Fuel Supply allies

[Misconduct]

In my game its approaching 4/15/42 as Allies and I am running into a pretty rough fuel situation, few tankers in a Convoy going to Pearl, then pearl to Canton - Canton to Lunganville. However I am so short on fuel I am having to load up transports to transfer fuel out instead of supplies, any tips on moving fuel? I think CS convoys can move fuel but haven't tinkered with it yet only use them for supplies.

[witpqs]

There's only a slight trick of using AK's in a CS convoy to move fuel instead of supplies. This exact procedure might be unnecessary but it does work.

- Create the convoy.
- Set the destination.
- Set it to load fuel. (this is the key step)
- Change it to CS.

Can do the same thing for resources.

Why are you running so low on fuel? Have you lost zillions of tankers?

[Misconduct]

Yeah I lost around 20 or so already, mainly from the broken up KB that runs around randomly so much I can't keep track, I thought all 5 carriers were hitting Java, but Hiryu so happen to showed up at Baker island and wacked 10 tankers offloading fuel at Canton, which amazes me since I had 4 squadron of PBY's keeping an eye on that area. rest were caught by a japanese destroyer who took on 10 tankers and won with only 1 hit.

[Cad908]

I have played around a little with this issue and would recommend a different approach as allied, especially for 1942 and into 1943. The main themes to me are:

1. Where are my fuel supplies?
2. Where do they need to go?
3. How do I get them there?

Question 1, the answer is simple: Los Angeles, Eastern US and Abadan.

Question 2, you need to supply Australian, Indian and to a much lesser extent New Zealand heavy industry with fuel. By doing this, you will generate piles supply from their heavy industry which you can then forward to support offensive operations. You need fleet fuel for Colombo and Pearl Harbor. You also need strategic stocks for offensive fleet operations in the South Pacific and East Indies. You need to select strategic bases that will become the logistic hubs for your early play as allied. When you select these hubs, you need to keep in mind how you will defend them if the Japanese come calling. My first moves have been to collect all the tankers in the East Indies in early December 1941, then load them with fuel and move them to Australian ports of interest, Darwin, Perth, Townsville and Brisbane. I do not send them back to the East Indies, once they are out they do not go back. Any competent Japanese human player will endeavor to block these routes and will target your tankers, so protect them and get them out of potential trouble.

Question 3, how? I send engineer and a naval base force to Christmas Island and set them to expand the port and airfield. While your East Indian tankers are making their trek, I collect all tankers on West Coast of the US to LA and and start sending a few tankers at a time with escort to Pearl and Christmas. I do not try to build intermediate fuel stores, but move the fuel to Australia. From LA, load up transport task forces with 4 - 5 tankers with a DD/PC escort and send them to Australia. Use waypoints. That is why you are developing Christmas Island. Create a task force, load it with fuel, send it to Brisbane (or Sydney) with "no refuel"and assign Christmas Island as the first waypoint with the refuel option set to "tactical", a second waypoint to a few hexes south of Pago Pago, and return trip set to "yes". This way, even 8,000 endurance tankers will be able to make the trip across the Pacific and make it back. The "continuous supply" option you mention merely automates the task force, ie it will run its mission and then repeat the same mission until you change it. This is fine, but especially early, I want maximum control over my tanker resources. In itself, it is not a strategic approach, but just saves you mouse clicks. As your target port expands, you can increase the size of these task forces and the amount of fuel they carry. Send a tanker group out once a week to minimize the risk of any Japanese raid crippling your tanker fleet, and over a couple of months you will have Australia swimming in fuel. You can use these a strategic stocks for New Guinea, Noumea or Darwin. The key is to keep your tankers well south of any Japanese raids and protected by intervening bases, Pago Pago, Souva, ect. If you try to use the small ports, you will have groups of tankers queuing to load or unload because the ports are just to small to transfer large amount of fuel even with naval support. At that point they are very vulnerable to raids, just as you described. As 1943 starts, you begin to get a flow of tankers and you can then build large fuel stockpiles anywhere you want.

I collect any tankers around India and send them to Abadan. I organize groups and send them to Colombo to support fleet operations and Karachi. You want to build ports and airfields in Karachi to exclude spoilage becoming an issue. From Karachi, you support Indian heavy industry and can move stocks to Perth if the Japanese player is attempting to interdict fuel from the West Coast US. Also, you can move fuel stocks from the East Coast US to Capetown to support Australia and India. You can you AKs to move fuel, I believe that they carry 1/2 their cargo capacity as fuel.

