The Phosphate Islands

[el cid again]

Few islands in the ocean areas have many resources. The major exception in theater is
of course New Caledonia, which apart from significant cattle industry, has major mines
it is difficult to overstate the value of. These produce vital strategic materials more valueable
than ton for ton of general resources indicates - but at least can be represented as present
in a major way. Most islands produce little - the main thing produced in exceptional places is
copra - otherwise fish/seafood. So major points produce tiny amounts - except for these islands -
which produce no supplies - but lots of resources.

Apart from that, there are three Pacific (and one Indian) islands with major resource production,
all of it guano ( nitrates for munitions and fertilizer ). These are Nauru Island, Ocean Island and
Makatea in the Pacific, and Cocos Island (Keeling) in the Indian Ocean.

These islands also have something else in common that matters in the game. All are 75 to 150 feet
above MSL, and big enough for Level 6 airfields (only one of which has been built IRL). Most islands
are atols and cannot have major airfields. Apparently this height is why birds preferred to nest on them
- so the nests could not be overcome by high water.

The port of Maketea is Temeo. It probably should be a 2 - so it rates higher than the 1 at Nauru.
Maketea is slot 1320. This island is in the Marquesas.

The port of Ocean Island is Banaba. It also probably shoudl be a 2 - for the same reason as Temeo.
Ocean is slot 812.

Nauru is slot 811. It gets a "port" rating of 1 in stock, and that is perfect. But there is NO port.
There are 14 gaps in the reef which small boats use to move things to ships anchored outside the reef.
There is no suitable anchorage or docking point, and none can be built. For this reason, I am going to
suggest a house rule in my games not to build up this port. It will also take longer to load than at Maketea
or Ocean - because I rate their ports as 2.

The somewhat similar Indian Ocean case is Christmas Island (not to be confused with Christmas Island in the
Pacific, which is a mispronounciation of Kirimitai in English) -
here the port has the romantic name Flying Fish Cove (or Kampong) and here you also mine phosphate.
But while long believed to be from birds, this came from ancient marine animal sources.
This island was occupied Japan (as were Nauru and Ocean in the Pacific) - twice actually - and in between
had a rare mutiny of CW forces - involving the deaths of 5 Europeans. Apparently, since everyone ended up
in Japanese prisons or worse, this didn't result in legal action. But it is remarkably similar to the case of
Cocos Islands - for two reasons. First, there was also a mutiny there - the only one to result in executions
in the CW in WWII. Second - both mutinies involved tiny coast gun detachments. The only medium caliber guns
(there are no large caliber cases) in the area are on these islands - 6 inch. Just as the pair at Rabaul, these guns
are absent from AE for some reason, never mind they were placed there for strategic reasons. There were two
on Cocos (slot 1023) but apparently only one on Christmas (slot 1022) - just as there were two at Rabaul.

How many resources to put on these islands needs to be determined? But it is enough to attaract a steady stream of
small ships. When a German raider showed up at one of them just before the Pacific theater went hot, it sank four
ships loading phosphates. I use 100 on Nauru, 75 on the others, to show Nauru was a larger producer (but it took
longer to load due to lack of a proper port).

[Shark7]

There is another that you have not yet mentioned, Christmas Island IO, which should have a significant resource center due to the phosphorus mine located there. Granted during the real war, the Japanese were never able to really exploit the phosphate mine, but IMO the player should not be artificially limited by the exclusion of this resource center. I have added 10 resource centers to the island in my own modifications.

[Skyland]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

The port of Maketea is Temeo. It probably should be a 2 - so it rates higher than the 1 at Nauru.
Maketea is slot 1320. This island is in the Marquesas.

Makatea port should be 1(0) in game. Production was 200 000 tons in 1939.
I have added those datas in my mod.

