The Good The Bad & The Indifferent

[JeffroK]

Its 1943, when are you allowed to drop mines by air???

[Alfred]

The game engine allows it from 1 Jan 1943.
 
Alfred

[JeffroK]

Thanks Alfred, I thought it was sometime in 1943.

Could be a useful tactic to plant some in all Malayan/Sumatran ports and you make pick up a hit or two. At the least JIII will have to make sure he has AM in every port.

[Canoerebel]

Thanks JeffK (and Alfred). Great idea! Now I just need the airfield operational to employ it! (Fighters are getting up in fair numbers, but my 4EB at Sabang were trashed in the nuclear bombardment.)

[Canoerebel]

Thanks, BB, that's what I'd hoped. I think I have something like 100 3.7 inch (or is it cm?) guns at Ramree Island. About a week ago, John came in with a host of Sallys and Helens. There was no CAP. The AA there downed at least 20 of the bombers, and John hasn't sent them back.

I probably have roughly a similar number at Sabang - not enough to stop massed bombing raids in the short term, but enough to make it costly over the long term. I hope.

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

Speaking of AA it has proven very effective in this game to date. In particular the Brit/Indian units with the 3.7cm guns have proven devastating. A concentration of those guns at Ramree Island persuaded John to stop bombing despite there being no CAP.

Do the USA AA units (coastal artillery) have something similar to (or even better than) the 3.7cm? I think the US units have 90mm and something like 40mm guns with others included. I'm hoping the 90mm will be as good or better than the 3.7. Anyone know?


Without looking at the data on each gun, I am pretty sure the US 90mm is at least as good as the British 3.7" AA gun. 90mm is practically the same caliber as 3.7". Both are high velocity weapons with high ceiling and great accuracy.

[Lecivius]

John cannot keep KB on station indefinitely. He simply does not have the fuel. It does help that he is so close to his fuel source. But he is burning gas to stay on station. Also, he loves fighters, at the cost of his bomber pool. Historically, he produces bombers but not in the numbers he produces fighters. If you can come up with a way to get a few serious AA units into Sabang, you make him one dimensional. His navy. Some strike aircraft on short range naval missions will make that dangerous & force him to LRCAP instead of Sweep. Then it's Game Over for Sabang.

It's 43. The tide is turning. He nuked you, but your engineers should be able to put things to right in short order provided his bombers stay off you. I seriously think if you can hang in there a few more months, you can "grab him by the nose, and kick him in the a$$". Let him play Stonewall. This was Patton's war [:D]

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: Lecivius

John cannot keep KB on station indefinitely. He simply does not have the fuel. It does help that he is so close to his fuel source. But he is burning gas to stay on station. Also, he loves fighters, at the cost of his bomber pool. Historically, he produces bombers but not in the numbers he produces fighters. If you can come up with a way to get a few serious AA units into Sabang, you make him one dimensional. His navy. Some strike aircraft on short range naval missions will make that dangerous & force him to LRCAP instead of Sweep. Then it's Game Over for Sabang.

It's 43. The tide is turning. He nuked you, but your engineers should be able to put things to right in short order provided his bombers stay off you. I seriously think if you can hang in there a few more months, you can "grab him by the nose, and kick him in the a$$". Let him play Stonewall. This was Patton's war [:D]

Good points. A whole back he stated he has something like 1100 aviation support.

That likely also means he has an astronomical number of engineers.

Both the damage to the facilities and the airframes can be repaired "almost" overnight.

John will need a sustained daily campaign to keep a facility of this magnitude suppressed.

[Canoerebel]

The Allies do have a good bit of AA at Sabang - three USA Coastal Artillery and about five Brit/Indian units (two of which are light). Oveall, AA should be decent but not whithering.

John isn't Stonewall Jackson. I think he's a mixture of John McCellan and John Hood. He's aggressive, like Hood, but he's modeately cautious about sending his ships into harm's way, as McClellan was with his troops. John isn't Robert E. Lee, who said words to this effect: "A general must be willing to destroy that which he loves best."

[Canoerebel]

Hans, one of the confusing things about that nuclear bombardment is that the engineers aren't repairing damage expeditiously. I do have a ton of them there, but the airfield only improved from 79 damage to 72 damage a day after the attack. That suprises me.

