Once Again into the Breach - Mike (J) vs. tc464 (A)

[Mike Solli]

1 Apr 42

Sub War

A Dutch sub took out an xAKL transporting an SNLF company to Ndeni. That took out almost half of the company. The remaining xAKL (escorted by a PB) landed the troops and supply to take the island. I took this only to make Ted take the island back if he wants to build it up.

Another Dutch sub badly damaged a PB just north of Rabaul. She’ll survive and limp into Rabaul to be repaired. That sub got away.

Air War

One Oscar was lost while 4 Allied fighters were shot down.

That’s all of significance in the war. Lae’s airfield finally made level 4. It’ll stop there.

Other Stuff

Well, my invasion bonus is over. Fortunately, everything I need to take has been taken (except for Ambon, and that’s not critical – but the invasion force is enroute). I have made headway in several logistic areas.

A few things of note:

Supply continues to dwindle, but that will turn around very shortly. This month, it dwindled by 25k to 2,597,818. This does not include several 100k supply in convoys headed primarily to Soerabaja. I’m not concerned with supply. I had refineries in Sumatra shut off for much of the month so I didn’t lose fuel to spoilage. Now they are all on, which gives me +1200 supply per turn. I think I’m good here. My expansion is basically done except for rebuilding Soerabaja and finishing the expansion of Miri (~45 days to go).

Fuel – This dropped by 101k but that number is deceiving. There are convoys with >250k fuel headed to the Home Islands. Life is good. I just wish I had more TKs, but that will come with time.

HI – This increased by 78 to 7168. My goal is still 7500. Right now I’m building up Soerabaja’s & Batavia’s HI and will work the numbers in Java to figure out what I need to get them to in order to best use the stuff in that area. The remainder of the needed HI will be built in Singapore and Hong Kong.

Oil – This increased by 50k. Part of that was from turning off refineries for part of the month. Life is good here too.

Naval Shipyard Points – Currently at 174 and dropping by 2 per day. I have 3x CVs and 3x DDs accelerated. The Junyo arrives in April and will give me an additional 84 points to play with.

Merchant Shipyard Points – Currently at 35046. I’m considering accelerating some TKs. I don’t have enough.

Armament Points – I still have all 620 factories producing and currently have 66,720 points in the pool. I’ll continue until I exceed 100k and then reduce producing factories to ~120.

Vehicle Points – I still have 150 factories producing and have 9596 points in the pool. Much nicer than last game. I’m going to start upgrading my tank regiments one at a time, starting with the ones in Burma.

Pilot Pools:

They are coming along nicely for the most part:

IJA – 1 Apr totals (1 Mar totals)
Fighter – 41(11)
Bomber – 30(8)
Transport – 4(0)
Recon – 26(17)

IJN
Fighter – 81(26)
Bomber – 116(61)
Patrol – 120(48)
Transport – 9(9)
Recon – 0(0)

This doesn’t really tell the whole story though. When I have a chance, I’ll give a better breakdown. Even though there are no IJN recon, some recon trained pilots show up in the Patrol totals. Also, there was only 1 NavT/NavB trained pilot trained in Mar 42.

Lost Pilots

MIA – 33
WIA – 54
KIA – 96

I gained about 330 rookies so the net gain was about 150 assuming most of the WIA were lost (better to be conservative).

Score

Japanese – 14777 (+5398)
Allies – 8228 (-199)

Ship Losses

Japan – 11 (49 points)
Allies – 40 (192 points)

I don’t have the breakdown handy. I’ll post that later. I don’t recall anything major being lost by either side.

Here’s a breakdown of pilots who completed the on map training program during the month of March. Note that these numbers will not match up with the numbers above for a couple of reasons. First, units that withdraw dump their pilots into the pools and also, I occasionally pull specific pilot types out if I have a critical shortage that needs to be filled immediately and those numbers may not have made it to the total sheet.

