Aboard the Red Castle - Erkki(J) vs. Smeulders(A) - no lookin'!

[obvert]

I think it depends a lot on whether you know or you don't know where your opponent is going. But lines work the same as zones, you just need more subs for each area.

[Erkki]

ORIGINAL: Richard III

Still following this one closely[8D]

Are you using your subs as a stationary picket line or computer controled or manually moving them ?

When I started setting then on "patrol zones linger 2-3 days" the attack rate doubled.
The allies are very short of escorts until `43.

Hey.

My subs are all player controlled. I'm using my subs differently at different places. I have some anti-merchie picket lines(perhaps 2/3 of the sub force), some individual subs or sub pairs and threes in choke points and some subs supporting operations(DEI) directly. I also have commando subs near LA and some other places. Picket lines have got mostly merchies, tankers and a less-than handful of warships, plus CV Yorktown. Commando subs have been perhaps most effective in kills per sub, with an APD and some xAKs and a big xAP down. The ones directly supporting operations have been the least effective(Royal Sovereign + hit on a CL + less than a handful of xAKs, xAKLs and tenders).

My submarines also seem to have "forced" the enemy to use Adelaine and Melbourne as mechie/TK ports instead of Perth and Sydney. The only non-convoy escort ASW assets seen are those PCs and DDs patrolling near Pearl...

[Erkki]

April 24th


Burma: Nothing happens. Within a week we'll have the 3rd wave of support unit reinforcements unloaded from ships and railed to their stations. Magwe and nearby bases have almost 200 fighters and some more within a week + Rangoon area another 60 fighters. As soon as we'll get some Ki-44s and Ki-45s there. I say, let 'em come.

East Indies: Japanese troops advance towards Djokjarta and Meiktila. Half of Java is now in Japanese control.

South Pacific: I-10's E14Y has sighted some Allied warships at Suva, Fiji, yesterday and today. I-10 and RO-61 on station nearby.

Home Islands: Kawasaki Ha-60 R&D advances this engine to August 1942. We'll get to produce the engine well before the planes they go into(Ki-61s) become available.


Now, let me introduce the IJNAF's Crash Squadron. These guys have flown from day one, well behind the lines too, their F1M mere 3 hex mission, and have crashed a LOT considering its just 6 plane squadron, no enemy contact, ever, and the fatigue is low with a reasonably good leader.

10 crashes in 140 turns makes crash every 2 weeks... If they fly, say, 4 sorties a day(3*2 minus those canceled by weather, sortie numbers of surviving pilots seem to support that approx figure), that means these guys(pilots are fairly skilled too BTW, no fresh replacements in my search and patrol units any more!) are able to crash their plane once in every 56 sorties. With 4 KIA guys and 1 WIA it means every time these guys take off they have about 1% chance to die or get seriously injured... Would you buy a ticket? [:D]

[obvert]

And you're not even flying them four hexes!

Sometimes I put them on 30-50 search 20-30 rest and it seems to keep ops losses down. Not sure if it'll help this lot though.

[Richard III]

Your Kamikaze boys arrived early...[:'(]

[koniu]

ORIGINAL: Richard III

Your Kamikaze boys arrived early...[:'(]

they are taking training to seriously

[Erkki]

April 25th

Not much to report. Paramushiro-Jima in the Kuriles hit forts level 3. For now I'll send some 450 AV worth of troops + 2 aviation support battalions in the Kuriles, on Paramushiro and Onnekotan islands.

First day for over a month when not a single aircraft is lost, not even as an operational loss which we typically suffer about 4 every day...

[Erkki]

December 6th 1917


Hyvää itsenäisyyspäivää! Happy independence day!

Sininen ja valkoinen, värit vapauden. Blue and white, the colors of freedom.

[Erkki]

April 25th 1942

Another silent day. An unescorted 2-ship convoy gets attacked by a submarine near Truk, xAK Izumo Maru receiving 3 hits. Miraculously 2 of the hits are duds(Dutch sub, not USN) and the only hit does only moderate damage.

Other than a couple of air raids in Burma and one against British troops on Borneo, no action, but the buttons are moving...

[PaxMondo]

Erkki,

So you are finishing up the initial expansion phase. What are your plans now? Anything major, or are you starting your consolidation and defense now?

[Erkki]

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

Erkki,

So you are finishing up the initial expansion phase. What are your plans now? Anything major, or are you starting your consolidation and defense now?

