Pacific Campaign

saber964 wrote:
You could go with dozens of books on specific battles and campaigns.

My choices for certain battles are

Battle of Midway
Shattered Sword by Parshell and Tully

Guadalcanal campaign

Guadalcanal by Richard B Frank
Starvation Island by Eric Hammel
Neptune's Inferno by James Hornfischer

Battle of Leyte Gulf

Battle of Surigao Strait by Tony Tully
Last Stand of the Tin-can Sailor by James Hornfischer

Battle of the Philipian Sea
Class of the Carriers by Barret Tillman

I greatly favour material on the Guadalcanal campaigns.

Many others are either turkey shoots, complete surprise or luck to a silly degree, while Guadalcanal was a long stretch of hard fighting that could have turned out differently rather easy. (hence my mention of the Flat top game, as it is focused on this area and tries hard to be able to be played realistically despite being pen, paper and map)

Leyte gulf can be interesting for its oddities and Midway for a good example of how audacity plus insane luck can have amazing results.

Tenshinai wrote:

saber964 wrote:
You could go with dozens of books on specific battles and campaigns.

My choices for certain battles are

Battle of Midway
Shattered Sword by Parshell and Tully

Guadalcanal campaign

Guadalcanal by Richard B Frank
Starvation Island by Eric Hammel
Neptune's Inferno by James Hornfischer

Battle of Leyte Gulf

Battle of Surigao Strait by Tony Tully
Last Stand of the Tin-can Sailor by James Hornfischer

Battle of the Philipian Sea
Class of the Carriers by Barret Tillman

I greatly favour material on the Guadalcanal campaigns.

Many others are either turkey shoots, complete surprise or luck to a silly degree, while Guadalcanal was a long stretch of hard fighting that could have turned out differently rather easy. (hence my mention of the Flat top game, as it is focused on this area and tries hard to be able to be played realistically despite being pen, paper and map)

Leyte gulf can be interesting for its oddities and Midway for a good example of how audacity plus insane luck can have amazing results.

If you want a table top strategy naval warfare game, I recommend Clash of Arms Games Admiralty Trilogy series. Which runs the gamut of naval combat from the Russo-Japanese War through modern combat

The base systems are:

Fear God and Dread Naught WWI

Command at Sea WWII

Harpoon Modern Naval

Thank you for all the help!

If you like alternate histories, you could try Birmingham's "Axis of Time" trilogy which takes a multi-national navel fleet of 2021 and dumps it in the middle of the the Battle of Midway.

Oh and if you're in the mood for a GOOD movie about the actual events leading up to Pearl Harbor, watch Tora, Tora, Tora.