Coral Sea: Playbook Edition
Scenarios and History
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
January 2025

Second World War at Sea: Coral Sea is intended as the introduction to the world of Second World War at Sea. The topic’s well-suited to that task: it’s a very famous battle (the first between fleets of aircraft carriers), it takes place in a well-defined area (the Coral Sea, off the north-east coast of Australia) and it doesn’t require a huge stretch of map space or very many pieces (54 double-sized ship pieces and 92 square ones, for 146 total).

Despite the relatively small size, as its designer I approached it the same way as any other Second World War at Sea game, putting the story foremost. Coral Sea’s Playbook edition has fifteen scenarios, all of them grounded in actual historical events.

The campaign took place during the early months of World War II in the Pacific, with the Japanese on the offensive in the waters around New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, just north of the Coral Sea. The Japanese sought, at least in their high-level planning discussions, to erect a defensive barrier against the inevitable American counter-offensive. In practice, they moved only slowly to prepare the airfields and support infrastructure needed for such a defense. That had a lot to do with the over-stretched nature of the Japanese offensive, undertaking each operation with the bare minimum of resources and trying to make up for that by conducting a great many of them at once.

While the Americans had taken a severe blow at Pearl Harbor, losing almost all of their battleships, and sending the rest to the West Coast to be near their fuel supplies, they still had their aircraft carriers. The American point of view dominates popular history, holding that the U.S. Navy fought as a distinct underdog against the mighty Japanese. But that’s not exactly true. They still had all three heavy carriers of the pre-war Pacific Fleet (Lexington, Saratoga, and Enterprise) with a fourth (Yorktown) arriving in late December 1941 and a fifth (Hornet) in March 1942. The Japanese had six heavy carriers, but the American flattops each operated more airplanes (and the Americans, unlike the Japanese, could and did replace their losses with fresh planes and pilots).

Playing through the scenarios shows a few things about the campaign. The Japanese achieved a great deal with their fairly limited fleet, capturing Rabaul, New Guinea and the Solomons with a force built around decidedly second-line forces: Great War-era light cruisers, aged destroyers and minelayers pressed into service as escorts and transports. Later they committed a portion of the First Air Fleet (the heavy carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku) to cover the invasion of Port Moresby on the south coast of New Guinea, by suppressing the Allied airfields in north-east Australia. A new light carrier (Shoho) would be added to the Fourth Fleet forces already in the area to help protect the actual invasion convoy.

The Japanese order of battle is, by itself, a pretty stark indication of the sheer madness of Japan’s war of aggression against the United States and her allies. The brand-new carrier Shoho could operate 30 aircraft, but on her first deployment carried only 18. Shokaku and Zuikaku could operate a theoretical maximum of 84 aircraft each; they brought, respectively, 56 and 53 operational planes to the Battle of the Coral Sea. Five months into a war of choice, the Japanese carriers were at 60 to 66 percent of their capacity. Even that required scraping the depots for planes and pilots; four of Shoho’s dozen fighters were obsolete A5M4 models. The Americans hold an edge in the number of planes aboard their two carriers (128 to 127, counting Shoho), making the balance in the air even, with 18 of those Japanese planes aboard Shoho. Each side has the striking power to destroy the other if they can locate the enemy, and bring that force to bear.

This would be typical of Japanese operational planning during the phase of the war, a dangerous habit they’d learned from Britain’s Royal Navy: assign just enough force to accomplish the mission, to limit risk. This actually increased risk, as the Americans understood. American planning sometimes did assign merely matching forces, but this was almost always because no more ships and planes were available. The Japanese had more planes and carriers, but these had been pulled back to the Japanese Home Islands to guard against a repeat of the Doolittle raid (which also absorbed the attention of the other available American carriers).

At the more famous Battle of Midway a month later, the decisive phase of the battle was over relatively quickly; the key actions all took place in about 26 hours. The Coral Sea campaign stretched out over a longer time frame, taking six days to finally resolve the action from the first American airstrikes against the Japanese seaplane base on Tulagi to Zuikaku’s fruitless attempt to find and finish off the damaged Yorktown.

The scenario set also includes two preliminary operations from February 1942. The Japanese landings at Gasmata on New Britain could have been contested by a newly-established Allied cruiser force, but the Allied command didn’t attempt to intervene. The operation allows us to introduce the operational system and tactical combat between surface forces without having to handle aircraft carriers.

Later that month, Task Force 11 (Lexington and escorts) moved toward the Solomons to make a raid on the newly-established Japanese base at Rabaul. Japanese recon planes spotted the Americans, and attacked them with land-based bombers. Lexington’s Combat Air Patrol devastated the attackers, but the Americans broke off the operation. It does form a nice introduction to carrier operations, with only one carrier in play, and an air strike scenario so new players can try out that sub-system.

Most of the scenarios, appropriately, come from the Battle of the Coral Sea itself in the first days of May 1942. We have five operational scenarios based on the battle: one covering the entire battle, and then others picking up the action with the Yorktown’s attack on Tulagi, the American attack on Shoho, the exchange of airstrikes between the big carriers, and finally Zuikaku’s sortie in pursuit of Yorktown. Fleshing out the story are six more battle scenarios covering the tactical actions that took place or could have taken place as a result of those operations.

All of that adds up to considerable play value for what’s supposed to be an introductory game. The Playbook edition of Coral Sea is supposed to be fun for new and old players alike, and it does that.

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife and three children. He misses his lizard-hunting Iron Dog, Leopold.

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