War across the Atlantic - Smeulders (Allies) vs. SqzMyLemon (Japan)

[Smeulders]

2 February 42'
Quite the calm day

Burma
Japanese advance troops take Pegu against no opposition, he has moved in with 1 division, 1 infantry, cavalry and engineer regiment. If he also want to protect his flank at Rangoon he doesn't really have the forces to attack Northwards. Of course, neither have I the forces to threaten that flank and he likely knows.

China
He finds the evacuation of Nanyang completed, one 100 AV corps holds to city to delay his pursuit for another day.
Over Changsha 2 oscars-c get shot down during a sweep. My opponent was slightly higher than I was 24000 feet against 20000, but he was outnumbered 10 to 6.

Solomons
Shortlands is taken, KB remains East of New Ireland, I hope he remains there, I've got units unloading at both Suva and Noumea at the moment and I'd rather let them finish than running for the hills.

As some extra info, what the convoys are doing at those bases.
Noumea now has half a regiment, the other half is unloading at Auckland to load on smaller ships for the next leg. 2 more regiments and support troops have just left the West Coast on an amphibious TF.
Suva is at 1 NZ bde and 1 Independent American regiment. Two other regiments are on the way, but still some time out, another will come as soon as it's bought out.
Pago Pago has one USMC and one army regiment, one other USMC regiment will leave the WC in a couple of days.

[Smeulders]

3 February 42'

I've been away the last week, but the game has restarted again and there was some action.

Southwest Pacific
Devastators from Port Moresby raid some shipping at Lae, this move was clearly unexpected as no CAP was over the ships, 4 xAK are sunk.
At the same time my opponent is launching raids on the airfield at Port Moresby, zeroes sweep and Nell bomb.

Burma
A bombing raid attacks my units retreating North from Pegu, only 4 hurricanes are on LRCAP and 3 get shot down by the escorting Oscars, the plane losses hurt more than the bombing itself.

China
Lemon's forces break to rearguards at Nanyang and Loyang, while also routing 2 brigades in the mountains around Yenan. It looks like he's pursuing the retreating forces from Nanyang both in the direction of Sian and West.

DEI
KXII was reconing Balikpapan and was attacked by ASW DD for moderate damage. It didn't spot any large surface combatants in the harbour so the American cruiser TF will launch an attack into that harbour. I'm hoping mission speed will mean they'll move in at full speed to engage during the night as the manual says, otherwise they may be caught in dangerous waters during the day.

[khyberbill]

only 4 hurricanes are on LRCAP

The hurricane will do well against the zero and oscar if it isnt overwhelmed by numbers.

[Smeulders]

Bill: That's why there are a couple of squadrons in Burma already, there were 15 planes on a 50% LRCAP mission, so I would have expected more planes in the air, bad roll of the dice probably. To be sure I'm seriously bumping up the percentage though, squadrons will be rotated to keep fatigue down.

I've gotten the replay and the raid to Balikpapan was a nice victory,a bunch of xAK are sunk for some damage to my destroyers, waiting for the turn for more info though.

[Smeulders]

4-5 February 42'

DEI
The American cruiser forces gets into combat for the first time on the 4th and is successful from the start. On entering Balikpapan harbour they find and sink 2 DMS and briefly engage an enemy convoy. A couple of xAK are damaged before it manages to flee. However, the convoy is encountered again when the Americans retreat and this time the carnage is nearly complete. 2 xAK and a PB are sunk, the remaining 4 xAK and xAP are very heavily damaged. The only survivor is the DD Inazuma, the little destroyer manages to do light damage to Houston and 3 Clemson class destroyers and takes moderate damage in return.

On Borneo Singkawang falls to an overland assault.

Burma
Rangoon is taken before the Japanese even enter it. Bombing raids against my retreating troops continue, but Hurricanes break these up and down an Oscar and 2 bombers. My opponent seems to have about 50 oscars in action around Burma, I've got more fighters waiting on the Indian border, but not enough fields and AV support in Burma to properly use them.

PI
Legaspi falls, leaving Bataan the only base remaining on Luzon. Puerto Princesa falls as well.

China


The 48th corps keeps up it's offensive against the RGC forces. In Kaifeng (top-right) an extra Division and Route Brigade reinforced the 2 divisions that have been routed twice now. This was to no avail, as on the 4th the 48th corps broke down the fortifications and routed the defenders on the 5th. The corps is now completely behind enemy lines and will be eliminated shortly, but in the meantime it has wrecked a number of non-rebuildable units and will force some good troops to turn around, so not a bad trade-off.

