General Patton vs. larryfulkerson Focus Pacific #75

[larryfulkerson]

I finally got the pieces of the 48th division together and rebuilt the division. There's some pieces of the 65th division at Lingayen and
the third piece, the "c" piece is making it's way there as we speak. So then I'll have two full divisions in the PI. I'm not sure but I don't
think I can take down Manila or Bataan with just two divisions. I may need to ship some more people to the PI yet.

[larryfulkerson]

And in Malaya, Georgetown fell and now all my troops are headed for Temuloh and I'm sweeping all the Allied groups that way as I go.
We should be in Johore B. by the end of a week or so.

[larryfulkerson]

Manado finally fell so I have another port in the Celebes area. Ternate has been getting hit by Allied air strikes so I've parked a
carrier group near it for the CAP until the airfield is expanded to level 1 and I expect that to happen in a couple of days. Manado
has a 3(7) airfield and I'm going to move some fighters there. Maybe a bomber group too....depends on what number of planes
I can park there. Fighting is still going on at Tarakan and Davao. Tough nuts to crack.

[larryfulkerson]

I'm invading Finshaften and the SCTF at Port Moresby is still there. The air strikes have dropped off a bit. He must be running out of
undamaged planes. And I've got one small SCTF at Tulagi to act as a placeholder in case some Allied transports arrive with troops
or goodies for Tulagi. I'm running out of available troops in this area. I've extracted the 44th division from Guam to Truk and after they
rest a bit I'll insert them somewhere.

[ny59giants]

Manado - A good place to get an Air HQ into along with a group or two of Ms Nell or Ms Betty with some Zeros.

Amphib TF vs bases with CD guns - More ships, less troops. [:-] If an LCU has 4000 troops, load unto ships with at least 2 1/2 that capacity. Also, select "load troops only" option in bottom left corner of screen that you use to select LCUs. Second, form a small Amphib TF of xAKLs and load just supply. Combine both TF and add those old slow BBs. Before landing you will need air power to attack ground troops for a few days.

CD Guns - Open up mod as Allies. Look at the CD guns and then hit "D" to bring up devices. Find out the range of the CD guns. Form Bombardment TF and escort "NOT" to bombard. Set CA and/or BB to range 1k or 2k greater than CD guns. Hit base multiple times before invading. Get a large AKE nearby to reload from (Manado would be good choice).

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: ny59giants
Manado - A good place to get an Air HQ into along with a group or two of Ms Nell or Ms Betty with some Zeros.

I think so too. Originally I argued with myself which to grab Ternate or Manado and I
decided to do both. Now I'm wondering if I need both. I guess having both won't hurt
anything. The more the merrier.

ORIGINAL: ny59giants
Amphib TF vs bases with CD guns - More ships, less troops. If an LCU has 4000 troops, load unto ships with at least 2 1/2 that capacity. Also, select "load troops only" option in bottom left corner of screen that you use to select LCUs. Second, form a small Amphib TF of xAKLs and load just supply. Combine both TF and add those old slow BBs. Before landing you will need air power to attack ground troops for a few days.

I like this idea a lot. I'm doing it this way from now on.

ORIGINAL: ny59giants
CD Guns - Open up mod as Allies. Look at the CD guns and then hit "D" to bring up devices. Find out the range of the CD guns. Form Bombardment TF and escort "NOT" to bombard. Set CA and/or BB to range 1k or 2k greater than CD guns. Hit base multiple times before invading. Get a large AKE nearby to reload from (Manado would be good choice).

I've got an AKE already moving into the area. And the idea of standing off out of the
range of the CD guns is brilliant. Why don't I think of things like this. Lack of
experience I guess.

[larryfulkerson]

I got some new moves from Brian about 17:00 or so this evening and I watched the combat replay and watched my stricken TF get
decimated again near Singapore. I don't think very many ships survived that trip. But on the other hand, I've captured Finshaften
and it had oodles of supplies already so I've started the expansion of the airfield and the port. I'm in a hurry.

[larryfulkerson]

Every number is in the green at Tokyo. And by extension, probably,.every other home island city is probably okie dokie also. Tokyo is
where the levels are fluctuating up and down constantly by great amounts. I'm especially glad to see that there's ample fuel so far. I
had trouble with fuel in my last game with Brian. I don't think he changed anything about the Jap economy and I don't know what I'm
doing different.

