AI and Jap Production

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

The Japanese industrial base wasn't big enough to supply the additional skilled personel (even before the IJA started drafting them), and the machine tools availability and production line engineering skills and experiance weren't available either. So when production was pushed to the max, you wound up with things like a 30% rejection rate on areo engines.

But part of the problem WAS solvable: Parillo says the Army and Navy ignored each other's needs:

A plant making Navy planes would have a critical worker - and the Navy would not draft him - but the Army said "who cares" and drafted the guy anyway - so the plant loses its expert worker! Also, they put American POWs in shipyards! These guys regularly sabotaged the ships! One of these POWs said "I think they must do it for morale reasons - surely they know it isn't efficient." [In fact, about 2000 US soldiers died at Hiroshima - they were prisoners not in camps but in industrial facilities. Along with about 20,000 Koreans - people who were nominally victims of 80 years of Japanese imperial aggression and such good allies they were the main way we knew of things in the empire.]

The degree of NON-cooperation between the Japanese Army and Navy is almost impossible to believe. Someday maybe someone will do a really realistic WITP where the Allies are played by the AI and the players can compete as the REAL opponants..., the IJA and the IJN! Of course, BOTH of them were competing against their own Civilian Economy (as witness the military's shipping returning empty to Japan from the SRA---or putting the Civilian Population on "rationing" 8 months BEFORE the war started)

[Sneer]

there are good arguments about war economy of both USA and Japan but i fear that if all problems Japan had would be modelled
with other factor's not changed
- players know history
- players know exactly how diffrent ships/planes works against each other
- players tested many diffrent strategies till the moment of next game
- players never care about troop and ship losses - think more in terms of points lost
... game will be always much faster and bloody than history

conclusions ....
we have big fun from playing this game and it is based on fact that Japan can hit hard for more than half a year
otherwise there will be shorter opening phase + much shorter mid war stage

i know this argument is nothing against any seriuos reserach and will of historical correctness
just 2 cents about my feelings
I recently experianced alternative game where room left to japan was much more narrow than in stock game and i think number of players taking Japan in PBEM will drop significantly
and as it was written
mods are choosed to play and it nobody is forced to them

[el cid again]

The degree of NON-cooperation between the Japanese Army and Navy is almost impossible to believe. Someday maybe someone will do a really realistic WITP where the Allies are played by the AI and the players can compete as the REAL opponants..., the IJA and the IJN! Of course, BOTH of them were competing against their own Civilian Economy (as witness the military's shipping returning empty to Japan from the SRA---or putting the Civilian Population on "rationing" 8 months BEFORE the war started)

But before you get too "we were superior" about this - note that in PTO we NEVER DID have a joint command - and in fact ran two separate offensives - until they met at Okinawa. The Army Navy divide was pretty awful on our side too - see The War Between the Geneals (or something like that). Frankly - and I am a joint guy - this is not because I served in the Navy ( and my last service was an Army like one ) - I think Mac was a very bad choice. After all, he had been the organizer of the defense of the Philippines (and made a wealthy man by the process - which I view as corruption) for many years - after a lot of personal background in country. His defense plan did not survive very long - and it was severely negatively impacted by his previous decisions (e.g. stop stockpiling food on Bataan - because we won't be going there). I think his methods at "Bloody Buna" are questionable (he relieved EVERY officer and sent a division forward under sergeants - and a colonel he sent forward from his personal staff). IF he was justified in that act, it says very little for US Army methods in officer training! I have no problem holding the commander responsible for the performance of his unit - and if I relieved him the new one gets to bring his own chief of staff. But there is no way all the line officers were junk, and there is no way it is good for cohesion, morale, or near term effectiveness to order them all relieved for cause. I see a pattern of Mac not going to the front himself - Dougout Doug was his nickname for cause - and it explains why he didn't know he was facing only a single brigade with two corps for weeks! When relieved by Truman, the incoming army commander found an army incompetent in the basics - and immediately ordered the fundamentals be addressed - as they should always have been. That time Mac was set to jump off in an attack on the SAME river line the Chinese People's Volunteer Army of Korea actually did attack across. He outnumbered that army significantly, and certainly he had much better equipment (a CPVA division at full TO&E had a single baby battalion of 75mm guns - typically Japanese 75mm field guns). Not all the problems are on the Army side either: search in vein for a brilliant battle of maneuver in the Central Pacific. Frontal attacks at expected points (not one time was Japanese intel wrong about where the next attack would come) is not nice - from the point of view of our own casualties. Trained to land landing craft in the old style - on the last APA ever built - I said "this is stupid" - and the Marines said "you are right." We tipped the enemy hand by the Makin Island raid - itself a technical failure - and beacuse of that attempt to make some headlines - we faced a much tougher enemy on the beaches. The Japanese had no monopoly on dumb.

[el cid again]

- players never care about troop and ship losses - think more in terms of points lost
... game will be always much faster and bloody than history

Not all players.

I always let players judge success or failure.

I do not understand - never looked at - never will look at - and never make any decision in the context of - "victory points." I make all decisions based on real objectives. And I most assurredly do care about casualties. On principle.

