The Battle for Hans Island (no Xen2xen) please move to the AAR section

[palioboy2]

Sept 15th. Again no sweeps. His airforce in Oz has more or less stood down in general. I should have one squadron fully fitted with P40K's either today or tomorrow. How do they hold up? Is there a noticeable improvement from the E's which seem to be fairly over matched by his IJA fighters at this point.

[Shark7]

Well its been a while since I did a PBEM, but I do remember how I would treat the IJN pilots in the games I did play. Your opponent might be doing something similar.

I would move my really good IJN pilots from their squadrons to training command to save them for late in the game when I had better airframes. Meaning that from about 3/42 to the end game, I would only be sending out ~50 XP pilots as cannon fodder to keep some strain on my opponents replacement pools. Mediocre pilots in mediocre airplanes really aren't that much of a loss, especially when you are using a decent training system that can give the IJN a good number of those mediocre pilots every month.

Basically I'd take all my 80+ pilots out of play until I had the Sam and George and then put them back into service by 'Request Veteran' to the squadrons equipped with the newest planes. In other words I was playing the long game, only trying to hold the line in the middle.

I do agree with others here that he sure seems to have a lot of A6M2s given the numbers you posted. I can see keeping a couple of squadrons of those for the range to use as escorts for the Netties, but those factories should be upgraded to newer models as soon as possible.

[palioboy2]

Sept 16th. Again no sweeps so I must have rattled his cage a little the other day.

I think tomorrow I am going to post some pictures of the situation in Oz to see if people have any advice in the other aspects of my defensive system. Particularly when it comes to naval affairs which is definitely the weakest part of my game (I may have wasted away 3 of my carriers learn a lesson I won't soon forget.

[Alpha77]

Re. the models (overbuilding them) others have made good posts already. But when you said he sweeps but does not bomb this seems strange. Sweeps will do nothing to your airfields/supply/building. He wants to wear your fighters down. But I bet his pilot losses must be quite high now. So this seems to work in your favour at the moment.

I play a bit differently I rarely sweep with early IJ planes, ONLY if I need a defended enemy place secured. Then one must often risk sweeps also with unsafe planes (for the IJ pilots) to get your bombers through, trash the base asfaip, prevent forts building, destroy supplies etc. So you ground troops have a better chance taking the place.

But not sweeps for the sake of sweeps.

[palioboy2]

Earlier in 1942 he caught me leaning themail wrong way. I thought he was going to push through the SW pacific and Burma hard but instead landed large number of troops in Oz. I was able to reinforce quickly and stop him on a line from Toowomba to Marybourgh. All the bases along the Marybouright-Bourke-Port Augusta line are all now built fairly large with forts at 5 or 6. The main concentrated area of troops in around Brisbane, we are numerically at similar levels and I am in good defensive terrain. He recently pushed me out of Perth which I wasn't really defending in strength. We are more or less at a stalemate, I think he is trying to sweep.me until I have nothing left of a fighter force so he can then bomb on a large scale.

[Alpha77]

Guess the Perth loss is not so worrying for the Allies and might be even play in their hands, it is a quite long stretch of water from there to nearest bigger IJ bases (Soerabaja, Batavia). puts strain on logistics and fuel consumption.

As long you hold the line of more important places in OZ-land you should be fine, how is the situation in other theaters ? Is this Scen1 or 2 ? IN 2 the IJ gets more factories, raw materials and pilots remember this.

Re. the P40K I found this to be a good upgrade and with the better speed it for sure is a better fighter than earlier IJ ones (only Tojos and M5 Zero better, but early Tojo also pretty weakly armed).

I would try setting some P38s v-high and some P39/40/F4 etc. v-low. If IJ planes dive on your low planes the P38 high up might counter dive them and with their high speed get some victims [;)]

PS: I play PBM scen2 as of end of Sept/42 my losses: (but my 1st opponent was quite agressive and then there was a hickup until another player took over the game, which for sure helped me a bit in terms of own plane losses)

630 A6M2's
380 Ki-43 b + c
80 Ki-44-IIa
0 A6M3's +M3a (not built)
70 Nick
30 A6M5
60 Nate
10 Rufe
10 Claude

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: InfiniteMonkey

ORIGINAL: PaxMundo
My post #10 above ...

