cap_and_gown(j) v witpqs(a) - no witpqs

[CapAndGown]

May 24, 1942

Kaga was released from the ship yard today. Together with Junyo and Yamato it now heads to Truk to join up with KB2. (Yamato is not going to be part of this group, I just want it at Truk where it will be closer to the theater of operations.) KB2 will then be composed of CVs Akagi, Kaga, Junyo, CVLs Shoho and Zuiho and possibly CVE Taiyo (which is loaded with Zeros). (Hiyo will be available in about 28 days. And a Taiyo class CVE should be finished building tomorrow.) Once Kaga and Junyo reach Truk, KB2 will make a sweep to the south of the Tonga Islands to look for convoys heading to and from Oz.

[CapAndGown]

May 28, 1942

Clark Field fell on the third assault. I was actually a little surprised since some of my units still had disruption in the teens. Cleaning up Bataan should not take any time at all, not after the allies suffered over 25,000 casualties.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ground combat at Clark Field (79,76)
Japanese Deliberate attack

Attacking force 69532 troops, 709 guns, 599 vehicles, Assault Value = 2424
Defending force 40127 troops, 577 guns, 504 vehicles, Assault Value = 1199

Japanese engineers reduce fortifications to 0

Japanese adjusted assault: 1065
Allied adjusted defense: 484

Japanese assault odds: 2 to 1 (fort level 0)

Japanese forces CAPTURE Clark Field !!!

Combat modifiers
Defender: terrain(+), leaders(+), experience(-), supply(-)
Attacker:

Japanese ground losses:
1651 casualties reported
Squads: 1 destroyed, 122 disabled
Non Combat: 8 destroyed, 157 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 33 disabled
Guns lost 2 (0 destroyed, 2 disabled)
Vehicles lost 106 (11 destroyed, 95 disabled)

Allied ground losses:
25002 casualties reported
Squads: 845 destroyed, 234 disabled
Non Combat: 1656 destroyed, 181 disabled
Engineers: 158 destroyed, 0 disabled
Guns lost 377 (352 destroyed, 25 disabled)
Vehicles lost 414 (412 destroyed, 2 disabled)
Units retreated 33
Units destroyed 5

Next up: Mindanao.

[CapAndGown]

May 30, 1942

Crap. Just when Kaga gets out of the yards (it will arrive at Truk next turn) Hiryu eats two torpedoes fired by a Dutch sub. I knew there were subs in the area. In fact, KB1 was sitting right on top of a sub at the end of last turn. I have been playing cat and mouse with these subs for at least two turns, trying to move away from them hoping they couldn't catch me. Except for the fact that Perth is obviously a major sub base for witpqs, so there are a lot of subs coming and going on the western side of Australia. My luck ran out today, obviously.

If Hiryu survives it will be out of the war for 4 months. Right now it has 12 sys, 68 float (33 major) and 33 engine (26 major). No fires, so that is good. But there are still all those subs around and 68 float is appalling. I hope I don't have to scuttle her.

I wonder what witpqs thinks I am up to? I'll bet he thinks I am aiming for Perth. A Hudson unit that had been at Darwin doing naval search is no longer there. I would guess he moved it west, perhaps to Broome.

Well, it doesn't much matter at the moment: the invasion of Broome commences tomorrow with support from the rest of KB1.

[CapAndGown]

May 31, 1942 (June 1 orders)

Well, no more subs showed up to finish off Hiryu. I don't know if that will continue to be the case. She has a very dangerous passage to make back to Sorebaja. Float damage came down 1 point. Not much, but at least it didn't go up. She is only making 3 knots right now, so it will be a long while before she can even make port. I have 3 ARs heading to Sorebaja right now to help make some repairs to the non-major damage before I try to get the ship to a shipyard. Unfortunately, even if she makes it to Sorebaja, going from there to a shipyard seems fraught with danger since the Java Sea appears to be a superhighway for subs. (I am bringing ASW float planes down here to help manage this problem.)

