Revolutionary Risk with The Fast Carriers: Air-Sea Operations, 1941-77

RockyMountainNavy, 10 April 2024

From our perch in 2024, looking back at the naval wargame The Fast Carriers: Air-Sea Operations, 1941-77 by Jim Dunnigan for Simulations Publications, Inc. (SPI) in 1975 provides an opportunity to explore a state-of-the-art naval wargame design from the mid-1970s. In The Fast Carriers Dunnigan ambitiously gives players three levels of responsibility in a game design that, admittedly, has both reasoned abstractions and flaws in some game models. While the rules and interaction of game subsystems are perhaps not as streamlined as they could be, The Fast Carriers nonetheless offers fascinating insights into designer intent—and execution—of an exploration of a revolution in warfare using a “paper time-machine.”¹

Small State Navy

Looking back to the mid-1970s, I am actually a bit surprise by how relatively few naval wargames were published in the early days of hobby wargaming. By my reckoning, between March 1969 when SPI “released” its first game (Up Against the Wall Mother******!) and September 1975 when The Fast Carriers was published the number of wargames produced totaled 124 with The Fast Carriers being the tenth-ever naval wargame on that list—only 8% of the total. For the ever-prolific Jim Dunnigan, The Fast Carriers was just their seventh naval wargame for SPI.² While many SPI titles had “navy modules” in a game, after The Fast Carriers there were only three more naval-exclusive titles published (all by Joe Balkoski who would later go on to design the Fleet-series for Victory Games). [For a complete listing of SPI titles see spigames.net.]

 

Dunnigan at Sea

Jim Dunnigan’s first naval wargame for SPI was U.S.N.: The Game of the War in the Pacific, 1941-43 in 1971. U.S.N. was an operational-scale wargame with 200 nm hexes, weekly turns, and individual aircraft carriers with other ships grouped together. Dunnigan followed up with CA: Tactical Naval Combat in the Pacific, 1941-45 in 1973 which, as the name states, was a tactical-scale game design. Later in 1973 Dunnigan went back to the operational-scale turning to the South Pacific of World War II with Solomons Campaign: Air, Land, and Sea Warfare, Pacific 1942. In 1974 Dunnigan reached further back into history with the tactical-scale Frigate: Sea War in the Age of Sail and later that same year published the solo-play Wolfpack: The German Submarine War in the North Atlantic 1939 – 1944. In 1975 the year started off with the release of Sixth Fleet: US/Soviet Naval Warfare in the Mediterranean in the 1970’s in January which was followed by the release of The Fast Carriers in September.

The back of the box matter (in SPI flat tray games more correctly an under-the-box sleeve) called out the top line of The Fast Carriers in three bullets:

• • Nine Scenarios, Six Maps, 800 Counters
  • Includes Strategic, Operational, and Tactical Levels
  • Search Missions, Limited Intelligence (The Fast Carriers, sleeve back)

The sleeve goes on to explain:

Fast Carriers is a recreation of carrier operations in the period 1941 thought the near future. There are nine scenarios. The “solitaire” scenario recreates the attack on Pearl Harbor, followed by scenarios depicting the battles of Coral Sea, Midway, Eastern Solomons, and Santa Cruz. A hypothetical 1943 scenario is shown. Then two semi-historical scenarios cover Korea and Vietnam actions. Finally, a hypothetical 1970’s scenario portrays a Soviet and American clash in the Denmark Strait.

At the Strategic level, the Players each assume the role of the overall fleet commander. They simultaneously maneuver Task Force markers on the strategic map. The Operational level puts the Player in the role of a Task Force commander-air operations officer. A Task Force Operations Display is used to allocate all the planes available to each carrier in each Task Force, showing how name are being armed, how many are in dead storage, etc. Tied in are subdisplays portraying aircraft launched from the carrier during an operational turn and sent on one of three missions: Combat Air Patrol, Search or Strike.

The Tactical game involves the Player in decisions regarding CAP [Combat Air Patrol] and flak distribution (as the defender), escort, dive bombing and torpedo attack coordination (as the attacker). (The Fast Carriers, sleeve back)

 

Revolutionary Design

Jim Dunnigan also penned a set of Designer’s Notes for The Fast Carriers which reveals to us not only some of the design intent behind the game but also some of the challenges during development of the game. Reading the Designer’s Notes and comparing them to the game provides us better insight into the game and an understanding—or at least an appreciation—of some design decisions…even if they didn’t all quite work out.

Dunnigan starts the Designer’s Notes by telling us that The Fast Carriers focuses on a “revolution in naval warfare.” Specifically:

Fast Carriers was designed and developed primarily to simulate the four carrier battles of 1942, between the navies of Japan and the United States. These four battles confirmed a revolution in naval warfare, a revolution that saw the aircraft carrier supplant the battleship as the modern capital ship. (The Fast Carriers, p. 22)

If The Fast Carriers is “primarily” to simulate the carrier battles of 1942 what was the driver behind adding the two semi-historical and hypothetical scenarios from the Korean and Vietnam wars and a near-future confrontation? Dunnigan doesn’t say, but as I read the Designer’s Notes, it becomes apparent to me that despite the several decades covered by the title the real focus is the June 1942 Battle of Midway.