IJN
F – 41
NavS – 27
ASW – 18
Rcn – 8
NavT/B – 1
Nav B – 29

IJA
F – 72
NavS – 17
ASW – 5
Rcn – 10
GrdB – 64
Trn – 7

[Mike Solli]

2 Apr 12

Sub War

A Dutch sub harassed the reduced Ndeni invasion force unsuccessfully and took some minor damage in the process.

Air War

Overall, for the loss of 1x Oscar, 3 Allied fighters were shot down.

Not much else of note, other than another attack on the 5 isolated Chinese units.

Lunga’s airfield reached level 1.

[Mike Solli]

3 Apr 12

Sub War

The I-168 caught an xAKL off Efate and put her down.

SE Fleet

I put the Betty daitai on night bombing and they damaged Pt. Moresby a bit while destroying a Kittyhawk. The Lilys flew first thing in the morning losing 7 of their number. I upgraded the Lilys to Sallys and set them to night bombing as well. The 3x Zero chutai flew separately against the Allied CAP and lost 4 of their number (+3 op losses) vs. 3 Kittyhawks shot down and 1 P-40E op loss.

The poor ole TF at Ndeni (1 PB and 1 xAKL) was caught by the CL Perth before they could get away and were sunk. That 50% strength SNLF company is now stranded there.

Burma

One Oscar sweep destroyed 3x Hurricanes. Ted can’t find an effective counter to my air power there. He’s using his bombers outside of my fighter range. He’s been bombing a tank regiment which is on the road just west of Paoshan ineffectively. The Zero daitai I received as a reinforcement is making its way to Burma from Japan (where it arrived) and will attempt to ambush them in a couple of days.

Philippines

I attempted a shock attack against Bataan today. I probably shouldn’t have tried it yet. The 1:2 attack against level 3 forts netted 872(46) Allied losses to 2563(18) Japanese losses. The Japanese loss was primarily disruption, but it’ll take a while to rest them sufficiently to attack again. The 30 Allied units are down to just 4 units that are still combat effective, and their AV keeps declining daily.

China

Another attack on the 5x surrounded Chinese units netted 221(15) Chinese to minimal Japanese losses.

Sian now has 5 of the 6 surrounding hexes Japanese controlled with the main attack force a couple hexes away.

Other Stuff

Down in the Solomons, Shortland’s port hit level 3 and Tulagi’s airfield hit level 2. I’m building up a lot of level 2 airfields in the area (with a smattering of level 4 airfields) and a few level 3 ports. I plan on creating a hornet’s nest should Ted decide to contest the area.

I took Sawahloento (Sumatra?) intact at 80(0) resources.

[Mike Solli]

4 Apr 42

Another quiet day today. There was no action over Akyab. The fighters found no enemy and the bombers went in unopposed. I am going to send another bombardment force to Chittagong. Most of his aircraft are either there or at Imphal, and the ground forces are gathering for Imphal.

Over Pt. Moresby, I shot down 2x P-40s and a Kittyhawk (+1 op loss) for the loss of 1x Zero. The 3x Zero chutai flew separately again. I don’t like this so I’m moving all 3 of them back to Rabaul and am replacing them with a 27 plane Zero chutai that was stationed at Rabaul. Here are my new fighter distributions in this area:

Rabaul: 4x 9 plane Zero chutai
Gasmata: 1x 27 plane Zero daitai
Lae: 1x 27 plane Zero daitai

We’ll see how this works.

In Sumatra, I pushed the rabble out of Sabang with 2 Division. Losses were 775(63) Dutch vs. 70(0) Japanese. The 2 Division is now pushing south along the west coast of Sumatra with the 4 Division pushing north along the west coast of Sumatra.

[Mike Solli]

5 Apr 42

SE Fleet

Using 1x daitai of Zeros vs. 3x chutai worked well. For no loss, the 18x Zeros that flew shot down 2x P-40Es and 3x Kittyhawks. Two Zeros were op losses but no pilots were lost. Very nice.