Broome was invaded and no one is home. What in the hell is witpqs doing? He has not been developing bases in western Australia or northern Australia. He has not been developing bases in the Pacific either. The Line Islands are no bigger than they were at the start of the game. Same with the society islands, although one of my subs did spot a convoy of xAPs going to Tahiti. He has been developing bases in southeast Australia, India and on the U.S. west coast. Is this a defensive posture? Or is he preparing to launch his offensive from India?

Today was spent converting xAKs. Some were converted to TKs while others were converted to AKs. More will be converted to AKs when they finish with their current tasks and reach an appropriate port.

The operations report indicated that 108 pilots had their training accelerated. Big whoopdy doo. I don't need more poorly trained replacements, I need better trained ones, even if there are fewer of them. I have more replacements in the pool than I could possible train right now. I ended up pulling a bunch of the TRACOM guys out of TRACOM and assigned them to some training squadrons in order to raise the average experience level of those squadrons. It seems as though newbies that are training will rise towards the squadron's average experience level. The higher this is, the faster they seem to gain in experience.

The HI are down to less than 100 days fuel. Yikes! Fortunately, now that Palembang and Medan are on line, that is about to change. Another big fuel convoy is currently loading at Singapore and should set sail the day after tomorrow. (I am using Balikpapan to send fuel to Rabaul and Truk.)

[CapAndGown]

June 4, 1942

Bataan fell today on the first assault. Luzon is now completely cleared. The troops at Bataan - 5 divisions and 3 armor regiments plus assorted artillery - are now marching back to Manila. Minesweepers have been dispatched from Batangas to clear the mines. xAPs are also sitting at Batangas waiting for the mines to be cleared so that they can then dock at Manila to pick up our victorious troops and send them to . . . where ever. Two divisions will be landed on Mindanao. I will probably use another division to clean out the rest of the central Philippines, such as Cebu, Leyte, etc.

An empty Port Hedland on the northern coast of Australia was invaded yesterday and will be captured tomorrow. Witpqs has also evacuated Darwin. Only one unit is still there. I am guessing this is some kind of static coastal defense force. So if he is just going to give it to me, I am going to take it. I figure it can't hurt if I don't try too hard to hold it. I won't lose many troops if I don't put a lot in there. And it will give me added time to develop bases in the eastern DEI.

Hiryu has managed to bring its float damage down to 53 and increased its speed to 5 knots. It is still several days away from Sorebaja. It is being covered by KB1.

[CapAndGown]

June 6, 1942

The mines at Bataan were cleared out today. Transports are now heading to Manila to pick up the divisions marching there from Bataan. Some of them will be used to secure the remainder of the Philippines, in particular, Mindanao.

Hiryu made it to Sorebaja. It will repair the non-major damage there and then head to Singapore were it will go into the yards to repair the major damage.

After checking tracker for ship upgrades I found that Shokaku and Zuikaku can be upgraded to include radar. So KB 1 is now headed to Singapore where this carrier division will undergo the upgrade procedure. That will take until the end of June. That will leave only Soryu and and Ryujo for KB 1, so I will send these carriers over to Truk to join up with the other carriers of KB 2. Hiyo should be finished in 18 days. That will give me a carrier striking force of Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Junyo, Hiyo, plus the CVLs Ryujo, Zuiho and Shoho. Because Shokaku and Zuikaku will both have radar installed, it looks like they will not be serving in the same carrier division for a while. Instead, they will be split up so that I can have 2 carrier striking forces, each one of which will have a radar equipped ship.

Kukong in southern China was captured today. I am now nearing the completion my objectives in southern China and the establishment of my desired defensive line.

[CapAndGown]

Here is the defensive line in northern China

[CapAndGown]

Here is a front line trace of the Japanese Empire as of June 6, 1942.

