I got to play Seekrieg 5 over the weekend, recreating the
Battle of Vella Gulf.
I got flipped to the Japanese force, facing two split 3-boat groups from two other players, one who was teaching the game and the other is a former Marine who was learning the game, but has a lot more mini wargame experience.
The Marine led his force out too far from the island and directly into visual range, allowing me to bloody his nose a bit as a I headed inland. I managed to outrun a torpedo salvo that was fired directly back in toward me and the inside force, screwing up their maneuvers. After a knife fight with the screening force where I took out one of his to two of mine, I managed to get a 6% chance hit with my torpedoes, completely destroying a second destroyer that hadn't been scratched.
My other two destroyers turned tail and headed back out to sea, runnign smack dab into the outside force coming back in. I split my destroyers to bracket the 3-ship element front and back, trying to get one ship out while screening his middle ship from firing. I managed to inflict some serious damage, but not enough to get any kills. Unfortunately my plan failed, and one ship lost all propulsion and the other lost enough that I couldn't outrun the ships still in the fight.
So while I lost more ships than historically accurate, I sure as hell did better than the Japanese did historically.
It's almost as if people are the problem.