The Betties flew another night bombing raid causing light damage and destroying a Catalina on the ground. I’m waiting to see if Ted tries to fly fighters at night.

Burma

My Zero daitai arrived in Burma yesterday and I had them LRCAP the hex next to Paoshan (where I have a tank regiment) that Ted had been bombing (unescorted) the past few days. Today he sent 12x Hudson IIIas, 12 Hudson Is and 10 Blenheim IVs. Four Zeros flew (only 14 in the daitai so far due to the 12 plane per week limit) and they shot down 4 of the Blenheims. We’ll see if he tries that again tomorrow. I should be ok with fatigue since I have 27 pilots and only 14 planes in the daitai. I could have trashed them had I had the full complement of 27 planes! Tomorrow I get another daitai of Zeros for 22 Air Flotilla. That’ll give me (eventually) 54 Zeros to go along with the 5 Tojos and 100+ Oscars there. This new daitai arrives in Bangkok but with only 2 planes so it’ll take 3 weeks to build it up to full strength.

Other Stuff

The Helen IIa moved up a month to Aug 42. Banzai! I can use some decent IJA bombers. The Sally IIa pool is used as fast as they are produced (40/month). I’ve been force to restart the Lily factory (34/month), something I did not want to do. The Helen, when it arrives, will produce 90 per month. I’ll be able to shut off the Lily factory forever. The Lily will be phased out and become a training plane, augmenting the Sally Ic, which is down to 3 in the pool.

Something else I’ve been pondering is building the Mary. They use the Kawasaki (early) engine, which has 85 in the pool and has no other use. I’d build them until the engine pool is gone. Right now I use the Mary, Ann and Sonia as ASW aircraft as well as front line aircraft in China. I’d like to replace the Sonia, which has small bombs (and relegate the Sonia to training, along with the other really trashy 1E bombers). By doing this, I could replace the few dozen Sonias I have in the front line as well as have a reserve to replace the Anns and Marys. Eventually, I’ll replace all of the 1E bombers in China (with the Sally IIa once the Helen factory comes online) and use the 1E bombers as ASW aircraft. The problem is that I don’t have any factories available to convert to the Mary. I’ll probably convert the Lily factory but it’s too early to do that. I’m hoping to be able to do that by the end of April though. I have to be cautious converting the Lily factory because right now that’s almost half of my IJA 2E bomber production and I don’t expect to get the Helen until June.

Speaking of engine pools, the Ha-5 pool is down to 5. I’m using that for the Ki-57-I. When the last two are built, I’ll upgrade to the Ki-57-II and shut off the factory for a bit. I have ~10 Ki-57-Is in the pool right now. I’ll save that last engine for my museum after the war. I’m still using the Ki-56 and MC-21s as well until they are expended. The 36x Ki-59s are all still in service as trainers in Manchuoko.

[Mike Solli]

6 Apr 12

Sub War

Another damn Dutch sub heavily damaged an xAKL at Timoeka today. She’ll sink tomorrow. She was part of a TF hauling around a Naval Guard unit cleaning up dot hexes. Timoeka was taken and the unit had just re-embarked on the ships when the attack occurred.

SE Fleet

The air war over Pt. Moresby continued costing us 2 Zeros and pilots along with 4 op losses vs. 5 P-40Es and a Kittyhawk.

The 30 B-17s hit Lae this time. Been waiting for that. They caused more damage than could be repaired (13 airfield points remaining) and destroyed a Sally and Betty on the ground. I’m pushing more engineers to the bases in the area to work on/repair airfields more quickly.

Buna finally got a level 1 airfield and continues work on the next level.

Philippines

I think the end is near at Bataan. The raw Allied AV dipped below 300 for the first time. I bombard by air and ground daily and attack when the infantry is sufficiently rested. I wanted to attack tomorrow but their fatigue is still too high. That shock attack hurt me more than the Allies. As Lazarus Long would say. “You live and learn, or you don’t live long.” (Anyone know who Lazarus Long is?)

