Hints on defeating Allied 4E LBA

[AirGriff]

Personally, I wouldn't send in my CVs. Once he spots them he will go into Nav Attack mode. With 80+ 4Es enough may get through your cap to land some hits, plus they could chew up your carrier based fighters. Yes, he will take heavy losses too, but as an allied player I would be happy to do that, he has tons of replacements. Once he hits one or two of your carriers with stray 500lb bombs he will send in the beuaforts to finish them off.

Use your plentiful supply of BBs and screen them at a distance with your CVs.

That's definitely one way to do it, but you are still exposing the carriers to the -17's since they'll have to stick close to the BB's on their run on PM. I believe KB should stand off far enough to stay out of range of the allied bombers but close enough to still LCAP Rabaul. I think this is possible, but I haven't counted the hexes.

[AirGriff]

Air Griff, that's interesting that your opponent is invading Hawaii. You say you should've defended Lahaiana etc., but I'm not sure you have the troops to garrison every Hawaiian island enough to prevent a beachhead.

Are you posting an AAR on this game? Be fun to watch...

I'm not posting an AAR, but I have been keeping good notes of things and intend to give a pretty good disertation on what it's like to get your ass kicked in WitP in the After Action Reports.

I should have tried to garrison Lahaina with troops from the West Coast, but he had carriers prowling about pretty much nonstop. I was able to sneak in many supply transports, though at heavy cost, which makes me think I could have gotten at least some hardware in. Too late now. He's locked it up hard at this point. He doesn't need KB in the area now that he's got a gazillion Betty's and Nells at Lahaina. Failing a West Coast cavalry charge, I think I could have easily sent over maybe a whole division from PH. He's going to need a 4-1 superiority to take PH I think, and the supply situation is good, so it's going to take a long long time before he can afford to hit me there. Had I moved a division from PH to Lahaina I could have made a nasty fight for it. Then the B-17's would have been far more effective for far longer since there's no good airfield around. In the probably several weeks it would take to capture Lahaina the B-17's (and other bombers) could hit shipping and make ground attacks and little could stop them except an eventually costly KB LCAP and I'll bet it wouldn't have succeeded without at least a couple of CV's getting banged up and a whole lot of shipping lost. Ah well, hind sight and all that. It's different than this Rabaul situation. Rabaul is a good distance away from the B-17's.

[niceguy2005]

ORIGINAL: AirGriff

Personally, I wouldn't send in my CVs. Once he spots them he will go into Nav Attack mode. With 80+ 4Es enough may get through your cap to land some hits, plus they could chew up your carrier based fighters. Yes, he will take heavy losses too, but as an allied player I would be happy to do that, he has tons of replacements. Once he hits one or two of your carriers with stray 500lb bombs he will send in the beuaforts to finish them off.

Use your plentiful supply of BBs and screen them at a distance with your CVs.

That's definitely one way to do it, but you are still exposing the carriers to the -17's since they'll have to stick close to the BB's on their run on PM. I believe KB should stand off far enough to stay out of range of the allied bombers but close enough to still LCAP Rabaul. I think this is possible, but I haven't counted the hexes.

Agreed, screen from right at the edge of B-17 range. BBs won't be greatly affected by 500 lb bombs so they can make the final run to PM without too much danger. Better yet would be to take Gili gili is it isn't too heavily garrisoned and move in zeros to help with LRCAP.

[Feinder]

SSDD.

-F-

[niceguy2005]

ORIGINAL: Feinder

SSDD.

-F-

[&:]

[Nikademus]

same sh*t, different day.

[Feinder]

Nothing personal by the way (I hate the "in reply to..." note).

It's just the 4e bomber "debate" (if you could call it that), goes on and on, and on, and on...

"How do you kill 4e bombers?" - As Japan, you can stop them temporarily by putting up excellent pilots flying excellent planes. But, you're putting up your best pilots and best planes against a resource that -will- eventually grind down your best pilots. The simple truth is, in the long-run, you -can't- stop 4e bombers.

(* shrug *)

-F-

[Arkady]

ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker

Arkady, this a Nik mod result?

nope

original scenario...started with 1.3 patch and later databases changes from 1.6 incorporated...

those Tojo groups are very experinced, exp 80+

[Arkady]

ORIGINAL: Feinder

Nothing personal by the way (I hate the "in reply to..." note).

It's just the 4e bomber "debate" (if you could call it that), goes on and on, and on, and on...

"How do you kill 4e bombers?" - As Japan, you can stop them temporarily by putting up excellent pilots flying excellent planes. But, you're putting up your best pilots and best planes against a resource that -will- eventually grind down your best pilots. The simple truth is, in the long-run, you -can't- stop 4e bombers.

(* shrug *)

-F-

Correct!

