Rise of the Sheep! JocMeister(A) vs. Obvert(J)

[JocMeister]

[font="Verdana"]Frontline - Past 13 months[/font]
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[JocMeister]

[font="Verdana"]Location New Guinea - 1 year ago[/font]
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[jonreb31]

Great work. The allied war machine sure can get a lot done within a year with the right leader at the helm. Not many games make it to 1945.. and it looks like it'll still continue to be a daring venture into the unknown. Pull out all the stops!

[DOCUP]

Great job Joc.

[JocMeister]

Here we go...keep those fingers crossed we do well next turn.

[JocMeister]

Got the turn back. Full update coming tonight but I´m very happy with the results of the Manila attack!

Ground combat at Manila (79,77)

Allied Deliberate attack

Attacking force 139512 troops, 2682 guns, 5413 vehicles, Assault Value = 5885

Defending force 117133 troops, 1356 guns, 1640 vehicles, Assault Value = 3399

Allied engineers reduce fortifications to 6 [&o][&o][&o]

Allied adjusted assault: 2436

Japanese adjusted defense: 20691

Allied assault odds: 1 to 8 (fort level 6)

Combat modifiers
Defender: terrain(+), forts(+), leaders(+), experience(-)
Attacker:

Japanese ground losses:
2798 casualties reported
Squads: 45 destroyed, 483 disabled
Non Combat: 6 destroyed, 108 disabled
Engineers: 5 destroyed, 53 disabled
Guns lost 180 (9 destroyed, 171 disabled)
Vehicles lost 80 (15 destroyed, 65 disabled)

Allied ground losses:
3105 casualties reported
Squads: 39 destroyed, 743 disabled
Non Combat: 9 destroyed, 238 disabled
Engineers: 5 destroyed, 155 disabled
Guns lost 175 (33 destroyed, 142 disabled)
Vehicles lost 362 (23 destroyed, 339 disabled)

Considering the odds 1:8 the allied casualties are very light. One infantry division took the brunt of the losses and will be out for some time. The tanks are virtually untouched. I found only 20 disabled Shermans among all the Tank BTLs. [:'(] The first 5 attacks will be all about lowering the forts. Any attacking knocking down the forts is a good attack.

This shows good promise. This will hopefully lead Erik to pour more troops into Manila thus sealing the trap.

[Crackaces]

Considering the odds 1:8 the allied casualties are very light. One infantry division took the brunt of the losses and will be out for some time. The tanks are virtually untouched. I found only 20 disabled Shermans among all the Tank BTLs. The first 5 attacks will be all about lowering the forts. Any attacking knocking down the forts is a good attack.

You have shown a good example of firepower vs. AV as a concept. You have excellent firepower in the hex and thus have better results than expected if one just considered a combat results table and adjusted AV odds. I think you have the right idea that once forts are reduced the adjusted AV will go your way and you will move this stack out of Manila .. or is your intent to produce a "Stalingrad" here too like Bangkok?

[JocMeister]

ORIGINAL: Crackaces

Considering the odds 1:8 the allied casualties are very light. One infantry division took the brunt of the losses and will be out for some time. The tanks are virtually untouched. I found only 20 disabled Shermans among all the Tank BTLs. The first 5 attacks will be all about lowering the forts. Any attacking knocking down the forts is a good attack.

You have shown a good example of firepower vs. AV as a concept. You have excellent firepower in the hex and thus have better results than expected if one just considered a combat results table and adjusted AV odds. I think you have the right idea that once forts are reduced the adjusted AV will go your way and you will move this stack out of Manila .. or is your intent to produce a "Stalingrad" here too like Bangkok?

I´m actually not really sure yet! [:)] I have 2300 AV prepped to land behind Manila. So I think what Erik does will decide my next move. If he moves more stuff into Manila I´ll land behind him but if he stays put I might scratch a risky landing and slug it out trading time for safety.

I have another 4500 AV arriving in theatre shortly. So I have plenty of options on how to deal with Manila. Looks like we also have a big naval battle coming up in the SCS that will decide a lot of things. A complete victory here and I might even bypass Luzon completely!

[JocMeister]

[font="Verdana"]2nd-4th Jan -45[/font]
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So, things are turning very interesting all of a sudden.

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Luzon
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On the 2nd I sent in a bunch of 4 ship Fletcher TFs to rattle things up a bit. I included DMSs in the TFs but I probably should have change them from SCTF to MSW before sending them in. Lost a Fletcher to a mine. But in return we clear the sea.

