Strategy In '1898':
The Battle for the Philippines
By Doug McNair
May 2006

As promised in my last article on the Battle of Manila Bay, today I turn to the Great War at Sea: 1898 operational scenario which looks at what would have happened if Admiral Montojo had not meekly gone back to Manila Bay and waited for the end when he found that his planned defenses at Subic Bay were not there.

If the admiral had been a more creative thinker, he would have realized that sending his barely-seaworthy fleet into the maze of the Philippine archipelago would give them a shot at evading the U.S. Asiatic Squadron while continuing to pose a threat to U.S. invasion plans. This could have slowed the planned American invasion. Much more importantly, it would have allowed Spain to continue showing the flag in the Philippines and thus continue her bid to get other European powers to side with her in the war.

Spanish Strategy

In Operational Scenario #7: The Battle for the Philippines, the Spanish player starts in the same place (Cavite, or Manila Bay) with the same dilapidated fleet as in Battle Scenario #1. Three Spanish ships are dead in the water at Cavite, and the rest are Speed 1 Slow. All Spanish ships have only one gun each, and all but two of those guns are mere tertiaries. Most Spanish ships have torpedoes, but most of those are the less-accurate hull-mounted variety. Finally, the entire Spanish fleet is so un-seaworthy that they can only travel in coastal zones during the entire scenario.

So . . . Spanish prospects seem pretty bleak against the Americans, whose ships outgun them, are faster, have no limitations on where they can go, and start only two sea zones northwest of Cavite. But this is deceiving. The Spanish don’t have to sink the Americans to win — all they have to do is survive to remain a threat to American invasion plans. For this reason the Spanish player gets the VP value of each Spanish ship that has escaped the Americans at game’s end (just as in the Manila Bay battle scenario).

And the Spaniards can scatter their fleet and send them island hopping, forcing the Americans to split their forces and pursue. The Spanish player should put more than one ship into one of those scattered fleets, making it a shell game for the Americans to determine which of the four mobile Spanish fleets is the stronger one, and giving the Spanish a chance to hit the thinly-spread Americans on equal footing when they do make contact. Failing that, Spanish honor demands that a lone ship contacted by Americanos must rush them boldly with gun blazing and torpedo at the ready. God willing, a lucky shot may grant her victory.

American cruisers Boston (left) and Baltimore (right), 1890, by Fred S. Cozzens.

American Strategy

The Americans have a good shot at catching any Spaniards that try to bypass them going north. And while any southbound Spanish ships have a head start on the Americans, the Philippines don’t go on forever. Sooner or later they’ll have to head west, east or north, and the Americans should put their fleets in strategic locations to wait for them.

In particular, the Americans should send one or more fleets up around the north end of the island of Luzon and then down the east coast. This will let them close the vise on any Spanish ships that run to the south end of Luzon, through San Bernardino Strait and up the east coast while being pursued by other Americans from the south.

But in all cases, the Americans must not sacrifice their firepower advantage — they must make sure that each of their fleets has a gunnery strength of more than one (the gunnery strength of any lone Spanish ship they'll meet).

RULES NOTE: I usually make GWAS games hotter by allowing fleets to roll for contact when they enter a zone an enemy fleet just left. But in this scenario, the Americans are so close at start and the Spanish are so hemmed in that they’d have a very hard time breaking out of Cavite if I ran the game that way. Therefore, I strictly apply the rule saying fleets only roll for contact when they both end up in the same zone or both pass through the same zone or zone boundary.

Also, to make the dead-in-the-water ships less of a turkey shoot, I give Cavite two primaries for shore batteries, just as I did in Battle Scenario #1: Manila Bay.

Game Summary

Here's what happened in a recent game:

Spanish Setup

The Spanish start at Cavite (Zone V9 on the west coast of Luzon on the U.S. Navy Plan Orange map). They split their ships into five fleets, with Fleet 1 being the three dead-in-the-water ships Castilla, Velasco and General Lezo (one secondary, two tertiaries and two torpedoes between them), and the other four fleets having one ship each except Fleet 2, which has the cruisers Reina Cristina and Isla de Cuba (one secondary, one tertiary and two torpedoes between them).

A bad day for Spain. The Battle of Manile Bay, 1 May 1898 by J.G. Tyler.

American Setup

The Americans start two sea zones northwest at T8, and split their ships into five fleets:

1. Protected cruiser Boston and gunboat Petrel (two secondaries and one tertiary).
2. Cruiser Baltimore (two secondaries).
3. Cruiser Olympia and revenue cutter McCullough (three secondaries and three tertiaries).
4. Cruiser Raleigh (three secondaries).
5. Gunboat Concord (two secondaries)

The game starts on Turn 6, the last night watch of April 30th, 1898, and runs for six days (36 turns).

Turn 6 — Night

Spanish Fleets 3, 4 and 5 move one zone west to V8, while Fleet 2 moves northeast to U9. U.S. Fleets 1, 2 and 5 move southeast to U8, steaming straight toward Cavite, while Fleet 4 moves northeast up the coast of Luzon and Fleet 3 goes southwest to U7.

