ORIGINAL: PaxMondo
Maybe, but the truth is PB is the IJ target for Dec 7, 1941. Everything else is diversion and to secure your LOC to PB. As the IJ, you must land there mid-Dec and take it (or be in a position to prevent reinforcements and forts to be built up). Either way in a PBEM, you are going to suffer damage to those facilities but you must take it. Medan, Balik, Miri, etc are important, but PB is not an option. I want Singer, Rangoon, Batavia, Sorbaya, and Manila/Clark mainly because they are 4E bases in range of the oil fields; so take them ASAP. Blitz really is the byword.ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
ORIGINAL: DOCUP
This makes the AFB inside me smile and giggle like a school girl.
Just, please, no dresses. [:)]
Another turn back. Moved the FAA torpedo bombers to Pt. Blair off the retiring RN carrier headed for Colombo. Four good B-24 units headed for Rabaul. The B-17s there already continue to rest. Truk is reconed daily. If it goes as a re-fueling option the Marshalls will be hard to defend. I just need two more carriers or CVE equivalents.
I wonder in retrospect when this is over if having 160,000 troops at Rangoon/Pegu/Moulmein, and 130,000 or so camped at Chungking will have been the best use for them. Rangoon only matters if the oil from up-country is Japanese. It has never been Japanese in this game. Rangoon holds open the Burma Road, but he has the other end in strength, plus all of the Chinese countryside beyond. Supply wouldn't flow to Chungking even if the Road were open. He has sea control on the Burma coast. Rangoon could be evacced across to Sumatra. That stack could take PBang most likely, with the air assets he has. Some of the Chungking stack could get to Hong Kong easily and he has sea control all along the Indo-China coast to Singers and then Sumatra. The troops are available. He has to have the fuel or the economy tanks. But so far, nothing.
Sending the KB to the DEI is prolly going to be the best opening move long term for the IJ players going forward. PH was a grand diversion in reality and it worked perfectly. But with hindsight, it loses that diversion capacity. With the KB in the DEI, the pace of the blitz can be doubled or more. You can take Java, Sumatra, Darwin, and Rangoon in Jan ... you still have 2 months of landing bonus left, now where do you go? Fear the IJ! [;)] [:D][:D][:D]
I agree. PH is a pipe dream Japan players still exercise because they like to Hulk Smash! some BBs on Day 1. In this game Mike went for a Hawaiian campaign (Johnson, Palmyra, Christmas, big battles over Hilo) early and got severely off-track elsewhere. To me there are two gotta-have targets in December: Singers and PBang. Here he split air efforts between the PI and Singers and both took too long. PBang was not addressed at all until way too late.
In my other game Cliff has read this AAR (I asked him to stop after I saw he had read too closely [:)]) and seen how much I like to strat bomb petroleum. We are in mid-February 1942 and he has not taken any of north Borneo yet, or Balikpapan, Soerbaja, Burma oil. And he has let me get a really good start on a Fortress PBang while invading northern Oz, which I don't care about. I disagree a bit that Darwin ought to ever be a Japanese target. Like the dog chasing the car, what do you do with it once you catch it? Darwin is not a good 4E base for fuel denial. The ranges are too great and the resupply too onerous in 1942. The Allies have much better places to push than out of Darwin.
