'Tis light as a feather... No Panzerjaeger Hortlund

[traskott]

Oh, my, fighter pilots with exp9 !!! And I was worried about my chinese pilots with exp15 !! they can teach yours a lesson !!! [:D][:D]

Well, overall, an interestign challenge. I think if you can cripple his morale of "AFB rolling at 1945" you'll provoke him to nuke, which would be a japanese victory, I think.

[Smeulders]

ORIGINAL: traskott

Oh, my, fighter pilots with exp9 !!! And I was worried about my chinese pilots with exp15 !! they can teach yours a lesson !!! [:D][:D]

I think the pilots with 9 exp are better off. The one with 15 get in the plane only to crash seconds after take-off. The 9 exp bump their heads and sprain their ankle trying to get in the planes, but at least they stay on the ground and survive.

[Nemo121]

Ah but the 9 Exp pilots have to transition the "Terrible Teens". At least once they hit 18 they can, legally, go out and fend (badly) for themselves ( with frequent returns to mom and dad... umm, I mean the airbase for resupply ). The main difference though is that during their terrible teens I WILL be teaching these guys how to crash - not necessarily to survive the crash - and be threatening court martial for anyone who brings the plane home after they "borrow the keys" from mom and dad.

Today all over Japan guys who can't tell an aileron from from a propeller got all Geisha'ed up with their shiny new pilot wings gleaming ( made from real polished wood, all the metal is being saved for weaponry ). Tomorrow we begin teaching them which end is the front and wait for the first guy to get excited, press the MG and cannon button and for them to learn, themselves, which is the dangerous end. Ah, the joys of teaching [8D]

The Emperor expects everyone to do his duty.... no matter how incapable they are. The new motto of the IJNAF is "YOU owe the Emperor a death." The under the breath rejoinder is, "Yeah, probably your own."


Tomorrow the IJAAF begins to re-organise its training regime. While the IJNAF is now focused entirely on a) fighter defence and b) day and night naval and kamikaze attacks the IJAAF will retain a small night-bombing capability whilst focussing almost entirely on fighter defence and kamikaze strikes. I expect the IJAAF to provide most of the high altitude kamis I will be using.

Reviewing my plane pools I see that I have 40 x Ki-74s. These only enter production next month but I have about 3 IJAAF bomber squadrons with 60 to 65 Exp which I could convert to Ki-74 kamis right now... The Ki-74 has an altitude of 39,370 which is above the Hellcats and interceptible only by F4U-4 Corsairs which the Allies only started receiving in June and may not have fully upgraded to. They're fast and carry a single 500 Kg bomb each. A crash dive onto a USN CV deck would do quite a bit of damage...

Hmm, I'm sure he must be doing something with those USN CVs around Guam... At the very least it'd be prudent to hit Truk and since the Ki-74s can reach Truk I think that in 5 or so days he might find a Ki-74 kamikaze Sentai prowling the waters around Guam from Truk. If I'm lucky I might hit a few CVs. If I'm less lucky just a few xAK or xAP ( which are still useful ships to hit ).

It'll waste the surprise of these planes but I need to know if they work. The A6M8s looked like they'd be much more competitive on paper than they were in real life while the N1K5Js performed better than the paper stats would have suggested. So, I need to get real-world experience with the planes I intend to base the defence around. If they prove disappointing I need to know that before we're fighting the decisive battles around the Okinawa, Iwo Jima or Kuriles axes.

[Nemo121]

So, what's happening today on the third day of the war?

1. I'm testing the Ki-201, J7W and A7M2 near Okinawa. These planes are respectively two next-generation fighters and the A7M2 which is the best IJNAF fighter of the current generation. Testing continues. Those planes have a range of 0 set so they won't escort anything.

2. I'm also giving him a second taster of the Ohkas. This time instead of coming in at 2 or 3,000 feet they are coming in at 100 feet. That should cut down his radar warning time again. I still need escorts though, that's what the Ki-43 IVs are for... complete with their 22 Exp pilots. They should take a couple of minutes to die and that'll give the Ohkas enough time to break through into the enemy TF.

3. I've finished loading the first group of evacuees from Shanghai and 62,000 IJA troops ( 2 divisions, about 6 engineer units and about 6 to 8 artillery units - I have a mania for seeding likely invasion beaches with artillery to kill the troops as they unload ) are now on their way back to Japan. As I unload these guys in western Japan troops from western Japan are already making their way towards Hokkaido to turn that island into a fortress.

