[pfdietz]

You can wargame and simulate. It's not perfect, but it can give very useful pointers, especially at the strategic level.

The US Navy did extensive wargaming at the Naval War College in the inter-war years, from after WW1 to about 1933. The results were extraordinarily valuable in the Pacific when WW2 came about. The strategic issues the Japanese had can be seen as the consequence of not gaming full campaigns (as opposed to putative "decisive battles").

[jcranmer]

The Youtube channel Drachinifel covers those war games, and the lessons the US learned (and didn't learn) from them in pretty extensive detail here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMK9a-vDE5zEmzgruoWAy...

[pfdietz]

That's a different set of games. The Fleet Problems were LARPing with ships. This could be invaluable for understanding (some) tactical issues but could not apply to understanding prolonged campaigns (that would be too costly). For that, the Naval War College did tabletop/paper games, lasting up to months, that covered multiple engagements.

Fascinating free book that motivated these comments:

https://www.history.navy.mil/research/publications/publicati...

"Between 1919 and 1941, the U.S. Navy transformed itself from a powerful if unsophisticated force into the fleet that won a two-ocean war. The great puzzle of U.S. naval history is how that was accomplished. This book argues that war gaming at the U.S. Naval War College made an enormous, and perhaps decisive, contribution."

A whole string of vital lessons were learned during the gaming, which I can go into if you like (or you can read the book.)

[jacobr1]

One take from that historical episode that might be applicable to those on HN: the real value came from building the organizational muscle around metaproblems. How do we adopt the organization to a changing environment? How do we introduce feedback loops? How do we get good data and test assumptions? How do we continuously improve? Building that mindset and capability was potentially as important as any specific lesson on logistics or whatever.

[pas]

please do go into details!

[pfdietz]

Glad you asked!

Most importantly, the game in 1933 showed that the "through ticket to Manila" version of War Plan Orange would not work. The capital ships would arrive there with underwater damage and no way to repair it. They'd have to go back to Pearl Harbor, or the west coast, to reach facilities that would allow repairs. In which case, what was the point?

After that part, US war plans in the Pacific involved island hopping, so forward bases could be obtained where repairs could be performed. This had a number of important downstream implications: amphibious assault against protected islands would be necessary, with the equipment, training, and doctrine that implies (these would go on to be applied in the various invasions in Europe, including D-Day). Mobile dry docks would be needed (the US led the world in these in WW2, including modular ones that could be hooked together to produce something that could service a battleship.)

The need to fight across the Pacific implied ships would be up against land based planes in the Mandates (various island groups assigned to Japan after WW1). This meant carrier planes had to be on par with land based planes. The British did not learn this lesson and started the war with greatly inferior carrier planes (some of which were biplanes!)

The games illustrated that carrier operations needed to be optimized for rapid recovery of planes. The more rapidly planes could be recovered, the more planes a carrier could launch (and then recover before they ran out of fuel.) Capt. Reeves went on to command USS Ranger, where he pushed strongly to accelerate flight operations, eventually developing the system of landing planes before a wire crash barrier, then pushing them forward of the barrier to rest on the deck as more planes landed. This avoided the need to cycle the elevator(s) during landing operations. The US Navy was the only navy doing this at the start of the war. Fueling and reloading, even storing, aircraft on the flight deck was a natural extension of this. As a result, US carriers could carry more aircraft than those of other navies; they were not constrained by the size of the hangar.

The games showed that carriers were vulnerable to damage to their flight decks from even small bombs, and that there would be great value in the context of a campaign if this damage could be repaired by the ship's crew. This led the US to designs where the flight deck was unarmored, made of wood on a steel framework. USS Enterprise could not have participated in many of the carrier battles of the war (and the US would have lacked any carrier at the final climactic battle off Guadalcanal) had this not been the case. The British, in comparison, had armored flight decks, which meant after any damage to them they needed to go to a repair facility.

The circular formation used in carrier task groups in the war was developed in the games.

The games showed there would be great attrition of aircraft and aircrews. This meant the fleet had to be backed up by a very large pilot training program, as it was. The Japanese never understood this implication (at least, until it was too late) and failed to implement a scalable pilot training program, nor adequate pilot recovery efforts, and suffered from catastrophic decline in effectiveness as their first team pilots were lost.

The games showed the importance of scouting. Various ways of doing this were tried, eventually leading to investment in flying boats (which also were imagined as bombers, although they were overshadowed in that respect.)

[jcranmer]

I distinctly recall that many of those lessons were learned from the Fleet Problems, especially several of the carrier tactics as well as the logistical lessons (US invested heavier in at-sea refueling than any other navy at the time). So I suspect your source is integrating the Fleet Problems as part of the war games going on, and your denigration of them as "LARPing with ships" is unwarranted.

(Of course, perhaps the most famous unlearned lesson from the Fleet Problems was the vulnerability of Pearl Harbor... the Navy simulated a surprise carrier attack on Pearl Harbor two or three times, each time it was wildly successful, and still the defenses weren't beefed up before December 7).

[pfdietz]

No disparagement of the Fleet Problems was intended. They were complementary to the NWC games.

Some of the lessons learned in the table games about carriers were before the Fleet Problems could have learned the same lessons, due to the carriers not yet being available. Indeed, one of the issues the games were addressing was just what kind of carriers should be built. I expect any solution the NWC games came up with that could be verified in the FPs would have been. Also, the fleet problems would have provided vital inputs to the enhance the rules the NWC games used.

Other unlearned lessons (from NWC): the importance of unrestricted submarine warfare (this had been ruled out in the games because the British were assumed to be neutral, so not targeting their ships strongly constrained what the subs could do), the importance of night battles (the USN failed to train adequately for these and suffered greatly in the Solomons for it), kamikazes (the games assumed the Japanese would have an adequate pilot training pipeline and not have to resort to this), and what would be necessary to get Japan to surrender (politics in Japan was out of scope.)