If Dunnigan truly focused on the Battle of Midway to build the game design of The Fast Carriers that in turn raises a note of caution for us today for the scholarly understanding of the Battle of Midway in 1975 was nothing like we enjoy in 2024. In 1975 the two most prominent books on the Battle of Midway were almost certainly Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy’s Story by Mitsuo Fuchida and Matsatake Okumiya first published in 1955 and Walter Lord’s Incredible Victory: The Battle of Midway published in 1967. The credits for The Fast Carriers cite Jeff Gibbs and David C. Isby with research and I can only assume that they had access to some library resources. Even so, Dunnigan in 1975 almost certainly had no benefit of declassified wartime records that have given us books covering intelligence in the Pacific War like Combined Fleet Decoded by John Prados in 1995 or the seminal Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway by Jonathan B. Paschall and Anthony Tully in 2005 that reconstructed the events of the entire battle from a groundbreaking perspective. Nor could Dunnigan benefit from some of the latest studies, like Trent Hone’s Mastering the Art of Command: Chester W. Nimitz and Victory in the Pacific from 2022 which looks at Nimitz as the leader of a complex adaptive system.

 

Telescoping Role Players

In order to portray that revolution in naval warfare seen in The Fast Carriers, Dunnigan ambitiously(?) gives the player three roles:

The designer’s intent was to place the Player not in just one role, but three: that of Nimitz or Yamamoto concerned with the overall strategic dispositions; second, that of Nagumo or Fletcher, concerned with the actual carrier-air operations (and the fundamental timing of attack and defense); and third, that of Widhelm or Shimazaki, concerned with the flight to, and attack on the enemy fleet. (The Fast Carriers, p. 22)

The Fast Carriers is a wargame that uses telescoping scale; that is, the scale of the game changes during play. The three levels, called a Stage in the rules, are each played on a different “map”:

• [5.0] THE STRATEGIC STAGE
  • GENERAL RULE: The Strategic Stage is played on a Strategic Map…On this map, the Players plot and move Task Force Markers.
  • From [3.5] GAME SCALE – Each Strategic Game-Turn represents four hours…Each hex on the Strategic Map represents 90 Nautical Miles….
• [9.0] THE OPERATIONAL STAGE
  • GENERAL RULE: The Operational Stage, unlike the Strategic or Tactical Stages, is not played on a “map.” The Operational Stage is played on the Task Force Operations Displays, which are comprised of the Search Display, the Strike Display and the Carrier Status Display.
  • From [3.5] GAME SCALE – Each Operational-Turn represents one hour….
• [11.0] TACTICAL STAGE
  • [11.1] INITIAL SET-UP The Tactical Display is used to play out the Tactical Stage. It regulates the positioning and movement of the attacking aircraft and the defending ship and CAP units.
  • From [3.5] GAME SCALE – …each Tactical Turn represents forty seconds of real elapsed time…each hex on the Tactical Display represents 1000 yards (one-half Nautical Mile)….

For a time when wargames were literally defined by hex and counter, Dunnigan tells us that the Operational Stage, the one without a “map” but using what modern game designers call a tableau, is actually the most important part of The Fast Carriers:

It was immediately apparent that it would be impossible to fit all three roles into the same play sequence and map. The most important role was the second, that of Task Force Commander. The decisions of Nagumo or Spruance or Fletcher or Hara really decided who won the carrier battles. And these decisions all basically revolved around one central question: What was the best use, at any given time, to which the Task Force’s aircraft assets could put? How many planes should be devoted to search, how many to CAP, and how many to strikes? Assuming positive target information, would it be better to dispatch an immediate strike, or wait an hour or so for more planes to be prepared? Was it wise to send a large strike? Was it possible the search planes were wrong? Should the hostile base be bombed with everything or should the enemy carriers be found first? (The Fast Carriers, p. 22)

One could argue that Dunnigan actually conflates player roles in the Operational Stage of The Fast Carriers. On one hand, Dunnigan properly gives the players agency to decide how air strikes are formed like Task Force commanders historically did. In Lord’s Incredible Victory there are passages such as:

Captain Mitschner’s idea was to send his slow torpedo planes ahead, while the faster bombers and fighters were climbing to rendezvous high above the ship. These would then catch up en route, and all would attack together. Fine in theory, but too risky. With the torpedo planes below a thousand feet and the squadron at 19,000, it would be easy to miss connections (Lord, p. 141).

