USS Yorktown CV-5

I decided to try a more difficult campaign in Corsair Leader, so I picked the Battle of the Coral Sea (short campaign, 2 days), which allowed me to use my personal pilot card.

I actually used the ‘skilled’ version of this card, making him the squadron leader.

After assigning skills (gave Gung Ho to 4 pilots who had none, and Attack Run to the Devastator and Dauntless pilots), I drew two targets:

I sent 6 planes after the carrier (Shōkaku, which was damaged in the actual battle), 3 Wildcats (VF-42), 2 Devastators (VT-2), and 1 Dauntless (VB-2).  I armed the Devastators and Dauntless with 500lb bombs, when i should have (historically) armed the torpedo bombers (Devastators) with (duh) torpedoes.

They made short work of the carrier and sunk her.  The campaign awarded an additional 2 Victory Points for sinking the carrier.

Meanwhile, Saguisag escorted a single Dauntless on a bombing run against the small freighter, which had an additional VP attached to it.  Again, they sank the target, with no losses.

The combined Victory Point total for the day was 10 VPs, which gave me a great result, and I decided to give the squadron the 2nd day off.

I think I lucked out on my first day of the introductory campaign, Luzon 1945.

I drew two targets, a large anti-aircraft battery, and photo recon for a secondary mission.

I sent in 5 planes to deal with the AA battery, and they destroyed the target with no losses.

I sent a single plane for the photo recon, and the mission succeeded with no casualties.

Of course, when I first played Phantom Leader, I had the same success at first, then failed miserably during the second day of my campaign.

We will see what happens with the next draw from the Target Deck.