The Power of Inexperience / GreyJoy(A)-Rader(J)

[Dan Nichols]

You say the Med will open in 40 days, but I see that it is May 13, 1943 in your game.  I thought the med opened May 14, 1943?

[paulkenny]

I believe all his carriers and light carriers are due for an upgrade in April 43, given you are starting to get your essex carriers now, he is probably upgrading most of them to get the additional AA guns

[paulkenny]

The 4/43 upgrade is a huge one, the AA guns go  up from 18 to 33% on most of the carriers or CVL plus the ones that dont have it get radar, think only Shok and Zuik have radars at this point.

BTW the upgrades are fairly lenghty 30 days or so for Kagi and Akagi IIRC 3 weeks for the others except for Z and Shok which have like 2 week upgrades, may be a good time for a counterattack.

[ny59giants]

Third Front

Right now there is a stalemate in India and in the Solomons. Are there any plans to go on the offense at another place?? The best place to go would be from Perth to the north and eventually over to Broome to start putting pressure on the vital SRA region. The Solomons are great for you to win the attrition war, which you seem to be doing, but you have to start considering what pressure you can put on his economic assets.

[Crackaces]

ORIGINAL: GreyJoy

ORIGINAL: Smeulders

Hope you don't take this the wrong way, but did you actually have any idea about what was in the army chasing you ?  If I'm not mistake this is a rought timeline.

1) Radar gives up on capturing India, sends many divisions of to other areas.
2) You go on the offensive towards Multan
3) Radar starts switching forces back to India

Now there are a couple of ways to explain this.
1) As you seem to be doing, Radar just thought it a good idea to stop his India offensive for a couple of months and give his troops a cruise to the Solomons and back before the final attack
2) Radar thought he'd be able to outflank you army and destroy it away from your bases. He's bringing in extra forces for the final attack, which could work because your army would be crippled in the open.
3) Radar knows he is outmatched in India and is bringing in forces for defensive purposes. The sortie from Multan consisted of weak units/engineers/etc.... He knew your recon was bad due to a lack of airfields and tried to bluff you with the amount of units.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was 3, but I'm not going to blame you for retreating. You didn't have any way of telling 2 and 3 apart so the retreat was the prudent move. However, right now it's looking more and more like that was the case. His bombing is giving him very good recon and Radar decided to give up the chase. Your retreating army is almost certainly too strong to be defeated in the open by Radar's (Doesn't mean that you could have taken Multan though, he'll have high forts there) I don't think you should worry about an attack on your bases too much.

Thanks mate!

If i have to be honest, i think option 2 was, till the Japanese Tank Army defeat, the most probable.
As far as i can tell right now there are at least 6 big identified divisions at Multan, plus all those tank units we've fought against.
I do think Rader's plan was to lure me east of the Multan river, knowing that i had to keep my stack united in order to be able to defend against his bombers, and, after having engaged my main army with a decent force that he was sure was not going to be defeated in open ground, move behind my shoulders a 1000 AV Tank corp to cut my supply path and retreat route, thus opening the very gates of a possible future land offensive against an -almost- undefended Karachi.
The mistake he has made with his tanks was brutal, and, united with the fact that i sniffed something and moved back behind the river just in time, saved my butt from a total annihilation.
When he realized he was no more able to win the race game towards Hyderabad because his bombers were unable (due to the forced very high cieling) to slow me down enough, he halted the advance and got back to Multan.

now if this hypotesis corresponds to reality, we have a strong japanese army in Multan and many more big units aboard Marus moving to India. Obviously the latters can be redirected somewhere else now, but it's clear that, unless i completeley mistaken the situation and a japanese army pops up from nowhere, my two Indian bases are safe for the moment being. Med will be open in 40 days and so we'll be able to bring in more supplies to help the struggle. But it's also clear that untill i'll be able to fight back in the Indian skies, the "status quo" could not be changed.

