"Nagumo and Somerville in the Indian Ocean..." Topic

This is a tantalising "what if?" for both sides.
By day the Japanese carriers would rule the Indian Ocean, especially the skies, as they proved when that sank HMS Hermes and two British 8-inch gun cruisers. But… as this documentary explains:

YouTube link

The situation was reversed at night. Somerville had four squadrons of Swordfish or Albacores on his two carriers and several carried ASV (air to surface) radar. As soon as the sun went down the entire balance of power would reverse as the Fleet Air Arm had already proved at Taranto. At one time the two forces were playing blind man's buff and were only 120 miles apart – at night. If one side had not reversed course the radar-equipped Swordfish would have found the Japanese and it would have been game-on.

The Swordfish and Albacores were all armed with torpedoes and flares to light up the sky while the Japanese had no dedicated naval night fighters and no radar assisted AA.

Midway could have happened several months earlier.

Barry

Never knew about this possibility. A friend wanted to do some games based on this event but we were looking at surface engagements.

It is a most interesting "what if?".

B

This reminds me of an Avalon Hill "Flat Top" game I played ages ago. It was not situated in the Indian Ocean, but in the Solomons area, and the Allied side had 2 carriers, Enterprise and, IIRC, Illustrious. The game was played full blind, with a referee to assess moves and recce. No side knew what the opfor had in store (as the Jap player, I had Shokaku & Zuikaku)
I detected the Allied force at the end of a day via a flying boat, and moved south towards them, keeping in range of the Bougainville CAP. I was detected also, the Allied force moved North, but later during the night. In the end, we both launched at the same time, reaching targets in the early morning. Thanks to my land based fighter umbrella, the Allies did but light damage on a carrier, not impeding air ops. My own raid was heavily escorted and went through easily, I lost a few planes due to the AD, concentrating on the Big E and leaving her in the same state as Hornet at Santa Cruz… We stopped the game there, at the beginning of what was going to be a very long day for the Allies, with a single operational carrier, with a diminished air wing facing the prospect of 2 more raids before sunset. Then the umpire told me of the Illustrious night raid capacity…

The Helion 2-volume 'The Darkest Hour' covers this really well.

I, too, have watched both installments on Japan's "Operation C" by the ever remarkable Drachinifel on YouTube.

Cannot more highly recommend folks following these links in this order: YouTube link
and YouTube link

All of his programs are worth watching, if only for his dry humor so perfect for all history lovers.

TVAG

Thank you, I just found the second part and I am watching it now.

B

Check out my free print and play game Mongoose vs. King Cobra: Indian Ocean Carrier Raid April 1942 at link

The Japanese player has a 50% chance of getting the mission of TAKING Ceylon/Sri Lanka which might have been quite easy.

The Ceylonese had been radicalized by *Trotskyists*, and their garrison on strategic communications link Cocos Island south of Java mutinied and murdered their British officers and noncoms, naturally expecting the Japanese to arrive.
But for whatever inexplicable reason the Japanese didn't. The Australians did instead and arrested the mutineers who were then after the war discreetly hanged.

So in my game – and no other Indian Ocean game that I know of has a Ceylon landing possibility – the British player rolls the die for each of the Ceylonese Defence Force brigades with a 33% chance they will stay loyal and fight, a 33% chance they will desert and disappear, and a 33% chance they will join the Japanese.

After my game was published, I discovered there was a recent book The Most Dangerous Moment of the War: Japan's Attack on the Indian Ocean, 1942 Hardcover – November 19, 2015
Churchill, anyway, grasped the grave danger the possibility of Ceylon becoming the unsinkable aircraft carrier to dominate the central Indian Ocean represented. The supply lifeline to our China-Burma-India front … if not up the east coast of Africa to Egypt as well … would have been cut.
(India's rail system was a menagerie of different gauges, since each maharajah wanted his own.)

Folks here may also be interested in the book by Andrew Boyd, the son of the British carrier commander, The Royal Navy in Eastern Waters: Linchpin of Victory 1935-1942 Hardcover – April 15, 2017
wherein he claims the British nearly could have pulled off their own Midway. HIGHLY debatable. B-)

My erstwhile opponent at Ares Krigspillklub Oslo, Tor, was the Japanese in a game of my game a few years ago now, and I was able to launch a night-time radar-assisted aerial torpedo attack, but to no avail.
Think of torpedo-panicked Japanese fleet carriers running around like flaming-pig-panicked Carthagian elephants: the catastrophic collision possibilities would have been significant, and that remote but if happening then compounding possibility is in my game. }:-)

The Albacore was a crew killer, by the way, prone to invert and crash in front of its oncoming carrier.

Note also that China is currently courting the Maldive Islands like it successfully has the Solomon Islands.

The account of the Cocos Islands' mutiny is somewhat inaccurate as the whole of the garrison did not mutiny but only 15 men of the Ceylon Garrison Artillery on Horsburgh Island. The others remained loyal and there was a larger contingent of Ceylon Light Infantry on Direction Island who weren't involved nor knew about it until after the event.

Only one person was actually killed, Gunner Samaris Jayasekera who was one of those remaining loyal and the mutiny was quickly suppressed by the CO and his loyal troops before the mutineers could make contact with the Japanese on Christmas Island, which they had taken following an earlier mutiny by Indian troops in which they killed their British superiors, which you might have mixed it up with.

Of the fifteen mutineers on Horsburgh Island, seven were sentenced to death in a court martial convened on the island in May 1942 but only three were eventually executed back in Ceylon, in August that year. Five of the Christmas island mutineers were executed following a trial after the war.

For an account of the Cocos mutiny see link and for that on Christmas Island, link