[JWE]

This is the "port" of Temao, in the Archipel des Tuamotu, not the Marquesas. The mouth of the cut is 27 meters. The bottom is 3 meter reef (5 meters at mean high tide). Local fishing boats use it for a storm hole. Modern sailboats are warned against it. Even giving it dot status is a gift.

The Island itself has some (few) spots on the Eastern coast where ramps and piers could be built, but they would be in the way of the Easterlies.

Learn about the hydrography of places. It is an interesting study and will help you understand the whys and wherefores of game decisions.

[DuckofTindalos]

Doesn't look like much of a "port", does it?

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: JWE

This is the "port" of Temao, in the Archipel des Tuamotu, not the Marquesas. The mouth of the cut is 27 meters. The bottom is 3 meter reef (5 meters at mean high tide). Local fishing boats use it for a storm hole. Modern sailboats are warned against it. Even giving it dot status is a gift.

The Island itself has some (few) spots on the Eastern coast where ramps and piers could be built, but they would be in the way of the Easterlies.

Learn about the hydrography of places. It is an interesting study and will help you understand the whys and wherefores of game decisions.

Nice info!

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: Terminus

Doesn't look like much of a "port", does it?

Not at all, however, if you had a bass boat, a cooler and all day to do nothing, it would be a good place to go 'fishing'. [:D]

[SuluSea]

El Cid reminds me of the energizer bunny but instead of the loveable rabbit someone that comes off as petty and badgering to the "armchair historians" and "people that never walked the terrain".

Instead of incessant badgering put out your own mod and if it's any good people will let you know by playing it. Life experience has taught me that people that write their tickets by beating down anothers effort don't have the confidence that their work is of any significance.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: Shark7

There is another that you have not yet mentioned, Christmas Island IO, which should have a significant resource center due to the phosphorus mine located there. Granted during the real war, the Japanese were never able to really exploit the phosphate mine, but IMO the player should not be artificially limited by the exclusion of this resource center. I have added 10 resource centers to the island in my own modifications.

I should have mentioned it. And it was an Allied asset before it was occupied, and again after it was liberated. So, like every other resource asset,
it may or may not be productive, and it may or may not change hands, but it ought to be present. For one thing, strategy is determined by such assets. Remember, WITP is about resources. First, of course, about critical oil, iron ore and rubber - enough to shut down Japan if we were not allowed to dictate its foreign policy. But second, when it decided (entirely predictably) not to go along with that, it then needed to establish an autarky - a completely self sufficient zone in all respects - and to defend that zone.

Try to imagine someone telling the USA, after four years of war, that it must abandon its position and write off its war dead, as a condition of being able ot import vital resources. Try to justify, in an academic sense, why it was somehow acceptable not to take a tough line in 1937 or 1938 - but suddenly a priority in 1941? It might have mattered, in 1937, and indeed the Panay Incident was percieved to be a big deal in Japan, even in military circles. To act as if a policy, which we disapprove of, does not require sanctions for years, creates a certain inertia, with events causing momentum that did not at first exist. The fact is, the colonial regime in place in China was not substantially one of Japanese making - we ran US flagged opium ships under US Navy protection into at least the 1920s (the USNI Proceedings did an article on five of them) - and Western nations had special "consessions" and "enclaves" and "rights" which were only ended by Japan - mostly in 1945 as a form of revenge (but which were mostly not reinstated, with the notable exception of Hong Kong - which STILL permitted legal opium trading until 1954 - on the formal record). [Don't get me wrong. I love Hong Kong. But its history is not one easy to defend.] We trade today with a China that is Imperial - ruling minorities by force - claiming a right to expand to undefined former Imperial territories even over the sea; that sponsors and facilitates internet attacks, the spread of wmd and missile technologies, and which does not honor intellectual property rights writ large, or human rights at home. Yet no one advocates we attempt to embargo China to force it to change its foreign or domestic policy. If we did, we could expect trouble. FDR said as much. He was unable to persuade an isolationist Congress to do more than finance belligerent allies in WWII - and he sought a path to war in which (quoting from one of the formal orders sent to Pacific commanders - by the Army Chief of Staff) "if war should come, the US desires that Japan should commit the first overt act." (from memory, so possibly not perfect). The point of the embargo was that there would be war. And the mechanism chosed to influence Japan was an embargo.