I might add a comment if I could strcitly from a newbie to the game but experinced at wargaming. I would propose that Radier is desperate for an instant victory. The move back into the solomons was to give him time but now he has no time so the India campaign is one last thrust to find victory. Probably as desperate as the "Battle of the Bulge". I would also propose that Radier now respects GreyJoy's abilities and can figure that he will be able to use the 1944 - 1945 forces with complete competence. I beleive Radier asked himself , "given the immediate circumstances How do I win this thing ???.." Capture India! .. I do beleive this was the orginal plan, but he did not completly stick to this strategy responding to the Solomons thinking he could out think GreyJoy somehow. Much like moving chess pieces in a basic opening move because it works, but without really understanding where the pieces will be in the middle of the game. It works only if the player has an establsihed strategy at the begning not just because the pieces get into an establsihed position.

Also, I now understand what CR has been saying in this thread. Just like how the BoTB hastened German defeat .. this foray in India so late in the scheme of things will produce an instant result like the Bulge, cause some drama, but in fact hasten defeat. It will be fun to watch ...

Just my .02 ..

[GreyJoy]

I know mate. I'm slowly building up reserves in NOPAC and Western Oz...unfortunately it takes a lot of time cause i had to send LCUs directly from West Coast and the journey is long.
However I had already built up at max Geralton and supplies are flowing there on a regular basis. From there in the next 2 weeks we'll invade Exmouth (which is the only base left in jap hands on the coast) and start building . I think that that little invasion will force him to devote more attentions to southern DEI and the upcoming recon missions from NOPAC should have the same results for what concerns the Kuriles.
 
I have 5 Seabees Regiments ready at Perth and 2 big USN base forces...i need a couple more USAFF base forces and a couple of Marine Defence units before thinking about going further than Exmouth...however we're on the move for that.
NOPAC is anyway the shortest way...i wanna start planning for summer 1944...but before i hope to get anything good out of this theatre, as u say, i need to start threating seriously his economic assets...
Subs are becoming useless again...too many losses for no positive records...he has changed all his usual routes and i'm not finding them anymore...instead he has moved lots of Helens and Betties on ASW duties and probably his new routes are moving only in guarded paths...
 
 

[GreyJoy]

ORIGINAL: Crackaces

ORIGINAL: GreyJoy

ORIGINAL: Smeulders

Hope you don't take this the wrong way, but did you actually have any idea about what was in the army chasing you ?  If I'm not mistake this is a rought timeline.

1) Radar gives up on capturing India, sends many divisions of to other areas.
2) You go on the offensive towards Multan
3) Radar starts switching forces back to India

Now there are a couple of ways to explain this.
1) As you seem to be doing, Radar just thought it a good idea to stop his India offensive for a couple of months and give his troops a cruise to the Solomons and back before the final attack
2) Radar thought he'd be able to outflank you army and destroy it away from your bases. He's bringing in extra forces for the final attack, which could work because your army would be crippled in the open.
3) Radar knows he is outmatched in India and is bringing in forces for defensive purposes. The sortie from Multan consisted of weak units/engineers/etc.... He knew your recon was bad due to a lack of airfields and tried to bluff you with the amount of units.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was 3, but I'm not going to blame you for retreating. You didn't have any way of telling 2 and 3 apart so the retreat was the prudent move. However, right now it's looking more and more like that was the case. His bombing is giving him very good recon and Radar decided to give up the chase. Your retreating army is almost certainly too strong to be defeated in the open by Radar's (Doesn't mean that you could have taken Multan though, he'll have high forts there) I don't think you should worry about an attack on your bases too much.

Thanks mate!

If i have to be honest, i think option 2 was, till the Japanese Tank Army defeat, the most probable.
As far as i can tell right now there are at least 6 big identified divisions at Multan, plus all those tank units we've fought against.
I do think Rader's plan was to lure me east of the Multan river, knowing that i had to keep my stack united in order to be able to defend against his bombers, and, after having engaged my main army with a decent force that he was sure was not going to be defeated in open ground, move behind my shoulders a 1000 AV Tank corp to cut my supply path and retreat route, thus opening the very gates of a possible future land offensive against an -almost- undefended Karachi.
The mistake he has made with his tanks was brutal, and, united with the fact that i sniffed something and moved back behind the river just in time, saved my butt from a total annihilation.
When he realized he was no more able to win the race game towards Hyderabad because his bombers were unable (due to the forced very high cieling) to slow me down enough, he halted the advance and got back to Multan.

now if this hypotesis corresponds to reality, we have a strong japanese army in Multan and many more big units aboard Marus moving to India. Obviously the latters can be redirected somewhere else now, but it's clear that, unless i completeley mistaken the situation and a japanese army pops up from nowhere, my two Indian bases are safe for the moment being. Med will be open in 40 days and so we'll be able to bring in more supplies to help the struggle. But it's also clear that untill i'll be able to fight back in the Indian skies, the "status quo" could not be changed.