Mostly building defenses from now on. However I'm not giving up semi-active use of submarines, and to some level offensive use of CVs(small but reasonably safe "low risk - high gain" raids). I also have one more larger land-grabbing offensive in my mind - more about that once we're closer to the launching day. Approx 1½ month away as troops will need the preparation points...

EDIT: btw that "Imperial Crash Squadron" crashed another plane... But pilot is OK. WTH. [:@][:D]

[PaxMondo]

Ah, so there is a 2nd level offensive coming ... cool. cant' wait.
[:)]

[koniu]

ORIGINAL: Erkki
EDIT: btw that "Imperial Crash Squadron" crashed another plane... But pilot is OK. WTH. [:@][:D]

I think they telling you. "Send us home or we destroy all you planes"

send them, with XP like this they are going to be good crash test dummies in Toyota Factory

[Erkki]

April 27th

27th? Has the calendar skipped a turn? Looks like a typo in previous AAR report.

Another silent turn.

Semarang falls on Java, while a small Japanese transport gets torpedoed near Kwajalein.

First recon aircraft sortie to Broome in northern Australia. Looks like the base has received no reinforcements, as it is reported to have only couple of hundred troops and just 2 guns. Excellent. [;)]

[obvert]

ORIGINAL: Erkki

December 6th 1917


Hyvää itsenäisyyspäivää! Happy independence day!

Sininen ja valkoinen, värit vapauden. Blue and white, the colors of freedom.

My great-grandparents left Finland to escape becoming part of the Russian Army, so it's meaningful to see this. Plus, I always like to see Suomi in type. Such a crazy cool language. I bet no one cracked Finnish codes during the war.

[Erkki]

April 28th

Another silent day.


Burma: still silent, Japanese photoreconnaissance aircraft overfly whole Indian border once in 3 days and theres nothing worth mentioning.

East Indies: Japanese troops are advancing and will reach Djokjarta in 2 days! Timor will be 100% Japanese in 6 days.

Australia: Derby reconnoitered, just a small garrison. Good news that.

Central Pacific: the Kido Butai will be reformed and at the peak of its might tomorrow, near Truk. In 2 days, 100,000 tons of fuel will arrive at Truk. That should allow the KB to sortie at long range missions at least twice.

KB is from tomorrow

CV Akagi
CV Zuikaku
CV Shokaku
CV Hiryu
CV Zoryu
CVL Zuiho
CVL Shoho
CVE Taiyo
CVE Hosho
BB Kirishima
BB Haruna
BB Hiei

+ lots of smaller ships. On average each CV has 4 DD escorts. All the ships are divided among 3 task forces: ASW & surface combat cover, KB-1 and KB-2. Aircraft numbers in TFs are so high that theres about a 50% chance of lack of coordination each time the full number of aircraft sortie, but as some fighters fly CAP and some strike aircraft fly naval search so it could be 10-15% and I'm OK with that.


obvert: the Soviets simply used Finnish-speaking people. There used to be a lot of them living in Eastern Karelia, among with speakers of other Finnish-Ugrian languages. Used to be hundreds of thousands, and many were pro-Soviet then. Now, after 60-something years of Soviet rule and 20 of modern Russian, them all put together are literally in the hundreds and many have average speaker ages around 60s or so. Finns, Estonians and Hungarians are pretty much all the speakers who are still left.

[obvert]

ORIGINAL: Erkki

April 28th

Another silent day.


Burma: still silent, Japanese photoreconnaissance aircraft overfly whole Indian border once in 3 days and theres nothing worth mentioning.

East Indies: Japanese troops are advancing and will reach Djokjarta in 2 days! Timor will be 100% Japanese in 6 days.

Australia: Derby reconnoitered, just a small garrison. Good news that.

Central Pacific: the Kido Butai will be reformed and at the peak of its might tomorrow, near Truk. In 2 days, 100,000 tons of fuel will arrive at Truk. That should allow the KB to sortie at long range missions at least twice.