4. The seeding of every island along the Okinawa, Iwo Jima and Kuriles axes with a Brigade or Division continues. Several islands already have a full Bde in place while others are between 1/3rd and 1/2 way there. By the end of the first week these islands should all be reasonably secure. Then I'll catch my breath and see which ones need additional forces, engineers, AAA etc.

5. My ASW efforts are spotting what seems to be a ring of subs running from south of Shanghai via Okinawa and then just south og Aogashima and up into the Kuriles. It looks like he might be trying to cordon me. I'm sure he will be sending some into the Yellow Sea and Sea of Japan though so I'm taking two steps to counter this:
a) a line of Japanese coastal subs running from south of Shanghai to Kyushu. I'm hoping they will torpedo the occasional Allied sub travelling on the surface and also trigger night-time naval strikes by radar-equipped Japanese strike planes

b) massive minefields along the eastern and western entrances to the Sea of Japan. Very historical but also very effective.

6. I've re-organised IJAAF fighter squadrons and while currently not a single squadron can exceed an average skill of 70 in A2A I expect that by month's end I'll be able to field a small cadre of truly good squadrons. It'll be a slow process and Japan's forces are very fragile but one must start somewhere.

7. After talking about a possible strike on the USN CVs with Patsys today saw a huge depletion in the number of ships in Guam and my patrols out of Truk spotting a very large group of Allied ships making a beeline for Pearl... A beeline which will take them past Wake where I've been busy airlifting aviation support. I won't be able to hit them with many Patsys as they've just upgraded today but I'm going to thicken the strike with some kamikaze Bettys.

8. I tested the G9M by sending 9 of them into action around Okinawa. They met a CAP of just under 100 fighters and fully 7 of the G9Ms survived to make attack runs. They didn't hit anything but their survivability vs MG-armed fighters has been confirmed. They didn't destroy any of the Allied fighters but they damaged a lot of them so they'd also make good sperrbrecher units to absorb fighter runs when attacking CV TFs. While 7 survived to attack the ships none survived the trip home. So, the attack cost me 1296 HI ( 9 bombers costing 144 HI each ) for no hits BUT it proved an investment in the G9M would be worthwhile - so I responded by doubling the number I plan to produce monthly.


I still can't get Tracker working so I haven't done much with the economy yet apart from beginning significant Ohka production ( I've created about 16 new factories all of which I plan to expand to a size of about 16 Ohkas each. I'm also beginning a slightly dispersed buildup of G9Ms. I am planning to build about 60 per month which will require 240 engines. That'll represent an investment of 300,000 tons of supplies. I also plan to co-locate some smallish Ohka factories in the two G9M production centres.

Part of my longer-term plan is talk up the G9Ms and make these two centres attractive A-bomb targets when the time comes. I'd rather he hit these less structurally essential targets than my irreplaceable Home Island targets.


P.s. For anyone questioning the slight overstack.... That's an old preferred technique of mine for making sure that I don't generate a true alpha strike and risk losing an entire strike package. I use it on islands to ensure that I don't end up with stranded, 0 plane airgroups I can't rescue.

[traskott]

Probably he moves allthat fleet to shorten his supply/fuel lines. Too many ships at the front and very little fuel available....

[Nemo121]

Aye, Andy left a lot of ships without fuel in on both sides...

Still though I think that we can't be sure what those ships are yet.... They COULD be tankers going back for fuel, APs going back for troops OR CVs going back to Pearl. If that's happening then he is basing out of Pearl and that means the Kuriles.

I'll know when I attack. If I hit APs he's getting troops and he isn't going for Hokkaido, if I hit tankers then the same applies. If he has CAP then it means the CVs are heading to Pearl and I can't believe he'd tie down his CVs for a month for a supply run.


I left the Allied and Japanese shipping with lack of fuel as it was in Downfall because I considered it made a nice conundrum for the Allies and Japanese. It gave a real strategic choice for the Allies as opposed to just giving them too much of everything so they could do whatever they want.

As it is I am trying to figure out a way to sneak 500,000 tons of supplies and fuel into Japan from Hainan Island and Saigon in the face of utter Allied air superiority. It is a prime example of utter misallocation of fuel and supplies etc but I left that unfixed also because I figured it made for an interesting problem for Japan to solve also. EA is all about choices and problems, not about giving easy solutions [8D]. How you respond to these tells a lot about you as a player/person and also acts as a strategic indicator of great value.