On the other hand, Dunnigan places the players in the role of the air operations officers in The Fast Carriers. These air operations officers are the ones that turn a Task Force commander’s direction into action; the movement of aircraft on the flight deck was not something Fletcher or another Task Force commander managed. The back sleeve wording for The Fast Carriers is perhaps more accurate when it says, “The Operational-level puts the Player in the role of a Task Force commander-air operations officer.”

 

If Dunnigan used the Battle of Midway as the benchmark for The Fast Carriers game design, the recognition of Widhelm as an exemplar leader in the Tactical Stage is a bit baffling. At the Battle of Midway, Lt. William J. “Gus” Widhelm was a pilot assigned to Scouting-8 aboard USS Hornet. He makes no appearance in Fuchida’s book and has only two minor mention in Lord’s. The performance of Hornet’s air wing at the Battle of Midway is somewhat controversial given that the first wave attack never made contact with the Japanese fleet. Widhelm is cited by name in Hornet’s official after action report which states, “This particular Pilot, Lieutenant W J. Widhelm, U.S.N., was later credited with two direct 1000-lb. bomb hits on a battleship, or heavy cruiser, on June 6.” Admittedly, while Widhelm played a minor role at Midway, at the Battle of Santa Cruz (scenario [25.5] in The Fast Carriers) they played a much more prominent role which is perhaps what Dunnigan was attempting to portray in, “decisions regarding…dive bombing and torpedo attack coordination (as the attacker).” We can see this relationship of decisions in the account of Lieutenant Commander Widlhelm at the Battle of Santa Cruz from the U.S. Navy History and Heritage Command in 2008:

The initial strike group from Hornet (CV-8), composed of 15 VS-8 and VB-8 SBD dive bombers, led by Lieutenant Commander William J. “Gus” Widhelm, had been in the air about an hour and 15 minutes on the morning of 26 October 1942, searching for the Japanese carrier task force, when Widhelm turned the group north to avoid several Japanese Zeros he could see attacking Hornet’s covering fighters. Five minutes later, after passing through a cloud bank, he spotted some ship wakes and billowing smoke to his left, about 25 miles off. He had sighted the Japanese carrier Shōkaku and its still-burning companion, the light carrier Zuihō.

As Widhelm and his SBDs were overtaking the larger carrier from astern, a Zero from the carrier Zuikaku that was flying combat air patrol made an overhead firing pass, puncturing the leader’s aircraft in the left wing, the tail, and the engine. Even as Widhelm attempted to keep formation, his now-overheated engine seized up, and he was forced to drop away. He successfully ditched the aircraft, and he and his rear gunner, ARM1c George D. Stokely, were able to get into their life raft before the plane sank. But it was a close call. As he later told an audience of workers at the Brewster Aircraft plant, “My plane sank 15 seconds after it hit the water, but the rear gunner and I got out on a life raft. The entire Jap force steamed right by us. One time we had to paddle with our hands to avoid being run down by a destroyer.” Nevertheless, the two men had a front row seat to see several of the planes of his strike group put three 3,000-pound bombs into Shōkaku’s flight deck, setting off fires that crippled her ability to handle flight operations.

Three days later, Gus Widhelm and George Stokely were rescued by a PBY patrol plane.  For his courageous leadership at the Battle of Santa Cruz, Widhelm was awarded a Gold Star in lieu of a second Navy Cross. A 1932 graduate of the Naval Academy, Gus Widhelm went on later in the war to command the first Navy nightfighting squadron in the South Pacific and to serve as operations officer for Carrier Task Force One during campaigns in the Central Pacific. (NHHC, 2008)

Further, Lieutenant Commander Shigekazu Shimazaki, who led the second-wave of the Pearl Harbor attack, does not appear in Lord’s or even Fuchida’s book. Why Dunnigan choses to mention these two by name in The Fast Carriers is a puzzling especially given no air operations officer aboard any carrier is named.

 

Searching for an Answer

In the Designer’s Notes for The Fast Carriers Dunnigan recognizes that portraying three-levels of decisions was difficult. To find a solution Dunnigan again focuses on the Operational Stage:

The design problem was how to portray this decision making process. First, a time frame of an hour was fixed for the Operational-Turn. This represented the time it took to prepare and to launch the full launch capacity of planes, and form it into a strike. Within the Op-Turn, the Player would be restricted only to dealing with his air units, allocating them to some function or status. (The Fast Carriers, p. 22)

While it is interesting to read what Dunnigan included in an Op-Turn, it is perhaps just as enlightening to read what they excluded and instead placed in the Strategic Stage of The Fast Carriers:

The Strategic Game-Turn was conceived to summarize naval events encompassing four hours of time. This was nothing but naval movement. Originally, search was to be a specific operation conducted every Operational-Turn, with each Player actually recording the path of each searching unit unit in a method analogous to the strike procedure. This proved completely unworkable as Players would spend at least an hour per Op-Turn doing nothing but playing hide and seek. This led to the search display arrangement, an abstracted search contact procedure. Even this proved too time consuming, and the decision was made to abstract search even further, placing it in the Strategic-Turn where it needed to be executed only once per four Op-Turns. (The Fast Carriers, p. 22)

While the Designer’s Notes for The Fast Carriers makes it sound like search is conducted exclusively in the Strategic Stage, the game rules are actually a bit more complex. The game design splits search decisions over two stages; the Strategic and Operational. That said, the abstracted design of the search system is simultaneously playable and a believable model that is relatable to history.

