General Patton v. Larry Fulkerson Scenario #76

[larryfulkerson]

I made that special trip to page two of the AAR for the old picture of the aircraft and engines and I found that the line for Betty's wasn't
even on the list so I made a new one, an updated one with the Betty row showing on the list. Now I can check in a couple of weeks to
see what the levels are and adjust accordingly.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's me boosting the production of the Ha-35 by 50 engines per day. It's going to take a while to get up to speed but I think maybe
I won't run out before the production can catch up with demand.

[larryfulkerson]

I had to shut down the refiinery at Port Arthur again. In my drawing oil out of PA I managed to draw too much again and the refinery
ran dry. D'oh. This is the second time I've done that. I'm going to have to watch closer to what goes on there.

[larryfulkerson]

I've captured Nauru island and Ocean island and I've been pulling RES from them and shipping it to Truk. And I've almost gathered
enough to justify a trip to the home islands with it.

I've bitten off more than I can chew at Boela. The Allied defenders are way more than my invaders can handle and B-17's have been
pounding them from the air. I'm guessing the B-17's are coming from Darwin or Cairns. I'm planning on bombarding the Boela defenders
with my SCTF but that won't prevent the B-17's from bombing. I'm thinking of parking a DD-heavy TF on Boela for the AAA support
they might provide. I'm scrounging around for a carrier group to provide air cover. You'd have thought that I would have though about
that before hand. I've got other operations ongoing and they were busy elsewhere.

[larryfulkerson]

Meanwhile I've been pulling RES out of Balikpapan and moving it to Babeldoab and there's not quite enough for a trip north yet.
At this rate of increase a trip might be soon.

[larryfulkerson]

I've got the production of Nav and Merch shipyards cranked up as high as they will go and I'm keeping the values in the pools low
by accelerating ships coming off the production line. I've got the differences between what's being produced and what's being used
just about right. I'm aiming for a pool value of about a thousand.

[larryfulkerson]

New moves from Brian, last moves from him for today. A lot is going on near Milne Bay. I had a TF of minelayers who laid a minefield,
a substantial minefield, at Milne bay and a medium-sized BB TF had done a night naval bombardment on Milne Bay and a DD hit a mine
and is being escorted back to safety. I'm going to have to include some DMS ships on the next few bombardment runs. Maybe I
should just bomb them from the air instead of risking any more ships to a known minefield.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's all the ships under repair right now and the boats in the yellow boxes are those AS's and AV's that I'm converting from some
other kind of boat. Relatively recently. I like AS boats a lot. I'm going to spread them around the front lines so that I don't have to
keep moving my sub bases as much and can send my subs just about anywhere they need to go. Except Diego Garcia. I can't see
a good reason to send a sub all the way out there when they might not get any traffic for the next six months.

EDIT: I just noticed something else about this image. There's a relatively high proportion of SC's under repair and that's because
I'm using them for ASW around the mouth of the Yokohama harbour where most of my ship traffic is. They are catching a lot of
torpedoes and near misses and surface contests are common. A lot of them are getting hurt. I have yet to sink an Allied sub usig
them. Hope springs.

Of the traffic in ships that happens about 60% of it is in / out of Tokyo and 20% in / out of Osaka and the rest everywhere else.
That's just a rough guess from an examination of the shipping traffic. I'll have to post the shipping traffic for you guys so you
can see what's going on right now.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the auto-convoys. Supplies leaving Osaka and RES pouring in is working okie dokie I guess. Maybe if I supply Osaka with more
ships there would be more convoys. Too bad. All the transports are busy just now and can't be spared. The biggest problem is that
the auto-convoy system is feeding transports without escorts to far away ports. Ports I can reach easily from one of my hubs. With an
escort on it. So I'm slowly closing down the auto-convoy system and coming to rely on the ordinary logistical system to handle everything.
When I get a set of moves from Brian, early in the morning usually, I can afford to rush through my moves so I can get them back to him
quickly by just moving the important stuff and monitoring everything else. So I can most of the time get a set of moves back to Brian by
about 10:00 tucson time and I'll receive another set of moves from Brian about 12:00 tucson time and I can usually get my moves back to him by 2:00 or so tucson time and then I'll usually receive his last moves for the day about 17:00 or so and I can then take my time and
check everything I had been skipping and putting off.So I usually check everything and tinker with the game until about 21:30 or so and
take a nap. Then about 10:30 or so I take my medicine and get busy on my moves again when I run down details and look over the map
to make sure I didn't miss anything. I usually find something to change that way. And then about midinght or so I send my moves to
Brian and he gets them first thing in the morning. It's a system that's been working out pretty well.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the CS convoys. As you can see most of this traffic is RES. I'm going almost all over the map looking for RES. Most of the
traffic is in the nearby bases of course but I'm hauling RES out of Nauru and Ocean island and I have big hopes for the Java and
Sumatra areas. Balilkpapan is working out fine already. I'm getting fuel from Miri and my troops are already sailing toward
Palembang. I'll have to check to see where they are now. I'll keep you in the loop.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's all the computer convoys. I tend to overlook the computer convoys since there are so few of them. Also, I'm running most
of my minesweeping and ASW missions on 'human' control because I like to change up the pattern used from time to time to
confuse Brian's subs. I've also tried to lay some mines around the harbor at Tokyo in the shallow water but it didn't work out very
well. So then I tried laying the mines at the smaller islands near the Yokohoma harbor and that didn't seem to work out either. So
I'm laying the mines elsewhere now. Mostly at those places where I've recently captured something. Or those places where I intend
to go in the future. And some just to harrass Brian, like Port Moresby.