There were other surprises - while the bombardment torched the airfield and aircraft it didn't touch supply, the port (and ships) and the ground troops.

Oddities abound, but that's the nature of war.

[Canoerebel]

Some weeks ago, I offered odds on the Allies holding Sabang in viable shape until the Hellcats become available as 15% to 20%. The odds rose thereafter during some of the heady days when things went well. At the moment, I'd put the odds at probably 33% - which is somewhat better than you might expect. Why?

First, why 67% likely that the Allies can't hold? Japan rules the roost at the moment and things do look pretty bleak. John will be able to engage in multiple bombardment runs before I can hope to get ships there, and I might not can afford to get ships there if the airfield is torched so that they have no cover. Sabang is vulnerable and things do look bleak.

So why a relatively "optimistic" 33% chance of success? Because despite John's numerical superiority and the Allies' vulnerability right now, John has a long way to go towards vanquishing this base. He's likely to close the airfield soon. Even then, it will take him a long time by ground to reach the base and take it. To reduce that time he'll have to invade Langsa soon or chance an invasion of Sabang directly. And each day, each activity, involves friction that should attrit his assets somewhat - mines, subs, AA, and ground troops that should be well supplied for weeks to come. Most importantly of all, we're now at February 20. He has about 39 days (plus a few more as it will take some time to get Hellcats up and running).

[Lecivius]

Do you have construction engineers on premise aka SeaBees? Or just aviation support? You should be repairing faster than that. But then, you should have been getting more raid time warning, from all documentation I could find and the limited testing I was able to do.

[Canoerebel]

Three SeaBee units are present plus other engineers. I was shocked at the lack of repair.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Hans, one of the confusing things about that nuclear bombardment is that the engineers aren't repairing damage expeditiously. I do have a ton of them there, but the airfield only improved from 79 damage to 72 damage a day after the attack. That suprises me.

There were other surprises - while the bombardment torched the airfield and aircraft it didn't touch supply, the port (and ships) and the ground troops.

Oddities abound, but that's the nature of war.

A looong time ago Michael made a change so that engineers' performance is affected by disruption (and I assume fatigue, morale). I have seen that enemy naval bombardments have a far greater disruptive effect on support units like construction type engineers than on combat units. And they work like 5 minutes per day until they get the movies and hot showers fixed.

[Canoerebel]

The bombardments didn't affect the engineers or other ground troops. No disruption or fatigue or morale problems. Odd, eh?

[Lecivius]

He had 40 engineer vehicles on site before the attack. Plenty of supply. Only 7 points of repair. I need to go find Alfred's repair guide.

<edit>

Not Alfred, but I did find this really informative link...

tm.asp?m=2260137


9.4.2 - BASE CONSTRUCTION/REPAIR:

tm.asp?m=2211852

1. If you have any friendly ENG unit at base then you get a bonus ENG value of 5 to total eng value regardless of opMode.
2. Repairs are free but you must have ENG in Combat mode, however you do get the +5 bonus in spite of opMode so repairs might occur(just real slow) depending on base size.
3. Construction is not free and ENG must be in Combat mode.


There is a LOT of reading in that link, and I keep getting interrupted at some silly thing called work [:-] I do see below some of the engineers were disrupted, I bet that was the cause. I'll be curious if the repair points go up as the disruption goes down, as long as the bombers can be kept at bay. I'll keep looking, as long as work allows.

[Canoerebel]

Here's an update, and likely your answer, regarding engineers. As I'll show in a moment, they did suffer disruption but no fatigue or disablements. In fact, all support troops (HQ, engineers, base support) suffered about 50% disruption, 0 fatigue, 0 disablements in the bombardments. But the ground troops weren't touched. Here's an example including all major ground troops and engineer units (note that there are alot of the latter). Figures are: Disruption/Fatigue/Disablement

1. SWPac HQ: 47/3/0
2. 164 RCT: 0/3/0
3. 132 RCT: 0/3/0
4. 762 Tanks: 0/2/0
5. 1st Marines: 0/5/0
6. 813 EAB: 49/3/0
7. 2 USMC EAB: 41/3/0
8. 193 Construction Reg't: 49/3/0
9. 8th Sea Bees: 49/3/0
10. 15th Sea Bees: 49/3/0
11. 22nd Sea Bees: 49/3/0

Supply at the base is now 282k. It was at 302k just before the bombardment, but there was also a transfer of at least 10k (and possibly considerably more) to Langsa. So the bombardment had minimal affect on supply.