Now here we have something special. Japan is no ordinary nation in re imports. It is remarkably poor in terms of tillable soil (4% of land area) or exploitable mineral assets. Further, we had a direct and causal role in the industrialization of Japan (see Admiral Perry) - threatening to shell its seaports (a few weeks after the French DID shell Kagoshima - so what that meant was clear) if it did not open to international trade. The argument was, "if you do this, you won't have to drown girl babies in years of famine." So Japan industrialized, but the only way it could - importing resources (and food). Threatening Japan with a cut off of resources is to threaten starvation. [Indeed, under our administration, because we did not allow Japan to keep Formosa and Korea which it needed to feed itself, it DID suffer starvation. Saburo Sakai's wife died of malnutrition as late as 1948. Only Cold War politics caused us to change policy and permit Japan enough latitude to trade enough, again, to actually survive. Wartime Treasury Secretary Morgenthau, in particular, advocated reducing Japanese population by starvation by something North of 2/3. And we did make slight progress in that direction for some years.]

Think about it in reverse: what if Japan wrote off years of war in China - and did what we wanted? What next? If we could dictate that, what else might we want? If you give a mouse a cookie...no way they were going to find out.

So the war is about resources. Nothing in the campaigns makes any sense unless it is to take, defend or retake resources. You are absolutely right.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: SuluSea

El Cid reminds me of the energizer bunny but instead of the loveable rabbit someone that comes off as petty and badgering to the "armchair historians" and "people that never walked the terrain".

Instead of incessant badgering put out your own mod and if it's any good people will let you know by playing it. Life experience has taught me that people that write their tickets by beating down anothers effort don't have the confidence that their work is of any significance.

It is completely true that these are not places like, say, Guadalcanal. Admiral Fisher (First Lord of the Admiralty) selected it for a strategic fleet base, because it is such a fine anchorage. In fact, I propose that Nauru not be allowed to develop a port - none ever was - and access was always by small boat through 14 small breeches in the reef to ships anchored out. Yet these were really significant economic assets - into the 1980s - until the phosphate was fully exploited. For a while, the population of Ocean Island was the most wealthy in the world - even more than the oil states. It is not some sort of trivial technicality that fortunes were made, and ecosystems decimated writ large: it was a result of significant economic facts. The presense or even feasibility of large ports is not the point. Indeed, the game system itself permits one to rate "port build" at 0 - and while that rating is overused - one of these islands rates it - the rest probably only a 1 - so no amount of investment is going to permit a major port. And I have no problem with house rules that limit port development - indeed propose one for Nauru - and would entertain the suggestion re the other islands.

I do not post this information except FYI. The concept that I am "badgering" is inappropriate - it is not my motive, and I have no time for such a thing. Any and all are perfectly free not to read what I post, or to ignore it if it is of no interest or value after they do read it. Granted that my motives are rather more professional than hobbiests have: battleship admirals are perfectly free to simply slam away at computer or human opponents just for the joy of seeing the ships sink if they want. But for me, simulation is about trying to make strategic sense, and inside that context, operational sense, out of the choices available. I cannot do that unless the economic assets are on the table. To which end, I am working up the more critical of these changes into a slightly modified stock scenario 1, which I will use to understand the AE system. Unexpectedly, I have collected an entire team of people who are interested in these ideas - for various reasons - no doubt including to consider some of them in their own mods. But until I have a better understanding of AE, I do not intend to even decide if it is worth the man years of work of a major mod? And in no case would I consider being critical of someone who invested time in creating this system or a mod of it - except in the most constructive sense - to create the possibility of making it better.

