Big ship, bigger war - Adventures of the Yamato - AAR vs Acepylut (A)

[Hortlund]

February 19th

China
Disasterous day for the airforce in China.
Canton and/or Hong Kong is under threat from a Chinese probe moving south from Kukong. I have enough forces to hold Canton and Hong Kong, but I do not want to have Chinese units in the city hex of Canton. They are nightmarish to eject from that hex if they get in, and as long as they are there, I dont get the resources built there.

So, Ive moved pretty much the entire Chinese front airforce to this area to soften up these units while they are in the open. Today the bombers flew, but the escorts did not. At the same time the entire AVG showed up. The result was a massacre. I lost 40-something Ki-48s and Ki-21s.

Burma
Looks like Rangoon will fall tomorrow. The last few attacks have been at 1-1 odds with no forts left. I let the units rest today and now we spotted some enemy units retreating north. Finally. When Rangoon is secured we can move up the railline towards Mandalay. I really want to clear this front before the Monsoons.

I originally had too few units here. Only one Regiment and some supportunits. They managed to secure Pegu and Moulmein, but then they were defeated at Rangoon by the entire Burmese army. By that time an allied counterattack was heading south along the railline threatening to recapture Pegu and routing the entire front. I pressed the panic-button and brought in two divisions from Java together with a couple of Regiments. I believe I have enough units here now to finish the Irrawaddy-campaign.

Ive dropped a para unit behind him to try to scare him off. That has developed into a series of airbattles over Mandalay and Shwebo as I fly in supply and he tries to intercept my transports and bomb the paras.



Australia
Tennant Cross fell today. The base was only defended by a baseforce and my tank regiment had no problems clearing them out. That means the Australian forces moving south from Katherine are cut off. I doubt I will be able to encircle them though, these new retreat-rules makes it pretty much impossible to completely surround an enemy unit it seems.

First units arrived at Townsville today. Tomorrow the 21st Division will arrive. There are two units reported defending the base. If I manage to secure Townsville, I will have cleared the entire coastline down to Bundaberg. He has got 5 units at Charter Towers, the last remaining defence in northern Australia.

[Hortlund]

Here is a map of the strategic situation.

[Hortlund]

February 20th

Some small measure of revenge today for the air-disaster yesterday. Meanwhile some omnious clouds appear on the horizon. Ace told me in an email that he has picked the target for his first counterattack. Since Japanese signal intelligence is what it is, I expect my first hint of what that target is will be the appearance of an invasion fleet a few hexes off shore. Time to look over the defences.

Meanwhile...

Indian Ocean
We captured Diego Garcia today. Its just a small force of two naval guards on board some AMCs, but it was enough to do the job. As I suspected DG was not reinforced at all. Its easy as an allied player to forget about this base, but now when its in japanese hands it is disasterous for the India - Australia convoys. The invasion TF was escorted by two CVEs and two CVLs, and as an added bonus, they happened to stumble upon two convoys. One is 10-15 AKs loaded with fuel...oddly enough. Is he low on tankers? The fuel load means that a single 60 kg bomb hit will turn the AK into a blaze though and even some of my floatplanes managed to get kills. The other convoy seems to be the AO TAN 1-6 ships from the NEI. Apparently he is using them too to haul fuel to Australia.

Now I will put some aircraft on DG and use the mini-KB as a harassing force in this region.

Burma
Rangoon fell. Finally. Time to move up norht.

Australia
Some bad luck from my opponent this time. He had ordered a counterattack at Townsville. But since the 21st Division managed to arrive during the turn, the counterattack failed miserably. 3rd Australian Division and 1st Motor Brigade shocked their way into the Japanese division and 1-14 odds. He lost over 600 troops and his units must be disrupted through the roof. The base should fall tomorrow and that will effectively end the resistance up here.

Another setback for the allies in Australia happened just south of Daly Waters. A large stack of units fleeing south ran into a japanese tank regiment. 3rd Motor Brigade, 2nd and 6th Infantry Brigades, 4th Cavalry brigade and an aussie batallion shock attacked and only got 1-2 odds. I wonder if he is low on supply here. His unmodified AV was close to 300, and his modified AV ended up around 35.

In the south, an encircling force consisting of an armored regiment and a MG batallion was turned back by a tank regiment. That was important since I dont have that many forces at the frontline down here. If I had lost, Toowoomba would have been threatened.

[Hortlund]

Ive decided to try to pick up this AAR again. This will be a text-only post, but I will post some screenshots when I get the next turn.

April 29th 1942... Yamato enters service

A short recap of the various fronts.

China
We are running a huge offensive operation up north. Sian is besieged and will probably fall soon. Lvl 2 forts, he has 1600 AV to my 2500. I have relocated alot of the Imperial airforce to help in this northern thrust.

Burma
Mandalay is taken, we are pushing north towards Lashio.

Philippines
Bataan still holds, but will fall within a month. 800 AV behind lvl 2 forts are defending against my 1600 AV, I am also moving in two more brigades here to finish the siege as soon as possible. Most of the units here will head to Burma after the battle is over.