[Capt. Harlock]

As it is I am trying to figure out a way to sneak 500,000 tons of supplies and fuel into Japan from Hainan Island and Saigon in the face of utter Allied air superiority. It is a prime example of utter misallocation of fuel and supplies etc but I left that unfixed also because I figured it made for an interesting problem for Japan to solve also.

Whether or not it's a misallocation, it seems fairly realistic to me. Given the Allied bombing and the shortage of shipping at that stage of the war, wouldn't you expect those areas to accumulate fuel and supplies while other areas scraped the bottom of the barrel?

[traskott]

Well, If I were the allied I will go frontally against Palembang and Vietnam: You clear a potencially dangerous zone and get easy access to a fuel depot.... plus if he has been smart and have loaded the scen as japo will know too there amount of supplies stocked there. 

[Xxzard]

He may assume that he can defeat any attempt to move troops and supplies from there to the mainland. At the very least, I don't think he will have fully anticipated the scale of Nemo's ambitions.

[Nemo121]

and finding what is wanting....

Harlock
Well, much of the OIL and Supply etc is in bases which have no native means of producing OIL, or RESOURCES or turning them into supply.

Traskott,
Aye, he'll hit Palembang first - which is unnecessary but c'est la guerre. I can't get the OIL from there anyways but he'll want to be sure, even though it is unnecessary.

Once he does that he'll see that Vietnam is very weakly held and go for that next.... I am evacuating Vietnam and in about 2 weeks time there won't be a single Japanese soldier left apart from two garrison units which cannot be moved. Unfortunately the supplies and fuel aren't moving with the troops. ANyone have any ideas how I can pull the FUEL out overland?



And now onto the meat of the matter which gives this post its title.... Weighing the wort of various production alternatives and deciding which to follow through with... Basically the engine production for Japan is quite misallocated at this time of the war. I am producing far more than I can use of some engines and not nearly enough of most of them. I also have pools of obsolete engines which cannot be used for any modern planes at all.


Here's what I could do with the engines I have in the pool....

1. Hitachi (Early ) Engines: I have about 330 engines in the pool and nothing using them. So I'm going to begin a small production run of 24 x Ki-79as ( the Ki-27 equipped with a 250 Kg bomb ) to give myself some cheap "distraction" kamis. 26,400 tons of supply for 330 throw-away kamis.

2. Kawasaki ( early ) Engines: I have 85 in the pool so building 7 Ki-32s per month will use them up in a year. That's 7,700 tons of supply

3. Mansyu: I have 200 engines in the pool and am going to use them to build as many G9Ms as possible. I want to be producing 64 G9Ms monthly by the end of the month. This will require 256 engines monthly also so will be an investment of 352,000 tons of supply.

4. Mitsubishi Ha-31s. I have 245 in the pool. The only useful plane I can make with them is the Ki-45AIc. It can fly to 8 hexes with 2 x 250Kg bombs ( so will make a useful very low altitude kami ) and, most importantly, due to the in-mod removal of the silly 37mm cannon it now sports 3 x centre-mounted 20mm cannon. That will help shoot down enemy bombers. So, 10 x Ki-45AIcs per month would burn those engines in 12 months. Sounds like a good deal to me. That will be 11,000 tons of supply

5. Mitsubishi Ha-32s. I am making 134 engines and using 76 for B6N2as ( which are useful for night torpedo attacks as they have radar ), 12 x E15 floatplanes ( good since they have a range of 15 hexes ), 12 x H8K2-Ls ( usueful as they give me a good transport capability to atolls with no airfields ) and 11 Q1W1s ( useful as ASW planes ). I plan to expand Q1W1 production to 22 planes per month and so will need 180 engines for that. So, I need to increase production by 46 engines per month.

I can't produce any of the 163 G4M3as, 112 P1Y2s, half of the H8K2-Ls or any of the 24 H8K2s as I don't have enough Ha32 engines. So what can I convert those factories to?


6. Mistubishi Ha33s: Producing 234 Engines:
Require: 24 for E13A1bs ( the ones with radar, useful for ASW work ), 48 engines for Ki-100IIs ( they haven't been in combat yet but I'm not that convinced by them ), 24 engines for L2D2 transports, 112 engines for D4Y4s ( They'll suffer high losses so it is good to have quite a few of them ) and 26 engines for Ki-102c night fighters - which I want to be the backbone for my IJA night fighter force.

That's it for the Ha-33. That means no production of A6M8s ( which were useless anyways ), no increase to D4Y4 production ( I can't afford it ) and the halting of Ki-46IIIs ( I am going to build Ki-95s instead anyway ).


