Victory in the Pacific

Japanese “Typical” Carriers 1-2-*(3+)
vs. Allied LBA 2-4-*

These situations occur almost always in the early-war Japanese offensives (Turns 2-4). A problem is that the Emperor’s carriers are so different, so I chose the 3-bonus-attack carriers as “typical”, usually they are the ones remaining to decide battles at end. The heavy carriers (4+) will get targeted first and they are “faster” to die in combat – so it’s safe to count all 4 heavy carriers as 5 “typical” ones. Count lighter carriers (2+ and 1+) only as firepower, they will get targeted only if the battle is already lost.

This is a coarser approximation than other Cases analyzed, because so many different things can happen to different types of carriers in the battle.

Note 1: If US heavy carriers are present too, their combat with Japanese carriers will happen much “faster” than carrier-LBA combat. Both sides will put out of combat each other almost exactly 1:1, so subtract US carriers from the Japanese numbers (maybe 1 more for safety against some bad luck), the rest will have to battle the LBA.

Note 2: the spreadsheet size adequate for the other Cases was too small for the typically total battle for Pearl Harbor in Turn 3: all the 12 IJN carriers with 35 attack factors (11 “typical” ones as defined above) against all 6 Allied LBA. You may seek in the table for half the strengths, 5.5 : 3 wins but not surely, and with heavy losses (around 3 in half the battle = 6 carriers in all!). A little surplus for excursions may remain, but you’re never too strong in battle!  But if 3 US carriers come to help the defense, it remains to the Japanese 8 CV:  6 LBA, or 4:3 (26.94% Japanese victory, not shown here because we assume attackers stop at this ratio).

Starting data:

1 LBA vs. 1 CV: 51.85%

1 CV vs. 1 LBA: 24.19%
2 CV vs. 1 LBA: 44.72%
3 CV vs. 1 LBA: 60.79%
4 CV vs. 1 LBA: 72.77%

Lanchester Equivalent Value LEV = sqrt(0.5185/0.2419) = 1.46 carriers equal one LBA.

Results:

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