I thought I would run through some of the thinking and reasons that went into the game.
Firstly this was pretty much planned on the back of a fag packet. We were chatting in The Ready Room on Facebook about the coming anniversary less than a week ago and I thought, why not?
Well not having any models was a start I suppose. Actually I did. I have a squadron of Vals printed for me more than a year ago by Paul Davison. They're a very basic model scaled up to 1:200 from 1:300 and although proportionally very nice they lack almost all details. They were a pain to clean up, but they did paint up ok in the end I suppose. Decals were from the spares box - mostly Warlord but others thrown in.
The Nevada I didn't have, but I do now have a 3d printer of my own so a quick search on Wargaming 3d got me a 1:1800 scale Nevada for $7 which printed quickly and cleanly. It's not quite the right model as it is the post Pearl Harbor refit, but it will do.
I quickly painted it in an approximation of the 1941 blue scheme. 1:1800 is probably about right as a target marker, or possibly a bit small. I suppose I could have scaled the stl up but I'm planning on playing Victory at Sea in 1:1800 so I will donate the finished model to Paul as he collects US ships in that scale.
The sea map is from Warlords Victory at Sea starter set. I roughly cut the land masses out of brown wrapping paper - I had intended to do a nice full colour version but work got in the way so brown paper and scissors it was - John Noakes would approve. He probably would chide me for using low tack tape to hold the land masses in place, because it wasn't quite low tack enough and some of the paper map surface was damaged removing it - Doh!
As usual I just used my old phone camera on this one - I have a much nicer camera but this was not intended as a big production, hence the dodgy pics :-)
The scenario itself is quite interesting. Nevada was a very old design from pre WW1 so I didn't think it reasonable to class her as a standard Battleship in Airstrike. In the end I dropped the "Hardened" trait, and because the ship was slowed by the torpedo damage and was in very narrow waters I decided to reduce the effect of "Mobile" trait to -1 not -2. The Vals were all rated as Pilot Skill 3. You could argue they should be better as they were the cream of the crop, and had practiced their role in the attack for many, many hours.
On the other hand the second wave of Vals were apparently not armed with armour piercing bombs. The plan was for this second wave to target the less well protected cruisers and destroyers so standard 500 lb bombs were used. The Val was an excellent aircraft but one weakness was it could not carry a 1000lb bomb, unlike it's US and German counterparts. If Nevada had been under attack by Ju87s I don't think she would have had any chance at all.
As the Vals arrived over Ford Island they spotted Nevada making her slow way out and instead of pushing on to their assigned targets decided to try and sink the much more prestigious Battleship. It has also been suggested that they wanted to sink her in the narrow channel so as to block the harbour mouth, but I'm not sure how much of that is a cover story for what was a collective rush of blood to the head.
Pearl Harbor is full of "what if" situations, but I wonder if the decision by a significant portion of the second wave dive bombers to attack Nevada and the destroyer Shaws which was in a floating dock so looked much more impressive than she actually was, rather than the very vulnerable and tightly packed cruisers in dock a stones throw away. Everyone knows the US Carriers were absent on the day and this in part allowed the USN to strike back through them only six months later, however I wonder if the carriers would have been committed without the support of the cruisers that escaped damage on Dec 7th due to Nevada & Shaws drawing in so many Vals. We will never know of course, but it's interesting to speculate.
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