Here I have broken a rule - and a promise - not to be drawn by any negative comments. But, quoting Ayn Rand, to see evil and not condemn it is moral counterfeit. I am here for positive reasons. Any suggestion to the contrary is based on false assumptions, and has no traction with me. I post for the sake of those who care for my input - not to irritate anyone. I see no reason to be hostile. Anyone who does demeans himself, not me.

[JWE]

Woof !! And if anybody can understand that nonsense, more power to them.

[Schanilec]

This one time...at band camp.....[:D]

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: JWE

Woof !! And if anybody can understand that nonsense, more power to them.

you just demeaned yourself. Now go punish your liver......it'll be in good company with your brain after reading Cid's last post. [:'(]

[Don Bowen]

Of all the threads I haver ever read, this is the most recent.

[nashvillen]

Here is a current overhead image of Nauru

[anarchyintheuk]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

Try to imagine someone telling the USA, after four years of war, that it must abandon its position and write off its war dead, as a condition of being able ot import vital resources. Try to justify, in an academic sense, why it was somehow acceptable not to take a tough line in 1937 or 1938 - but suddenly a priority in 1941? It might have mattered, in 1937, and indeed the Panay Incident was percieved to be a big deal in Japan, even in military circles. To act as if a policy, which we disapprove of, does not require sanctions for years, creates a certain inertia, with events causing momentum that did not at first exist. The fact is, the colonial regime in place in China was not substantially one of Japanese making - we ran US flagged opium ships under US Navy protection into at least the 1920s (the USNI Proceedings did an article on five of them) - and Western nations had special "consessions" and "enclaves" and "rights" which were only ended by Japan - mostly in 1945 as a form of revenge (but which were mostly not reinstated, with the notable exception of Hong Kong - which STILL permitted legal opium trading until 1954 - on the formal record). [Don't get me wrong. I love Hong Kong. But its history is not one easy to defend.] We trade today with a China that is Imperial - ruling minorities by force - claiming a right to expand to undefined former Imperial territories even over the sea; that sponsors and facilitates internet attacks, the spread of wmd and missile technologies, and which does not honor intellectual property rights writ large, or human rights at home. Yet no one advocates we attempt to embargo China to force it to change its foreign or domestic policy. If we did, we could expect trouble. FDR said as much. He was unable to persuade an isolationist Congress to do more than finance belligerent allies in WWII - and he sought a path to war in which (quoting from one of the formal orders sent to Pacific commanders - by the Army Chief of Staff) "if war should come, the US desires that Japan should commit the first overt act." (from memory, so possibly not perfect). The point of the embargo was that there would be war. And the mechanism chosed to influence Japan was an embargo.

Now here we have something special. Japan is no ordinary nation in re imports. It is remarkably poor in terms of tillable soil (4% of land area) or exploitable mineral assets. Further, we had a direct and causal role in the industrialization of Japan (see Admiral Perry) - threatening to shell its seaports (a few weeks after the French DID shell Kagoshima - so what that meant was clear) if it did not open to international trade. The argument was, "if you do this, you won't have to drown girl babies in years of famine." So Japan industrialized, but the only way it could - importing resources (and food). Threatening Japan with a cut off of resources is to threaten starvation. [Indeed, under our administration, because we did not allow Japan to keep Formosa and Korea which it needed to feed itself, it DID suffer starvation. Saburo Sakai's wife died of malnutrition as late as 1948. Only Cold War politics caused us to change policy and permit Japan enough latitude to trade enough, again, to actually survive. Wartime Treasury Secretary Morgenthau, in particular, advocated reducing Japanese population by starvation by something North of 2/3. And we did make slight progress in that direction for some years.]

Think about it in reverse: what if Japan wrote off years of war in China - and did what we wanted? What next? If we could dictate that, what else might we want? If you give a mouse a cookie...no way they were going to find out.

So the war is about resources. Nothing in the campaigns makes any sense unless it is to take, defend or retake resources. You are absolutely right.

