Axis Fleet, 3 x battleships - Bismark, Scharnhorst, Vittaro Veneto and 1 x cruiser - Koln.
Alled Fleet, 2 x carriers - Princton & St Lo, 2 x cruisers - Sydney and Ajax, 1 x destroyer - Javelin,
Allied Aircraft, 3 x Swordfish, 3 x Devastators, 2 x Dauntless and 1 x Hurricane fighter.
Both fleets 150 points. Aim - control single objective marker in center of open sea.
Allied limitation, only three carrier based flights meaning that turns 2 and 4 that six flights were rearming on land. For preservation the carriers did not move from their initial positions until turn # 4 as there were chased down.
Allied Intent, swarm the enemy fleet with at least four flights per sector. That way the enemy fleet of two ships in that sector may shoot down or cause two flights to abort while the other two could continue to attack.
Axis limitation, no air.
Axis intent, to muscle their way into the allied fleet and blow it out of the water. This was accomplished on turn 2 when the two allied cruisers and the allied destroyer were ripped apart by surface gunnery. leaving only the aircraft carriers to go after the objective (not).
throughout the aircraft tried hard but only caused minor damage to the battleships. Surprisingly, none of the antiair fire managed to shoot down any allied aircraft though about 40% of all attacks were forced to abort.
I’m going to play this through a few times to see if it is still all in the dice.
Are there any similar experiences out there? The Battle of the Coral Sea was won by air power alone as no surface gunnery occurred. I’ll have to check the books to see if there were Battleships involved.