Darwin will be secured shortly. A division at Sorebaja is 100% prepped for Darwin and the AK amphibious force that was used to secure Broome and Port Hedland is now heading back to Sorebaja to pick up this division to land at Darwin. The only allied unit at Darwin is that static CD unit. Witpqs is bugging out of northern Australia. Recon of Katherine shows that the units there are marching south towards Tennant Creek.

The big question is whether I launch an operation aimed at securing Perth. The goal here is to help isolate Australia from being reinforced and resupplied from the west. The AK lift capacity needed for such an operation will not be available till the end of June when all of the xAKs I converted will come on line. That seems rather late for an offensive. Nevertheless, except for Kalgoorlie, witpqs has not been building up these bases. Instead, it would seem he has hunkered down in southeast Australia.

One final note: I have become concerned that witpqs may be sending convoys to Australia from the west coast of the US along the extreme southern edge of the map. That would burn up a lot of fuel, but it still seems very doable. To counter this, if he is doing it, I am surging a large number of subs into the area to check. I am also planning a carrier raid down south. I would especially like to find an allied tanker convoy. Preventing Australia from being refueled would put a huge crimp in any effort to launch an offensive from that quarter.

[Mike Solli]

ORIGINAL: bklooste

Refinary never pays for itself as you have access at home , for oil repairs  your break even point is the second half of 44.

I agree about refineries, but for a different reason. There is excess refinery capacity at the Home Islands. Ships need to go there. You may as well move your excess oil there to be refined.

I don't understand your statement about oil repairs. For me, oil is produced to ultimately be used to fuel your ships and HI. It has nothing to do with getting your expended supply out of it. As long as you have excess supply, repair your oil centers, until they are in range of Allied bombers.

[CapAndGown]

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

ORIGINAL: bklooste

Refinary never pays for itself as you have access at home , for oil repairs  your break even point is the second half of 44.

I agree about refineries, but for a different reason. There is excess refinery capacity at the Home Islands. Ships need to go there. You may as well move your excess oil there to be refined.

I don't understand your statement about oil repairs. For me, oil is produced to ultimately be used to fuel your ships and HI. It has nothing to do with getting your expended supply out of it. As long as you have excess supply, repair your oil centers, until they are in range of Allied bombers.

I don't understand any of this conversation. Oil does not fuel ships. Fuel does. Oil does not feed HI, fuel does. Oil does not produce supply, refineries do. So there is no "payback point" for repaired oil centers. There is a "payback point" for repaired refineries: 1000 days for each point repaired. Also, you are going to need to transport fuel from the SRA if you want to keep your resource convoys running. Between the resource convoys, HI, and your fleet, the home islands are sucking down more fuel than is produced by the refineries there.

Generally, I am not repairing refineries. I made two exceptions to this: Sorebaja and Palembang. For Sorebaja, I wanted a) the extra supply produced and b) the fuel produced that could feed the HI I expanded there as well as supply the ships based there. Plus, there were not that many refineries damaged when I took the place.

For Palembang, I am repairing both the oil and the refineries because this is a self-financing operation. Right now the refinery there is producing over 730 supply points a day. Those supply points can be plowed right back into repairing both the refinery and the oil centers.

As to repairing oil centers, I have been repairing Miri, Samarinda (not much damage there, but some) and Palembang. I am repairing the oil centers so that these installations will produced more oil than is consumed by the refineries there. That will leave an excess of oil that can then be sent to the HI.

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli


As long as you have excess supply, repair your oil centers, until they are in range of Allied bombers.

I agree. At least I end up with same result in my analysis.

[bklooste]

ORIGINAL: cap_and_gown

ORIGINAL: bklooste

Refinary never pays for itself as you have access at home , for oil repairs  your break even point is the second half of 44.

I am not quite sure I understand how you break even on oil. A refinery produces supply so it can pay back (after 1000 days) the supply spent repairing it. But an oil center just produces oil.