Wow, just wow.

Try to imagine invading a country, then when you fail, requesting all other countries to stop supplying the invaded country and that those other countries continue to supply you. Even worse, when the other countries stop supplying you, you attack them because . . . well . . . apparently you have a right to them supplying you. Under delusional foreign policy such as this, no diplomacy was likely to lead to any positive result.

Imo, it's pretty clear that the gumbatsu's idea of turning China into a Japanese controlled entity and eliminating european colonial powers in Asia predated the actual invasion of China. Whether the embargo occured in 37 or 41 is irrelevant. Assuming that they knew the invasion would be unpopular abroad, it was incumbent uon them to take into account the range of responses available to other countries both diplomatic and economic. Accordingly, Japan should have preplanned their responses to the expected diplomatic and economic sanctions prior to the invasion instead of having a relatively knee-jerk reaction to the them when they started to hurt. The knee-jerk reaction couldn't have been less well thought out: declare war on the US, UK and Dutch in order to defeat China.

The pressure that the US applied was quite gradual from diplomatic protest (1937), non-binding embargo (1938), removal of favored nations status (1939), embargo upon airplane parts, scrap and steel (1940) prior to the final embargo of oil. If the oil embargo was the causus belli for Japan they had plenty of warning that it was coming and plenty of time to choose other options.

Korea and Formosa may have been necessary to feed Japan but the Japanese did rather less well in allowing the Koreans and Taiwanese to feed themselves. Neither country is an agricultural paradise. The UN may have honored self-determination more often in the breach than the observance but I have no problem with it setting up an independent if split Korea post war, nor returning Formosa to China. I imagine the Koreans and Taiwanese felt likewise.

The only bombardment of Kagoshima that I know of concerned the Brits, not the French. Shimonoseki involved the French (as well as others) but was a couple of decades after Perry, just like Kagoshima. Got any references to a French bombardment of Kagoshima weeks after Perry? In any event the threat of bombardment was implicit, the actual demonstration by the French, assuming it actually happened in the time period that you state, was unnecessary.

[Bradley7735]

ORIGINAL: Don Bowen


Of all the threads I haver ever read, this is the most recent.

This one made me laugh out loud. Thanks for all your input Don! You have a great command of the game and history. But, your command of humor is not insignificant!

[&o]

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus
you just demeaned yourself. Now go punish your liver......it'll be in good company with your brain after reading Cid's last post. [:'(]

That sounds like wonderful French..Fried..Advice (a la Eric the Gladiatt). I did get a litre of El Jimador on my last trip to the Bama ABC store. I wouldn't waste good rum on something like this, but a hard slash of Tekillya with some lime juice might do some duty.

[TOMLABEL]

ORIGINAL: JWE


I did get a litre of El Jimador on my last trip to the Bama ABC store. I wouldn't waste good rum on something like this, but a hard slash of Tekillya with some lime juice might do some duty.

John - Hope you are still enjoying your life in AL!!!!! The ABC store comment made me chuckle. May be headed your way this weekend.

Oh, and ROLL TIDE!!!!!!

TOMLABEL

[Skyland]

ORIGINAL: JWE

This is the "port" of Temao, in the Archipel des Tuamotu, not the Marquesas. The mouth of the cut is 27 meters. The bottom is 3 meter reef (5 meters at mean high tide). Local fishing boats use it for a storm hole. Modern sailboats are warned against it. Even giving it dot status is a gift.

The Island itself has some (few) spots on the Eastern coast where ramps and piers could be built, but they would be in the way of the Easterlies.

Learn about the hydrography of places. It is an interesting study and will help you understand the whys and wherefores of game decisions.

I know all this. In my mind the size 1 port is to simulate the existing port facilities at that time (3000 tons can be loaded per day). There was also 8 km of narrow rail line from the port to the mines.
Dot port size did not simulate this.

The picture IS the port of Temao that i want to simulate.