Turn 7 — Day

Spanish fleets 3, 4 and 5 go south into zones W7 and W8 between the islands of Luzon and Mindoro. Two American fleets pursue while USS Baltimore goes into Cavite and attacks the dead-in-the-water ships. Baltimore takes one hit from the shore batteries as she comes in, losing one secondary gun and leaving her with just one secondary remaining. She then steams in through more fire (all of which misses), fires on the Spanish cruiser Castilla and knocks out the only secondary gun the Spanish have. Having steamed past the range of the shore batteries, she's able to sink Castilla, General Lezo and Velasco from outside the range of their tertiary guns, gaining 10 VPs. She then steams out through more fire from the shore batteries, all of which misses.

Directly north of Cavite, U.S. Fleet 1 steams east and Spanish Fleet 2 steams west, and they contact each other on the border between Zones U8 and U9. Combat ensues, with Boston and Petrel fighting Reina Cristina and Isla de Cuba.

Round 1: Spain gets the initiative, and decides to go for a torpedo run since both Spanish ships have torpedoes while the U.S. ships don't. It's a 1 Slow dance, but by Impulse 14 the ships are adjacent to each other. The U.S. scores one hit on each Spanish ship, knocking out Reina Cristina's only gun and doing one hull to Isla de Cuba. The U.S. ships then move into the same hex with the Spanish, and Reina Cristina stays there to try a torpedo run while Isla de Cuba moves out of the hex. The torpedo run fails, but Isla de Cuba hits Boston and rolls a 2, scoring critical damage. It does two hull and sinks Boston!

Round 2: The Spanish get the initiative. Isla de Cuba and Petrel blast away at each other while Reina Cristina looks on royally. Isla de Cuba finally KOs Petrel’s gun.

Round 3: Isla de Cuba pursues the gunless Petrel and sinks her. The score is now U.S. 10, Spain 7.

Turn 8

The weather stays clear, and the two U.S. fleets pursue the three Spanish fleets south. The Spaniards go down both coasts of Mindoro, with two fleets on the west coast and one on the east coast. One U.S. fleet follows down each coast. Isla de Cuba and Reina Cristina move up the coast of Luzon, and Baltimore exits Cavite to pursue them. USS Raleigh (Fleet 4), already plotted to head north on the coast of Luzon, continues doing so even though the Spanish are following them.

Turns 9 and 10

There's more pursuit, and then Isla de Cuba and Reina Cristina double back south and slip past Baltimore on the coast at T9 (Baltimore went past them to S8, thinking they'd still be heading north). They thus escape getting caught in the vise between Baltimore and Raleigh, which is now heading south on the coast.

Gunboat diplomacy. Boston’s crew helps overthrow the Hawaiian monarchy, January 1893.

Turn 11

It's now nighttime, and Baltimore guesses right this time and ends up in Zone T8 with Isla de Cuba and Reina Cristina. They make contact, and the gunless Reina Cristina runs while Isla de Cuba fights a rearguard action. Reina Cristina is able to disengage in the dark and move southeast to Zone U8 (just northwest of Cavite), but Baltimore sinks Isla de Cuba with no damage in return. The score is now U.S. 14, Spain 7.

Turns 12 and 13

Baltimore guesses wrong again and goes into Cavite, thinking Reina Cristina would run for the protection of the shore batteries there. She doesn’t and heads southwest down the coast, putting two zones between her and her pursuers. But USS Olympia and McCullough contact Don Antonio Uloa in Zone AB6, just off the southwest cape of the island of Panay. The Spaniards go for another torpedo run but are sunk with no damage to the U.S. ships. The score is now U.S. 17, Spain 7.

Turns 14 and 15

Spanish fleets 3 and 4 have gone as far south as they can, and must head east or west now. They both head east toward the San Bernardino Strait. The Americans pursue.

Turns 16 through 42

Baltimore pursues Reina Cristina from the north while Olympia and McCullough come at her from the south. Reina Cristina hangs around the west coast of Mindoro, then slips past Olympia and McCullough going through the strait between Mindoro and Panay. The Americans keep going the wrong way and lose Reina Cristina.

The other two Spanish ships race up the east coast of Luzon, pursued by U.S. gunboat Concord, while Raleigh steams around the north end of Luzon and down the east coast toward the Spaniards. Concord is able to get the inside track on the Spaniards by going out to sea while they're hugging the coast to the west. She gets into the same zone with the Spanish cruiser Isla de Luzon just east of the future Clark Field, but fails to contact her on two consecutive night turns. She then zigs while Isla de Luzon zags, and loses her.

The last chance for contact before the Spanish escape entirely is with the southbound Raleigh. The Spanish try to race past her going north and evade contact. Don Juan de Austria is successful, but Isla de Luzon is not and combat ensues just off Tuguegaro Field in zone S14. Raleigh sinks Isla de Luzon with no damage to herself.

The last two Spanish ships escape, so the score at game’s end is U.S. 21, Spain 15. The Americans win, and the invasion of the Philippines can go forward with little or no interference from Spain!

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