Net effect, it is in my opinion impossible for even the most aggressive Japanese player to interdict fuel flows to both the Eastern and Western Australia. You have flexibility and options for 1942, even when you are at your weakest. Your options only grow as 1943 and 1944 approach. All of this is just my method, you have any number of bases for potential hubs and multiple axes of advance to ponder.

[Rainer]

This belongs into the MUST READ collection.
Very good.

Following your strategy the Allied player will quickly discover why the Allies in Real Life were so eager to build bases along the Pacific route (Palmyra, Pago Pago, Canton etc.). They needed airbases there to protect the life line to Australia. Something WitP did not model very well. But AE does. And with Andy's magic campaigns against AI will make the Allied player painfully aware that protection is needed indeed.

[Mistmatz]

ORIGINAL: Misconduct

Yeah I lost around 20 or so already, mainly from the broken up KB that runs around randomly so much I can't keep track, I thought all 5 carriers were hitting Java, but Hiryu so happen to showed up at Baker island and wacked 10 tankers offloading fuel at Canton, which amazes me since I had 4 squadron of PBY's keeping an eye on that area. rest were caught by a japanese destroyer who took on 10 tankers and won with only 1 hit.

When I read your starting post my first thought was 'why Canton?'. It's far to much north and can be easily intercepted. Your second post proved the point. [8D]

Any allied player should protect TK/AO almost as much as carriers. You're now in a difficult situation, either pick short dangerous routes to get mor fuel delivered or go for a longer but safer route and limit your options for fleet operations and thus overall advance.

As an intermediate solution I'd suggest going a safe route with TK/AE and for urgent deliveries take some of your AKs. Not very effective but expendable and might give you some relief when not intercepted.

[Stelteck]

Personnaly i found too risky to move accross the pacific to supply australia. (Especially with noumea/fiji often in imperial hand).
 
So my solution is to stockpile the offmap base CAPETOWN with fuel, and to use the link capeTown => australia (perth, even sidney/melbourne) as main australian supply link. It is really safe (especially melbourne link).
 
A long but safe way.
 
CAPETOWN can be supplied from eastern USA and middleEast.

[vinnie71]

I do the same as Cad. The only difference is that I develop Christmas Island quickly and have the 8000 endurance tankers and AOs going to and fro between LA and Christmas island and unloading. I then  organise the other tankers in 2 TFs and just load at Christmas Island and deposit the precious fuel wherever needed. It's pretty safe especially since i normally send these latter TFs well south of Pago Pago and therefore avoid even the occasional sub. BTW have decent aircover around Sydney in case a Jap AC comes that way..

[usersatch]

ORIGINAL: Stelteck

Personnaly i found too risky to move accross the pacific to supply australia. (Especially with noumea/fiji often in imperial hand).

So my solution is to stockpile the offmap base CAPETOWN with fuel, and to use the link capeTown => australia (perth, even sidney/melbourne) as main australian supply link. It is really safe (especially melbourne link).

A long but safe way.

CAPETOWN can be supplied from eastern USA and middleEast.

Depends on the scenario. I normally bring all my tankers down from India to help build up Oz's fuel. But, in Ironman, the KB sat off the West Coast of Screbaja and nuked about 10 TK's. It did this about four times over the course of 6 months. Just be careful!

[Q-Ball]

One precaution Allied players should take: Use smaller TK TFs. It can be a struggle to come up with sufficient escorts, but that will save you losses if/when KB does show up.

Do this and you won't lose 10 TKs at a time

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: Cad908

Question 2, you need to supply Australian, Indian and to a much lesser extent New Zealand heavy industry with fuel. By doing this, you will generate piles supply from their heavy industry which you can then forward to support offensive operations. You need fleet fuel for Colombo and Pearl Harbor. You also need strategic stocks for offensive fleet operations in the South Pacific and East Indies. You need to select strategic bases that will become the logistic hubs for your early play as allied. When you select these hubs, you need to keep in mind how you will defend them if the Japanese come calling. My first moves have been to collect all the tankers in the East Indies in early December 1941, then load them with fuel and move them to Australian ports of interest, Darwin, Perth, Townsville and Brisbane. I do not send them back to the East Indies, once they are out they do not go back. Any competent Japanese human player will endeavor to block these routes and will target your tankers, so protect them and get them out of potential trouble.

in game terms you don´t need to supply Australian, Indian or New Zealand heavy industry with fuel. Not supplying it at all may be a bit gamey, but using 60% of the total US tanker fleet to supply Australia alone seems too much for me...

you´ve got loads of AKs to carry supply to Australia or India that it´s just a waste of tankers and fuel to look at it as a supply source IMO.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Stelteck

Personnaly i found too risky to move accross the pacific to supply australia. (Especially with noumea/fiji often in imperial hand).