Yup. Just reinforcing your point since I saw a couple comments about IJN pilot shortages in this situation and what I regard as potentially misleading info on pilot quality differences between IJN and IJA. I find IJA a lot harder to train than IJN. I think his opponent's IJA pilot situation is likely to be far more precarious than the IJN.

Possibly, but as I mentioned after 3/42 I have no shortage of fighter pilots....

[palioboy2]

A few pictures of the war effort.



I recently went through a fighting retreat in China, but have a fairly well established MLR again, except for a few of his units that have infiltrated in from Burma (Are they going to have any supply?)



Things are pretty stable in Burma, I have hit Magwe with a few surprise raids that damaged his oil to keep him honest. He seems to not have many troops in Burma so I am pushing forward with what unresricted troops I have to the edge of the clear terrain




He was moving strongly in SW Pac before he landed in Oz, Noumea is currently safe



I have a strongly established line in Oz, I am not really worried about him breaking through. My carriers are in the process of leaving the theater, they need to repair and upgrade. I have heavy naval combat units in Oz to protect my ports and will rely on land based A/C to protect them as long as I can. KB is currently posted at Perth.

I still have Wake Island and all of the Aleutians under my control.

In late July-ish he lead a bombardment run against Brisbane, I intercepted him with a bunch of CL's and DD's that caused his forces to get hung up. At the same time I put my carriers in position to bounce the hung up CL force he sent in. I sank a few of his ships that were damaged in the surface fighting but the majority ended up one hex outside my carriers range. The next turn I pressed the attack a little further trying to stay out of his LBA's range, but one TF cut a corner near the coast and I lost 3 carriers. So I am down to Saratoga, Lexington and Essex. I know, don't lose your carriers in 1942, I'm a dummy! [:-]

[palioboy2]

Also apparently I don't know how to embed images

[palioboy2]

Hmm I just read about players disbanding restricted Indian divisions, using the squads to fill out already purchased ones and then buying the rebuilt divisions at a fraction of the cost. I might have to look in to that considering my opponent seems to be treating Indian/Burma as a backwater.

[palioboy2]

Today's A/C losses, he launched a lot of sweeps at my field at Toowoomba again.



I moved my squadron of P40K's in to Toowoomba to see how they hold up.

I am moving two divisions through the jungle north of Toowoomba in hopes of cutting off the large stack he has in Toowoomba proper. It seems like he is also shifting a lot of troops to Perth but I am dug in well at Port Augusta.

I am also moving out more Seabee's and some infantry units to reinforce a few more islands at the end of the Aleutians.

Because of the carrier loses I took, I want to get into a drawn out ground campaign in Oz and to try and destroy a large number of A/C and LCU's there in 1943. After this I would like to shift a decent amount of force to the north and use the built up Aleutians for the base of a northern counter attack.

[palioboy2]

Sept 20th, 1942

Fighter loses in the Brisbane area are 64 enemy (including 51 A6M2's) too 37. The K's seemed to perform really well, but I pulled them back and swapped out some so-so pilots and filled up the squadron to high end pilots.

I continue to shuffle troops on my new MLR in China, once things stablize and units dig in I might send back a ton of AV to try and route the smaller IJA units that have infiltrated behind my lines. I assume they can't be drawing much in the way of supply.

CV's are out of the danger areas and headed back to Pearl and my troops are almost done loading for the Aleutians.

He took Lord Howe Island forever ago and is flying Jakes out of there supplied by subs. I have been constantly pounding the port with B-17's and other level bombers as I figure this is a good place to train those crews up as it is a total milk run. Is there anyway I can shut down the Jake's though? Sending my supply ships all the way around the island is a pain.

[btd64]

Starvation is the way to go. Keep bombing the airfield and use USN S boats to seal off the island. They can sink subs too....GP

[palioboy2]

Another question for everybody. If I am wanting to disband an Indian unit, what do I need to have at a base to disband the unit but retain all of the squads and equipment? I think there is a supply threshold and some other requirements but I cant really remember.

[palioboy2]

Another question. If I am defending a hex that is being invaded by sea, and I still occupy the hex does the enemy's ships get fired on every time they drop off supplies? or just when they are dropping off troops initially.