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

The degree of NON-cooperation between the Japanese Army and Navy is almost impossible to believe. Someday maybe someone will do a really realistic WITP where the Allies are played by the AI and the players can compete as the REAL opponants..., the IJA and the IJN! Of course, BOTH of them were competing against their own Civilian Economy (as witness the military's shipping returning empty to Japan from the SRA---or putting the Civilian Population on "rationing" 8 months BEFORE the war started)

But before you get too "we were superior" about this - note that in PTO we NEVER DID have a joint command - and in fact ran two separate offensives - until they met at Okinawa. The Army Navy divide was pretty awful on our side too - see The War Between the Geneals (or something like that). Frankly - and I am a joint guy - this is not because I served in the Navy ( and my last service was an Army like one ) - I think Mac was a very bad choice. After all, he had been the organizer of the defense of the Philippines (and made a wealthy man by the process - which I view as corruption) for many years - after a lot of personal background in country. His defense plan did not survive very long - and it was severely negatively impacted by his previous decisions (e.g. stop stockpiling food on Bataan - because we won't be going there). I think his methods at "Bloody Buna" are questionable (he relieved EVERY officer and sent a division forward under sergeants - and a colonel he sent forward from his personal staff). IF he was justified in that act, it says very little for US Army methods in officer training! I have no problem holding the commander responsible for the performance of his unit - and if I relieved him the new one gets to bring his own chief of staff. But there is no way all the line officers were junk, and there is no way it is good for cohesion, morale, or near term effectiveness to order them all relieved for cause. I see a pattern of Mac not going to the front himself - Dougout Doug was his nickname for cause - and it explains why he didn't know he was facing only a single brigade with two corps for weeks! When relieved by Truman, the incoming army commander found an army incompetent in the basics - and immediately ordered the fundamentals be addressed - as they should always have been. That time Mac was set to jump off in an attack on the SAME river line the Chinese People's Volunteer Army of Korea actually did attack across. He outnumbered that army significantly, and certainly he had much better equipment (a CPVA division at full TO&E had a single baby battalion of 75mm guns - typically Japanese 75mm field guns). Not all the problems are on the Army side either: search in vein for a brilliant battle of maneuver in the Central Pacific. Frontal attacks at expected points (not one time was Japanese intel wrong about where the next attack would come) is not nice - from the point of view of our own casualties. Trained to land landing craft in the old style - on the last APA ever built - I said "this is stupid" - and the Marines said "you are right." We tipped the enemy hand by the Makin Island raid - itself a technical failure - and beacuse of that attempt to make some headlines - we faced a much tougher enemy on the beaches. The Japanese had no monopoly on dumb.

I'm not about to argue that our Army and Navy didn't have their rivalries.., but there is no way you can compare them with the IJN/IJA. Both Ghormley/Halsey's command in the South Pacific and Mac's in the Southwest Pacific WERE "joint commands". And while I have already stated my not exactly stellar opinion of MacArthur (the Philippines and Buna are both examples of ego-centric incompetence on the highest level), I think you are overstating some of the rest of your claims. The jump into the Marshalls caught the Japanese by suprise, as did Mac's finally taking his head out of his ass and start "jumping" up the New Guinea coast. And in many places there wasn't much "room to manuever" in the choice of targets. What would be the other choices if you wanted to avoid the Marianas? Remember, you want to base a LOT of very large bombers wherever you choose. All in all, while the two US services had some problems; compared to the Japanese they were "kissin' cousins". And frankly, with US abundance of production, we were im much better shape to absorb what foolishness there was. I have no idea what Korea has to do with this question, so I'm ignoring your comments on that score.

[el cid again]

I'm not about to argue that our Army and Navy didn't have their rivalries.., but there is no way you can compare them with the IJN/IJA.

It is a mixed bag. You can cite the case of the IJN captain assigned to Gen Yamashita for his op in Malaya - surely the crown jewel in the IJA ops - and being joint may have a lot to do with why they won (with half the force of the enemy they attacked). Tsuji - an army officer - has nice things to say about the naval officer of equal rank on the same staff. Things like 'he told me whatever you need, we will do it.' I think the good and the bad were mixed on both sides.

It is pretty clear to me there should have been a unified command in the Pacific as there was in ETO. And it is pretty clear that Adm King was not going to go for Mac as the unified commander - for what may be good reasons. Was it really smart to have two offensives - and a line between the zones where things got "lost in the crack" (thinking of a critical time patrol planes were not talking because they belonged to the wrong command - they told their base - not the command that needed to know).
As for surprise in the Marshalls - never happened. Japanese intel always had the next target properly identified - no exceptions. And that is the official USN version I was taught.

[Mike Scholl]

As for surprise in the Marshalls - never happened. Japanese intel always had the next target properly identified - no exceptions. And that is the official USN version I was taught. I'm not denying thst with the fall of the Gilberts the Japanese knew the Marshall's were next. But they figured it out far too late to do them any good..., and we went through the Marshall's like a chainsaw through butter...

[el cid again]

Check - then we agree after all.