 

The General Rule for [7.0] SEARCH in The Fast Carriers provides a high-level overview (no pun intended) of the search procedure:

Search is conducted by air units which are present on the Search Display. The act of placing air units on there Search Display occurs during any Operational Turn, and during the Take-off Phase. It is one the permitted air operations by which a Player physically takes an air unit from his Carrier (Base) Status Display and places it on the Search Display. By the exact placement of the air unit on the Display he determines the search pattern of that air unit. Search is resolved during the Search Phase of each Strategic Game-Turn (except Night Game-Turns). Resolving search requires that a Player find the Strategic positions of his Task Force relative to the Enemy Task Forces, and then compare the search patterns of air units in the Task Force’s Search Display with the Search Template, superimposing the pattern on the map to find if the Enemy Task Force lies within the pattern. If an Enemy Task Force lies within a search pattern, the search contact procedure is used to determine whether or not the air units ‘find’ the Enemy Task Force. If a contact is achieved, then the Enemy Player draws a chit which tells him how accurately he must describe the Task Force to the searching Player. (The Fast Carriers, pp. 6-7)

Using Fuchida’s account in Midway, in particular Chapter 9 “The Nagumo Force Fights,” I attempted to recreate the search situation on the morning of June 4 as portrayed using the rules for The Fast Carriers:

At about 0300 on the morning of 4 June the noisy drone of planes warming up roused me from slumber. I got out of bed and attempted to stand, but my legs were still unsteady. The sound of engines alternately hummed and then rose to a whining roar. Akagi was preparing to launch her planes for the attack on Midway.

…

I asked Lieutenant Furukawa when sunrise would be.

“At 0500, Sir,” was the reply.

“Have search planes already been sent out?”

“No, Sir. They will be launching at the same time as the first attack wave.” (Fuchida, pp. 177-178).

In the Battle of Midway scenario of The Fast Carriers, the Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi is rated with a capacity of 13 air units with a Flight Deck capacity of six (6) and an Arm & Fuel capacity also of six (6). This means Akagi can carry no more than 13 air units of which 6 can be “readied” (i.e in the Arm & Fuel box of the Carrier Status Display) or 6 can be staged to the Flight Deck box of the display at the end of an Op-Turn (see [9.11] thru [9.14]). For the Battle of Midway scenario Akagi’s airwing consists of three (3) Zeke Fighter units, four (4) Val Dive Bomber units, and four (4) Kate Torpedo Bomber units ([25.34] JAPANESE ORDER OF BATTLE).

Per rule [23.4] SCENARIO LENGTH in The Fast Carriers, “…all Scenarios begin on the first day Turn (0101 hrs.) of day one.” Though not specifically stated it appears the design intent is that all air units start in the Hanger. Based on the historical timeline, Strategic Turn 1 could play out as follows:

• • 0101-0200 Op-Turn: No activity / 0201-0300 Op-Turn: No activity.

    

 

• • 0301-0400 Op-Turn: Six units of CAP (1x Zeke) plus First Attack Wave (1x Zeke, 2x Kate, 2x Val from Hanger to Arm & Fuel).

    

 

• • 0401-0500 Op-Turn: CAP and First Wave from Hanger to Flight Deck. Second Attack Wave (5x air units of 1x Zeke, 2x Kate, 2x Val) from Hanger to Arm & Fuel.

    

What of the search plan? Fuchida explains:

“What searches are scheduled?”

Furukawa explained them to me on the map board. “There are seven lines extending east and south, with Midway lying within the search arc. We are using one plane each from Akagi and Kaga, two seaplanes each from Tone and Chikuma, and one from Haruna. The search radius is 300 miles for all planes except Haruna’s, which is a Type-95 and can do only half that.” (Fuchida, p. 179)

This search plan is very difficult to recreate in The Fast Carriers. The first problem is that each air unit in the game represents six aircraft ([3.5] GAME SCALE) and there is no provision in the rules for “breaking down” an air unit. Rule [21.42] explains Japanese sea planes carried by Tone and Chikuma but has no rule for float planes carried by other non-carrier ships like Haruna. The only way to fully recreate the Japanese search plan for 4 June in The Fast Carriers is to take a fighter or bomber unit and dedicate it to search. Practically speaking, the First Wave would have to be reduced by a Kate or Val. Such a reduction in strike aircraft was certainly not the Japanese way. As Fuchida laments:

Despite the importance of conducting adequate searches, our naval strategists were congenitally reluctant to devote more than a bare minimum of their limited strength to such missions. Ten per cent of total strength was all they were willing to spare for search operations, feeling the rest should be reserved for offensive use. But such overemphasis on offensive strength had proven detrimental to our purposes before this, and it would again. (Fuchida, p. 180)

This in turn raises another question to explore, that of search patterns in The Fast Carriers and whether they can reproduce believable results. Fuchida’s Midway on page 200 shows Nagumo’s dawn search plan with the seven wedges.