China

My current goal for this theater is the liberation of Sian and Loyang. Between the two, I’ll gain 110 oil facilities and 20 HI. Sian is surrounded on 5 of 6 sides and Loyang has forces adjacent to it.

Burma

Only 2 Zeros opposed the Allied bombers going after the tank regiment adjacent to Paoshan. They shot down a Hudson for no loss. By the way, the tank regiment is still at 100/100.

I have air superiority over Akyab. I’m bombing it by air with 2 sentai of Sallies daily. Ted can’t keep up with the repairs to the airfield. Chittagong has ~30 fighters stationed there. I’m getting ready to send a BB/CA bombardment TF there again to cause a ruckus. I might try the 2x TF in 2 nights hit again. That seemed to work well. The problem is that I need those ships for the Australia invasion (see below). Gotta see what’s available and allocate forces. That’ll happen when I get the next turn.

I keep sending more AS and engineers here. There just isn’t enough of either. Once I get a nice nest of airbases built up with sufficient AS, I can start to think of taking the air fight to Imphal, which currently is the most secure Allied air base in the area.

Palembang

I definitely have a shortage of small TKs. I can’t pull the stuff out of Palembang fast enough. I’m actually having that problem with most of my oil/fuel producing bases. I think it is because most of them were captured with high amounts of oil/fuel. I’m keeping all of my large TKs and slow AOs busy moving the stuff to the Home Islands, which is great, but those small bases are definitely a concern. I keep allocating more xAKLs to move fuel but I just can’t seem to get ahead of it.

Australia

I’m accumulating forces at Soerabaja for the invasion of Australia. I’m going to go for Darwin initially and then invade westward from there. The 20 and 21 Divisions, along with 4x tank regiments and other stuff, are moving to Soerabaja along with a bunch of transports to haul them. Right now, the 38 Division is loading at Singapore and the 5 Division will begin loading in a day or two. I’ll most likely use the 20, 21 and 38 Divisions in the initial invasion with the 5 Division as a reserve. Should Darwin fall quickly, I’ll send the 5 Division elsewhere along the coast.

I have 4 BBs and ~12 CAs (along with plenty of DDs) available for invasion support, as well as the Chittagong bombardment force. In addition, MKB will support the invasion.

Koepang is shaping up to be a nice staging base. The 21 Air Flotilla HQ is there along with some additional AS. There are currently some Nells there along with recon and Oscars from 5 Air Division. I also have the 2 Raiding Regiment there. They will para drop at a location to be determined soon. I’m leaning toward Pt. Hedland right now. I want that base to be a recon base to prevent Ted from sneaking small raiding TFs from Perth along the coast.

MKB will guard the west flank of the invasion against the raiding TFs mentioned above. I have allocated some subs to guard the east flank. I don’t expect anything from that direction but the subs will be far enough east that MKB can react should the subs spot something. Once Darwin is liberated, that will be my main airbase on the mainland.

Other Stuff

Reinforcement: Kanoya Ku S-1 – Starts with 2 Zeros and 3 very good pilots and arrived at Bangkok. I added 10 more pilots but couldn’t add any more planes. Bangkok doesn’t have enough supply! Bad planning. This unit is part of 22 Air Flotilla and will move to Burma and ultimately Pt. Blair.

I’ve learned some things that I’ll do in the next game concerning air power. The 5 Air Division and CEA air force both face minimal enemy fighters early in the war. Next game, I’m going to max out their bomber and recon units with rookies. They will gain experience very quickly that way. Wish I had thought of that when I started.

I get my first TK reinforcement tomorrow. Yay! It’s a Type-1 TM class (8150 ton capacity). I was thinking of using it between Shikuka and Sapporo. I have allocated 2x 1250 TKs to move fuel between Shikuka and Sapporo until it is emptied then between Hakodate and Ominato until it’s drained. I’ve reconsidered. I may use it at Palembang.

