Greyjoy(J) vs. Obvert(A) - The air war in China- DBB, SLs, PDU OFF

[HansBolter]

Damn disconcerting it is. The Allied player does everything he possibly can and gets steamrollered anyway with nothing but a few cuts and bruises administered to the Japanese in return.

I'm sorry if this offends Greyjoy, but you should have gotten your butt handed to you.

[veji1]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

Damn disconcerting it is. The Allied player does everything he possibly can and gets steamrollered anyway with nothing but a few cuts and bruises administered to the Japanese in return.

I'm sorry if this offends Greyjoy, but you should have gotten your butt handed to you.

To be honest it is a bit of a mystery.. maybe the BBs made a big difference ? maybe a fair bit of the allied troops there just arrived and were in strat mode ?

[HansBolter]

Please pardon me for having an opinion and the audacity to pollute this thread with it.

I'll bow out now.

[ny59giants]

Some comments here seem to forget that the Aussie troop quality is still poor at this stage. We don't know if they were still militia squads or had the newer 42 rifle. Raw AV is a misleading number to look at. Geraldton was a clear terrain hex with only forts at 2. Where was the fortress you speak of??

[GreyJoy]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

Please pardon me for having an opinion and the audacity to pollute this thread with it.

I'll bow out now.

uhm??[&:] What do you mean Hans?


I can't say I am surprised with the result at Geralton. I've been there on the receiving side of this many times in my game against Mr.Kane. I even lost 220K 1943 troops (US, UK and Aus ones) in mid 1943...
I think the main factor is experience. Japanese IDs are crack ones, while allied are pretty poor. Add the distruption caused by the BBs and the result couldn't be much different against early 1942 allied troops.

That's why I'm investing Oz. For some more months my LCUs can really do the difference against his own, especially on coastal areas, where my ships can use their firepower.

Now I wonder what will he do with Perth... I have 3 more divisions arriving and LOTS of siege artillery, along with AA, base forces and Combat Engineers.
10 AKEs are at Exmouth... I really hope he decides to stand for a fight there...possibly bringing his CVs...


Mar 27, 1942

The KB moves south with another amphib TF...Busselton is the target but it seems to be abandoning by the troops present there...
The enemy's army is retreating south, pounded by 200 bombers...3 Divisions are already marching south...more troops are unloading... BANZAI!!!!
Carnavon fell...and 3 more Bdes are now doomed in the middle of anywhere...

SS Snapper takes a shot to the Akagi...hit but no explosion...phewwwwwww[X(][X(][X(][X(][X(]

Lose 2 more xAKs to his subs near Geralton...but now, as Veji said, the foot is in the door...

Mavis spot many ships near Esperance... fleeing aux units it seems... subs are enrouted there...

[GreyJoy]

ORIGINAL: veji1

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

Damn disconcerting it is. The Allied player does everything he possibly can and gets steamrollered anyway with nothing but a few cuts and bruises administered to the Japanese in return.

I'm sorry if this offends Greyjoy, but you should have gotten your butt handed to you.

To be honest it is a bit of a mystery.. maybe the BBs made a big difference ? maybe a fair bit of the allied troops there just arrived and were in strat mode ?

Don't think they were in strat mode... pretty sure that if it was the case it would have shown in the combat report "mode(-)"

[GreyJoy]

ORIGINAL: ny59giants

Some comments here seem to forget that the Aussie troop quality is still poor at this stage. We don't know if they were still militia squads or had the newer 42 rifle. Raw AV is a misleading number to look at. Geraldton was a clear terrain hex with only forts at 2. Where was the fortress you speak of??

Clear terrain means a lot, especially if you get pounded by sea. That's why western Oz is so voulnerable...
Now everything depends on what erik will decide to do. Stand and fight for Perth, risking to lose the whole lot, or retreat fighting?
Not an easy decision...

[GreyJoy]

Oh, forgot to say: a couple of Indian Bdes managed to escape from Akyab and eventually reached Kalemyo, where they attacked and defeated the 1st Raiding Rgt... now I need to send someone to take care of those bastards...but I am not in hurry: they can't go anywhere.
Tomorrow the 21st Army will cross the river and shock attack Ledo. May the Gods of War still be with us...

[crsutton]

ORIGINAL: veji1

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

Damn disconcerting it is. The Allied player does everything he possibly can and gets steamrollered anyway with nothing but a few cuts and bruises administered to the Japanese in return.