[larryfulkerson]

I'm interrupting the tour of the different types of convoys to publish these breaking news items. TF 20 was the one I had tasked to land
at Boela and they seemed to go through the maneuvors and then all of a sudden they re-embarked and now they are in RTB mode.
The Allied defenders proved to be way too stout to push over and the commander decided to save the men for another day. So I'm
going to redirect them to a different port and use them to capture some place or other.

[larryfulkerson]

I started cutting and pasting and cutting and pasting and pretty soon the image got pretty large
so I stopped somewhere in the 'S's. These are the human convoys. It's most of them as you
can surmise. I've eliminated from the list those ASW and SCTF patrols since there's so many of
them and they aren't carrying any goodies anywhere. This category reminds me of the "Misc"
category for the missions. Whenever I can put a TF on CS then I do usually, but those TF's
that are going to have minor damage on them by the time they get to their destination I sometimes
put leave those as regular convoys so I can tell them to disband when they arrive. To get the
repair started ASAP. Most of the time I let those ships that have goodies I need onboard to unload
first THEN repair.

[larryfulkerson]

I ran Rabaul out of gas a few days ago and when I finally noticed, yesterday, I dispatched a TF to load some fuel and take it to
Rabaul and it's still two days out and nobody at Rabaul can move until he arrives. It's got only 18K of fuel about half of what
Rabaul is going to need for future operations so at least one more TF is indicated. I'll dispatch one right now.

[larryfulkerson]

I checked out Manila just now to see what gives and I've found 5 TF's either loaded or loading for immediate shipment of troops to points
south. I found two TF's that were headed to Boela and it seems that the 65th Brigade and some backup arty might dislodge the
Allies. But on the other hand there's 22K of them and these are probably Australians and not Chinese coolies. I might have to do a lot
of preparitory bombardment before these troops land. I'll put that on my todo list right now.

EDIT: And, yes, I know it's AT the dock and not ON the dock. I don't know why my right hand wrote that.

[larryfulkerson]

The recon values are low for PM and Milne Bay both and my battle results show it. I haven't hit anything yet I don't believe, at either
site. The last time I tangled with PM's air cover it was 40 X P-40's and they were trained as I recall. Not new guys. So I have a high
priority on smashing the airfields at PM and MB and I've got planes dedicated to bombing or sweeping them day and night. This is
how the air war is shaping up near Rabaul. There's some B-17's that are making a nuesance of themselves and I'm going to have
to head down to Darwin and bombard that base to see if I can put a stop to that, at least temporarily.

EDIT:: Sorry for the confusion. The B-17's are a problem in the Celebes area, not here at PM.

[larryfulkerson]

It's Wed. 22:03 tucson time and I've just gotten up from another refreshing nap. I'm in the final stages of my tinkering with the moves
tonight and I'm looking at all the transport missions especially those with troops, and I've discovered to my horror that I have a TF
that's nearing it's target but it's got no escorts at all. I'm wondering whether to abort the landing or not. They are almost there and
the troops have come all the way from Manila and they are getting tired of being on the ship and they want solid ground under their
feet again. I don't have any escorts nearby that I can re-purpose really quick. But I need to give them some DD's at the very least.
I'll send what's available at Singapore and let the TF hover at a nearby friendly port until the escorts show up.

[larryfulkerson]

I found some unemployed SCTF elements at Singapore that volunteered to escort TF 138, which I have redirected to loiter at
Georgetown for a day or two while the escorts approach. That ought to save a lot of digital lives.

[larryfulkerson]

TF 376 is headed to the island of Java to port I'm calling K-town. I ran a sub in there and sort of proved there's no mines there so I'm
going to use that port to insert my Armour-heavy invaders and spread out and take over the island. That's the theory. You can see
on the list of TF's that there's several involving troops. They are all headed for a target somewhere and some will arrive soon.

[larryfulkerson]

I thought I'd send the 21st Division to Palembang just in case he's turned the place into a fortress. The 'A' part of the division is getting
into the CRB waters and should be needing some escorts soon. But I can't include any BB's in the escort corps because they can't
make it up the river to Palembang.

EDIT: The "B" and "C" parts of the division are still at Shanghi I think.