7. Mitsubishi Ha43. I am making 303 engines and using 66 for the A7M2. Next month production of 82 N1K5Js ( which went 1:1 with anything less than the P-51H recently ) , 192 Ki-74 Patsy ( which can fly over the F6F5 but not the Corsair, P-47 or P-51 and carry a 500 Kg bomb. It might be a real carrier-killer if used en masse. Many would be shot down by Corsairs but there's a limit to Corsair numbers and the Ki-74 is fast so even if intercepted a good number should penetrate the CAP and survive to crash-dive onto the American CV decks. Once there a 500Kg bomb should penetrate easily and cause internal damage. All I need to do is cause damage sufficient to force the CV back to base. As damaged CVs are removed on the approach march to the invasion beach my Ki-43 IIIs can take over the task, benefitting from the lower levels of CAP and the Ki-74s can concetrate on harrassing retreating cripples. ) and Ki-95 ( a good, fast, twin-engined recon plane with long range ) will begin. Even without additional engines I can meet the greatly increased need for engines ( a monthly requirement in October for 580 engines ) due to the stockpiles built up this month.

Once the J7W1 comes into service I'll stop making the N1K5J as the J7W1 should handily outclass it. I'll still need a total of 786 Ha 43 engines per month though and that will require an increase in Ha43 production of 483 engines. Ouch, over half a million tons of supplies. Can't be helped though, I need the J7W1 and I have HIGH hopes for combining the Patsy's range with its high ceiling to really effectively harrass USN invasion fleets on the way to and from my coastlines.


8. Nakajima Ha-34. I have 122 engines in the pool, no production but the Ki-49 IIb Helen would make a good night-bomber for harrassing nearby Allied bases so I think I may invest in building 10 Helens a month to support that effort.


9. Nakajima Ha-35. I'm making 140 per month, have a stockpile of some 560 engines and am building 141 Ki-43 IIIcs per month for use PURELY as kamikazes. I want to use the pool though so plan to build another 48 or so Ki-43IIIas per month. That'll give me 700 Ki-43 IIIas in the pool with another 180+ produced per month. By the end of the year I could have a solid force of 1400 Ki-43 III kamis ( I'll have expended some but that'll still mean a good solid force of several hundred kamis with ample reserves available to counter any invasion ).... With a range of 8 to 10 hexes with 2 x 250Kg bombs these planes can really saturate any landing near the coast of Japan.


10. Nakajima Ha44.... I can make about 400 Ki-94II per month based on my research allocation. I'm making NO Ha-44 factories at the moment so I need to change that. The Ki-94 II may just come to be known as the Saviour of Japan. While the J7W will do well vs bombers and fighters it has no real utility as a kamikaze. The Ki-94 II on the other hand carries a 500 Kg bomb under the fuselage, can fly at 48,000 feet ( thus reversing the bounce bonus the Americans usually enjoy allowing me to bounce their fighters before they get to bounce my lower-level CAP AND also enabling them to fly above the Corsairs and long-range CAP USAAF fighters ( P-51s, P-47s etc ) and then dive down onto the shipping far, far below.

It is thus the cheapest kamikaze plane I have - Launch 10 Ki-94s and KNOW that 10 of them will get into position to crash-dive. With suitable exp pilots ( about 40 naval bombing skill ) I can expect 50% hits for a total of 500Kg delivered per 72 HI expended in building Ki-94 IIs ). Sure they're good fighters but they are also my cheapest cost/benefit kamis. I'll be going into this in a later post to explain which planes I think make sense to use as kamis and which are "too expensive" to use.


11. Nakajima Ha 45: Making 654 engines.
Using 90 for B7A2s, Beginning production of 40 C6N1-S per month for IJN night-fighter squadrons, building 159 Ki-84rs and 100 Ki-67(T)s.

That's a total use of 489 engines which leaves me with 165 engines with no airframes. Really it comes down to whether I want more torpedo-bombers, more night-fighters, more daytime twin-engined torpedo bombers ( I NEED IJA bombers as the IJA bombers can't upgrade to IJN bomber types, only other IJA bombers or Ohkas ).

What has decided me is that I am building 66 B6N2as so single-engined torpedo bomber production is a total of 156 which should be enough, 40 night-fighters combined with 12 Ki-102cs should suffice to replace the low losses night-fighters will suffer and while I need IJA bombers I would be happy enough to see the IJA bomber force mostly being consigned to training in order to support a small number of front-line and kamikaze squadrons. So, those few squadrons should be able to make do with 100 Ki-67s per month as they won't see a huge amount of intensive action every day.