[larryfulkerson]

Fueling all the places I've captured recently, Manado, Ternate, etc. has drained the fuel out of Babeldaob again, or still. This is about
the third time in the past three weeks that B. has run low on fuel. I have a vague memory of an emergency shipment of fuel being loaded
at Truk for B. but I don't know how far along the process is and it's important that I have more fuel showing up pretty soon now or the
SCTF's will have to park themselves at a port somewhere and wait.

[larryfulkerson]

I'm going through the bases in Tracker scanning for obvious problems and I found Rabaul is out of fuel still. This time I checked for
shipments and found two of them, both carrying fuel, about half way between Truk and Rabaul. So Rabaul will have fuel in about two
days or so.

[larryfulkerson]

I have some AKE's at Hiroshima that I need to move to Hong Kong and I'm thinking the southern route would be better than the obvious
northern route even though it's a significantly longer trip and probably more damage encurred enroute and so on but there's a known
Allied sub on the northern route's path and I'd like to avoid that bad boy. Even though I have escorts for the TF because I believe that
maybe that's what the real life commanders would have done. I like realistic games.

[larryfulkerson]

New moves from Brian. He's a workhorse. Here's a training squadron flying Claude's and they seem to have gotten the point of their
escort training so I thought I'd put them to training in the straffing mode now and my understanding is that to do "staf" training one
uses a low altitude with some form of ground attack. I'm hoping that's true cause that's what they are now.

[witpqs]

Training at 100 ft yields Strafing skill. Training at 1,000 ft (maybe up to 3,000 ft) yields LowGround skill. How they get used is a little different depending on the aircraft type and the mission.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: witpqs
Training at 100 ft yields Strafing skill. Training at 1,000 ft (maybe up to 3,000 ft) yields LowGround skill. How they get used is a little different depending on the aircraft type and the mission.

Thank you for that. Anybody ever use fighters on Lnav? I mean attacking ships at 100' ? I'm training them to do that. Waste of time?

[ny59giants]

ASW air groups - I would start finding some of your 9 and 12 plane bomber groups and start training in ASW. Rest until Morale is 100%, set altitude to 1000', range 0, 100% training in ASW. Brian seems to like to keep many American subs off southern Japan as he can at start.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: ny59giants
ASW air groups - I would start finding some of your 9 and 12 plane bomber groups and start training in ASW. Rest until Morale is 100%, set altitude to 1000', range 0, 100% training in ASW. Brian seems to like to keep many American subs off southern Japan as he can at start.

Yeah, I've noticed that too. This picture shows only the few subs I've detected....the rest are invisible until they do something offensive
or my ASW assets find them. I'm going to have to do what you suggest and also, I'm thinking I need to rush some DD's to southern
Japan to make up some ASW groups specifically for the subs off the southern coast of Japan. I've already lost about a dozen ships to
his sub attacks.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the search patterns for the ASW assets I have flying anti-sub missions over the waters of the southern coast. Mostly float planes
and some Val's on training. It's going to be easy to find some of those smaller bomber squadrons and get them training in ASW
missions. I'll do it.

[paradigmblue]

In Focus Pacific, Japan should start the game with lots of sub-chasers that you can use for ASW work without using your valuable destroyers. Check the ship screen to see where yours are- there should be quite a few scattered through the home islands.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: paradigmblue
In Focus Pacific, Japan should start the game with lots of sub-chasers that you can use for ASW work without using your valuable destroyers. Check the ship screen to see where yours are- there should be quite a few scattered through the home islands.

I just got some moves from Brian just before I started posting this, so I need to watch the combat replay first to see how bad the
news is and THEN I'll put out an APB for some SC's near the home islands to see if I can't get them ASW-ing pretty soonl Thanks
for the hint, I had stopped shipbuilding them, but now, iit turns out they are handy so I'll see what I have to do to remove the stop build
on them. Most are for later in the war.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's where the SC's are right now. I've noticed that some of them aren't in the home islands any more and some of them are showing
some signs of wear and tear and evidently I've been using them as escorts. I'll put a stop to that and see if I can't get them into the home
islands again and get some ASW going up there. Either that or escort them out of the port and grab an inbound TF and escort it into
port, etc.