GJ,
Your analysis is letting you down again. You are making statements without evidence to back them up, letting hyperbole get in the way of sober assessment. YOu did very well with spotting the huge gap Rader left in the north BUT you do have a tendency to just take hyperbole as fact which is unfortunate.
Lets examine them in turn....
A part from Harbin, where i found no opposition, all his bases are covered with thousands of fighters
That's incorrect. At best he could have 100 to 200 fighter per base over Japan. Some bases may have more at the expense of leaving others less-defended. You've already thrown away your best opportunity to kill his aircraft factories quickly by hitting them while he was disorganised. Now you'll have to fight for them BUT there's no reason you can't ID bases with relatively fewer fighters and tackle them first. What I see in this game is that now you are AGAIN throwing yourself right at his best-CAPed bases and then are talking about his strength.... well, of course, if you throw yourself into the meatgrinder you can't expect not to be minced. Why are you throwing yourself into the meatgrinder though? It is unnecessary.
i still don't have the numbers of long-legged fighters to sweep and LRCAP the targeted bases efficiently
But you have enough bombers to bull through lightly/moderately defended bases and you have enough fighters to support them in a limited offensive if you don't continue wasting your long-ranged fighters on hugely outnumbered sweeps of Hakodate. You say you don't have enough but every day you throw many away needlessly over Hakodate. Your lack of P-47s is due to your using them in roles which other fighters could fill, leaving you with too few for the roles ONLY P-47s can currently perform. That's another mis-allocation of resources within your power to fix.
(i barely have 200 4Es in the theatre).
Thats not true and it also misses a larger point.
In one recent day you commited 120 4-engineds to strategic bombing raids over Harbin and on the same day commited over 140 to ground attacks over Hakodate. In addition, recently, you talked of having 4-engined bombers commited to the fighting around Rabaul.
So, even within the theatre you have 260+ 4-engined bombers and are losing UNDER 50% for what you have identified as strategically decisive missions which will end the war - which, at present, only the 4-engineds can accomplish.... using over 50% of them for missions which won't end the war and which any SBD or B-25 could easily accomplish. A serious misallocation of 4-engineds within the theatre.
Beyond that you have, based on what I can glean, at least 200 more 4-engineds in action in other theatres... theatres where they are engaged in far, far less important missions - none of which will end the war as quickly as strategic bombing of fighter airframe factories in the Home Islands.
April 25, 26 1944
Rabaul has been emptied by his Air force...tomorrow sweeps and 4Es over the big base...
Here's a quote from today about misallocation of 4-engineds.
So, you are using 120 4-engineds for strategic bombing but conservatively could be using at least 4 times that number for strategic bombing. Of the 120 you are using it looks like half are being tasked for fire bombing or engine attacks ( at least ). So, your strategic bombing offensive is working at, roughly, 1/8th of its maximal efficiency. You COULD with a small amount of discipline be getting 8 times the results with the planes you have on-map.
All of the arguments about FOW etc etc are simply comfort myths. They aren't affecting your effectiveness nearly as much as the fact that you are misallocating about 85% of your 4-engined bombers to subsidiary theatres or subsidiary missions other bombers could easily do instead.
...i have to convert many 2Es to 4Es
Another comfort myth. No, you need to begin using what you have properly. ONly when all of that fails do you need to start worrying about PP and swapping twin-engineds over. Right now you should use your pools as a reserve to replace losses but should concentrate all of your 4-engineds on strategically decisive targets ( fighter airframe factories ) - a single base at a time. Accept the losses and smash his fighter production in a fortnight and you'll rapidly see significant results. As it is you are entirely playing into Rader's hands.
have to get better planes for many of my fighter units (P-47s and P-38s instead of P-39s and P-40s).
That would also help but the primary issue is the huge misallocation of 4-engineds in which you are engaging.
Hakodate:
Well he won't flood it because it looks like you are going to take it soon. If you back off you could lure him into a mistake.
I imagine what a fleet of BBs could do starting from Hakkodate.... the work the 4Es cannot done will be taken by the ships...
NO they won't. They'll kill planes at the airfield, fight CD gun emplacements and run into mines and subs. They won't destroy his factories and they won't disintegrate his divisions. Your imagination, here, is running away and embracing wishful fantasies as opposed to the objective reality of the algorithms.
Last point:
Whenever I see a picture you take of Honshu I'm struck by how few airbase signs there are.
Either your recon is abysmal ( and you aren't reconning these bases ) or those bases are empty. In either case it speaks to the unsupportability of the statement that he has strong fighter concentrations everywhere.
Sheer air unit size limits will tend to limit his fighter groups. He may have 4,000 or 5,000 potential fighter slots at this point but the key is there is a limit and even 5,000 fighters at 500 per base means he can only cover 10 bases. Leaving you free to hit other bases until he spreads out to cover 25 at 200 per base --- a small enough force that you can actually punch through.
Air co-ordination....
Well people have posted the answer here several times but you haven't taken it. At a certain point people stop posting the answer if it keeps just being ignored.
The answer, which others have posted ( not me), is to stop sweeping and, instead, LRCAP at highest altitude. Then, when bombers come in, the fighters will act as extempore escorts.
It has been posted many times going back several months but has been ignored each time.
I don't think GJ needs much advice at this point as his play has been absolutely brilliant
Guys, let's not get carried away. This isn't a Hollywood script where people have to be either down and out or brilliant and triumphant. GJ played an excellent strategic meta-layer but operationally and tactically there is still much to be worked on. Excessive praise is just as pointless as excessive excoriation.
Right now the bottom line is that IF strategic bombing of aircraft factories is his war-winning strategy then he is mis-allocating about 85% ( at a minimum ) of the planes best-suited to that mission. Obviously things will go better if he uses more than 15% of these planes for this war-winning mission type.
As to fighters: The answer is there also. He is losing his best long-range fighters in sweeps of Hakodate.
A) he shouldn't be sweeping Hakodate with any fighters ( as others pointed out long ago wrt other bases)
B) he shouldn't be committing his best long-range fighters ( capable of enagement to the enemy's operational depth - 15 hexes or so ) to sweeps 3 or 4 hexes from his bases which other fighters could do just as easily - fighters which can't engage at the ranges of the P-47s.
As to the benefits of Hakodate: I'm not convinced the cost/benefit analysis here is anything more than "it is a base, I want it". Certainly the fantasy of BBs raining down terror on strategically important targets as they tyrannously reign the seas is just that, a fantasy. They can close a couple of airfields but with the numbers of midgets Japan gets they will eventually get attrited out of action. Furthermore they cannot damage factories and so cannot achieve what GJ identifies as his primary strategical mission right now.