So my solution is to stockpile the offmap base CAPETOWN with fuel, and to use the link capeTown => australia (perth, even sidney/melbourne) as main australian supply link. It is really safe (especially melbourne link).

A long but safe way.

CAPETOWN can be supplied from eastern USA and middleEast.

I'd say this is my basic way to go as well.

The trans-Pacific route has several large disadvantages. 1)Setting up way-stations eats up time, base forces, and losses to spoilage 2) Andy Mac's scripts don't make any route immune to CA-led surface raids. You don't need a carrier to chase down some fat old tankers. I lost a fair bunch before I figured out I was not going to be shut of those cruisers for a year or more. 3) It's a long haul, and and eats up sys damage same as the CT route. But, and it's a big but, you're exposed to sub attack for all of it, especially at the far end west of Noumea, where the AI floods subs operating from Rabaul. The CT route shields you from subs for 90% of the route.

East Coast to CT only needs to be set up once. CT starts as a big loading port and can be finished off fast. Then, auto-convoy CT to Perth, swinging south to avoid the range of the Everlasting Betty Farm at Oosthaven. I've never seen the AI send subs west of Perth. Northern IO in droves, making Abadan convoys a risk, but never west of Oz. Might be a script to do that, but I've never seen it. (Now Andy will write one.[:)])

Once the pile is at Perth you experience your only real risk--getting it around Oz to Sydney, Brisbane, and Darwin. Those short-leg TAN tankers are good for this, as well as the hordes of xAKLs you saved from the PI and other bug-out locales. The Bass Strait is a IJN sub haven, so patrol it early and often. (I sent about ten DDs from the WC and PH through the Canal to CT, then Perth, then Melbourne and Sydney in Dec. 1941. They don't have offensives to support yet and they're useful elsewhere.) I dump a lot of the Perth fuel into Melbourne, and only part of it direct into Sydney, later adjusting to all Sydney as the subs are beat down. I played this phase under Patch 1, when sending an AM out on ASW duty meant giving their crews their birthday presents before they left (they weren't coming back), but Patch 3 toned down ASW escort attrition in a big way, so you should be able to somewhat clean out that Perth--eastbound leg pretty well by Spring 42.

Whatever fuel Fiji, etc. needs along the southern rim I do with 2-ship convoys (1 TK, 1 escort) out of Balboa, swinging far south.

I just don't see the logic in running big TK convoys out of LA or SD until much later, when Tarawa and Canton are securely mine and I can do a staight shot. Even then I still run into Perth from CT. In my game it's June 1944, and CT has been "free" supplied by numbered, queued auto-convoys for 1.5 years, but I run fuel up to the northern coast of Oz, where my advanced sub bases are now. Ooshaven is still a PITA, but its days are numbered.

[Misconduct]

Right now I have transports hauling my fuel from San Francisco to Pearl since tankers arn't needed right now, my AKL's carry supplies where AK's carry fuel, 4 Task Forces of 8 AK's ferry fuel to Pearl without Refueling, this way I eat my fuel at San Fran instead. From Pearl I have 4 groups of 6 ships running supplies and fuel to Palmyra, which another 4 groups are set to offload at Canton, from Canton to Suva then Noumea and Sydney.

Supplies arn't a problem, Townville, Moresby, Noumea, have 100k in supplies and Sydney over 900k, my biggest problem is AK's carry so few fuel points and offloading takes so long I tend to either run a base dry or deal with spoilage in between routes, routes that have spoilage.

AO's I have been using to ferry Oil to Australia, seems Tankers are fine for it but I keep running into problems where they load halfway with oil then stop loading for few turns so I have to fill remaining tankers with fuel and head out.  I am still working on figuring out a system to get oil shipped monthly as I have only be able to drop off 1 load of oil in 4 months, since my previous tanker group was loaded with oil.

[John Lansford]

Losing 20 tankers that early will hurt for sure, especially if you didn't evacuate every tanker in the DEI before the carriers started showing up there.  You'll need to use AK's to ship fuel instead of tankers; it's inefficient but it works.  I moved all those small capacity TK's down to Darwin and Brisbane and use them to redistribute fuel to Noumea and the other offshore bases.  I also routinely send 8-12 TK's from Ceylon to Perth and Darwin (it's 3/43 in my CG) to keep those places refueled.  Fuel at Perth does redistribute to Melbourne and the southern Australian bases.
 
