Nomonhan Redux: Seydlitz (Japan) vs. MBatch729 (Allies)

[seydlitz_slith]

Here is the Mongolian front. As soon as I get the supply situation fixed, I will start moving both here and up the tran-siberian railway.

[seydlitz_slith]

Mark is not taking this lying down. I suspect that he may realize that I am short of supply. His bombers hit Mishan, which during the first few months of the campaign was my central supply point for the offensive. He totally destroyed all supply stocks in this hex, leaving my large contingent of AAA units impotent. Casualties were very light, but the fact that he has such a large bomber force to use is sobering. I counted a total of 178 medium and heavy bombers that bombed Mishan airfield this turn in a series of five waves.

[offenseman]

That is a concern but still the outlook is good simply because the map looks terrible if you are the USSR.  I'd be curious to know if you are turning off Home Island expansion or anything else that would quickly build supply levels.  Understood if you do not want to answer that one in here...

[seydlitz_slith]

While all of my bombers will stay grounded for a few turns to build supply stocks, my recon planes will fly. I will try to put multiple recon flights over all the Soviet bases and see if I can pull together a better strategic picture regarding the disposition of his ground forces and aircraft. Then I can plan my next step accordingly.

I do still plan to send most of my Nells and Betties south so that I can use them to help finish Singapore. It is critical that I break the deadlock there to free those forces up. Like Vladivostok, the multi-month seige combat involving large forces has sucked much of the supply out of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand.

I also must address the serious situation in Bangkok. In fact, it is serious enough that I will probably land the reinforcements in Bangkok to clear the city of enemy forces, then move them by rail down to Singapore. This will take several weeks to happen, however.

This pic gives you an idea of the forces that he has beseiging Bangkok.
BTW, the RTA units that I have are not worth the rice needed to feed them. Nothing more than meat shields, and poor ones at that.

[offenseman]

Would be nice to be able to amphib up the Malaya coast and cut off his troops down there.  Maybe after Singapore falls...  What is your appraisal of the RN strength in the region?

[seydlitz_slith]

ORIGINAL: offenseman

Would be nice to be able to amphib up the Malaya coast and cut off his troops down there.  Maybe after Singapore falls...  What is your appraisal of the RN strength in the region?

Intact. I will have to stay conservative in this area as I have not seen so much as a peep out of any of his carriers since the war started.

[CaptBeefheart]

Nice data dump, Seydlitz. It makes for great reading. See you again in another month. [;)]

Cheers,
CC

[Heeward]

Good work securing Vladivostok. Do you have significant supply reserves in the Hone Islands to start the rehabilitation of the industrial facilities in Vladivostok?

Can you conduct another pocket battle destroying another chunk of the soviet army?

[seydlitz_slith]

ORIGINAL: Heeward

Good work securing Vladivostok. Do you have significant supply reserves in the Hone Islands to start the rehabilitation of the industrial facilities in Vladivostok?

Can you conduct another pocket battle destroying another chunk of the soviet army?

Thanks.

Actually supply is a problem right now. The Russian campaign has sucked all of the excess supply out of the home islands and also out of China. In fact, I have several yellow and a few red exclaimation points in China now. I have turned off repair of the factories at Vlad to save supply. I was going to save supply by standing down my bombing campaign but all of a sudden I had a couple hundred soviet bombers appear in the skies over Gavan so I have resumed "rolling thunder" and I am conducting heavy night bombing of 4 soviet airfields that seem to be heavily stacked with aircraft.

My huge stack of units that was at Vlad are now on the road/rail line NW of Rashin trying to eliminate the soviet fort there so I can begin using the rail link for supply movement. As soon as the fort is cleared the Southern Army units will go strat mode and rail to Port Arthur where transports are waiting to take them to Malaya. The Kwangtung units will them move eastward, rolling up the Trans-Siberian rail line from the south. As a new surprise, I have a good chunk of forces from northern China (about 5900 AV) enroute by rail to north Korea. These will form a second major thrust north from Hailar to finish him off. These guys were sitting doing nothing and short of supply in China since I pushed him all the way back to Sian.

[seydlitz_slith]

My forces have smashed the border fort that blocks the rail line between Mutikiang and Voroshilov.
Now I shall split my forces, sending the southern army boys by rail to Port Arthur where they will board transports for the trip south. Meanwhile my other forces will head back east to continue the campaign.

[seydlitz_slith]

For the first time since December, the Kido Butai is at sea and has engaged an American task force unloading troops and equipment at Tarawa, which Mark had recaptured during June. Using more planes than in the Pearl Harbor attack, we sank the entire task force comprising 4 DDs and 2 AKV. Not sure what an AKV does, but both were good size. I suspect that it carries either aircraft or vehicles since 24 P-40s were on CAP when I attacked.

[offenseman]

Mabels...  what is your impression of how they fair in battle compared to the Kates?

[rader]

Mebels and Kates are almost identical (I used both in about even numbers).

[seydlitz_slith]

Mabels are every bit as good as Kates. Service rating 2 instead of 1 but that doesn't matter since carrier combats never last more than two or three days at a time. If I recall correctly their cruise speed is slightly higher than the Kate. Other than that, in this game I went with Mabels over Kates as the Mabels used a different engine. The Kate wants the same engine that a bunch of high demand aircraft use. It's apples and oranges. It also gives more variety when watching the air battles.

[seydlitz_slith]

I conducted an assault on Nikolaevsk this turn. Didn't get it, but it's getting close. The port is jammed with his remaining subs and destroyers, so I bombed it heavily this past turn.

[seydlitz_slith]

Northwest of Tarawa, the KB was attacked by a considerable land based American force.
They scored no hits and many attackers were destroyed.

[seydlitz_slith]

In return, I hit the port and airfield at Tarawa pretty hard. The base isn't totally knocked out, but it should be heavily damaged. Even better, we shot down 15 P-40E with only 1 zero, 1 kate, and 1 val lost. I shall hit the base again next turn.

[rader]

I love the aircraft top art... where did you get it?

[seydlitz_slith]

The art was done by Carthes. He recently made it available to all.

ORIGINAL: rader

I love the aircraft top art... where did you get it?

The art was done by Carthes. He recently made it available to all.

You can get them here:
http://www.turkeyvulturesart.info/

He does excellent work. He has a thread in the scenario and modding section of the forum. It is now on page 2. Sample pics of some of the planes.

[seydlitz_slith]

July 20, 1942

This game has continued although it has been interrupted a bit as my opponent tended to some real life matters.
Realizing that I am fully tied up in Russia, he has started offensive actions on several fronts to test my ability to respond.
Since things are picking up, I will try to provide more regular updates as this game is still very interesting.

Here is a tour of the fronts and how they stand:

On the central Russian front, Vladivostok is mine. I sent the portion of the Southern Army that had been helping in the siege there to Port Arthur via rail where they are boarding transports to take them to Bangkok.

At Spassik-Dalniy, my Korea and Kwangtung forces advanced to recapture the airfield. Much to my dismay, what I thought would be a rag tag group of survivors leavened by a few fresh Soviet units has turned into about 3400 AV of combat troops. His bombers and fighters have also began to appear in numbers striking at my troops in the hex. I am moving several units from the North China theater command by Rail to the area to reinforce my engaged troops.

On a positive note, I now hold all of his significant coastal ports in the primary theater of operations. As soon as I get enough supplies transferred, I will begin to press his flank from that direction also.