General Patton v. Larry Fulkerson Scenario #76

[larryfulkerson]

I used a submarine to lay some miines at the harbor of Milne Bay and that mission went so well I thought I'd try to lay some mines
at Port Moresby too. And if that works then I'm thinking of making several such trips to pile on the mines at PM to make traffic
through there hazzardous. Rabaul is out of fuel still so the operational tempo has slowed to a crawl lately. But fuel is approaching.

[larryfulkerson]

The 65th Brigade is still making it's way to Boela by taking turns as to who is at point because they are having to hack their way through
the jungle with machetes and it's slow going. No telling how long it's going to take before arrival. The good news is that they don't seem
to be increasing much in fatigue and disruption. So they may be in good condition when they get there.

[larryfulkerson]

Kendari fell and it's got some damage to the facilities that needs to be repaired before it's going to be much good to me. If I recall
correctly some engineers are already enroute. This is just one of the bases that I'm going to need to stop the naval traffic to Darwin.
If the Allies have an escape route from Sumatra and Java then they will get away. I'm going to try to put a stopper in the bottle before
the genie gets out.

[larryfulkerson]

This image shows the pool levels at specific times and it shows that in the 17 days that have passed the numbers in the pool for a
specific set of aircraft and engines has increased but not for other aircraft and engines. I'll use this image again in about two
weeks game time.

[larryfulkerson]

New moves from Brian. First set of three moves for today according to Brian. So I've got to sort of rush through my moves to be able
to get three sets of moves done today. This is a picture of the logistical situation at Rabaul and as you can see I'm having a hard time
keeping Rabaul fueled. The operational tempo is higher than I had anticapated and the fuel needs are higher than I've planned for.
At least twice as much fuel needs to go to Rabaul than has been going and there's no AK's at Truk to make a fuel run. So it's going to
be a while before Rabaul gets refueled. D'oh.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what the Celebes Sea looks like now. The Allies have largely retreated to Java and Darwin and it appears that the Celebes
Sea is my private lake now. Except for the subs. And I'm grabbing bases and building them up and moving planes into the area and
stocking bases with engineers and some support ships. I've moved an AKE to two T-town and Ambon for rapid turnaround on those
naval bombardment missions. I'm wondering if I can grab all the bases just north of Darwin and stop the Allied naval traffic. It's looking
possible so far.

[larryfulkerson]

Lots of naval traffic around CRB nowadays. Troops moving south from Manila and I've made a landing at Sabang on the northern tip
of Sumatra with another TF headed for Langsa the next city moving south along the east coast. I'm hoping to own the entire east
coast in about a week. Yeah, I'm planning that many landings. And I'm hauling RES out of Bangkok and fuel out of Miri and I'm
staging divisions at Singapore for their next leap whereever it is. I'm trying to find a suitable port on the island of Java and I'm
wondering if he's put mines on the WEST coast of Java. It might behove me to invade there instead of on the east coast. Java isn't
that wide and I might be able to get some air cover to reach all that way. Either that or some carriers might be indicated. And some
surface forces for support during the landings. It might not hurt to make a tour of the island with my ships to flush out any SCTF's he
might have hiding somewhere. Especially on the west coast. But I'm sort of in a hurry and so maybe the landings should take place
simultaneously with a tour around the island. That might work.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a study of Java I threw together just now. I'm looking around for the best ports to invade. Soerbaja has a garrison penalty and
so does Batavia but there are ports on the west coast that are looking good. There's still the lack of air power however. I'm wondering
how difficult it would be to push over the defenders of Christmas island IO so I could base some planes there and if it would help at all.
I'll keep you in the loop.

Oh hey, I just now got Brian's second set of moves for the day. It's 12:24 local tucson time.

[larryfulkerson]

Um.......I started to put together a picture to point out to me where everybody was so I could plan better and I put the yellow lines to
where the carriers are and then started putting the places where the BB's were in green and it didn't work really well. The lines sort
of faded into the picture and were hardly visible. And besides, it started to look busy.

I was planning a tour down the east coast of Australia and that's why three of my CV's are grouped together near Rabaul. But then
Rabaul ran out of fuel. So the tour is on hold. The two carriers near Tarawa are there to protect the AK's grabbing RES out of
Nauru and Ocean Island. One of Brian's favorite tricks is to ambush my TF's near those two islands. As happened earlier in this
game.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a bird's-eye view of my pilot reserve. As you can see I've got 484 pilots and some of them are of
pretty high quallity. I need to get them into an airplane because some of them look like they are ready
for combat. Anyway, it's good news.