From Nanyang he seems to be driving straight for Sian, shouldn't be enough forces to seriously threaten the city though.

Around Changsha he's making the expected move of crossing the river to outflank the city. Some 1000 AV will be sent as quickly as possible to Henyang. I fear these reinforcements might arrive to late and I wonder how to proceed if he manages to cross properly. He still has a good deal of his forces in front of Changsha, so he'll be split up, but even so I wonder if I can get enough forces together to throw him back, without weakening Changsha enough for him to take it with the rest of his forces.

[Smeulders]

6 February 42'

China
Again new moves in China, the tank regiment that was threatening the road Loyan-Sian has now moved and is on the road Sian-Yenan. At the same time he's moving forward there from the East. Irritating as there are some base forces and construction regiments now cut off as well and I fear those don't respawn. This is another city I should have abandoned a lot earlier.

DEI
A serious air campaign has started against Palembang, about 50 bombers, supported with zero sweeps and oscar escorts strike the abandoned airfields.

Solomons
Guadacanal is invaded, this may be the last in this batch of invasion as KB is seen retiring in the direction of Truk. The ANZAC Cruiser force has left Brisbane to raid invasion convoys around Lunga.

Subs
3 duds in the last two days, Tuna and Tarpon on xAKL's, KX on a CM near Balikpapan. My opponent let me know that he it was there to mine the Balikpapan harbour, luckily for me he was a day late.

Misc
POW has arrived in Cape Town and faces about 6 months worth of repairs.

[Smeulders]

7-8 February 42'

DEI
Sweeps have started over Java, not many fighter units there that can stand up to the Zeroes, so I'm ceding the skies over Java unless he also starts bombing.

PI
A first shock attack on Bataan is held easily, the forts hold at level 4 and the Japanese take 5-1 casualties. This may be drawn out for a while.

SWPac
Unescorted raids come in over PM, but don't do much damage.

Sub Recon at Lunga attacks on the surface, so there probably aren't many Surface ships aroud. KB is North of New Britain so the ANZAC Cruisers remain on course for Lunga.

China
It may be due to bad recon, but the movement arrows for the flanking move around Changsha have disappeared, my troop movements seem to have scared him off.

Subs
021 sinks E Saga around Miri
Grayling gets a dud on an xAKL
S-34 was reconning Lunga when she attacked a medium sized xAK on the surface. She expended all her torpedoes in 3 separate salvoes, but the target was sunk.

[Smeulders]

9 February 42'

Malaya
The final stages of the battle for Malaya have begun, about 2000 Japanese AV have entered Singapore, facing off against 900 Allied AV behind strong forts. The crossing didn't hurt my opponent much, except for a recon regiment that took serious casualties as it arrived 2 days early due to it not being set to follow an infantry formation.

PI
Not much happened here, but it's interesting to note that he has only 1500 AV to besiege my 1300 AV in Bataan. I do fear I'll run out of supplies long before I run out of troops.

SWPac
One of the provisional squadrons was sent to provide CAP over PM against the Nell raids, but this plan quickly turned bad. This time a little over 10 zero escorts were provided, but due to coordination problems they came in as a sweep before the Nells. Even though they had been training on A2A non-stop since their formation, they were still somewhat lacking in skill there and were torn apart by the zeroes. At the end of the day 11 were shot down and another 11 damaged for only 2 zeroes and 3 nells shot down. Luckily the first P40E squadrons are arriving from the West Coast, with at least decently skilled pilots.

Conversions
After the 2/42 upgrade the Wickes class destoyers can be converted to APD, a treatment that they will all get.

[Smeulders]

10-11 February 42'

China
At Yenan a division + crosses the river to follow-up my retreat out of Yenan, this leads to an inconclusive shock attack. His tank unit that was moving up the road from Sian has turned tail though, using it to cut supply does seem a better choice than letting it fight on it's own.

Some 4000 AV is moving to Sian from various directions, they force back 2 roadblock corpses.

Some of my smaller units get eliminated in the region around Loyang.

New Guinea
A strike on PM seems imminent, on the 10th airstrikes were halted for a day, but they resumed on the 11th. In the meantime an enemy TF was sighted East of Milne Bay, but for some reason it didn't advance further, maybe bait for my DB ? On the 11th a largish TF is sighted near Lae, guarded by a nearby KB. PM is reinforced with part of a motor brigade, but if he is serious about taking it, he will.

Subs
Thresher gets a dud on an xAK in the Philippine Sea.

