Coral Sea, May 4, 0430

The force in J8 is the Shoho "Support Force", the Yorktown is in M6, half hidden by the search marker of the Tulagi Mavises, the Lexington in P9, and the Japanese Carrier Strike Force in H6. The photo shows the situation before the searching planes return home and land. There are two Japanese search paths on the map (the green one from Rabaul and the grey one from Shortland), and three Allied ones (black is the Hudson from Port Moresby, light grey the B-17 from Australia, and yellow the PBY from Noumea). Note that all these planes except the Shortland-launched Mavises took off at 0100 and are therefore under their '2' marker by now. The SBD north of Guadalcanal marks the search that found the ships that had moved from Tulagi.

This was the first test game for the solitaire rules, and I had not made dedicated markers yet. The ship search markers with red and blue hexagons are shanghaied as goal markers. Shoho's goal marker is in J9, directly adjacent to the Shoho TF, Lexington's in N10, and Yorktown's still in M7. The two empty blue counters in K10 and L9 mark Japanese submarines (don't ask). To make it clearer, the goal markers are shown in the photo below.

Same picture, with search paths and TF goals marked.


Last modified: Sun Jun 23 01:32:58 Cen. Australia Standard Time 2002