Night Time Surface Combat, near Manila at 79,77, Range 8,000 Yards

Japanese Ships
DD Kagero, Shell hits 2, Torpedo hits 1, and is sunk
DD Hatsukaze, Shell hits 1
DD Maikaze, Shell hits 2, on fire

Allied Ships
DD Albert Grant
DD Hale
DD Halford
DD Hall
DMS Boggs
DMS Palmer

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Night Time Surface Combat, near Manila at 79,77, Range 8,000 Yards

Japanese Ships
E W-26, Shell hits 21, heavy fires, heavy damage
E Nasami, Shell hits 9, heavy fires, heavy damage
E Sarushima, Shell hits 10, and is sunk

Allied Ships
DD Albert Grant
DD Hale
DD Halford
DD Hall
DMS Boggs, Shell hits 2, on fire
DMS Palmer, Shell hits 1

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Night Time Surface Combat, near Manila at 79,77, Range 11,000 Yards

Japanese Ships
E W-26, Shell hits 11, and is sunk
E Nasami, Shell hits 5, and is sunk

Allied Ships
DD Albert Grant
DD Hale
DD Halford
DD Hall
DMS Boggs, on fire
DMS Palmer

Also managed to sink 4-5 SSXs. All allied ships except a Fletcher that hit a mine are safely back at Iloilo. This led to Erik evacuating the Manila airfield. Heh. During the night time bombing I found something very interesting.

Night Air attack on Manila , at 79,77

Weather in hex: Light rain

Raid detected at 13 NM, estimated altitude 15,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 3 minutes [X(]

Allied aircraft
B-29-1 Superfort x 8

Allied aircraft losses
B-29-1 Superfort: 3 damaged

Manpower hits 7
Fires 17468

Tomorrow we are going to try a powerful sweep of Manila. If it really is empty I might catch some leaky CAP from Clark. The USN/USMC are sent in mainly using Hellcats. Don´t have any other planes to spare if things go south.

But the real highlight here is of course the attack on Manila....

Ground combat at Manila (79,77)

Allied Deliberate attack

Attacking force 139512 troops, 2682 guns, 5413 vehicles, Assault Value = 5885

Defending force 117133 troops, 1356 guns, 1640 vehicles, Assault Value = 3399

Allied engineers reduce fortifications to 6 [&o][&o][&o]

Allied adjusted assault: 2436

Japanese adjusted defense: 20691

Allied assault odds: 1 to 8 (fort level 6)

Combat modifiers
Defender: terrain(+), forts(+), leaders(+), experience(-)
Attacker:

Japanese ground losses:
2798 casualties reported
Squads: 45 destroyed, 483 disabled
Non Combat: 6 destroyed, 108 disabled
Engineers: 5 destroyed, 53 disabled
Guns lost 180 (9 destroyed, 171 disabled)
Vehicles lost 80 (15 destroyed, 65 disabled)

Allied ground losses:
3105 casualties reported
Squads: 39 destroyed, 743 disabled
Non Combat: 9 destroyed, 238 disabled
Engineers: 5 destroyed, 155 disabled
Guns lost 175 (33 destroyed, 142 disabled)
Vehicles lost 362 (23 destroyed, 339 disabled)

As I wrote before I´m very happy with the result. Knocking the forts down from 7 to 6 with that small losses are a good indicator of things to come. Fatigue and disruption are pretty high though and the troops will most likely need a week of rest. I had to pull out the 24th ID as they we reduced to only 120 AV.

The good news is that my expectations on the tanks were well founded. The tank BTLs are almost complete intact. The USMC BTLs have their light tanks pretty beat up but the Shermans are in good order. Even the Combat engineers made it in good order.

Now I have to decide on how to play the remainder of the assault. More on that in a separate post. Lots of options and unknowns.

Speaking of unknowns...

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South China Sea
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So, the KB reared its ugly head (see screen). Looks like Erik is willing to fight for the 3 Divisions trapped at Bangkok. Not sure that is worth risking the KB for...The screen is from the 2nd. On the 3rd both the Allied CVs and KB is unspotted. I continue the usual "dance" of moving around to try and avoid another of those silly 8 hex strikes. I won´t go looking for a fight as Erik will definitely stay close to LBA. He is outnumbered by 2:1 and he must know that. But if he tries to get the shipping out I will move in. With the BETA in effect Erik has little to no chance to penetrate using LBA. I have 70% of the fighters on 80% CAP.

[JocMeister]

[font="Verdana"]Manila[/font]
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A bit torn on how to play this. I have lots of options. Some dependent on the situation in the SCS. Some not...

1. Continue to slowly wear down the opposition using the current troops.

2. Land behind Manila. I currently have 2300 AV prepped and ready. This is risky though as it would require most of the assault shipping. With the KB and the entire IJN battlefleet within strike range I don´t want to take any unnecessary risks on a amphib landing I don´t have to do. Very soon the assault shipping will be absolutely critical. But the risks could still be worth it securing northern Luzon without having to wait for Manila to fall.