[Smeulders]

12-14 February 42'

Singapore
For those reading Lemon's AAR this isn't news, but Singapore fell in but 2 shock attacks. Japanese troops entered the city on the 9th, shock attacked on the 12th and 13th and the city fell, not even a week. On the first day the AV was 2200 versus 800, but despite the forts the Japanese AV was adjusted to 3000 to a 1000 !. This dropped the forts to level 1 and the next day the city fell.

Bataan
The other siege is going slightly better for me, despite my opponent slightly reinforcing his forces a shock attack was held on the 14th, with 1 to 2 odds even. Supply is getting critical though, slightly less than 7000 remaining, less than a week's worth.

China
Some movement here, he's cleaning up in the Loyang area and at the same time pushing hard on Sian, his spearhead is now only a hex away from the city.

New Guinea
Strong landings on Buna, with 2 infantry regiments, this seems like a whole lot, maybe he's contemplating an overland conquest of PM ?

[Smeulders]

15-16 February 42'

Burma
Not a lot of action, but recon suddenly reveals 3 units using the Eastern route around Tongou to flank my defences. There is a single Burmese battalion there, so he's not going to bag a whole lot.

China
Before Sian a single corps counter-attacked against units that were put on pursuit when chasing a corps out of the previous hex. I guessed this wouldn't be a lot, but guessed wrong, on the 16th the Japanese attacked and routed the spent corps, he'll enter Sian soon enough.

Around Yenan he's trying to extract the tank regiment blocking the route to Sian, so my troops should be able to escape. He'll also have to spend some time clearing forces around Yenan.

DEI
Some cleanup in the Northwest corner of Borneo

Subs
Some bad luck for the sub service these days. First S-23 put a dud in a DD and missed another DD in a second attack of Buna. It seems like I'm getting a lot of duds with the S-boats as well. The second stroke of bad luck was Tautog failing an attack on an AS being moved to Rabaul. I'm guessing we'll start seeing at least some subs of the coast of Australia and NZ soon now.

[Smeulders]

A short review of the Malaya campaign, and I'm afraid I'll have to be pretty hard on myself on this one.

The first steps of the campaign where the landings on Kota Bahru, the invasion in the North and the landing at Kuantan. This last invasion really brought me into trouble from the start. I didn't dare retreat many forces in Strat mode out of fear from air attacks, but this meant a lot of my forces stayed in the North longer. Lemon then sent his forces straight through the jungle instead of along the path, meaning he cut the road further to the South, without losing much time because the route is shorter, if you take a look at my posts at the time you can see how differently I viewed this then.

When his troops cut the road at Kuala Lumpur I still had 2 brigades and various other smaller formations to the North. I held the city until one brigade had made it there, but before my troops managed to leave the city on their own they were kicked out. This hurt the 11th division that was holding the city a lot, by this point both of the Indian divisions had lost much of their combat power, which definitely shortened my defence later on in Singapore. This was the decisive stage of the campaign and too much of a forward defence (not really by choice, but because I underestimated the speed of advance from Kuantan) was the big mistake from my side in Malaya.

The last stage was of course the battle for Singapore itself, but my opponent brought enough troops and mine were weakened so Lemon broke my lines quickly in 2 days of real combat.

[DanielAnsell]

Just caught up with the AAR. Good work on it, by the way.

Did you get any chance to evacuate cadres or units out of Malaya?

[Smeulders]

Carry: Cadres of both the Indian divisions have arrived in India and both will be rebuilt. Evacuating them isn't too hard, you can use air units to lift fragments to Sumatra or even Java and then ship them from there. This will result in very small cadres that will take a lot of time to be rebuilt though.

[Smeulders]

17-20 February 42'

DEI
The fall of Singapore will mean a lot more movement in the DEI in the coming weeks and the start has been made. Bengkalis was invaded on the 20th, an air campaign against Palembang has begun and there are sightings that indicate mini KB is entering the DEI again.

My moves are mainly to shift my combat TFs slightly to the West, Batavia has become too dangerous to keep a combat TF stationed, so now the British and Dutch are stationed at Soerabaja and the Americans are moving towards Ambon/Darwin.

China
Mainly movement in the South of China, an offensive from Canton takes Wuchow and Kukong also falls, I had only left token forces in Wuchow and Kukong was empty. The Chinese do disappoint however, about 1000 AV was marching from Kukong to the Changsha region, only one regiment stood between them and the river (in an open hex), yet they fail to break through, a 10:1 advantage in raw AV means nothing !

Burma
He keeps moving ground forces forwards, Tongou will fall shortly, I don't really feel like fighting much, but retreat a bit slower, this will hopefully draw some reinforcements from Singapore.