[Sneer]

always keep "no replacement" to frontline fgt units
worst scenario is to see fresh crated fgt delivered to 100% destroyed airfield and see them killed on the ground next day
never concentrate too much aircraft in front bases - keep bombers in 2nd line bases
keep recon planes in smaller secondary bases - diverse is your motto

avoid attrition fights - think twice if it is not better to allow for bombardment - always fight on your own terms

concentrate AA - good to take house rule that level bombers against land target have min alt 10k feet - AA gap is not a myth - it is truth - i see it in my game where flak starts working over 10k alt - often i see that 200-300 bombers loose 3-5 planes due to flak / ops after mission

try to harass enemy attacks on unregular basis

in my there is house rule that due to pdu and unlimited amount of replacements of 4e bombers they are restricted from ground attacks - this was a role of 2e medium bombers - if allies want troops support planes they should use FB /med bombers - there was nothing like universal 4e bomber during war

keep quality of pilots
you need at least 70 exp pilots - try to keep them close to 80 - it is too difficult to keep them higher
quality pilots in quality planes in numbers not far away from enemy numbers in situation that really needs fighter cover - you can't defeat enemy 4e LBA but can try to resist harder

[ColFrost]

Again, thank you for your valuable help. For some reason, he has stopped pounding my troops at Rabaul, and continues to pound Kavieng with his 17es and Liberators. I've moved most of that stuff out of there a long long time ago.

Oh, something else I found out. He's got no LB anywhere BUT PM (except, of course, for Wellingtons in India). He's made it the focal point of his defense. I've discovered that if I can get past PM, he's got nothing.

I might try to go for Darwin, and per someone's suggestion, Suva.

[Feinder]

I might try to go for Darwin, and per someone's suggestion, Suva.

I haven't read your complete game strategy but...

Invading Darwin in a big deal. You're invading Oz (duh). But that's a huge fight and commitment of resources.

Invading Suva is a much more containable objective. You can take it, and go for the other SoPac bases, without the dramatic commitment of assets that a fight for Darwin would entail.

-F-

[niceguy2005]

ORIGINAL: Feinder

I might try to go for Darwin, and per someone's suggestion, Suva.

I haven't read your complete game strategy but...

Invading Darwin in a big deal. You're invading Oz (duh). But that's a huge fight and commitment of resources.

Invading Suva is a much more containable objective. You can take it, and go for the other SoPac bases, without the dramatic commitment of assets that a fight for Darwin would entail.

-F-

Agreed, you could also invade nothing else, but preserve your resources for a heck of a fight.

Also, if he has all his 4Es at PM why not hit it with a mega bombardment fleet. I wonder how well they would fly after 6 BBs got done unloading on that AF.

[Mike Solli]

Darwin is doable, if you're careful. I invaded Darwin with 4 divisions, 2 tank regiments and 2 artillery regiments and took it in a week or two. I did use 6 BBs and 8 CAs to continuously soften it up. My losses were minor. My goal wasn't to take it, but to hold it for a bit of time to delay his bombing me into the stone age from there. He had most of his B-17s there and I was able to destroy a signigicant number on the ground (as well as a bunch of B-25s too). I stayed there about a month and pulled everyone out. On the way back to the SRA, I detoured a division to the next base west in Australia (can't remember the name) for another visit.[:D]

Edit: He had the 1st and 2nd Australian divisions and a couple of base forces there. I hope I trashed them but am not sure.

[scout1]

There are 4, fairly isolated, bases on the north coast of Oz. Grab these puppies and no LBA bombing of the Java region, plus they are out of range of any other Oz base. He'll have to either march overland or take them back via seaborne ops. A couple (?) have resource centers and HI, so they should be self sufficient in terms of supply. Then there's Perth on the west coast which is entirely isolated. But wouldn't go for this without the 4 northern bases in hand.
Don't know what LCU bonuses exist for the defender at these bases, but they are tempting .....

Better pump up the defences here Carl. The IJN/IJA has a taste for Kanagroo meat .....[:D]

[veji1]

Northern Oz is really worth the fight in Andrew Brown's map, as ther isn't a continuous railway, so you can build up a solid defensive position, and buy considerable amount of time. In stock it is a lot more complicated....

[Sneer]

ORIGINAL: veji1

Northern Oz is really worth the fight in Andrew Brown's map, as ther isn't a continuous railway, so you can build up a solid defensive position, and buy considerable amount of time. In stock it is a lot more complicated....

it is only good choice to me as india trip with new map and really isolated burma is much more difficult

[String]

You are making one fundamental mistake here. As I understand its still early '42. You should take to an offensive not try to be on defensive.

Go, smash and take PM and put an end to his 4e menace for quite some time. Sure, he'll try bombing PM from northern australia but PM is easier to defend as you've got Lae from where to lrcap it.

You have atleast 10 BB's. Form three bombardment fleets, 3 BB's and 3-4 CA's in each. Run them in three nights in succession. Before that, recon PM very very heavily so you have the detection levels through the roof. Good results should be achieved.

Another thing.. does he have a lot of fighters there? and does he have beauforts there?

If not, feel free to just move in the KB after the BB raids and shut the airfield down once and for all with a nice concentrated airfield raid.

If you can manage, bring in 3-4 divisions, with several HQ's and engineers. Each division in atleast 60 AP's and each HQ in atleast 8. Then you ought to land most of them in a single day.

Keep them right in the KB hex until you've neutralized the PM airfield and go and kill them americans there.