General Patton vs. larryfulkerson Focus Pacific #75

[larryfulkerson]

Hey you guys: I was reading in another AAR about sending the #1 file the combat replay file, to whomever wants to watch
it. Just send me an email and I'll put you on a list to receive the #1 file every time I send one to Brian. My email address
is : fulkersonlarry60(at)gmail(dot)com.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the major hubs. You'll notice that I've run the west ports out of supply and that an urgent shipment is indicated. I'll bet that if
I look for the TF's involved that there's already a convoy enroute. I have been looking around for some minor hubs and I'm leaning
toward Guam but the port is only 2(2) there and that's not big enough. There are engineers there and it won't be hard to expand it
as big as it will go, it'll just be costly in supplies. But worth it to make a better hub. Another hub will be Manila when I can clear out all
the mines at Bataan and Manila's harbor. I'm almost going to have to wait for the fall of Bataan before I can clear out the mines there
because of the CD guns. I don't want to damage one of my ships, although if I did use the ships it might make Bataan faster. Let me
think about it some more. I'd have to round up a SCTF with some BB's in it and lots of DMS ships.....

[larryfulkerson]

I count 13 Jap divisions at Bataan and they are all badly needed at Singapore so I'm in rather a hurry to see the fall of Bataan.
I think I'm going to put together a TF to pound Bataan from the sea which means I'll have to tangle with his CD guns and that
means I'm going to damage and or sink some ships. I'd really rather not see that happen so I've been bombing Bataan nonstop
for about two weeks now and every once in a while I'll actually hit something. So the air assault isn't working really well. Ships
are almost necessary.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what's going on near Singapore. I don't have nearly enough troops to do any serious fighting across the river.
Johore B. finally received some supplies and I'm letting the troops rest from their recent battles and fill up on supply
and absorb some reinforcements and replace their equipment losses, etc. From looking at the picture again I notice
that they aren't prepping for Singapore and I need to fix that. I guess it pays to take a look around once in a while.

[larryfulkerson]

new moves from Brian: Here's the oil and res situation in the home islands now. I need to come up with about 12K barrels of oil a day
to fill the demand for oil. I'm not sure I have the TK's for that. I'll have to see if I can't use the AO's to ship oil.

[larryfulkerson]

I'm building only 4 Betty's per day and that's not enough. I may have to convert another factory to building Betty's because I need
more than I'm getting now. There's a huge factory for the Ha-35 in Tokyo that isn't producing any engines because we have enough
in the pool for our needs. I'm thinking of using it for the production of the Ha-35 and convert all the rest of the Ha-35 factories into
something else. An aircraft factory if that's possible.

EDIT: Can't convert it into an aircraft factory. That's not possible.

[larryfulkerson]

This is me boosting the output of the Betty factories to higher values. Too bad they don't start putting out the max amount from
day one. The way they do it is realistic however.

[larryfulkerson]

This image shows how I've already moved the graduating class of navy pilots into a training squadron somewhere and there aren't any
hanging around cooling their heals. There's plenty of army pilots that need to be moved into a training squadron somewhere too.

[larryfulkerson]

This is just some of the pilot reserve. You can see that I have some high quality pilots in the reserve. Some TRACOM qualified pilots
in the reserve might seem unusual but the truth is I just haven't moved them to TRACOM yet.

[larryfulkerson]

I've got about 88K PP's and I don't know what all to do with them. I've already gone through the HQ units replacing leaders with better
ones. I've already bought out all the LCU's I need for a while. In this mod I'm swamped with PP's.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the ships under repair. There's not as many as there used to be. I've got two ships that had to put into an emergency port
before it sank and it's repairing but will need to be moved to a larger port eventually. I can't overestimate the value of having a
repair port at Truk. This would be a different game without it.

[larryfulkerson]

I've gotten into the habit of parking my subs on those dot-hexes that Brian may want to turn into a base. I've sunk several AK's but
lately Brian has been sending ASW ships to them and I've had several subs damaged by them so far. About half a dozen of my
subs are enroute back to Kwajaleine for repairs. I guess they need some surface treatment as well as subs. I'll take a look around
and see what kind of SCTF I can put together. Maybe a carrier escort.

[larryfulkerson]

Off the east coast of Australia I had some carriers that I needed to split up into separate TF's for better utilization of the aircraft and I
pulled them to the NE out of harm's way to do the reorganization and while that was going on one of my subs got a sighting at
Luganville and I'm going to drive my ships down there to see what kind of adventures I can cause.

[larryfulkerson]

The attack that resulted got A hit on some ships but the ones that got away were missed. Really a poor showing for the squadrons.
Another attack is indicated. Maybe some training for the pilots.

[larryfulkerson]

So I moved the carrier group a little bit so subs would have to displace to chase me. And this is the am airstrike the following day:
Much better results.

[larryfulkerson]

I'm reporting these results as I get them from the combat replay. Next to report is the fall of Bataan. So now a little rest and then off
to Singapore. And Palembang. And Java.

[larryfulkerson]

I was working on my moves just now and realized that sometimes I have no clue what is the right thing to do despite all the history I have
read and the principles I'm aware of that apply in warfare and I thought it might be a really good idea to "sandbox" some different
methods and see what works before I need to use it in a game I'm playing PBEM. So I started a game against the computer where I'm
the Japs and I'm going though all the gymnastics of the first turm, all the things you have to do to set things in motion for the first time
and all the changes to the economy that need to be made ASAP and so on. I did a lot to the planes before I got tired of that and
went to the LCU's and worked on that for a while and when I got tired of that I went to the ships and just now discovered that about a
third of the ships I own are already in a TF somewhere. So I only have to form TF's for about two thirds of them. This is a stock game.
I thought maybe I'd bring it to your attention. Your welcome.

[larryfulkerson]

New moves from Brian: The combat replay was semi-exciting this time, as Cagayan fell finally. So now I need to move all those
troops to Davao and then find some AP's or AK's to move them to Mersing. I'm wondering if I should instead use them to grab
some of those smaller islands in the Celebes. Or Timor.

[larryfulkerson]

There's about 84K troops at Bataan that need to be moved to Singapore and the best port to do that is Manila and that means
I need to clear out all the mines at Bataan so I dispatched some DMSs from CRB and they are just past the half-way point in
transit so it's going to take a couple of days to reach port but the troops aren't all at Manila anyway so it's going to work out just
about right I think.

When moving the troops to Singapore I need to keep in mind that Palembang still needs to be captured and I might ought to give
some thought to what it's going to take to capture that place. Brian has been flying in reinforcements by air probably and so there's
probably a fairly large contingent there already. I'm thinking of sending a couple of divisions at least when I assault it.

[BillBrown]

I would expect at least 1200 AV at Palembang by now.