Subs
The 19th is a good day for the Silent Service, Sargo put a torpedo in AO Shiretoko in the straight between Taiwan and the PI. Messages included oil cargo burning, so that's likely a kill. KXIV then made the day complete by torpedoing CL Kashii some 150 miles of the coast of Malaya, the Cruiser is claimed sunk.

Other attacks were made by Grayling and S-23, both shoot duds at xAKs.

[Smeulders]

21-22 February 42'

So we've been away for a while, first RL got in the way a bit and now that we were set to get underway again it's patch trouble. Lemon had updated to patch 3 beta, did his turn and sent it to me, but I hadn't downloaded the beta yet and now we're already at the official release. We're looking for ways to get the beta patch to me, otherwise Lemon will have to redo his turn.

DEI
Palembang was invaded, 2 infantry and a tank regiment are the main force, my ground forces aren't much more than the original garrison, so it won't hold out too long. The CD guns did do their share, the two xAK's that they got in their sights were thrashed pretty decently, but I'm surprised I'm not seeing any more. The port was mined as well, but that hasn't had any noticeable effect up till now. In other Sumatra news Bengkalis falls.

A small DD/TB TF came over to shell Kendari on the 22nd, but Banshees at the base sortied and seriously damaged/probably sunk TB Manzura.

Burma
Tongou in central Burma falls.

Subs
The Japanese subs show themselves, in the straight between Java and Sumatra the CM Rigel is sunk, the escorting destroyer put 3 DC's on target, damage is probably moderate, but not lethal. This straight was seriously guarded, the TF was attacked 3 times in 2 hexes while passing through.

KXI retaliates for the Dutch, sinking medium xAK Nojima Maru some 150 miles of Mersing.
 

[khyberbill]

the CM Rigel is sunk

That is too bad. I like using the Rigel for fast minelaying ops. You are not allowed to use her in our 2x3!!!

[Smeulders]

It was a bit sad, but she had laid her mines at Palembang already, now she was going to Australia to wait until her upgrade into an AR. Her sacrifice wasn't in vain though, now I at least know where the Japanese subs are hanging out, mostly in the combat zones it seems.

[Smeulders]

23 February 42'

I finally got the patch 3 beta and we can start playing again.

DEI
Further landings on Sumatra, this time in Tandjoengbalai, the most Southern of the bases on the railroad. I've dispatched Indomitable to a point Northwest of the island to see if it can get a strike in on one of these invasions.

Around Palembang the battle continues, but a shock attack destroys the fortifications and the base will likely fall quickly. In the meantime mini-KB has shown up between Palembang and Singapore.

The real KB is spotted as well, South of Mindanao, but retiring in the direction of Babeldaob, quite strange as I don't remember seeing KB entering the DEI.

And the final DEI news are some pretty decent air attacks on Ambon, they don't do too much damage though.

Burma
Leaking CAP isn't my friend. A hurricane leaks 3 hexes from Mandalay to just North of Tongou and is shot down by oscars escorting a raid. Tomorrow, 2 Hurri and 1 AVG squadron will fly LRCAP over the retreating unit to see if they can catch another strike.

Subs
I-10 attacks a DM escorting a convoy near Lord Howe Island, but the torpedoes miss and the escorts can't find the sub.

[Smeulders]

24 February 42'

DEI
Unsurprisingly, Palembang falls to shock attack in Northern Sumatra 3 infantry regiments and some supporting troops are ashore. Obviously Lemon is looking to make short work of the Sumatra campaign.

Burma
A nice victory for the RAF and USAAF over Burma today, a raid was caught with 2 escorting Oscars and 14 Anns shot down. The difference between 35k Hurricanes and 20k AVG planes was staggering though. No hurricanes were lost for 15 kills, the AVG 1 kill for one lost +3 operational losses.

PI
A deliberate attack on Bataan fails again, the forts hold at level 4. Worse is that supply has fallen from 2700 to 700 due to the fighting. I'll run out of supplies tomorrow or the day after that and from then on each attack will probably end in a Japanese victory. Lemon is quite frustrated that he doesn't seem to make any headway here, and I must say I've probably gotten lucky that no forts have been destroyed so far.

Subs
S-38 misses the CVL Ryujo off Palembang, quite unfortunate
KXI adds another scalp to it's list, the PB Kantori Maru off Mersing. With 3 confirmed and one probable it takes the lead in kills for Allied subs.

A question for the readers on this, what have Allied subs managed to accomplish in your games so far? Lemon seems to think them particularly strong and I wonder if mine is really an exceptional game in this regard, or par for the course. So far these are the Japanese losses due to subs.

25 xAK/xAKL
2 TK
1 AO
5 PB
4 DMS/E/APD
2 DD
1 CL