General Patton vs. larryfulkerson Focus Pacific #75

[larryfulkerson]

Here it is almost a week after the Pearl strike and I've still got one surviving midget sub in Pearl's harbor. And he's running out of
dried fish and saki. I guess I'll just leave him there and see what happens.

[larryfulkerson]

Remember that supply problem I had around the Bangkok environs? I found a TF that has sufficient supplies to aleviate the supply
problem at Bangkok. It's dispatched already and will be there with a couple of days.

[larryfulkerson]

I have two CVE's at Yokohoma that need escorts to be moved to the front lines. Even PB's would do. I'll scrounge around and see
if I can't get that TF moving to Truk.

EDIT: On the other hand I can keep them at Yokohoma to resize the air groups. I just learned of that concept recently.

[larryfulkerson]

I miscalculated in my post #521 in which I stated that there was 1 midget sub at Pearl and there's actually about four of them.
And this is about five days after the Pearl strike. Maybe I should simulate them being found and destroyed by the Allies and
just put them on a course for Kwajalein and by this time next September they should arrive there. Because of the 1 hex
movement rate when you're out of gas. What do you guys think?

EDIT: Here it is a week later and *spoiler alert* they all four sank between Pearl and Kwajalein somewhere. I put them on a
suicide course back to K. and they didn't make it.

[larryfulkerson]

New moves from Brian: here's the number of aircraft engines in the pools and it looks like I'm using about 1/3 of the engines on hand
each turn. That's a horrific pace but I'm wondering if the number of aircraft are being built. What's the pool look like for the aircraft
that use that engine? I'll look for a picture of that for you guys.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the number of airplanes in the pools sorted by the engine that they use. The Ha-35 stuff is in the yellow box. Everything looks
like it's humming right along. The Ha-32 is the engine for the Betty and it's still a bottleneck.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the industry global numbers. I'm thinking it's all looking good. So far.

[larryfulkerson]

The ships for some more of my invasion forces have arrived at their targets. The yellow circles are the new landings. I'm looking
around for more AF dudes to populate this area so I can bring in some air power. I would really like to grab Guadacanal but it's
just a bit too early for that far south.

[larryfulkerson]

Guam finally fell. I'm planning on building Guam into a semi-major hub in my logistics chain so I'm planning on expanding the port and
airfield and that means I'll need some engineers......I'll find some if they aren't already there.

[larryfulkerson]

I landed at Jolo to be able to thwart the Allied ships fleeing Manila heading south but it's looking like they are going to just drive by and
keep going. I didn't land there early enough to install some aircraft and some SCTF's. D'oh. And the situation is mixed because in
addition to the Allied ships moving south through there I've got invasion TF's traversing the Bay as well; one going to Manado and
one almost at Davao already. And some of my SCTF's have to return to Babeldoab to replenish.

[larryfulkerson]

here's all the auto-convoy TF's and the list of ships at Osaka ready to be dispatched on a mission. I don't have nearly the number of
auto-convoys that are desireable. If I can get the auto-convoy system to do most of the work for me I can concentrate on the war.

[larryfulkerson]

It's 18:13 tucson time and I've just received new moves from Brian and have watched the combat replay and now there's something new
to post.

I've been going through all the hints Tracker supplies me with and I've come to the LCU's at CRB and it's looking like this group is the
last of the INF loads that need to happen. I want to use them on Palembang but the Allied air power is still too strong for an assault that
deep without proper LBA aircover. I'm going to bring in a carrier group to provide something approaching air cover and hope for the
best.

[larryfulkerson]

The 7th division finally arrived at Hakodate and for about 1600 PP's I can load it up and use it somewhere or other. I'm only got about
4.5K PP's so that would be a very expensive investment to buyout the 7th division. I'd rather use those PP's on something a little bit
more important, like upgrading the leaders of the LCU's and squadrons and TF's and changing the upgrade path of the squadrons so
that they graduate to Betty's when possible. Besides, there are lots of little units I need to move first. All that stuff at CRB needs to
be moved yet.

[larryfulkerson]

For all the fighting that's been going on everywhere I'd expect more damaged ships than just these. Oh, there's still TF's trying for CRB
and just haven't arrived yet like these have. I've got ships holed up in size 1 ports rather than just sink outright and I'll be trying to
salvage those for a while yet. Six months or more for some of those ships. The first problem was to put out the fire and the quickest
way I know how to do that is dock it somewhere and let the naval support put out the fire at the docks. Maybe upgrade the leader of the
ship. So I've got a few of those here and there. A lot of what couldn't quite risk going to CRB are parked at ports on the north coast
of Borneo repairing very slowly.

EDIT: All this carnage happened because I neglected to provide proper escorts, ships to soak up the shells from the shore. Say that
three times fast. Without the BB's and CA's etc. to fire back and silence the guns my transports are getting damaged left and right. I
can testify that a little PB isn't good enough for invasions. I live and learn.