At any rate, the only refineries I am repairing are those at Palembang (since this is self-financing, don't need to bring in extra supply) and one at Sorebaja. The Sorebaja refinery is being repaired because I want the extra fuel on Java to supply the HI centers there that I have expanded along with naval assets I have based there.

Most Oil goes to HI .. Which produces supplies, that oil compared to repair cost has the payback. I wouldnt repair refineries ever - ship it to your other refineries.

[CapAndGown]

There seems to be a basic misconception here: that the home islands have excess refining capacity. That is not true. Right now tracker is telling me that for the Honshu/Kyushu/Shikoku group 8950 oil points are consumed per day to make 8055 fuel points. Those 8055 fuel points are not enough to feed even the heavy industry, much less any of your shipping (most importantly your resource convoys). Heavy industry alone consumes 12150 fuel points per day. This results in a daily deficit of 4085 fuel points. That mean every single day you need to bring in 4085 fuel points just to feed your factories. (Note: I have not expanded my HI in the home islands. In fact, the only places I have expanded HI are Singapore, Batavia, and Sorebaja.)

For the home islands to have excess refining capacity, they would have to be producing more fuel than is consumed by the heavy industry. In that case it would make sense to just bring oil back to the home islands where it could be turned into fuel. But this is not the case. Your refineries in the home islands cannot keep up with demand no matter how much oil you bring home. You need those refineries in the SRA because you need that fuel which the home islands by themselves cannot make enough of.

[bklooste]

ORIGINAL: cap_and_gown

There seems to be a basic misconception here: that the home islands have excess refining capacity. That is not true. Right now tracker is telling me that for the Honshu/Kyushu/Shikoku group 8950 oil points are consumed per day to make 8055 fuel points. Those 8055 fuel points are not enough to feed even the heavy industry, much less any of your shipping (most importantly your resource convoys). Heavy industry alone consumes 12150 fuel points per day. This results in a daily deficit of 4085 fuel points. That mean every single day you need to bring in 4085 fuel points just to feed your factories. (Note: I have not expanded my HI in the home islands. In fact, the only places I have expanded HI are Singapore, Batavia, and Sorebaja.)

For the home islands to have excess refining capacity, they would have to be producing more fuel than is consumed by the heavy industry. In that case it would make sense to just bring oil back to the home islands where it could be turned into fuel. But this is not the case. Your refineries in the home islands cannot keep up with demand no matter how much oil you bring home. You need those refineries in the SRA because you need that fuel which the home islands by themselves cannot make enough of.

Obviously its best to ship fuel home from the DEI , there is still oil left afterwards and if you ship this oil home you have a surplus. ie DEI+ Home refinaries is > than total oil production hence repairing any is futile ( since its only 9% better to ship fuel than oil) .

[Mike Solli]

ORIGINAL: cap_and_gown

There seems to be a basic misconception here: that the home islands have excess refining capacity. That is not true. Right now tracker is telling me that for the Honshu/Kyushu/Shikoku group 8950 oil points are consumed per day to make 8055 fuel points. Those 8055 fuel points are not enough to feed even the heavy industry, much less any of your shipping (most importantly your resource convoys). Heavy industry alone consumes 12150 fuel points per day. This results in a daily deficit of 4085 fuel points. That mean every single day you need to bring in 4085 fuel points just to feed your factories. (Note: I have not expanded my HI in the home islands. In fact, the only places I have expanded HI are Singapore, Batavia, and Sorebaja.)

For the home islands to have excess refining capacity, they would have to be producing more fuel than is consumed by the heavy industry. In that case it would make sense to just bring oil back to the home islands where it could be turned into fuel. But this is not the case. Your refineries in the home islands cannot keep up with demand no matter how much oil you bring home. You need those refineries in the SRA because you need that fuel which the home islands by themselves cannot make enough of.