Australia
The campaign is all but over here and Im about to switch over to the defensive. Frontline is just outside Brisbane, and we hold all of the coast from Brisbane to Darwin to Port Hedland to Carnavaron.

Centpac
Tarawa and Tabituea are in Japanese hands, we are trying to fortify these islands


Stuff that has happened since the last update
I lost a CVE to a USN carrier raid to Cocos Islands. KB raided the waters between Pearl Harbor and San Fransisco and stumbled upon a huge troop transport convoy. We sunk at least one division in that encounter. B-17s did a port strike on Port Hedland and managed to sink several support ships, AKEs, AGs, ADs and AO.

[Hortlund]

China

[Hortlund]

Burma

[Hortlund]

Eastern Australia

[Hortlund]

Gilberts

[Hortlund]

Diego Garcia

[Hortlund]

Alice Springs

[Hortlund]

Port Hedland

[Walloc]

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo
On aircraft alone, historically the US lost 188 a/c that day for 29 JAP, in addition to all the ships (18 sank or severely damaged) and port and airfield damage. I've never seen better than about 50 a/c ... have you? And 18 ships on the initial attack? Rarely see more than 10 targetted and very rarely get one BB actually sank, let alone the historical 5BB's, 3CL's, 3DD's and 3AUX which were sunk, not mention the others damaged.

/highjack on

Since i see this all the time u might wana try look in the air thread. Post 1900-1910 approx on page 63. Playing scn #1 or 2 with non historical first turn seems to be the norm and as shown in the thread is makes all the difference damage wise on PH. I know it shouldnt according to the manual, but u can test it ur self. I've never seen any test that repudes the results in my findings.Quite the opoosite actually. Seems that this knowledge isnt paticular widespred.

Hope it helps,

Rasmus

/highjack off

[Hortlund]

Just a short post to say I have not forgotten about this AAR. I'm planning to pick it up again when 43 arrives. It seems there are plenty of AARs covering early 42, but not so many showing 43-44.

I will highlight one thing though...the Japanese Dunkirk in Australia

I knew the allied counterattack would start in Australia. It is only reasonable since he has reinforced Australia alot with US forces and there are plenty of "free" (ie restricted) Australian units. I also dont think it is possible to defend in open ground against the allies, so I never planned on holding firm down south. Instead I wanted to delay the inevitable offensive as long as possible by agressive airforce operations and by looking two sizes bigger than I really am in Australia.

Things worked fine, I had 20-something units in Maryborough, including two full size divisions and 5-10 artillery and AAA each. The allies were bypassing the coastline by moving up the roads inland. I decided it was time to bail out, and ordered everyone except a rearguard to strat move north up towards Townsville.

However, one tank unit moved alot faster than I had anticipated, and the shifting to strat mode combined with the two day turns we are playing meant that my units were intercepted between Maryborough and Bundaberg. There they were, sitting in the middle of nowhere in strat mode. At the same time, Bundaberg fell to allied tanks. Our forces were in grave danger of destruction.

I managed to move the troops back into Maryborough, and caught in that pocket were practically all my forces on the east coast of Australia. Over 1400 AV if I remember correctly. This could be a complete disaster.

Fortunately I had a large portion of the fleet stationed in Rabaul together with enough APs to lift more than four divisions (aka the counterinvasion force). The entire fleet set sail towards Maryborough. 4 CVs, 6 BBs including the Yamato, around 100 transports, dozens of destroyers.

To rescue my troops (and to pick up all that heavy artillery aswell, I had alot of heavy guns from Manchuko there and I did not want to leave them behind) the transports would have to enter the port and stay there for several days while loading the heavy equipment. All this three hexes from the largest allied airbase on the east coast (Brisbane) and with P38s thick as flies in the sky. While I was gathering the fleet more allied forces closed in for the kill, and the B17s were pounding the airfield to dust. At this point I had no idea where the allied CVs were either, 2 of them were spotted two months ago in the Indian Ocean, but all of the others were unspotted. That meant I had to take into account that Halsey could come storming into the middle of the evacuation at any day.

Some tense days followed, the KB took up position in the deep water just off Frasier Island, while several SCTFs took up blocking positions in the surrounding hexes. Fortunately he did not defend with anything more than PTs and he did not dare attack the KB (perhaps thanks to my psyops, telling him I had every carrier in the Imperial fleet in that hex). A small surface combat TF consisting of some CLs and DDs were turned back by my screening forces.

All in all, the evacuation took 8 days. I had 4 different amphib TFs, two to load AAA and art (they went in first, days 1-4) and two to take the infantry. The allies had entered the hex, but their attack was unsuccessful, they only brought 1-1,5k AV and my infantry divisions could defend behind lvl 4 forts. After the guns had been evacuated, the mega-oversized amphib TFs (I think I had loading capacity for 3 divisions in each TF picking up a single division) pulled out the divisions.

In the end I think I lost something like 1000 men, or around 30 AV. That is not bad considering that the pocket originally consisted of around 50k men and 1400 AV.


Lesson learned though. Do not wait too long to pull back when you are attempting a fighting retreat.