 

In The Fast Carriers when a search plane is launched the searching player places the air unit on the Search Display. Each air unit searching can be assigned either a 360° search or alternatively search a 60° Wedge or 120° Fan. In The Fast Carriers we can use two Search Planes markers from Tone and Chikuma to loosely recreate Nagumo’s dawn search plan by placing one Search Plane marker in Wedge “1” and another in Wedge “2.” This gives coverage from 000° to 120° which covers most of the historical 015° to 180° (the last 60° , historically assigned to two lone planes, is ignored).

 

According to Fuchida, the US Task Force was located roughly 095° for 300 nm (4 hexes) from Nagumo in Wedge “2.” Using the [14.2] Strategic Air Search Table and cross-referencing a single air unit in a Wedge at range 4 we find a roll of 1 is needed for detection. Historically, Tone-4 “made the roll” and successfully sighted the US carriers. At this point, the American player draws a Search Effectiveness Chit (see [7.3]) which was either “Report Approx +/- 2” or “Report Error +/- 2” which tells the American player to report “1 to 5” carriers in an actual force of three carriers. Historically, Tone-4 called out a single carrier.

 

Of note, in The Fast Carriers a distinction is made between Search and Strike Contact. The Search rules from [7.0] cover locating an Enemy Task Force. Strike Contact, found in rule [10.9], is the last phase in an Operational Turn sequence. After Air Movement, if a strike is in the same Strategic hex as a located Enemy Task Force, the strike group rolls using the Strike Contact Table to determine if the strike group contacts the target. It is possible for a Strike Group to launch off against a located Enemy Task Force, fly to the target hex, and still not localize the target to strike it. This was very much the situation Scouting-8 from Hornet faced on the morning of 4 June:

Ensign Thomas Wood was beginning to realize he might have to eat his words. Back in the wardroom he had boasted that he, personally, would sink the Akagi, but the Hornet’s 35 dive bombers and 10 fighters had been searching for an hour now, and it looked more and more as if they might not find the Japanese fleet at all, much less sink the flagship. (Lord, pp. 150-151)

In The Fast Carriers game terms, the 35 dive bombers (6 SBD air units) and 10 fighters (a single F4F air unit) combined into a single wave strike group. Setting off to strike a target at 155 nm range (2 hexes) the American player needed to roll a 3 or less on a d6 to make contact. Ensign Wood and the rest of Scouting-8 obviously rolled too high and failed to contact the Japanese fleet.

 

Miracle-less CRT

While Dunnigan focuses on searching in their Designer’s Notes, perhaps they should have paid a bit more attention to the combat system in The Fast Carriers. That is because, using the rules as written, it is all-but impossible to recreate the “Miracle at Midway,” a phrase made famous a few years after The Fast Carriers was published when Gordon Prange wrote their Battle of Midway book by that name in 1982. In 1975, however, Dunnigan had at their disposal Lord’s narrative in Incredible Victory which reads in part:

The dive bomber pilots from the Enterprise and the Yorktown would long argue who struck the first blow at Midway. Coming in from different directions—unaware that anyone else was there—each told very much the same story. Each found Nagumo’s carriers untouched. Each attacked in the same six-minute span. Pulling out, each suddenly noticed the other at work. (Lord, p. 170)

According to Lord, the fatal moments aboard Akagi unfolded in this way:

Teiichi Makashima gamely swung his camera on the planes he saw hurtling down. He could make out three of them, getting bigger every second. Then he had enough—he was a landlubber cameraman, not a sailor—and he hit the deck.

Commander Fuchida watched a little longer. Suddenly, he saw black objects fall from the bombers’ wings. Then he too had enough and scrambled behind a protective mattress.

A blinding flash—the whole ship shuddered—as a bomb ripped through the radio aerial and exploded only five yards off the port side forward. A mighty column of filthy black water rose twice as high as the bridge, cascading down on the officers huddled there. For a brief, terrifying second Nagumo’s navigation officer, Commander Sasabe, gazed at this water column and thought he saw his mother’s face.

Right afterward—some say just before—a second bomb landed on the flight deck opposite the bridge. This time the shock wasn’t so bad—but only because it cut so easily through the elevator amidships and exploded on the hanger deck below. There it set everything off—planes, gas tanks, bombs, torpedoes. Flames gushed up, spreading to the planes spotted on the flight deck.