I'm sorry if this offends Greyjoy, but you should have gotten your butt handed to you.

To be honest it is a bit of a mystery.. maybe the BBs made a big difference ? maybe a fair bit of the allied troops there just arrived and were in strat mode ?

Not a mystery at all. Massive bombardment such as GJ put on the Allies will result in massive disruptions sometimes causing the enemy to lose-even at 1-2 odds. Happens to me daily in China. It is way over powered but that is the way the game works. Works that way for the Allies later in the game. Forts or no, it is very dangerous to defend an open terrain coastal hex. With the KB there, GJ would have won this in a few more turns anyways as he could keep piling the disruption on with air attacks.

[GreyJoy]

ORIGINAL: crsutton

ORIGINAL: veji1

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

Damn disconcerting it is. The Allied player does everything he possibly can and gets steamrollered anyway with nothing but a few cuts and bruises administered to the Japanese in return.

I'm sorry if this offends Greyjoy, but you should have gotten your butt handed to you.

To be honest it is a bit of a mystery.. maybe the BBs made a big difference ? maybe a fair bit of the allied troops there just arrived and were in strat mode ?

Not a mystery at all. Massive bombardment such as GJ put on the Allies will result in massive disruptions sometimes causing the enemy to lose-even at 1-2 odds. Happens to me daily in China. It is way over powered but that is the way the game works. Works that way for the Allies later in the game. Forts or no, it is very dangerous to defend an open terrain coastal hex. With the KB there, GJ would have won this in a few more turns anyways as he could keep piling the disruption on with air attacks.

True. Later in the game it's the same for the allies. The only way Japan can defend a clear coastal hex is to file lots of mines, lots of CD guns and possibly to have 7+ forts... something VERY difficult to do for Japan....so you better think twice before investing much efforts on coastal clear hexes

[HansBolter]

What I mean Greyjoy is that I seem to be in one of my "This game makes the Japanese so ahistorically overpowered its ridiculous moods" today.

Standing and fighting against them anywhere in '42 seems to be a futile pursuit.

I certainly wouldn't counsel he stands and fights given the Japanese ability to steamroll anything in its path.

The point I made that I retracted in the face of ny59Giants retort was incredulity at casualties of only 4 squads suffered clearing a fortified city defended by a divisions worth of troops.

He chose to focus on my use of the term fortified, when the real point is that only losing 4 squads attacking even a completely unfortified city defended by a divisions worth of troops is incredible.

The Japanese truly are supermen.

I apologize for my petulance.[:(]

[GreyJoy]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

What I mean Greyjoy is that I seem to be in one of my "This game makes the Japanese so ahistorically overpowered its ridiculous moods" today.

Standing and fighting against them anywhere in '42 seems to be a futile pursuit.

I certainly wouldn't counsel he stands and fights given the Japanese ability to steamroll anything in its path.

The point I made that I retracted in the face of ny59Giants retort was incredulity at casualties of only 4 squads suffered clearing a fortified city defended by a divisions worth of troops.

He chose to focus on my use of the term fortified, when the real point is that only losing 4 squads attacking even a completely unfortified city defended by a divisions worth of troops is incredible.

The Japanese truly are supermen.

I apologize for my petulance.[:(]

Well, true, possibly I got a very good dice&roll on the casualities counter... but please consider the squads lost or disabled during the landings... something like 2000 men lost out of an army of 30,000 men... that's not few!

However I understand what you say...but I consider the enemy almost opposed no opposition at all after the HEAVY air and naval bombardments... now go back few pages and see what I suffered at Sian...something like 20,000 Japanese killed!
It's all about distruption... when an army is distrupted it opposes very little resistance and that's how I explain the very little losses on my side in this battle

[veji1]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

What I mean Greyjoy is that I seem to be in one of my "This game makes the Japanese so ahistorically overpowered its ridiculous moods" today.

Standing and fighting against them anywhere in '42 seems to be a futile pursuit.

I certainly wouldn't counsel he stands and fights given the Japanese ability to steamroll anything in its path.

The point I made that I retracted in the face of ny59Giants retort was incredulity at casualties of only 4 squads suffered clearing a fortified city defended by a divisions worth of troops.

He chose to focus on my use of the term fortified, when the real point is that only losing 4 squads attacking even a completely unfortified city defended by a divisions worth of troops is incredible.

The Japanese truly are supermen.