3. I have more troops arriving that I could throw in the mix. I have 2 USMC and 1 USA division in reserve at Iloilo. I have another 4000 AV unloading at Cotabato. These troops are intended for another OP though but could be thrown directly at Manila.

4. If the IJN naval and air arm suffer a massive defeat in the SCS I could go straight for Formosa/China bypassing Luzon for now. I would need 3-4 days to embark on the assault ships and I could go. This is of course dependant on what Erik choses to do.

5. I have another wacky idea that I have to look a bit more closely at.

[JocMeister]

Hmm,

Bennington and Randolph just arrived at PH. The squadrons resized as they were supposed to and the "extra" Corsair squadron arrived straight to deck. The problem is that all the squadrons downsized retained their planes. So the DB squadron while resized to 15 planes still hold 32. How the heck do I get rid of the extra planes? I could send two planes from the Hellcat squadron back to the reserve before the button disappeared. The button isn´t even there on the DB and TB squadrons?

How the heck do I remove the "extra" planes currently in each squadron? I tried docking and unloading them but all planes are still in the squadron. And I can´t divide the squadrons.

[JocMeister]

Nevermind. Tried it out in Sandbox and the seems the "extra" planes will disappear next turn.

EDIT: Yikes! The new Corsair squadrons arrive completely without pilots. So thats something like 300 fighter pilots I have to draw directly from the pool! [X(]

[witpqs]

Hmm - I should start banking even more pilots.

[JocMeister]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Hmm - I should start banking even more pilots.

Yeah, and don´t forget USAAF bomber pilots. I have had every available fighter squadron for the last year training bomber pilots. And I´m barely keeping up. One bad raid and the pools are wiped clean again.

And then you have the bomber squadron resized from 12 to 16 in 2/45. Its unlikely I will ever have the planes to fill the squadrons out but I will definitely never have tho pilots!

[witpqs]

I have a lot of my 4EB squadrons just training pilots right now. There aren't enough planes for them anyway, but I really don't want to start getting B-29s and have to choose between the B-29s or other front line 4EB squadrons piloted by rookies. I plan to start gradually rotating out the best 4EB pilots to the pool so the new-but-trained pilots can get experience before the B-29s arrive and drain the pools. When squadrons expand very late game, I have no idea if I will have enough pilots.

[JocMeister]

How are you fighter pools looking? I have found that despite not training any fighter pilots the pool is pretty constant. Perhaps down by 2-300 in the last year. I currently have 2000 fighter pilots in the pool. I would rather have at least a thousand of them as bomber pilots instead. In my other game I´m probably going to stop training fighter pilots when I hit the 1k mark and only train bomber pilots after that.

[witpqs]

I don't have anywhere near that many! Never been hurting for them after I got through the initial 'caught flat-footed' phase at the beginning of the game, though.

[JocMeister]

[font="Verdana"]5th Jan -45[/font]
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Some ouch this turn...

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Luzon
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The sweeps go in as planned but opposition is stiff and 39 Hellcats/Corsairs are shot down for only 55 Japanese fighters. Not good. [:(] Still I decided to have another go tomorrow. Erik is heavily reliant on the Frank. Lots of them took damage today and SR3 is nasty. The hope is that tomorrow CAP will be lighter. P51s will sweep tomorrow followed by 500 4Es to close the airfield at Manila. This can turn ugly though...

Morning Air attack on Manila , at 79,77

Weather in hex: Heavy rain

Raid detected at 35 NM, estimated altitude 37,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 13 minutes

Japanese aircraft
A7M2 Sam x 5
J2M3 Jack x 10
J2M5 Jack x 5
N1K1-J George x 35
N1K2-J George x 49
Ki-43-IIIa Oscar x 6
Ki-61-Id Tony x 6
Ki-84a Frank x 49
Ki-84r Frank x 66

Allied aircraft
F4U-1D Corsair x 41

Japanese aircraft losses
N1K1-J George: 1 destroyed
N1K2-J George: 1 destroyed
Ki-84a Frank: 2 destroyed
Ki-84r Frank: 1 destroyed

Allied aircraft losses
F4U-1D Corsair: 7 destroyed

I decided on a course of action for Manila. I´m going to go with the wacky idea to draw more troops towards Manila. And I´m going to risk the landing. Troops with prep for Lingayan are being pulled out from Manila and Iloilo to land in about 2-3 weeks.


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South China Sea
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Both sides carriers are spotted again this turn. I enhanced the recon/navsearch around Bangkok. Timing will be crucial to hit the ships while loaded with the troops. I moved a little further NW to be within one days sailing without having to use fullspeed. 2 more CVLs will join the fleet tomorrow bumping numbers to almost 1500.

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Thailand
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We continue the advance south without serious opposition. Only token resistance is being offered.

