Canadians

[Califvol]

ORIGINAL: afspret

Speaking of Ironman and its wildly unpredictable moves, has anybody playing as the allies had the AI invade Alaska?  Just wondering 'cause in my current game against the AI, I'm in the middle of Feb '42 & I've already lost Port Moresby, Baker & Funafuti Islands and on the last turn my PBY squadron at Palmyra spotted an enemy TF, of unknown make up, about 12 hexes out heading east. 

Yes, in my game the AI Japanese invaded Kiska and ATTU in June 1942. I cleaned them out in late 1942 by using an adhoc force of US and Canadian Infantry (I was short ground units so spent the points to release a Canadain Bde to the North Pacific.)

For other Canadian untis I have turned the area from Vancouver to Kodiak into a 100% Canadian ASW patrol of both aircraft and ships (mostly AM's) with a few US DE's thrown in to bost up their surface and ASW ratings.

Also very early game I had Canadian a base force come south into the US so I could release a US base force to the pacfic.

While not a large force in my game Canucks are doing a first rate job!

[hueglin]

Also a bit off topic, but the "Saviour of Ceylon", the pilot who spotted the Japanese invasion fleet, was a Canadian. He was RCAF, but I think he was flying in an RAF Sqn (not exactly sure).

Here is a link with some info. He lived right around the corner from us in the years before he died and my dad corresponded with him for a newspaper article at one point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Birchall

[Smeulders]

ORIGINAL: hueglin

Also a bit off topic, but the "Saviour of Ceylon", the pilot who spotted the Japanese invasion fleet, was a Canadian. He was RCAF, but I think he was flying in an RAF Sqn (not exactly sure).

Here is a link with some info. He lived right around the corner from us in the years before he died and my dad corresponded with him for a newspaper article at one point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Birchall

After taking a quick look at that wiki page, it seems saving Ceylon was the least of his accomplishments in the war. Spotting a fleet and reporting it can be done by anyone, but what he did in the camps is worthy of a lot of respect.

Back on topic, I've actually thought about using the Canadians LCU as a way of getting more devices for the other commonwealth troops. There are several brigades with the very scarce 25-pdr and the AA units arriving halfway trough 42'are useful for filling out a lot of other base forces and AA units.

[EUBanana]

I got a couple of Canadian Bdes in India. They've not seen any action yet, but they will. There's a Canadian Kittyhawk squadron there too which has seen action (and got mullered, poor Canucks). There's also a Canadian Catalina squadron there which I didn't put there specifically, not sure where that came from originally - Singapore?

And there's about 100 AV of Canadians in Australia - the reconstituted Hong Kong units. Without much combat drawing on their replacement pools fragments from Hong Kong reconstitute quite quickly.

I used Canadian KVs quite a lot as well in convoys, this turned out to be an issue as several of them withdraw in 1942, and it sucks finding a lone Flower corvette in a bunch of convoys, and then finding out it's a months sailing from the map edge... ouch, cost me quite a few PPs. Ship withdrawal is a pain anyway though, not just for Canucks.

So - they are about! minor, but about.

[Gunner98]

Len Birchall commanded one of the two Catalina's from #413 Sqn RCAF which arrived in Ceylon on 2 April. Although the Sqn was Cdn, the other AC commander was SAfrican and there was only one other Cdn on Birchall's crew, the rest were RAF, Indian (of the British type) or SAfrican. Two other Catalina's joind the Sqn as they recoverd from enroute breakdowns.

What I didn't know about was his exploits in the POW camps or the fact that I went to the same High School! Its a small world!

Thanks for the link and info.

B