[JocMeister]

[Canoerebel]

02/20/43

When Clint awakened he didn't know where he was. It was dark. It was cool. Light rain was falling. He was hurt. And his shirt and jeans were matted; he figured it had to be his own blood. Then he remembered. He'd been out from the wagons in the night, scouting the terrain. It was then that the Commanchees had attacked. He didn't know how he'd been wounded. He thought that a day or two had passed since the attack. He wasn't sure what had become of the wagons and the settlers. He feared the worst. The first thing he needed to do was figure out how badly he'd been injured.

Battle of Sumatra: No enemy shipping at Sabang today (mines holding steady at 956). More enemy sweeps - mostly Zeroes - get the best of the Allies, the losses on both sides aren't particularly high (though my fighters are performing notably more poorly - possibly fatigue). The enginners and other suport troops are down to low 20s disruption. Runway damage is down to 49. Supply is at 280k. 1st Marines have left to take a blocking position in the jungle on the road to Langsa. A remnant USA battalion has long been in the jungle at the end of the yellow road to provide a warning in case John tries that approach. I've decided to allow it to rebuild. It's up to 20 AV and it's jungle rough terrain. If John does send 19th Div. up this road, by the time it arrives this unit might be a speed bump given the terrain.

No sign of combat ships in the Malacca Straits, so I'm somewhat confident (not entirely, due to rain and lower PBY performance due to damage in the recent bombardment) that nothing's coming from that direction tomorrow. But it looks like a cruiser TF is inbound from the west. Perhaps John stripped the KB or escorts to create a surface raiding force to take on the Cleveland/Birmingham TF. But it's going to vacate port tonight on a short mission, hopefully thus making John swing and miss. My fondest hope is that his combat ships will come in so fast that they'll race right into the minefields. (In the last month, I think Sabang's mines have score hits on one CA, two CL and three DD.)

Three or four fletchers are online and will be leaving Colombo with a USN CLAA. I have three combat TFs spread out looking for a window into Sabang.

I think another 10-point IJN DD damaged in the big naval battle went down. That should make three, along with a 7-pointer, two CL (Tama and Agano), plus "heavy fires/heavy damage" to Fuso and "heavy fires" to another BB (Nagato, I think).

DEI: John has nav search up at Denpasar. Judys sortied ineffectively against two USN DD raiders.

Elsewhere: Lots of planning, prep, and ship positioning going on (as has been the case since the start). There are lots of openings out there but lack of unrestricted troops and PP makes me think that biding my time awhile is the better idea. Rather than simply give John a manageable target, I'll wait until the time is ripe to strike a big blow.

[JocMeister]

Sadly minefields won´t protect you. Not even 900+ mines and nor will CD guns. [:(]

Not sure if its intentional or not but CD guns are only effective against landings and covering straits. Mines are mostly just a waste of time. I use them to protect against enemy mine laying subs.

[Canoerebel]

Yeah, I know they aren't effective in stopping BBs, but mines are certainly effective in damaging CAs, CLs, and DDs. John is now particularly, hurtfully short of CAs. Every time he loses one it will be a dagger. He's going to have a tough time come '44.

Did you note the makeup of the big combat TF featuring Yamato, Nagato and Fuso? There were no CAs. Not a one. The escorts consisted of CL Agano and five DDs. That was such an odd combination that it gave me some hope (before the shells started flying) that the Allies might be able to score. I had BB Indiana, CAs Hawkins, Wichita and Quincy, CL Cleveland, and about six or seven DDs. They fought hard, but the odd configuration of John's TF wasn't decisive.

But the lack of cruisers is enlightening, no? If John couldn't spare them for that mission, how much more might he be hurting for escorts now that he's lost two CLs and four DDs? He probably has more he can call on, but the well isn't inexaustable.

These kind of thoughts are optimistic thoughts. When John returns with six BBs, three CAs, and 25 DDs, I'll have pessimistic ones.