s screen about 14:48, was seen by Mustin in North Carolina’s screen about 1450, and struck North Carolina about 14:52.[2]**
All the rest of the naval battles in the area were mostly surface ship engagements, some Battleships early on but mostly Cruisers and Destroyers and the Japanese won many of these fights.