Then a third bomb smashed the very stern of the ship, hurling planes parked there into a jumbled heap. Worse, it jammed the ship’s rudder so she could no longer steer.

That was all. Seconds later the planes were gone, and for a brief moment, anyhow, there was no sound but the crackling flames. Looking down at the wreckage, Mitsuo Fuchida began to cry. (Lord, pp. 172-173)

Three bombs from three airplanes in less than a minute. In The Fast Carriers game terms that is an attack by a single SBD air unit in a single Tactical Turn. Three hits effectively crippled Akagi. Can that actually occur in The Fast Carriers? Using the rules as written the answer is “no.”

Rule [13.3] AIR-TO-SURFACE COMBAT in The Fast Carriers specifies the attack procedure for dive bombers. Generally speaking, the procedure is as follows:

The attacking Player states the Anti-Ship Strength of the attacking air units and subtracts the Defense Strength of the ship under attack, to arrive at an air-to-surface differential. He rolls the die, and, consulting the Air-to-Surface Combat Results Table, he cross-references the result with the differential, and immediately applies any damage result to the ship. (The Fast Carriers, p. 14)

Let’s step though the attack on Akagi using the game terms of The Fast Carriers:

• A single SBD air unit (Anti-Ship Combat Strength of 3) initiates a Dive Bombing attack using the procedures in [13.4] DIVE BOMBING.
• The SBD Anti-Ship Combat Strength of 3 is compared to the Defense Strength of 2 for Akagi; differential is +1.
• Per “[13.71] If a carrier has at least one air unit in the Flight Deck Box of its Status Display when attacked, its printed Defense Strength is reduced by one Strength Point.” Differential becomes +2.
• Per ”[13.72] If a carrier has at least one air unit in the Arm & Fuel Box of its Status Display when attacked, its Defense Strength is reduced by one point.” Differential becomes +3.
• According to [14.6] Anti-Ship Combat Results Table (CRT), the +3 column of the Air-to-Ship Differential shows a die roll of 5 equals a D-1 result and a die roll of 6 is a D-2 result; all other rolls are a miss.
• Using the Result Key for [14.6] the greatest possible damage result, D-2, is two Damage Points which affects carriers in these ways:
  • “…in all subsequent Operational-Turns, such carriers/airbases may no longer launch nor retrieve aircraft.”
  • “Surface Attack and Defense Strengths are halved (round fractions down). Anti-Aircraft Strength reduced to zero.”

In order to outright sink a carrier in The Fast Carriers one needs to score four Damage Points; an impossible feat with a single air unit using the rules as written.

 

[Interlude – It Gets Worse]

[In the above example, the assumption is that a full-strength, six-aircraft SBD air unit attacks. The historical narrative, however, strongly implies the fatal attack on Akagi came from a mere three aircraft. A reduced strength three-aircraft SBD air unit, one that has suffered a D-1 result in combat, has an Anti-Ship Combat Strength of only 1. The initial combat differential in this case becomes -1, moving up to +1 with the shifts for aircraft in the Arm & Fuel and Flight Deck Boxes. Referencing the Anti-Ship CRT, the +1 differential column shows a roll of 6 is needed to score a D-1 result with all other rolls missing. A D-1 result for a carrier means the ship can conduct either landings or take-offs in an Operational Turn but not both and the Anti-Aircraft Strength is halved. A result even further from the “Miracle at Midway.”]

The early players of The Fast Carriers were quick to recognize problems in the combat model. Less than a year after The Fast Carriers was released, Christopher Perleberg wrote in the April/May 1976 issue of Moves #26 a variant called “Fast Carriers: Burning Questions and Secret Ships.” In the article they directly address the problem of the CRT:

Let us first consider the famous dive bombing attack at Midway in game terms. The three Japanese carriers, Akagi, Kaga and Soryu are caught Game-Turn Three, Day Two, with aircraft in both Arm & Fuel and Flight Deck Boxes, due to Nagumo’s indecision over which target to strike. In game terms their Defense Strengths are reduced to zero. The first wave of the U.S. attack, 6 TBD units, has made its run and has been slaughtered, obtaining no hits. One TBD unit escapes. All the Japanese CAP has been pulled down to low altitude, and so is unready for the next two waves of dive bombers, which arrive simultaneously. Three SBD units, Leslie’s from Yorktown, attack Soryu, making (in game terms) two optimum attacks of +6 an +3. The probability of results is as follows: No effect – 11%; D1 – 41%; D3 – 13%; and D4 – 18%. Historically, the Soryu takes three hits and sinks on Game-Turn Five of the same day.