Ki-84rs aren't great fighters. They can't face P-51s or P-47s on 1:1 terms. They do better vs P-47s than P-51s but they still don't get a 1:1 exchange rate. Their armament is also too weak vs bombers. On the other hand their long range allows them to act as escorts for Ki-43 IIIa strikes ( they can reach 11 hexes with drop tanks ) and their high altitude allows them to fly above F6F5 Hellcats in the kamikaze role. In addition their high low-level speed ( 399 mpg ) allows them to act as useful low-altitude kamis. The load of 2 x 250Kg bombs should be pretty devastating too. So, 350 Ki-84rs. I'll use them as second-line fighters once the Ki-94IIs and J7W1s are on-stream and eventually allocate an ever-larger portion of them to the high-altitude sacrificial escort and low-level high-speed kamikaze roles. The quite long range will come in useful for that.


So, a heavy emphasis on fighters, high-altitude kamis and conversion to low-altitude, high-speed kamikaze. Virtually no twin-engined bombers and a core of four-engined torpedo bombers for daytime torpedo attack. Ideally I'd co-ordinate G9Ms with Ki-67s to help give the Ki-67s some increased survivability. We'll have to see how that goes though of course.


What is clear is that before I make any final decision I'm going to have to expend a number of squadrons of fighters in the low-altitude kamikaze role and compare them with 1 or 2 squadrons of twin-engined torpedo-bombers in a similar role. I need to check just how much speed matters and how protective against CAP an altitude of 100 metres is...

[Nemo121]

Ohkas, I forgot to mention them... Since they don't need an engine they only cost 18 HI each. In terms of deliverable explosive they deliver 1,700Kg or so IIRC. That's 3 times the 500 Kg bomb of most fighters and fighter-bombers.

My current hypothesis is that at low altitude the Ohkas close so quickly they can get through with a number of escorts equivalent to 1/6th of CAP. I estimate CAP over the nearest Okinawan Island to be about 75 P-47s etc so today ( as the picture above showed ) I am sending in 12 escorts as meat and about 30 Ohkas... This is a test of the correctness of my estimate of ratios and my plan to assign escorts at a ratio of 1 escort : 3 Ohkas. So for a CV TF protected by 600 fighters you'd see 100 escorts escorting 300 Ohkas in. That'd be the plan anyways, we'll see how it goes.


So, to get 1 Ohka hit, right now I would need to spend 18 HI for the Ohka and about 1/3rd of 36 HI for one of the single-engined escorts. So, to get 1 Ohka into attack run range would require an expenditure of 30 HI. That makes the Ohka an even cheaper plane than the Ki-94 II which cost 36 HI to build but requires no escorts as it can simply fly over the Allied CAP before crashdiving. Of course this all depends on the ratio of escorts to Ohka. Once I need more than 1 escort to every 2 Ohka the Ohkas become more expensive than the Ki-94 II. So let's call 36 HI equivalent to ONE KU ( Kamikaze Unit, which is defined as the amount of HI expended in order to get 500 Kg of bombs into crash dive position of a USN ship ) and note that the Ohka is about the only plane which can score less than 1 KU ( about 0.84 KU )


To put this into perspective a Ki-49 with 1,000Kg of bombs would have a KU of almost 1 if 50% of those sent into action could be sure of surviving enemy CAP. The problem is they don't so while the Ki-49 and other bombers look promising they are, actually, very poor returns on investment as kamikazes. The Bettys are even worse as they only carry 2 x 250 Kg bombs in the kamikaze role.


The exception to this is the Ki-264 Angel which carries 20 x 250 Kg bombs for a bombload of 5,000Kg of bombs. It costs 216 HI so if it only delivered 500 Kg its KU assuming 100% survival into FlAK range would be 7 KU. However it carries 10 times that bomload and so assuming 100% survival to CAP its KU would be 0.7 KU, even less than the Ohka. Overall I found I lost just under 25% of the G9Ms committed short of the enemy fleet. Assuming that this means I'd lose 33% of the Ki-264s as they're a bit more fragile than the G9Ms this would increase the cost to about 0.93 KUs. This is still damned good and compares favourably with the Ki-94 II. So it seems that the Ki-264 might be useful as a kami after all. However for the 7,700 tons of supplies I'd need to invest to create 1 Ki-264 per month ( 1 airframe factory and 6 engine factories ) I could create 3.5 Ki-94 IIs and these have the benefit of being useful in the fighter role as well.