I might add a comment if I could strcitly from a newbie to the game but experinced at wargaming. I would propose that Radier is desperate for an instant victory. The move back into the solomons was to give him time but now he has no time so the India campaign is one last thrust to find victory. Probably as desperate as the "Battle of the Bulge". I would also propose that Radier now respects GreyJoy's abilities and can figure that he will be able to use the 1944 - 1945 forces with complete competence. I beleive Radier asked himself , "given the immediate circumstances How do I win this thing ???.." Capture India! .. I do beleive this was the orginal plan, but he did not completly stick to this strategy responding to the Solomons thinking he could out think GreyJoy somehow. Much like moving chess pieces in a basic opening move because it works, but without really understanding where the pieces will be in the middle of the game. It works only if the player has an establsihed strategy at the begning not just because the pieces get into an establsihed position.

Also, I now understand what CR has been saying in this thread. Just like how the BoTB hastened German defeat .. this foray in India so late in the scheme of things will produce an instant result like the Bulge, cause some drama, but in fact hasten defeat. It will be fun to watch ...

Just my .02 ..

Thanks Crackeces!

As far as i can tell he was wise not to push against Karachi and to move back to respond to my invasion of the Solomons. It was too late for Karachi...his main mistake was to wait so much time before crossing the LOD and when he finally did he found that we had entranched so much and so deep that was a suicide to attack.
However his SOPAC counterinvasion was initially a complete success. He managed to storm an entire allied Corp at PM (2 divisions, 3 arty units, 2 Combat eng rgt) and was ready to storm the Solomons...then the turning point was at Tulagi. 5 Divisions weren't enough to dislodge 2 Allied regiments well entrenched and that halted his offensive...and so we are here now, after 5 long months of fightings.

However he did again a masterpiece of deception and counter-intelligence. For months he has been shipping back his big units to India right in front of my nose, while i thought he was going to counterinvade Tulagi....i was so full of my mistaken thoughts that didn't see the danger and sent all my Indian army against what i thought was a lightly defended outpost (Multan)...he sniffed the chance of inflicting me a final defeat and he attempted to...he did only one mistake with his tanks and that saved my day. Luckly for me i had sniffed too that there were something plain wrong and got back behind the Multan river in time not to be cut out...but it was close....
So now we have a HUGE jap army in India...what should i do?...have to re-think about my overall Indian strategy...

[Crackaces]

So now we have a HUGE jap army in India

In the words of Ho Chi Minh ...."Invite them for tea " but instead of the peace part .. cut them off and kill them .. none of these troops will be availible to help with the homeland defense .. by the looks of this .. Stalingrad will be pale in comparision ..and a footnote to the GreyJoy victory in India ...[:D]

Go get 'em GreyJoy!

[JohnDillworth]

Just a hunch about the KB.  Most Japanese players use the death star approach of keeping all the carriers together.  Once the Kaga got hit you probably had parity as his pilots are probably not as good as yours anymore.  My guess is is sent the lot of them for refit.  The 4/43 updates are significant so why not wait for the Kaga, train more pilots, refit all ships at once, and move the offensive back to someplace that will not require the KB.

[GreyJoy]

May 13, 14 1943

Good Lord, the bait worked...my small DD TF didn't find anything to sweep but the next day saw 2 waves (AM and PM) of Vals heavily escorted by the best IJN fighters....it was a massacre. My CAP, composed of Hellcats, corsairs and Australian Kitties truly butchered the enemy, scoring the incredible ratio of 1-12...i lost 4 planes and 1 pilots...he lost 99 planes in these engagements![X(]

...In fact i didn't express myself in a good way...i meant 40 days before my convoys may reach Aden.... 650k supplies are on the way, along with a whole army of Aus, US and british troops. 10 American bomber squadrons will join the party...

The Solomons are clearly a good place to grind him down...but Rader is getting aware of that and he's avoiding any possible ships encounter....

