Can you win this naval battle?

Let’s look at the map again. This is after multiple bombardments between S India 30 stack fleet and white’s 40 stack in the south. And an attack by Red’s planes against White’s planes. All 3 players are online and doing what they think is best. Then, S India starts bombing island and stops bombing white southern fleet. What Red doesn’t know is the first shot vaporized White’s lvl 2/3 airfield. Very unlucky for white. Australian 17 stack arrives after air factory is toast. But they don’t know that

White does. Because suddenly his planes are relocating and not responding to orders.

White’s 26 stack of planes,losing their home runways is forced to refuel on a different island. And has to refuel for 30 min, much to White’s dismay. You can see them on the ground on the map above.

If you’re White, how are you feeling as you wait for your planes to refuel?

Game over?

Ok. Big hint: what’s the worst thing red could do with his planes in the scenario? Remember his alliance was 15 or so cities away from a victory. The white units on the map are basically 80-90% of my forces. Within 2-3 hours the battle went from a bloody and destructive draw to a decisive victory for white.

The best thing was that S India was a gold abuser and a loud mouth jerk. “He knew things about the game I would never learn” etc. So sweet.

Thanks for all the comments. Here's what happened.

If you're red you should at a minimum stand and fight to a bloody draw which would hurt you a lot but wipe white out and then on to victory. Move Aus fleet close, patrol planes over ships and slug it out. Another option would be to just run and get your 15 cities for a win at a later time. Best option, hide your planes on patrol to the East to avoid damage and scoot and shoot (as Carking said) with your superior battleship numbers while heading East toward N America coast. That would force white to chase and defend while losing transports and warships the whole time. That is what I was fearing most.

What red did, though was a huge mistake. He attacked my planes forcing him to land and refuel. I hope everyone knows that refueling planes lose tons of hp and defensive damage inflicted. He attacked the first time our squadrons found each other. I patrolled/defended and was heading to patrol over his refueling planes to do major damage when he turned and shelled Suva vaporizing the air factory there on his first shot. Then, I was like Oh sh*t!!! He's got me. Now I'm forced to land and refuel. The AI chose Apia where I had another air factory. I sweated big time then waiting for his planes but was able to refuel and take off before he knew where I was. When our squadrons met again just West of Apia he attacked again (dummy). And then I had my 15 squadron from the Northern carrier group and my 26 out of Apia just patrol over his stack and refueling planes. Also while refueling my Southern fleet got off a salvo. In a period of 30 min he went from 27 planes to 3 that were badly damaged and useless. He flew off and hid. Then I just patrolled and shelled and eventually Northern fleet arrived to finish both red fleets and all remaining planes ditched in the sea.

Truly a unique and decisive battle for CoW and very similar to the Battle of Midway 1942. In CoW you never have to refuel planes in theory so the realism factor is lacking. But I used that feature to my considerable advantage. In Midway, planes always had to return to carriers for refueling and even changing from torpedo bombers to dive bombers, for example, made planes vulnerable. The battle was won by US forces because they caught the Japanese squadrons on the carrier decks multiple times while never having the Japanese squadrons catch their planes vulnerable. They also had two carrier groups and the Japanese thought there was only one. The Lexington was the Japanese focus while the Hornet and Enterprise were sending sorties but not found until too late. The Battle of Midway was the first naval battle where the opposing commanders never saw the others ships. All combat was carried out by air power. So another wrinkle to the map shown where ship-to-ship combat was in play.

All in all, very cool and we just won the game today. A few days ago we were 150 points away from defeat. for a war game and war history fan like me it was a uniquely special gaming experience.

Thanks again for reading. Here's the starting map again.

Lol. But not both commanders… I presume.