So, while the Ki-264 makes sense as a kami compared to the twin-engined IJA bombers it simply doesn't stack up to the Ki-94 II which gets you more planes and more versatility for the same supply investment.


Late-war Japan is all about juggling limited long-term HI production with limited supplies to create the means of production. I've budgeted 1.5 million tons of supplies for all of the changes I have to make. To be fair I'll blow through most of that in the airframe and engine production increases. Once that's done I'll focus on conserving supplies in order to last through to the end of 1946.

Suggested KU scores for the various plane types....

1. Ki-94 II. KU = 1. No need for escorts and no chance for interception due to the high speed.

2. Ki-43 IIIs, A6M7s, Ki-84r etc KU = 1.66 ( two escorts per plane in the high-altitude role ).

3. Ki-74. KU = VERY difficult to estimate. When acting like the Ki-43 III with escorts its KU should be 2.66 as it costs 72 HI and will still need 2/3rds of an escort to be expended to get it close to the target. When hitting merchants though it might fall to just 2 KU as there might be no CAP. Overall though it'll probably be around 2.44 ( 2/3rd of the time requiring escorts and only rarely not ). To counter that though is the great range. With a range of 29 hexes it extends the distance over which the Allies must be cautious three-fold and that's very useful indeed. So its KU is high ( which isn't good ) but its technical characteristics are very useful in fatiguing the Allied fighter pilots in the approach phase and killing cripples as they run away.

4. Ohka. KU = 0.85 KU.

5. low altitude kamis... Well, that depends on how many escorts they need. I'm going to test that over the next few days in-game and then I'll know. overall I expect that low-altitude kamis would do very well against anything short of a CV TF. Against a CV TF though I think they might just die in droves.


So, out to about 10 hexes I can engage the enemy CV fleet quite economically but need mass in order to do so. Beyond 10 hexes I can't engage them that economically but can still do so with some limited success with Ki-74s. If unawares or hitting something uncapped then the Ki-74s will be deadly. At close range even againt very well-defended enemy ships the Ohkas should be lethal, especially as one hit will send anything short of a CA or BB immediately back to port- or the bottom.


So, that's a bit of insight into my thinking re: KUs and how that influenced my expansion of airframes/engines plans.

[Rainer79]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. As someone who will probably be soon forced to commit Kamikazes to battle myself, I am obviously very interested in their optimal usage.

I see that you are planning to discontinue George production. Have you thought about building the slightly older N1K1-J model instead? Since you now can prevent a factory from upgrading, production of "outdated" aircraft is viable in AE. The N1K1-J has a higher ceiling than the later versions and is in fact one of the few Japanese planes that can go beyond 40k feet. While the evil P-38 and P-47 will still be able to go higher the same cannot be said for the allied naval fighters.

[Nemo121]

Rainer79,

Aye if I had that option I'd take it. Unfortunately by the time Downfall starts the N1K1 factories have already upgraded to the N1K15 - preparatory to its commencement of production next month. Anything which could get above Corsairs would be preferable to anything which can't. That's the way combat in AE works unfortunately. On the other hand while this hurts me now from January 1946 ( when the Ki-94 II comes in ---- and hopefully sooner if my research pays off ) it'll work in my favour so what's good for the goose is good for the gander in this case.


One thing: VERY IMPORTANT NEWS for all late-war Japanese players. Michaelm has confirmed that kamikazes use the LOW LEVEL NAVAL Skill to determine their hit rate vs enemy shipping. I certainly didn't know this was the case, assuming it was either general experience or general naval attack skill.

So, if training kamis set your naval attack training altituded to be 100 feet or else you might as well not bother with training at all.

[Rainer79]

Thanks, that info is really important. I had assumed that regular naval skill would be used so a lot of training would have gone to waste.

It is a shame about the George though. While it seems that you can upgrade a factory along its upgrade path without any damage, you cannot downgrade them again without suffering it.

Also I would suggest to double H8K2-L production if you can afford it. They seem to be very prone to ops losses for me even with decently trained pilots. Their transport capacity is great though.

[Nemo121]

Ah well, it is what it is... I'm not the sort to moan too much about things which would be nice but can't happen. E.g. In this game no Ohkas can be air-launched. Does that disable half of my IJN bombers? Yes but the whole trick is to adapt and overcome so I'll just use those bombers as kamis.