JohnD....yes, i guess so also because Rader is a master in the DeathStar Phylosophy...[:D]...he doesn't need the KB right now nor in the Solomons neither in India....the right time to R&R for him....

[GreyJoy]

ORIGINAL: Crackaces

So now we have a HUGE jap army in India

In the words of Ho Chi Minh ...."Invite them for tea " but instead of the peace part .. cut them off and kill them .. none of these troops will be availible to help with the homeland defense .. by the looks of this .. Stalingrad will be pale in comparision ..and a footnote to the GreyJoy victory in India ...[:D]

Go get 'em GreyJoy!

Easier to be said than done my friend!
To pocket them i'll have to land somewhere on the coast....and i have not the power right now to do that against his LBA....however the simple fact that they are there means they are not somewhere else, which is a good thing imho. Now i need to resupply India and plan to get a decent air force back there....then we'll see what we can do to "get'em"

[GreyJoy]

AFTER ACTION REPORTS FOR May 13, 43

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morning Air attack on TF, near Lunga at 114,138

Weather in hex: Light cloud

Raid detected at 186 NM, estimated altitude 16,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 69 minutes

Japanese aircraft
A6M3a Zero x 37
A6M5 Zero x 32
D3A1 Val x 24
N1K1-J George x 44



Allied aircraft
Kittyhawk III x 18
Spitfire Vc Trop x 12
Hurricane XIIb x 6
F4U-1 Corsair x 13
F6F-3 Hellcat x 45


Japanese aircraft losses
A6M3a Zero: 4 destroyed
A6M5 Zero: 2 destroyed
D3A1 Val: 13 destroyed, 2 damaged
D3A1 Val: 1 destroyed by flak
N1K1-J George: 2 destroyed

Allied aircraft losses
F6F-3 Hellcat: 1 destroyed

Allied Ships
DD Downes
DD Cassin



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Afternoon Air attack on TF, near Lunga at 114,138

Weather in hex: Light rain

Raid detected at 195 NM, estimated altitude 19,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 73 minutes

Japanese aircraft
A6M3a Zero x 32
A6M5 Zero x 26
D3A1 Val x 5
N1K1-J George x 38



Allied aircraft
Kittyhawk III x 17
Spitfire Vc Trop x 12
Hurricane XIIb x 6
F4U-1 Corsair x 13
F6F-3 Hellcat x 44


Japanese aircraft losses
A6M3a Zero: 1 destroyed
A6M5 Zero: 5 destroyed
D3A1 Val: 1 destroyed
N1K1-J George: 1 destroyed

Allied aircraft losses
Kittyhawk III: 1 destroyed

[GreyJoy]

May 15, 16 1943
 
Allert: a big enemy surface TF has been spotted by our PB4Ys 19 hexes north of Ndeni. We fear an attack to our main Hub in the region (Ndeni). Our fleet has been allerted. 4 BBs, 15 Cruisers and 30 DDs are guarding the access to the big base, while 400 fighters and 300 bombers are spread all over the 4 bases that form the "HUB" around Ndeni.
 
For the rest the only action of this turn took place in India. He sent 4DDs to intercept our resupplying xAKs near Karachi. We had a DD (HMS Scout) that was guarding the ships. Our lonely ship fought hard, badly damaging a Kamikaze class DD but then had to subcumb to enemy bigger numbers...however we still have fangs to bite and 4 Albacores and 2 Vangeances took off from the damaged strips of Karachi and sunk 2 DDs badly damaging another one which later got caught by SS016. Result? 1 old brit DD and 1 xAK in exchange of 3 Kamikaze Class DDs...not bad.
 
SS Poggy found, attacked and sunk another TK near Ambonia, while it's confirmed that he's still bringing convoys of troops to India.... 30 days and we should have the first 300k supplies at Aden....[&o]

[ny59giants]

His fighter pilot quality is starting to show that he cannot stand toe-to-toe with yours now.

I hope you are building up some P-38 groups to start doing high altitude sweeps.

Have you been reading Canoerebel's AAR and the recent discussion of SC TF composition?? It is worth your time.

[GreyJoy]

Yes, i've been reading it NY59, thanks! In fact i've been changing a lot my general attitude towards TF composition in the last months of gameplay...now i tend to group togheder ships of the same class or of the same speed, and to keep the number of ships inside the 15 units...
 
