I'll be on travel for work for a few weeks and won't be able to update much if at all. So I'll give a bit of a run down on where I hope to take this war in the coming weeks and months. I'm trying to avoid the wall of text, but this post may drag on a bit. I'm sorry in advance.
The only 2 theaters of concern for me are the Marshall Islands and Burma. It is possible his actions could expand the war to another theater, but at the current time, I am not planning any near term actions anywhere else.
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Burma
In Burma, he has moved into Prome in strength, and is looking to cut the coast road from Akyab where the road is 1 hex into the jungle. To this end, Prome is fortified as described in my previous post and is 41% of the way to forts 5. On the jungle road, I have a Brit infantry Bde digging in where he is headed, and roughly 2 division equivalents racing to get there.
VF8 has arrived in Calcutta and will have most of their A/C assembled in the next day or 2. Two VMFs are about 10 days from being useable.
In the near term, I just hope to hold off his counter offensive. If I can do that, I can start wearing down his troops with bombards from the air and ground.
In the air, for now, I'm just mostly playing it safe with night bombardments of his airfields, and sweeps / bombing of the troops heading for the jungle road in order to slow them down. Once my VMFs are in place I will try to bait him into sweeping Prome again (he is currently sweeping empty skies there) to take losses, and follow it up with an air offensive aimed at shutting down his airfields. From there I hope to follow up with pounding ground troops at Prome and the jungle road, and spare a few to mine ports and hit some places farther south (Saigon?).
As all of this is happening, this is what he will see in Burma over the next few months:
43rd US ID (week from CT)
7th US ID (week from East Coast US - needs to be bought out)
5th Indian ID (Aden in 1.5 month)
72nd Brit Bde (Madras in 1.5 month)
11th East African Div (3 month)
32nd US ID (rebuilding in Townsville for about another 2-3 weeks)
27th ID (Seattle - needs to be bought out and built up to full TO&E)
40th ID (Adak)
58th (Sep) Inf Reg (Adak)
Gardner's Horse Tank Reg (enroute)
762nd Tank Bn (week from CT)
763rd Tank Bn (week from CT)
194th Tank Bn (3 weeks from CT)
754th Tank Bn (Adak)
1st Cav Div? (4 months)
So 7+ Infantry divisions, 5 tank Bns and maybe a US Cav Division.
Once a good portion of these units are in place, I will send them Bassein. A few will sweep north and either force a retreat from Prome or close the hex sides to him. The rest will drive to Pegu and attempt to shut off the supplies coming into Burma. Dreaming now, I hope to then be able to drive into Thailand and threaten Bangkok by the end of the year.
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Marshall Islands
I think KB has left the area (perhaps for April upgrades). I will wait a bit to be sure, and then start to tread near bases at first, and see if he comes out to play. To that end, I plan to start activities here as soon as I can get the pieces into place (about 2 weeks).
I really want to hit Turk - hard. PB4Ys from Mili are consistently seeing a juicy target: 125 bombers, nearly 70 ships of all types from CA on down and a big fat goose egg for fighters. The problem is that I have to penetrate his Nav search. To this end, I have started LRCAP over his bases at patrol altitudes in the Marshalls. Over the past week I have seen a steady drop in the number of "Aux" aircraft at his bases. But I can't reach Kusaie and Wake Island. Kusaie has what looks like 1 squadron - and curiously, Wake has 60 bombers and a few fighters - but only 2 Aux. I expect this many bombers on the front lines to be backed up by significant nav search (by the bombers themselves if nothing else). To see if this is true, I have sent a small, old DD squadron to tip-toe just north of the Marshalls to see if it gets spotted. Today, they are 4 hexes north of Bikini, and so far so good - no DL and no A/C sighted. One more turn west, and I think I have a route that can surprise Turk when my CVs arrive in about 2 weeks. If this route is unfeasible, I'll settle for leveling Wake. It should startle him (no CV activity from me since November), and force him to react.
At the same time as this, I will send out my CVEs (7 total) full of fighters to provide a massive sweep of Kusaie - 100 fighters, no bombers. LRCAP from Tarawa and Makin will assist in air cover for the CVEs.
The big things I want though are his CVs. So long as they don't appear while I'm doing the above, they should come racing back down when done their upgrades; else he cedes the Marshalls to amphibious invasion. So here is how I plan to deal with it:
I believe he has the following CVs:
Hiyo
Shokaku
Hiryu
Soryu
Kaga
Akagi
each with their stock airwings, plus a bit of fighter supplement from Hosho, Shoho and 201 Ku S-1 airwings.
Adding up what A/C they should / could have, and cross referencing that to what my patrols were reporting, he has about 150 fighters and 285 bombers. I will face them with 310 fighters and 175 bombers. How? By bring both CVs and CVEs to the fight, and tailoring the airwings to the mission. Why 310 fighters?
I wrote a model that attempts to compute the expected number of hits on ships given the size and composition of the strike package, and the size of the CAP.
I estimate that each CAP fighter can neutralize 1.5 escorting fighters, and each CAP fighter can neutralize 2 bombers. For the bombers that get through, I expect them to get about a 7% hit rate if they have been disrupted by the CAP (and about 30% if they get through clean). I got these numbers looking at our past CV actions, and by playing the Forager scenario a few times.
I estimate that he will run about 60% CAP - this is what he appears to have run in previous CV battles. That will leave about 60 fighters escorting 285 bombers. I will put 185 fighters on CAP (plus whatever I can squeeze out of LBA). What bombers leak through should be scattered, and score low hit rates on my ships. Hopefully, they attack the BBs that will tag along and not the CVs as well.
I can then counter with 125 fighters and 175 bombers. A small portion of his 90 CAP should get through to some of the bombers (I estimate I really need about 132 fighters), but even with a 7% (of total strike package) hit rate, I should score about 11+ hits on his ships... and if the bombers get through in good shape, they can get up to about 50 hits. I expect somewhere in between, as I am only a few fighters short of the estimated requirements.
. Estimated at 19 A/C on the ground - mostly bombers. The decision further pays off in the day when he tries bombing Prome again in force. For some reason the fighters yawn at the first sweep of the day, then jump on the [escorted] bombers in force. Later sweeps by him several times. Some are mildly successful, others disasters. A group of Tojos based at Pegu cause a lot of problems - probably some of his better pilots - but they keep coming back for more (I'm guessing LRCAP), and by the end are starting to take some pain.
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