[larryfulkerson]

Hey you guys: Here's the situation: The Allies have snuck up on my Tarawa invasion fleet and sank it entirely ( the troops got off the
boat okay first, thank god ) and then hung around as you see them now. I've dispatched the KB to race to the area and see if I can't
get some serious negotiations going. Meanwhile I have a search group, flying Mavis's, and I want to give them an offensive mission
like naval attack and see what happens. I've set one Mavis to search and I've shortened the search / attack range to 10 instead of 25
so that there would be a better chance of detection and so that the attacking group will tend to involuntarily track my intended target.
Is that what I should do or is it just a bad idea again?

Edit: I just noticed that the hex the Allied CV's are in has a heavy rain kind of thing going on and my search planes aren't going to
find anything.......probably.

[Andav]

I would say no to the Mavis on Naval attack for a couple of different reasons.

1) Torpedoes are Red so they will have to try with bombs

2) If they do not have skill in Naval Bombing, they will probably not hit.

3) Some planes will probably get shot down and it is 4 engines to replace them. Is it worth the HI cost?

I would also be careful with the Auto Convoy. This never seems to work very well and you really need to manage and be aware of where supply/resources/fuel is going. You can set them up to do a specific run between two bases but you really need to manage this. Also, there are a couple which are loading bits of Fuel. While 300 or 600 or so does not seem like much, it all adds up especially if they are going to a place that does not need fuel. Make sure you set them to Do Not Load Fuel in the TF screen if you do not want them to take fuel.

Wa

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

Oh, yeah, I meant to tell you earlier but I forgot.......Brian charged Tarawa with his carriers and sank my invasion fleet. The image
below shows the condition of the only survivor. I suspect he's going to hang around and do another strike just to finish off the TF.
And of course I sent no air cover with the invasion TF, you'd think I would have thought of that, but NNnnnnoooooooo. At least the
troops got ashore first. Now I'm wondering if it's profitable to chase him with my carriers because he's sure to be long gone by the
time I get there.

They will certainly get away if they want to. But if he does not see you coming then he might hang around for whatever reason. You might want to try an oblique approach to gain a position where you can cut off their withdrawal if they do hang around. But the chances are low IMO, so it's not worth the damage of going full speed (increases detection chances anyway) or burning too much fuel (whatever you consider too much).

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: Andav
I would say no to the Mavis on Naval attack for a couple of different reasons.

1) Torpedoes are Red so they will have to try with bombs

2) If they do not have skill in Naval Bombing, they will probably not hit.

3) Some planes will probably get shot down and it is 4 engines to replace them. Is it worth the HI cost?

I would also be careful with the Auto Convoy. This never seems to work very well and you really need to manage and be aware of where supply/resources/fuel is going. You can set them up to do a specific run between two bases but you really need to manage this. Also, there are a couple which are loading bits of Fuel. While 300 or 600 or so does not seem like much, it all adds up especially if they are going to a place that does not need fuel. Make sure you set them to Do Not Load Fuel in the TF screen if you do not want them to take fuel.

Wa

Thank you very much for your analysis and of course you're right. And thanks for the tip about auto-convoy. I was hoping I could
count on it to do most of the deliveries I need to do. And yes, I've seen some convoys going to places that really didn't need
attention yet. And as the Allies the auto-convoy system keeps trying to route convoys near Jap bases and I had to constantly
correct the routing by cancelling out the auto-convoy part of the TF and make it human controlled. It was getting to be a hassle.
I like playing the Jap side very much. I'm having a blast in this game with Brian.

[larryfulkerson]

They will certainly get away if they want to. But if he does not see you coming then he might hang around for whatever reason. You might want to try an oblique approach to gain a position where you can cut off their withdrawal if they do hang around. But the chances are low IMO, so it's not worth the damage of going full speed (increases detection chances anyway) or burning too much fuel (whatever you consider too much).

That's a great idea. I hadn't thought of that. You guys have the best advice that's available.

What I ended up doing was to dispatch a carrier group and an AO refueling group to the Tarawa area where they have been
loitering every since. There's been no sightings since his attack.

But in the Celebes I've taken the Mandano base and ran some ships down to Ambon and sank a few Allied ships before leaving. I've
invaded so many places so far that I'm running out of available troops. I'm going to have to start re-using them to grab other places
and some of the places I've captured already don't have the best port facilities yet and loading the troops from a place like that is
problematic. I end up having to move the troops in pieces with the little AP's and AK's. It's unhandy but it's working.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

They will certainly get away if they want to. But if he does not see you coming then he might hang around for whatever reason. You might want to try an oblique approach to gain a position where you can cut off their withdrawal if they do hang around. But the chances are low IMO, so it's not worth the damage of going full speed (increases detection chances anyway) or burning too much fuel (whatever you consider too much).

That's a great idea. I hadn't thought of that. You guys have the best advice that's available.

What I ended up doing was to dispatch a carrier group and an AO refueling group to the Tarawa area where they have been
loitering every since. There's been no sightings since his attack.

But in the Celebes I've taken the Mandano base and ran some ships down to Ambon and sank a few Allied ships before leaving. I've
invaded so many places so far that I'm running out of available troops. I'm going to have to start re-using them to grab other places
and some of the places I've captured already don't have the best port facilities yet and loading the troops from a place like that is
problematic. I end up having to move the troops in pieces with the little AP's and AK's. It's unhandy but it's working.

Yes, they really have done a masterful job of working in the various logistics in AE! [&o]