I think our pilots are becoming superior, but above all what changes the cards is the fact that i keep on playin defensively, which gives me a huge advantage in terms of A2A combat. Last time i used the P-38s over Rabaul (during the great rabaul raid of last month) they suffered terribly, despite being TOP aces and with superior machines...If outnumbered they fall like flies against the georges, also because we have our max alt rule and the P-38Gs cannot fly higher than 31k feet so they cannot dive on georges and Tojos...
 
I'm thinking about using the Hellcats as sweeper in the Solomons...at 36k feet they should be good enough and they arrive in good numbers in order to be able to sustain the higher losses of the offensive missions... what do u think?

[ny59giants]

Like setting up a low/high CAP, you can do the same on sweeps. If you can use both the Hellcats and P-38s together, then set one (maybe P-38s at 31k) and Hellcats at 15k. It might need to be set up the other way, but you may need to do some experimenting here.

Anyone else have a better way for this??

[GreyJoy]

Still have to understand why the corsairs suck so much on Sweep missions. They are faster than the P-38 and surely more mvr than the two engine bird... still they perform so bad that after the first 3/4 attempts i had to stop using them that way and limited em to simple CAP missions. Another thing i noticed is that at 31k the corsairs perform defenetly worse than the P-38s and Hellcats, while at 20k the seem to be doing just fine. The Hellcats, on the other hand, get really too much fatigue above 30k, much more than the P-38 and the Corsairs...
Again....there's nothing that can compare with the SPITS VIII...which is the real king of the skies!
 
How about the P-47? Is that so good here? I read it's better than the mustang and superior even to the Spits VIII....is that true? How should i use them when the become available (july 43) ?
 
Thanks guys

[GreyJoy]

By July we'll be producing each month 55 P-47s, 65 P-40K, 25 P-39Ds, 40 P-38Hs, 130 Hellcats, 75 Wildcats (the F4F4 and FM-1 models), 30 Corsairs, more than 50 Australian Kitti and spitVc, 35 Hurricanes MKIIc and few more less important planes.
Not bad, especially if i manage to keep my losses low as they are now

[GreyJoy]

May 17, 18 1943

An important turn imho.... the strong BB TF localized 19 hexes north of Ndeni was intercepted by a pack of my "wolves"...After 2 different attacks SS Tuny managed to put 2 fishes into the bettly of BB Haruna...wonder why Rader kept those BB stationing there...a bait for my CVs? a bait for my BBs?....if so the KB is probably stationing somehwere in the shades near Kwalajein...


Sub attack near Kusaie Island at 123,124

Japanese Ships
BB Haruna, Torpedo hits 2
BB Kirishima
CA Chikuma
DD Naganami
DD Ishikaze
DD Takakaze
DD Asashio

Allied Ships
SS Tunny



While this happens in the pacific, in India 470 enemy bombers pounded Hyderabad and my Eastern Army which is 3 hexes far from it....

[kfsgo]

ORIGINAL: GreyJoy

Again....there's nothing that can compare with the SPITS VIII...which is the real king of the skies!

How about the P-47? Is that so good here? I read it's better than the mustang and superior even to the Spits VIII....is that true? How should i use them when the become available (july 43) ?

Thanks guys

[Disclaimer: I've never gotten so far in a campaign game as to use any of them! So take with salt.]

In testing (not under combat conditions! just putting different aircraft in identical situations) I find that the Spitfire 8 is the 'best' aircraft around (not enormously so, but noticeably) for zapping high-maneuverability Japanese fighters - better than the P-47, P-51 or even the Spit 14, funnily enough. Makes sense - it's about twice as maneuverable as the other late-war Allied fighters, while being a fast climber and still faster in a straight line than anything the Japanese field until the never-built stuff like the Shinden etc. So, if you're fighting Zeros, Oscars etc - the 'maneuverable but relatively slow and fragile' philosophy aircraft - it's the way to go, not least because they get somewhat fatter as the war goes on and lose that edge. Once you get into Franks, Georges, Tojos and similar (or bombers, for that matter) you're usually better off with the US fighters as they're not at such a maneuvre disadvantage and can apply their heavier armament. In other words - you really want the Spit 8 in about late 1942. Nice of Rader to give you that, eh?

Anyway - obviously you use what you've got on hand, but that seems to be the theory...