Initially, there is a large reserve of oil in Honshu (~2.75 million oil). Therefore, the refineries are all functioning at capacity. They use 8850 oil per day while Japan produces 1560 oil per day. There is a net reduction of ~7300 oil per day. The oil reserves will last about 375 days. After that, there will be 730 idle refineries. When we talk about excess refinery capacity, we mean starting ~1 Jan 43. Excess oil from the SRA needs to be shipped to Japan to push that date to the right. Every 7300 oil shipped to Japan pushes that date one day to the right.

[Mike Solli]

Duplicate

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli


Every 7300 oil shipped to Japan pushes that date one day to the right.

Nicely phrased. Concise. Wish I could do this ...

[CapAndGown]

June 10, 1942

Today I found out that a whole bunch of my aviation units can upgrade to having radar. I had found some base forces with radar that I had bought out of Manchuria. I also found a base force on Luzon with radar. So I decided to find out from tracker just how many radar units were in use. While looking at the device list I realized that all those sound detector units could upgrade to radar starting way back in March! Well, after that discovery I went around the map selecting aviation units where I needed to turn replacements on. Not everyone is getting this treatment, mainly units in areas where there are lots and lots of supplies, or in areas where I would expect to be attacked by LBA.

Another large amount of time was spent arranging for ship conversions and upgrades. Do you know beyond just finding the stupid ships that can be converted, it takes 6 clicks to do the conversion? [8|] One click to pick the ship. Second click to pick the conversion. Third click to confirm the convesion. Fourth click to change from Shipyard to Pierside repair mode. (Don't want to use valuable shipyard space for these conversions.) Fifth click to confirm that change. Sixth click to get back to the list of ships so you can start the next conversion.

KB 1 reached Singapore and the Zui/Sho-kaku pair were disbanded with upgrade set to on so they can get their radar sets. In fact, most of KB 1 was disbanded in order to undergo maintenance and get rid of their accumulated sys damage.

A regiment at Sorebaja is currently loading on AKs for the assault on Darwin. This assault will be preceded by a bombardment by 3xBBs and 6 or 7xCAs. I would really like to suppress the CD guns so I don't lose any more AKs. Even though I am going to have an awful lot of them by the end of June, I still don't like losing these guys.

My 5 divisions on Luzon have made it back to Manila where they will board ship for various destinations. They are rather fagged out, so they will rest for a few turns before embarking. The first order of business here will be cleaning up the rest of the Philippines.

Below is a map detailing my efforts to deal with the sub menace around Palembang/Singapore. My float planes are getting quite good at ASW. A float plane from the Mizhio which is escorting a fuel convoy to the HI reportedly got a hit on a US sub about 180 miles west of Bataan.

[CapAndGown]

June 13, 1942

Sabang, the northern most base on Sumatra, and the last coastal base on that island was captured today. There are two interior dot bases that I am not going to bother capturing. Sebang will become a base from which to patrol the Bay of Bengal.

Operations to clean up the Philippines began today.

Mostly what I am doing is capturing dots in various areas and building up bases, particularly in the eastern DEI and in the Solomons/New Guinea regions. I am also developing the Marshals and Gilberts.

Witpqs obviously feels a little more secure at the moment. Tahiti just went to a size two port and Christmas Island has been expanding. My guess is that he worked on the fortifications first before developed the other facilities. He has been building India up quite a bit, and today the airfield at Colombo expanded to size 5. This raises an interesting possibility. If I were interested in the auto-victory, Ceylon might be a way to get there. He no doubt has a large number of troops there. And I bet he would commit his naval forces to a defense of the island. This would give the opportunity, then, of capturing large numbers of troops and sinking a good deal of allied naval forces. Thing is, I am not as ballsy as PzB, or even String, who has launched a very large and very late (mid-June) offensive against Fiji. I like picking off understrength garrisons. A full fledged multi-division fight is not something I relish.


Darwin should be invaded in a about 3 or 4 days.

[bklooste]

Looks like a death  trap to me for subs..throw in some mines as well.