The Kaga and Akagi are attacked at the same time; McClusky’s 6 SDB units are breaking up into two roughly equal groups to make their attacks. Japanese AA fire is incredibly light, and the CAP is still straining for altitude. Both carriers are attacked at the same odds as Soryu. Kaga taking four hits and sinking in Game-Turn Five, and Akagi, attacked by slightly fewer aircraft, takes three hits and is abandoned by Nagumo at the end of Game-Turn Three and sinks on Game-Turn One, Day Three.

The point is that, historically, all three carriers sank, an event that has about a .05% chance of happening in the game. (Perleberg, pp. 4-5)

I note that Perleberg overstates the number of The Fast Carriers air units that struck Akagi. Lord makes it clear that three aircraft attacked; in The Fast Carriers game terms a single air unit (at best) with a single attack roll and not three air units (18 aircraft) making two attack rolls at +6 and +3 respectively like Perleberg states. As the interlude above points out, the dissonance in the combat model of The Fast Carriers is far worse than even Perleberg recognizes.

Regardless of how bad the combat model appears Perleberg’s solution is, quite literally, to set The Fast Carriers on fire. Perleberg properly observes that Dunnigan has no rule for progressive damage from flooding or fires in the game, just a simple linear damage model of D-1 through D-4 (sunk).
Perleberg proposes:

What’s missing here is a rule regarding fire. All three ships burned furiously after the bombings. Kaga and Akagi probably received D3 results from the attacks and the Soryu suffered a D2. But the fires that were ignited finished them off, as happened to the Lexington at Coral Sea. True, there is an attempt made to reflect this factor; this is why the Strength is affected by aircraft units in Arm & Fuel and Flight Deck Boxes. But while these rules may account for greater initial damage, they do not provide for the lingering danger of fire that claimed so many carriers. (Perleberg, p. 5)

Perleberg proposes a new rule [13.74] for The Fast Carriers which allows for the appearance of a fire after an attack. If a fire results after an attack, on subsequent Operational Game-Turns the progress of the fire must be determined. The results of the fire control efforts range from more damage (an additional D-1) to No Effect to Controlled (the fire is put out).

 

Modern Excursions

With all the focus on the carrier battles of 1942, and especially the Battle of Midway, it is very easy to forget that The Fast Carriers depicts carrier operations in the Cold War. Game design differences are captured in rule [22.0] POST-WORLD WAR II [JET AGE] RULES.

The first major difference is rule [22.1] DEPLOYMENT OF THE SHIP UNITS. Using this rule, the use of Task Force Markers is not necessary since, “total, comprehensive intelligence is presumed, with both players knowing exactly where all ships and Task Forces are.” When an air unit arrives in the same hex as its target, it still must roll for Strike Contact using rule [22.5] but if an air unit finds its target it also automatically contacts all Enemy surface ships in the same hex (see [22.52]). The post-WWII rules for The Fast Carriers also makes changes to Air Strikes by eliminating the strike waves of World War II.

The combat model in The Fast Carriers sees a significant change when playing a post-WWII scenario. Rule [22.6] TACTICAL ABSTRACTION changes the Tactical Stage Sequence to allow for multiple CAP intercepts at greater ranges than in the 1942 scenarios.

Submarines appear in The Fast Carriers via rule [23.0]. Whereas surface ships are always located in post-WWII scenarios, submarines are subject to a Search procedure. Once located, submarines may be subjected to attack from surface ships, anti-submarine air units, and even other submarines.

I am not sure what history lesson Dunnigan intended to communicate with the semi-historical “Action Off Korea” and “Action in the Tonkin Gulf” scenarios in The Fast Carriers. Both loosely depict three days of carrier air operations off the coast of the respective enemy country. The victory conditions in these scenarios seem very lopsided in favor of the UN/US player. In both scenarios the UN/US player scores points for damage to enemy airfields and aircraft. The North Korean player scores victory points for shooting down UN aircraft and, if very lucky, can also gain points for damaging any UN ship (a highly unlikely occurrence given how few strike assets they possess). A North Vietnamese player can only score points for downing US aircraft or, if they get really lucky, sinking USS Enterprise.
Given the assets available to defend the carrier if the US player allows that to happen, well, they deserve to lose.

“Action in the Denmark Strait” is a (then) future Cold War scenario in The Fast Carriers and the only other hypothetical scenario besides “Northern Solomons, 1943” to appear in the game. In the Denmark Strait scenario two US carrier battle groups (Nimitz and Kitty Hawk) with 11 supporting nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSN) and shore-based maritime patrol aircraft must try to reach the far northern end of the map. Opposing is a large Soviet anti-submarine surface group led by Kiev and another smaller surface action group led by a Kresta. The Soviets also bring five nuclear-powered guided missile attack submarines (SSGN) and two nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSN) to the battle along with 11 air units. The scenario is played out over the course of no more than seven days. Though unstated, the victory conditions make it clear that the scenario reflects US Navy plans to move carriers into the northern portion of the Norwegian Sea to threaten Soviet airfields on the Kola Peninsula.