I can't really afford to double H8KL2 production as increaseing production by 12 planes would require 48 more engines and, to be honest, I'd rather have an additional 48 Ki-94 IIs per month than an additional 12 H8K2Ls.

The more i look into it the more I think the Ki-94II is the war-winning airplane here.... I'm actually looking at increasing production a little. Currently I'm researching 488 of them so building 488 engine factories will require 536,800 tons of supplies. That leaves me with about 213,200 tons of supplies from the 750,000 I have allowed myself as my allocation to the most important plane type I can identify.... That 213,200 tons can be used to make an additional 97 engine factories as well as another 97 airframe factories. That would boost monthly production to 585 which would suffice to give me more than enough fighters as well as 200 to 300 per month purely for kamikaze work.

With 40 Exp Low Naval Attack pilots getting almost 50% hits I can assume that I should be able to train my guys to about 50% Low Naval Skill and then commit them so as to get a 50% hit rate too. FlAK is negligible in this sort of diving attack and with fighter interception being negligible also even 200 kamis per month would yield some 100 ships hit within enemy CV TFs. That has a huge potential for generating damaged CVs and creating a sufficient weakening of CAP such that my conventional bombers and other kamis could sweep in and do even more damage.

The more I look at it the more it looks like I need to increase my committment of supplies to rebuilding the air force from 1.5 million to 2.25 million tons. 750,000 will go to the Ki-94 II programme, another 650,000 will go to the Mitsubishi Ha43 engines ( J7W1s, A7M2s and Ki-74s ). If I build 200 Mitsubishi Ha32 engines I can produce an additional 75 radar-equipped Frances or Bettys per month. So that's another 220,000 tons taking the programme to 1.62 million tons. I need to build 10 Ki-45Ics, 10 Ki-21s a month and an additional 40 Ki-43IIIs so as to use up the engine pools of the respective engines. That brings supply usage up to 1.686 million tons. The remaining 314 thousand tons will be taken up by the G9M programme in which an attempt will be made to build 64 G9Ms and the necessary 256 engines to power them. That comes in at 352,000 toins and brings supply usage to 2.04 million tons. Throw in the 260 Ohkas per month I need to increase production by and that brings us to 2.3 million tons of supplies.

I only have 5.1 million tons of supplies available right now but my bet is that if I invest in this expansion now the additional fighters and bombers will enable me fend off the bombing campaign sufficiently to save the 800,000 tons of additional supplies this is costing me.


Logistics, logistics, logistics. My entire war plan is based on logistics and the cost/benefit of investing in combat capability now with a short-term hit to supply levels in order to protect supply levels in the long-term. It will also mean cutting naval production but, again, I think I can get by with lesser production of navy ships IF I have enough fighters to allow the ships I DO have to survive longer. If I get it wrong Japan will collapse much more quickly, if I'm right I'll have a stronger air force and navy in spite of decreased naval production.

[Nemo121]

Well, I've talked with Damian today and it seems that some of the little loopholes I found to maximise pilot training numbers ( using the pilot reserve to draw pilots out of a squadron, then filling it with replacements and then filling it above 1.33 times capacity with the pilots from the pilot reserve ) seemed to break Tracker.

If I understand Damian right I have something like 38,000 pilots training on and off-map. I only broke the pilot training limit for a few squadrons but I DID begin filling the pilot pool pretty aggressively... Tomorrow I plan to send even more pilot into the pilot reserve as I transition from naval training to low level naval training and draw everyone with a naval skill >60 into the pilot pool and then, the day after, draw them out to train in a special squadron dedicated to conventional torpedo attack training - causing a huge overstack in that squadron.

It seems that this workaround - which seems obvious to me - has the end effect of:
1... Increasing the potential number of Japanese pilots which can be trained on-map hugely and
2.... Decreasing the cost in HI of all of those pilots up to 1 year out.

As such one would think that development team would have spotted it already and closed the loophole. I've said it before though, they obviously don't have someone who thinks "systems" and how to break them on the team.


In other news: 2 days without a turn... I'm bored.... [8D] I may even have to go and do some real work to cover the boredom [:D]

[FatR]

Are you sure Q1W1 Lorna can be of any use? Its very short range is especially crippling on ASW duty, which, AFAIK, halves the effective patrol radius.

Very good observations about late-war Ki-43 models and Ki-94-II. In particular, this made me reevaluate Ki-43's worth in the long term.

I'm also very interested in seeing if you can make night naval attacks work. I've yet to succeed at triggering any, even when fending off an invasion. I'm not sure if merely seeing unloading TFs from the cost is not enough to trigger a night raid, or if the range was too great and morale too low.

