Re: [OFFICIAL] Missile Ideas

On Thu, 3 Apr 1997, Joachim Heck - SunSoft wrote:

>   Especially the latter.  The Japanese really screwed that one up and
> basically walked into a trap.

They didn't screw up. They had no choice. It was a last-ditch suicide 
mission and a gamble at that. Even if the Japanese task force had broken

off, they would have been hunted down by US aircraft next morning. And 
even if they had survived that, they would have spent the rest of the
war 
sitting in a lagoon with no fuel. If you want to speculate, the Leyte 
operation failed because Kurita chickened out on the suicide part.
 
>   I'm not so sure... I don't recall that they even launched any
> planes.  What I am sure they did was lay down a lot of smoke and duck
> in and out of it.  I think Kurita assumed, by the way they were
> fighting, that he'd found the (Nimitz's?) task force and he withdrew
> to organize his fleet.  I will definitely have to look it up now.

You are partly correct. Kurita did think he was up against the fleet 
carriers, and the few hundred planes buzzing around him probably
enforced 
that vision. The CVEs did launch planes, they just didn't have much in 
the way of anti-ship munitions (no AP bombs) -- but Kurita had no way of

knowing this.

>   It might be possible to have a seperate points system for battle
> value and economic cost (or strategic value) but I don't know how to
> work this into a ship construction system.

Campaign construction system? 

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