 

I cannot determine if Dunnigan was using The Fast Carriers to experiment with a new modern naval warfare game. As noted above, Dunnigan’s only other modern naval warfare title was Sixth Fleet: US/Soviet Naval Warfare in the Mediterranean in the 1970’s from earlier in 1975 which I see as interesting for its use of Zones of Control by ships. Zones of Control are not in The Fast Carriers as rule [5.44] specifically states: “There is no ‘Zone of Control” in this game. The presence of an Enemy Task Force in no way inhibits or restricts the movement of Friendly Task Forces.” It is a bit surprising to me that Dunnigan would never again publish a modern naval warfare wargame for SPI.

 

Trust Players and Risk

Dunnigan ends his Designer’s Notes for The Fast Carriers by talking about trust by players. Though written for The Fast Carriers, these words are applicable to most any wargamer or boardgamer:

More than most games, Fast Carriers requires care and trust between the Players. The most important decisions are made in secret and executed in secret. It is all too easy to cheat. It is also easy to make an honest error. Frankly, the game is not designed for cut-throat play. (The Fast Carriers, p. 22)

Dunnigan acknowledges that The Fast Carriers is not a simple game; “It is also a game with a real learning curve.” Dunnigan goes on to talk about what players need to understand about The Fast Carriers; “This is a game which will call for a lot of subtle calculation, but in the end it will be won by the Player who can take the best risk.”

Before the Battle of Midway, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz famously used the phrase “calculated risk” in his battle instructions. Dunnigan does not define “best risk” in the Designer’s Notes for The Fast Carriers so we cannot be sure their meaning is the same as Nimitz’s. One can hope, however, that Dunnigan was channelling the thoughts of naval historian and author Trent Hone nearly fifty years later who describes “calculated risk” this way:

As he sought opportunities to defeat the Kido Butai, Nimitz emphasized the principle of “calculated risk.” Because of how he used the term in his instructions before the Battle of Midway, it is generally assumed that Nimitz understood “calculated risk” to mean avoiding unnecessary losses: “[Y]ou shall interpret [calculated risk] to mean the avoidance of exposure of your force to attack by superior enemy forces.” However, his actions before and during that battle demonstrate the Nimitz’s conceptualization of “calculated risk” relied upon an aggressive, offensive mindset intended to capitalize on the inherent uncertainty of war. He focused his limited combat power at the decisive point and consciously accepted the risk of severe losses if his assumptions were incorrect. Nimitz’s “calculated risk” was disciplined risk-taking in the extreme. He was willing to endanger future success to shape the current battlefield and maximize the potential for victory. Over the first few months of 1942, Nimitz had worked to impress this orientation on the Pacific Fleet, leveraging the established heuristic emphasizing aggressive offensive action. In May and June, he and his subordinates would use that mindset to win a pair of victories that transformed the war in the Pacific. (Hone, pp. 70-71)

 

While some wargamers of today likely will echo complaints of grognards long past that The Fast Carriers is an over-wrought game design that plays at a ponderous pace, I instead challenge them to view The Fast Carriers as Dunnigan’s expression of “calculated risk.” Can you, deciding on the strategic disposition of your force, deciding the fundamental timing of attack and defense, and deciding how to attack an enemy fleet capitalize on the inherent uncertainty of war? Can you exercise an aggressive, offensive mindset and focus your limited combat power at the decisive point? Can you exercise disciplined risk-taking? Since 1975 The Fast Carriers has, with a few tweaks, offered a paper time-machine giving you the chance to make those decisions.

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References:

Dornan Jr., Dr. J. E. (1978). The US War Machine. Salamander Book.

Dunnigan, J. F. (1975). The Fast Carriers: Air-Sea Operations, 1941-77. Simulations Publications, Inc.

Dunnigan, J. F. (1975). Sixth Fleet: US/Soviet Naval Warfare in the Mediterranean in the 1970’s, Simulations Publications, Inc.

Dunnigan, J. F. (2000). Wargames Handbook, Third Edition: How to Play and Design Commercial and Professional Wargames. Writers Club Press.

Fuchida, M., Okumiya, M., Kawakami, C. H., & Pineau, R. (2001). Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan: The Japanese Navy’s Story. Naval Institute Press.

Hone, T. (2022). Mastering the Art of Command: Admiral Chester W. Nimitz and Victory in the Pacific War. Naval Institute Press.

Lord, W. (1998). Incredible Victory: The Battle of Midway. Burford Books.

 

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1. “Paper time-machine” is a reference taken from the opening chapter of Dunnigan’s Wargame Handbook, Third Edition which reads, “A wargame is an attempt to get a jump on the future by obtaining a better understanding of the past. A wargame is a combination of “game,” history and science. It is a paper time-machine.” (Dunnigan, p. 1)
2. Prior to SPI, Dunnigan designed Jutland for Avalon Hill in 1967.