KB is from tomorrow

CV Akagi
CV Zuikaku
CV Shokaku
CV Hiryu
CV Zoryu
CVL Zuiho
CVL Shoho
CVE Taiyo
CVE Hosho
BB Kirishima
BB Haruna
BB Hiei

+ lots of smaller ships. On average each CV has 4 DD escorts. All the ships are divided among 3 task forces: ASW & surface combat cover, KB-1 and KB-2. Aircraft numbers in TFs are so high that theres about a 50% chance of lack of coordination each time the full number of aircraft sortie, but as some fighters fly CAP and some strike aircraft fly naval search so it could be 10-15% and I'm OK with that.


obvert: the Soviets simply used Finnish-speaking people. There used to be a lot of them living in Eastern Karelia, among with speakers of other Finnish-Ugrian languages. Used to be hundreds of thousands, and many were pro-Soviet then. Now, after 60-something years of Soviet rule and 20 of modern Russian, them all put together are literally in the hundreds and many have average speaker ages around 60s or so. Finns, Estonians and Hungarians are pretty much all the speakers who are still left.

I may have missed this, but did you lose Kaga? Also, I'm curious about yuor decision to add Taiyo.

[koniu]

I may have missed this, but did you lose Kaga? Also, I'm curious about yuor decision to add Taiyo.

I am also curious. He is to slow for any offensive actions

[Erkki]

ORIGINAL: obvert

ORIGINAL: Erkki

April 28th

Another silent day.


Burma: still silent, Japanese photoreconnaissance aircraft overfly whole Indian border once in 3 days and theres nothing worth mentioning.

East Indies: Japanese troops are advancing and will reach Djokjarta in 2 days! Timor will be 100% Japanese in 6 days.

Australia: Derby reconnoitered, just a small garrison. Good news that.

Central Pacific: the Kido Butai will be reformed and at the peak of its might tomorrow, near Truk. In 2 days, 100,000 tons of fuel will arrive at Truk. That should allow the KB to sortie at long range missions at least twice.

KB is from tomorrow

CV Akagi
CV Zuikaku
CV Shokaku
CV Hiryu
CV Zoryu
CVL Zuiho
CVL Shoho
CVE Taiyo
CVE Hosho
BB Kirishima
BB Haruna
BB Hiei

+ lots of smaller ships. On average each CV has 4 DD escorts. All the ships are divided among 3 task forces: ASW & surface combat cover, KB-1 and KB-2. Aircraft numbers in TFs are so high that theres about a 50% chance of lack of coordination each time the full number of aircraft sortie, but as some fighters fly CAP and some strike aircraft fly naval search so it could be 10-15% and I'm OK with that.


obvert: the Soviets simply used Finnish-speaking people. There used to be a lot of them living in Eastern Karelia, among with speakers of other Finnish-Ugrian languages. Used to be hundreds of thousands, and many were pro-Soviet then. Now, after 60-something years of Soviet rule and 20 of modern Russian, them all put together are literally in the hundreds and many have average speaker ages around 60s or so. Finns, Estonians and Hungarians are pretty much all the speakers who are still left.

I may have missed this, but did you lose Kaga? Also, I'm curious about yuor decision to add Taiyo.

CV Kaga and CVL Ryujo are still returning from their indian ocean raid, where they got at least 8+4+2+6 6100-ton xAKs and damaged a 21st and 22nd(the other probably sunk). BB Kongo is with them, as are some of the CS cruisers.

I have carrier trained Saeki Ku D3A1 unit, 12 planes. They're aboard Hosho now. Hosho's Zero unit is on Taiyo and resized to 27. That D3A unit will later resize to 27(Taiyo class' capacity) which is nice. CVE Unyo that arrived recently also has one 27-size D3A unit being carrier trained.

I'm maximizing the CV deck space and optimizing torpedo capacity use... But I'm doing it by carrier training land-based units and moving units from CV to another(these CVs must then operate together), and not by gamey stuff like dividing and resizing CV groups. Once we have some more carriers we can have all CV Zero units but Hosho-1 operate from CVs, all B5N units optimized and the rest of the deck space used by D3As. [;)]

[Erkki]

ORIGINAL: koniu

I may have missed this, but did you lose Kaga? Also, I'm curious about yuor decision to add Taiyo.

I am also curious. He is to slow for any offensive actions

Taiyo, Unyo(, Chuyo) and Hosho have the same cruise speed with the rest of the fleet, 15 knots. CV Kaga is the slowest ship at 14 knots and limits the cruising speed.

In top speed yeah the KB is now 21 knots only BUT as I'm planning to use the Junyos(25 knots) with the main body of the KB it IMHO isnt a huge loss. Full mobility is lost already so might as well go for the mass. The full KB can still outrun all xAKs and most xAPs and TKs. I have chosen raw power, as in plane numbers and amount of escort ships, over mobility. If full pursuit speed is required, the slowest ships can always be left behind...