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Ground combat at Phnom Penh (58,69)

Allied Deliberate attack

Attacking force 21276 troops, 422 guns, 410 vehicles, Assault Value = 783

Defending force 2294 troops, 34 guns, 0 vehicles, Assault Value = 42

Allied engineers reduce fortifications to 1

Allied adjusted assault: 357

Japanese adjusted defense: 13

Allied assault odds: 27 to 1 (fort level 1)

Allied forces CAPTURE Phnom Penh !!!

Combat modifiers
Defender: forts(+), leaders(+), preparation(-), fatigue(-), morale(-)
experience(-)
Attacker: fatigue(-)

Japanese ground losses:
1021 casualties reported
Squads: 43 destroyed, 1 disabled
Non Combat: 88 destroyed, 7 disabled
Engineers: 13 destroyed, 0 disabled
Guns lost 7 (6 destroyed, 1 disabled)
Units retreated 2
Units destroyed 1

Allied ground losses:
53 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 7 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 1 disabled

Besides this little battle Erik seems to have decided to kill of his superstack. [X(]

Ground combat at 55,59 (near Tavoy)

Japanese Shock attack

Attacking force 143268 troops, 1539 guns, 2132 vehicles, Assault Value = 3673

Defending force 80809 troops, 1240 guns, 718 vehicles, Assault Value = 2624

Japanese adjusted assault: 481

Allied adjusted defense: 8266

Japanese assault odds: 1 to 17

Combat modifiers
Defender: terrain(+)
Attacker: shock(+)

Japanese ground losses:
28723 casualties reported [X(][X(]
Squads: 1003 destroyed, 944 disabled [X(]
Non Combat: 16 destroyed, 360 disabled
Engineers: 82 destroyed, 133 disabled
Guns lost 125 (37 destroyed, 88 disabled)
Vehicles lost 111 (31 destroyed, 80 disabled)

Allied ground losses:
2231 casualties reported
Squads: 16 destroyed, 213 disabled
Non Combat: 2 destroyed, 82 disabled
Engineers: 1 destroyed, 12 disabled
Vehicles lost 10 (1 destroyed, 9 disabled)

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IndoChina! (Hell yeah!) [:)]
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Tomorrow the first allied troops will attempt a crossing into IndoChina. The armoured spearhead of 3 Tank Brigades will cross just south of Vinh. Opposition should be overcome.

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Morning Air attack on 27th Electric Engineer Regiment, at 64,60 , near Vinh

Weather in hex: Overcast

Raid spotted at 20 NM, estimated altitude 9,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 6 minutes

Allied aircraft
Liberator B.VI x 46
Liberator GR.VI x 16
B-24D Liberator x 3
B-24D1 Liberator x 6
PB4Y-1 Liberator x 12

No Allied losses

Japanese ground losses:
214 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 14 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 8 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 1 disabled

Also attacking 65th Brigade ...
Also attacking 13th Ind.Infantry Brigade ...
Also attacking 65th Brigade ...
Also attacking 27th Electric Engineer Regiment ...
Also attacking 65th Brigade ...
Also attacking 27th Electric Engineer Regiment ...
Also attacking 65th Brigade ...
Also attacking 27th Electric Engineer Regiment ...
Also attacking 65th Brigade ...

Against this is the 254th, 255th and 50 Armoured regiments. 600 AV with 450 Shermans. I hope the 4Es softening up a bit will help too.

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Mindanao
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The massive convoys have started arriving. Some will unload at Cotabato while other will proceed directly to their final destinations at Luzon, Timor and Balikpapan. 3 million supply should have me going to couple of months. Some are earmarked for oil rebuilding at Balikpapan.


Here is a screen of the situation is SCS. Erik now has some 200 ships cut off at Saigon, Bangkok, Palembang and Singapore.

[JocMeister]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

I don't have anywhere near that many! Never been hurting for them after I got through the initial 'caught flat-footed' phase at the beginning of the game, though.

Many of the arriving fighter squadrons come with 50/50/50 pilots so it only take 2-3 weeks to train them up so thats a big reason the pools havn´t dropped that much. Its going to be the planes that is the limit and not the pilots. So I really messed up my training program. I think most likely 600-800 pilots would be enough in the pool if they are well trained. I think I have around that number of 70/70/70 pilots in the pool. I´m never going to use the 50/70/70 pilots I have so they would have been a lot better used as bomber pilots.

Lesson learned!

[ny59giants]

Reluctant Admiral 6.2 has dedicated Training Groups for the USA. [:D]

Here at San Diego I have three for the Navy (F, DB, TB), two for the Marines (F, DB), and at Salt Lake City I have three for the Army (1 fighter, 1 2e bomber, 1 4e bomber). The Army and Navy group sizes are 48 while the Marines are 36. Very nice!![&o]