[larryfulkerson]

New moves from Brian, and as you can see from the image that there's a lot of stuff at Singapore that needs to be moved yet. I've
been moving stuff out of Manila and they aren't through with Manila yet and I hate to recruit some of my RES runners but it looks like
I'm going to have to skim off some of the troop-mover-ish AK's and get them busy on Singapore.

I'm especially glad to see the group of Engineers there because there's a million places I can put them right now. Well, maybe half of
that.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a little situation that cropped up. I scheduled some INF and some ARTY to move into the enemy hex so I could aggravate them
and one element of the arty arrived by itself in the enemy hex without anybody else. The INF moved 45 of the 46 miles required and
that's not good enough to make it all the way into the enemy hex. D'oh. I've since got the arty element moving back to base and the
entire arty party is going to rest at base until the INF is really in the enemy hex and THEN move in. I'll have to remember this episode.

[ny59giants]

Manado - I land troops, very small LCU, at dot base to SW to prevent retreat from Manado. File this tidbit of info away for your next game. [;)]

Singapore - Combine the elements of the 2, 5, 18, and 56 Divisions here before you go anywhere!! [:-]

[Andav]

I've since got the arty element moving back to base and the entire arty party is going to rest at base until the INF is really in the enemy hex and THEN move in.

If the infantry is at 45 of 46, they will arrive the following day before combat. Switch them to Combat mode and if Brian tries to attack, he will get a rather nasty surprise. Just leave the arty in place.

You can set LCUs to Follow another one. I have used this to control the arrival of units into a hex. Nothing worse then your armor (or Arty in this case) out running your infantry and getting squished. This helps with river crossings. The lead unit tends to get trashed so pick one which is more expendable then others.

Wa

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: ny59giants
Manado - I land troops, very small LCU, at dot base to SW to prevent retreat from Manado. File this tidbit of info away for your next game.

How come I never thought of that? Good catch dude. Thanks for the insight.

ORIGINAL: ny59giants
Singapore - Combine the elements of the 2, 5, 18, and 56 Divisions here before you go anywhere!!

I think so too. It's a whole lot easier to just handle the "A", "B", and "C" parts of a division instead of the separate regiments.
And you can still use fragments of the division itself for special missions, like the one in the first quote above. Thanks for
caring enough to catch things like this.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: Andav
If the infantry is at 45 of 46, they will arrive the following day before combat. Switch them to Combat mode and if Brian tries to attack, he will get a rather nasty surprise. Just leave the arty in place.

You can set LCUs to Follow another one. I have used this to control the arrival of units into a hex. Nothing worse then your armor (or Arty in this case) out running your infantry and getting squished. This helps with river crossings. The lead unit tends to get trashed so pick one which is more expendable then others.

Wa

Hey there Wa dude. Great advice as usual. Thank you. These are the kinds of things I forget to do. I would switch the infantry to
combat mode like you suggested but I've already sent my moves to Brian. Which reminds me, I'm expecting some moves from him any
minute now, now being Thursday morning Dec 8 about 07:29 Tucson time.

EDIT:: I notice that the timestamp on my post is two hours earlier than the Tucson time so the server must live in California somewhere.

[ny59giants]

I just destroyed 5 Aussie brigades at Perth due to taking control of ALL the hexsides and preventing a retreat vs Brian. I just moved a tank rgt in and out of Perth until I had all the hexsides (hit F6 and the "W" to see who control a hexside).

EDIT - Don't forget to ALWAYS double check your leaders when you combine elements, divide divisions, and after an invasion.

[larryfulkerson]

EDIT - Don't forget to ALWAYS double check your leaders when you combine elements, divide divisions, and after an invasion.

Great advice. I have been completely overlooking this. Thanks for the heads up.

According to the air losses display I've been losing a lot of Zero's, Nell's, and Betty's and I don't have any Betty's in the pool again.
So obviously I need to boost the Betty output a lot. And the Nell's and maybe a smallish boost to the Zero's again. I'm aiming for
510 Zero's in the pool to take advantage of the engine bonus.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's me boosting the Betty output by quite a bit. I even converted one of the Lily factories to make Betty's. We should see some
Betty's in the pool in about a week or so. LOL.

[larryfulkerson]

This image shows that in the interval of just one week or so I've lost ground in the pools in that the levels are sinking still. I'm going to
have to boost almost every type to stay even. I'd like to see some healthy levels in the pools and so I'll take a look around and see
what planes I can do without and convert some factories etc.