I apologize for my petulance.[:(]

Well it is true that japanese LCUs tend to be way overpowered early in game because of experience and morale being so high. Or the other way round allied LCUs are strongly underpowered early on because of that. This game also doesn't take into account the moral effects of fighting on one's own turf.

[GreyJoy]

Those two American Rgts should be from the 31st ID if I remember correctly... or the 25th... however one of the few "free" units the allied gets early in the game... it's pretty important to maul them now... and would be awesome to destroy them once for all. Will do my best to harvest as much as possible in Oz...something I wasn't able to do in India (well, in India between Colombo and Calcutta I think I've bagged nearly 100,000 men...not that bad anyway)

[GreyJoy]

.

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: GreyJoy

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

What I mean Greyjoy is that I seem to be in one of my "This game makes the Japanese so ahistorically overpowered its ridiculous moods" today.

Standing and fighting against them anywhere in '42 seems to be a futile pursuit.

I certainly wouldn't counsel he stands and fights given the Japanese ability to steamroll anything in its path.

The point I made that I retracted in the face of ny59Giants retort was incredulity at casualties of only 4 squads suffered clearing a fortified city defended by a divisions worth of troops.

He chose to focus on my use of the term fortified, when the real point is that only losing 4 squads attacking even a completely unfortified city defended by a divisions worth of troops is incredible.

The Japanese truly are supermen.

I apologize for my petulance.[:(]

Well, true, possibly I got a very good dice&roll on the casualities counter... but please consider the squads lost or disabled during the landings... something like 2000 men lost out of an army of 30,000 men... that's not few!

However I understand what you say...but I consider the enemy almost opposed no opposition at all after the HEAVY air and naval bombardments... now go back few pages and see what I suffered at Sian...something like 20,000 Japanese killed!
It's all about distruption... when an army is distrupted it opposes very little resistance and that's how I explain the very little losses on my side in this battle

Good points all Grey, but to a degree aren't you also making my point for me?

Shouldn't the disruption that accompanied those 2000 casualties in the landings also have resulted in a degraded level of performance in the battle for the city?

A heavily disrupted, heavily attrited force lands over a beach under heavy coastal gun fire and goes on to sweep the defenders suffering only a few hangnails in return.

I don't begrudge the success of taking a coastal city in open terrain with low fort levels that has been heavily bombed and bombarded, I just think it's incredible that it was done with only 4 squads lost.

Kudos to you for pulling it off.

[Cribtop]

Wow - disaster for Japan becomes disaster for the Allies. Call on Marshal Murat and begin the pursuit!

[Cribtop]

PS - I would argue that although GJ obliged by landing at Geraldton, the decision to defend here was highly risky strategically. Had GJ discovered the truth, it would be easy to land behind him and trap these troops without the risk of landing in his teeth.

[GreyJoy]

ORIGINAL: Cribtop

PS - I would argue that although GJ obliged by landing at Geraldton, the decision to defend here was highly risky strategically. Had GJ discovered the truth, it would be easy to land behind him and trap these troops without the risk of landing in his teeth.

My recon planes failed on me. Despite 9/10 DL on the turn before I landed, it seemed that only 12,000 men were present there. Possibly this was due to the fact that I was using Mavis from Exmouth and Jakes from the KB to recon...didn't have an operative field anywhere nearby (The closest AF was at broome!)

@Hans: I do think that most of those 2000 casualities were among already disabled squads. Those two divisions were used extensively during the siege of Batavia and when I loaded them they had 10% of disabled squads. I guess those disabled got destroyed during the landings, but the intact squads not thanks to the HEAVY counterbattery fire by my BB/CA/CL/DDs that were shielding the landing ships.
I bet if I had all those surface assets embedded the distruption would have been much much higher

[GreyJoy]

R&D:

didn't talk much about economy till now.
Slowly the economy is getting set.
Next month will start producing Rufes (unfortunately only 2 FP groups upgrade to them but wanna use them if I can).
The A6M3 should be online by mid april 42
KI-44 IIa by the end of may (only 3 groups upgrading to the a version, so not investing much on this model).
7x30 factories of KI-43 IIa are getting repaired. Hopefully I can get the IIb version by late 42.
Finally reached the breakeven point for Ha-35, Ha-32 and Ha-33...producing more than what I'm expending... trying to get the 500 bonus ASAP
Will be hard with PDU OFF...but I'm doing my very best