In SoPac I built up Christmas Island, Wallis Island and Pago Pago and hardly ever stop at Canton  any more to refuel.  Pago Pago and Wallis are now my main supply depots, along with Suva and Noumea.  My problem was the subs off shore at LA; one sank an entire TF of 4 big tankers loaded with fuel, until I started escorting them with at least one ASW vessel.  

[Misconduct]

Yeah I decided to move 8 tankers to Cape Town and deliver fuel to Perth, along with 8 transports -  I got way to many at DEI anyway and that theater is second important to my Pacific campaign, right now I have 1 million fuel around India, so those 16 vessels will ferry fuel to Perth for time being.

Question, how many ships needed to be loaded with oil per month for Australia? I knew back in WITP I keep 8 tankers for oil duty only, not sure about AE yet.

[John Lansford]

Watch out trying to unload at Palmyra and Canton; those are so small any decent sized TF will sit there for weeks trying to unload everything, and you've got better places to use those helpful base engineering units (the ones that speed up load/unloading).  I don't use either base now for refueling stops; if a TF is headed to SoPac from the WC, I have them either stop at Pearl to refuel or all the way down to Christmas/Pago Pago/Wallis Island.  I do use both bases for seaplane stations, and a handy transfer site for planes headed to SoPac/SWPac.  I try and keep about 10k fuel at either spot for the odd TF needing fuel, but that's about it. 
 
Send your fuel to where it is needed; IIRC when my CG was at 4/42 I was frantically building up Suva and Noumea, and Pago Pago as a backstop.  That's where your fuel needs to be, not little sand specks in CentPac.  Most ships can make it from Pearl to SoPac without needing refueling; if you've got short legged escorts with the TF they'll refuel from the other ships with larger fuel bunkers.  They can then refuel at their destination and return home if they need fuel heading home.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: John Lansford

I also routinely send 8-12 TK's from Ceylon to Perth and Darwin (it's 3/43 in my CG) to keep those places refueled.  Fuel at Perth does redistribute to Melbourne and the southern Australian bases.

I did this too in 1942 and into 1943 (some), but, something triggered a script somewhere, and there have been sub floods up to Ceylon, over by Madras, by Port Blair, and even up to the exit chutes from Aden/Abandan for a year now. Also, the KB likes to ramble up the western edge of the IO map and "appear" near Diego Garcia, then run over toward Ceylon torching whatever they can. This started in about 2/43 as I recall. Mostly it's subs though. I've also had multiple, numerous mini-sub attacks on Bombay, and the carriers like to snipe coming and going.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Misconduct

AO's I have been using to ferry Oil to Australia, seems Tankers are fine for it but I keep running into problems where they load halfway with oil then stop loading for few turns so I have to fill remaining tankers with fuel and head out.  I am still working on figuring out a system to get oil shipped monthly as I have only be able to drop off 1 load of oil in 4 months, since my previous tanker group was loaded with oil.

I haven't hauled any oil in the whole game, and I have multi-millions of supply all over the theater. Oz needs fuel, not oil. Oil just wastes time and space IMO.

If you need suppplies in Oz, do CT to Perth as well. Supplies distribute all over the country from Perth. Don't waste effort trying to manufacture supply from Oz resources. CONUS makes enough for the whole world, pretty much.

[John Lansford]

The KB doesn't move around a lot in my CG any more, other than through tidal motion, and for some reason the subs are few and far between too.  There's one near the Puget Sound, a couple lurking around Ceylon, and one just west of Port Moresby that patrols down to Cooktown.  One shows up from time to time near Sydney too, but other than those I'm not seeing the big floods of subs everywhere any longer.  Maybe my heavy ASW presence around all my major ports is having an effect.

[Misconduct]

ORIGINAL: John Lansford

The KB doesn't move around a lot in my CG any more, other than through tidal motion, and for some reason the subs are few and far between too.  There's one near the Puget Sound, a couple lurking around Ceylon, and one just west of Port Moresby that patrols down to Cooktown.  One shows up from time to time near Sydney too, but other than those I'm not seeing the big floods of subs everywhere any longer.  Maybe my heavy ASW presence around all my major ports is having an effect.

I noticed early in my game from 12/41 to 4/42 the Subs were pretty much everywhere, I think once the patrol ended they suddenly started patrolling off Brisbane, Sydney, Cooktown but a few carrier runs ran them off, now they are showing up in force at Ceylon, spotted at least 5 subs so far, none are off California anymore or Pearl.

I repositioned a few subs along my supply lines and bagged a IJN cruiser that was fishing around Suva, another destroyer made an attack off Pago Pago, Noumea also.