I’ll be in better shape in late June. I can convert the Std-Cs I’ve been accumulating since the war began. I have about 20 of them now sitting in various ports waiting for 1 Jun 42 to begin their conversion.

I am going to increase the HI in Java to 300. That will use all the resources in the area and leave ~40k extra fuel a month for fleet ops.

[Mike Solli]

Ok, I'm all caught up and Ted is out carousing with a female tonight. [8|] No turn.

Here are the ship losses from March:

Allied:
DD - 1
xAP - 6 (Not bad)
xAK - 2
xAKL - 4
TK - 3 (Finally)
SS - 1 (Dutch)
AG - 1
AVP - 1
AM - 2
YP - 1

Japanese:
APD - 1
xAK - 2
xAKL - 4
SSX - 3
ACM - 1
PB - 1

As you can see, Ted is hiding his fleet for the most part. No sign of any capital ships at all. The up side is that my ships are taking minimal damage. He has made several comments about lots of upgrades happening in April, specifically ASW upgrades. He's all excited about that.

[ny59giants]

I will need to limit my comments here as our game progresses SLOWLY!! [;)]

I use 2x Tanker TFs from Palmebang to Singapore with 6x 7950 capacity TKs plus escort that keep me under the 48k limit of a size 4 port. I send in some of those small 1250 TKs in a TF to pull out some Oil. Anything larger takes too much time to load. I use Oosthaven and small TKs (1250 capacity) to pull out extra fuel from Palembang and ship it to Batavia.

I 'think' you have enough Merchant points as a surplus. [:D] You can probably accelerate some TKs and maybe a CVE or two.

Now, about my empty inbox...........

[Mike Solli]

It's in your inbox now. I sent it 3 hours ago..... somewhere, but not to you. Don't ask, it's embarrassing.

[Mike Solli]

I'm thinking the same thing about my merchant surplus. Time to get more TKs. I have 4x 7950 TKs for fuel and 1x 7950 for oil, plus some small xAKs to take fuel and resources out of Palembang. It ain't keeping up though. One thing I do is to increase the airfield to level 5. That way the total airfield & port levels is 9 and there is no upper limit for fuel.

[ny59giants]

You forgot to add this at the end of your posting.

[Mike Solli]

Ok, it's embarassing.

[Cribtop]

1) Great to have you back and caught up!

2) Lazarus Long. I read those books cover to cover. Other than his rather odd, errr, urges in some of the later books, LL was a great character. Go Heinlein!

3) Mike, how do you plan to approach the transitional and defensive phases of the game?

[Grfin Zeppelin]

If you run the Palembang---> Singapor tankers manualy you can use three task forces with 36k tons each(load space).
Each of it should load within two turns. This system ran like a clockwork for me and I totaly emptied Palembang. I also ran a two smaller convoys from Medan to additionaly relief Palembang. If using this system there is also always enough space in Palembang to run a small supply/resources convoy.

For some unkown reason I love logistics also [&:] Organizing my convoys is so much fun o.O

[Empire101]

Hi Mike,

Still reading and enjoying this highly informative AAR.

I'd be interested to to what are the limits of your advance in China?

I only ask as my GC is running a couple of months ahead of yours, and it would be informative to compare.
( for me anyway!)

I've always been an advocate of the 'Beat China To Death Strategy' in the first year of the war.

The Limits of my advance into China run along the axis of Paoshun, Tsuyung, Kunnming, Tuyun, Chihkiang, Changteh, Ichang, Ankang ( rather tenuosly!!) , Sian, Ningsia & Paotow, as at 12 June 1942.

( to be fair to my brother, I have thrown everything at him in China including the kitchen sink.

A huge swirling battle is going on around Kweiyang ( the key to Chungking ), involving dozens of units everyday.

My strategic aim in China is to invest Chungking.
I'd be interested to know what your strategic aim is in China!!?

[Mike Solli]

GZ, logistics is really fun and satisfying. Isn't that bizarre? I can't explain it.