Are you sure that overstacking training squadrons above the allowed overstack has any effect? Won't pilots above overstack maximum just be relegated to sitting on the ground in the group reserve forever?

[Mike Solli]

ORIGINAL: Nemo121
ANyone have any ideas how I can pull the FUEL out overland?

Fuel tends to migrate to ports with ships in them. I have no idea where your ships are, but if you dump a bunch in, say, Haiphong, fuel will migrate there. If you control the Chinese coast (I think you should but again I don't know for sure), you can dump a bunch of ships somewhere along the coast of China to help migrate the fuel toward Japan.

[Nemo121]

Well the Q1W1 can easily cover a range of 2 hexes on ASW patrol.

I plan to use it to cover the three access routes into the Sea of Japan:
1. Western edge, between Korea and Japan. 3 hexes wide to be patrolled by Q1W1s based on the central island.
2. Eastern edge. 1 hex wide between Hokkaido and Japan proper...
3. Northern edge. 1 to 2 hexes wide north of Wakkanai in Hokkaido.

I expect Q1W1s to do very good work in those narrow straits, backed by lots of floatplanes with radar. The key is to try and fit their technical/tactical characteristics to a suitable role. For chokepoint patrols I expect them to do very well indeed. They don't have to kill anything, just drive them away and keep them suppressed.

The only other route I really need to keep open is the route between Shanghai and Keijo and that route can be pretty well kept open by preferentially using APDs to transport the troops and supplies into Korea from where they can be shipped to Japan.



Night-time naval attacks. Well they don't fly as often as one would like but with the proper doctrine it can be made work. In my testing vs a hypothetical invasion of Formosa using the US forces in Manilla at game start I managed to generate something like 60 sorties per night and got about 7 or 8 good torpedo hits per night. Total IJNAF losses were something like 5 or 6 planes that night. So, all in all that's very favourable.

The key however is the doctrinal employment. What I've found works well is to the following:
1. a 4 sub midget-TF in the hex being invaded. During the daytime they sit in that hex and do very little - except get 1 sub sunk per day from what I've seen. However, at night you pulse the subs out 1 hex along the line of retreat/reinforcement of Allied TFs whilst leaving 1 in the hex being invaded.

2. A second line of submarines set 5 to 6 hexes back from the invasion hex along the line of retreat of damaged Allied ships. The idea is that as ships pass over these submarines at night they will generate spotting reports and IJNAF night-time attacks.

3. PT Boat TFs. With 2 or 3 PT Boat TFs in neighbouring bases you can send PT boats to raid the SLOCs 3 to 4 hexes back from the invasion beach leading to the invasion hex. Sometimes they'll run into SC TFs and die, other times they'll run into AK/AP TFs and get a few hits in before fading away. Either way though they'll generate sighting reports.

4. Overviewing this whole thing should be a Mavis or Emily unit set to night-time naval search as well as, ideally, some recon units ( Dinah etc also on night-time naval search ). If pushed though the Emilys or Mavis are sufficient on their own.


Anyways, between the midgets pulsing out and covering the 0 ( invasion hex ) and +1 ( 1 hex out from the invasion beach ) hexes, the PT boats covering +2 and +3 hexes and the submarines covering +4 to +6 with the Emilys spotting the occasional ship farther out and increasing the DL of the 0 to +6 hexes backed by some Dinahs you should generate enough detections to sortie quite a few raids every night.

I already have midget sub TFs around Okinawa and Formosa and in about a week's time will begin seeding the Kuriles with them also.


With sufficient planning I find night-time naval attacks to be quite possible and also for it to be possible to generate multiple successful attacks every turn at pretty minimal cost... Certainly much less cost per hit than daytime attacks. You need to plan for it though and set up the right force mix and realise that if you have 60 planes ready to strike you probably need 4 midget subs, 20 PT boats, and 4 to 6 coastal subs as well as 30 to 40 patrol/recon planes spotting in order to get the 60 planes to fly.

As I said though, when you see 3 CVEs getting hit in a single night you quickly decide it is worth doing.

[Nemo121]

Mike, I can bring ships into Shanghai pretty easily but I'm worried if I will draw fuel all the way from Saigon into Shanghai ( via Hong Kong etc )... I suppose I can try it and see.

I'd like to do anything possible to avoid having to send TK past Formosa to Hong Kong. Something tells me that without all of KB along as escorts none of them would come home.