Do you use the 7950 TKs for that? I think my issue is that I just don't have enough TKs to go around. I spent some time making notes of what I need to do next turn and am going to keep an average of 5-6 TKs accelerated from now on until I'm comfortable with the flow. I'm pretty sure that everything will be fine by late June when the Std-Cs finish their conversion.

Cribtop, Heinlein is great, isn't he? Concerning the transition/defensive phase, I'm pretty sure we're going into the transition now or soon. I don't plan on taking much more territory, and other than Australia, most of the territory I'm going to take is within my perimeter. So far, Ted's only offensive actions have been subs and the occasional CL popping in for a visit. He took pretty heavy CL losses so that's pretty uncommon. He usually likes to expend his starting cruisers on ambushes and most of them are gone now. I'm in the process of rearranging my subs to keep an eye on places like Hawaii, US west coast, Australia, India and the few SLOCs I've managed to find to get an idea if something is brewing or to try and ambush something. At this point in the game, I like to use KB to sink whatever I can find while keeping it available to counter any moves Ted makes. Yeah, I know, people will start screaming that I should be more aggressive but that's just not my nature.

For the defensive, I'm trying to scrounge up more AS and engineers. I want to have the ability to move my land based air force to counter any Allied thrusts (or get out of the way if necessary). Soon I'll station fleets in certain areas (KB at Truk, BBs probably at Davao or maybe closer to the fringe, cruisers at Singapore, etc) to counter Allied thrusts or take advantage of Allied mistakes. On the ground, I'm creating layers with enough defenses to slow him down. You can't really stop the Allied player just with troops. You need air and naval power to do that. The goal is to have enough ground forces in any one critical base to give the air and naval forces time to arrive. I'm currently saving PPs for the two tank divisions that come in June. They're headed to Burma. I'll allocate armies to regions (in the SRA) with some additional reserve divisions in the core with troop carrying Tohos conversions allocated to them. I've convert all the Tohos to the troop carrying conversion. About 12-15 is enough for a division and I have over 50.

As I clean up the Japanese controlled territory, I'll continue to make the decisions for the defense of the empire. All those little things like where to place ASW air and naval units to protect the lifelines from the SRA, etc.....

By the way, Soryu will be completely repaired in 3 days.

[Mike Solli]

Hi Empire. So far, my goal has been to surround and destroy the Chinese out in the clear. There are 8 units left and almost 40 have been destroyed. Phase II is the capture of Sian and Loyang. Phase III will be to clear the rail line. After that, I'll simply maneuver to try and surround small groups of Chinese to keep the Chinese army from growing too strong. At that point, it's just a delaying action. I really have no interest in defeating China. I would rather use the supply elsewhere.

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

Soon I'll station fleets in certain areas (KB at Truk, ...

I recommend not Truk. Its too predictable which the IJ cannot afford.

I think one reason that PzB was (is) so successful is that he had the KB in the right place to react from, but it wasn't your usual parking spot. That coupled with his incredible ESP which had him shift the KB location peridocially to fall right into the midst of the allies plans. [;)]

[Empire101]

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

Hi Empire. So far, my goal has been to surround and destroy the Chinese out in the clear. There are 8 units left and almost 40 have been destroyed. Phase II is the capture of Sian and Loyang. Phase III will be to clear the rail line. After that, I'll simply maneuver to try and surround small groups of Chinese to keep the Chinese army from growing too strong. At that point, it's just a delaying action. I really have no interest in defeating China. I would rather use the supply elsewhere.

But don't you think that by kicking China in the proverbials, the long term gain is increased pressure on the US/GB, in all other important areas?

I agree that the short term disadvantage is increased expediture in supplies, unit casualties etc,
But I've always been of the opinion that the long term gains far outway the initial expenditure.....but I might be wrong[X(]

[Grfin Zeppelin]

I originaly used 7950 tankers for that but replaced them with small ones as soon they became available.