The Good The Bad & The Indifferent

[BBfanboy]

Those DMS are short-winded things. It helps to reset their home base to somewhere near their employment so they do not refuel every other day when with another TF.

[palioboy2]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

4EB do almost nothing against dug in troops or troops in good defensive terrain. The Japanese MLR troops probably have four or five forts each.

Sorry I should have specified. I was wondering if there are any bases in open terrain where you could try to either punch a hole or create a meat grinder situation for the troops caught under the bombs.

[Canoerebel]

There's one base in open terrain, but it's far from my airfields. I'd rather devote my B-24Js and B-29s to more important missions. As mentioned before, the Japanese MLR in China is actually helpful in many respects - keeping a large Japanese army away from the coast, where I'll soon be moving in strength.

[Canoerebel]

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth
Do you have enough supply and support to start spitting out PT boats? You have to figure out a way to make these quick, night surface combat runs more painful.

Not sure what you mean. John hasn't employed a combat run in more than a month. He's been totally quiet.

But I do have PT boats at Taichu - perhaps four TFs.

[Canoerebel]

10/13/44

Peep Show: Allies take Hengchun, the last IJ base on Formosa.

Fancy Pants: D-Day Pescadores the day after tomorrow.

[Canoerebel]

10/14/44

Peep Show: 4EB strike Osaka in big numbers and effectively - the best raid of the war, to this point. Progress made towards eliminating the enemy units at Hengchun. That is the last item to be done on the Peep Show list.

Fancy Pants: D-Day Pescadores tomorrow. Large reinforcing landings at Foochow likely the day after tomorrow.

Lots of power in close proximity now, so things can get crazy....but once again I'm struck by just how much more tense things would be if KB were at least in the general vicinity.

[JohnDillworth]

no magic altitude for night bombing but lower is somewhat better. You just don't want to be within a few thousand feet of the night fighters. If you come in close to the same altitude you are going to have losses and disruption. Keep mixing it up. Good raid there. How many bombers went in for that much damage?

[Lokasenna]

2K feet is best for damage.

[Canoerebel]

10/14/44

Firebombing: The results of the raids on Osaka and a few other cities. I think more than 200k fires set in Osaka.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

2K feet is best for damage.

Bad for balloons.

Firebombing I usually do 8, 9, 10, or 11k. Accuracy not as important.

[Canoerebel]

I'll find out soon enough. If weather permits, I set three or four squadrons to hit Kagoshima at 2k. If my squadrons get eaten alive, I'll blame lokasenna.

[Kofiman]

That's not quite the way fire reports work, IIRC. The fire number for an attack is the total amount of fire present, and individual attacks add to it, but don't start from zero.

That's still a lot of fires, but it's not 200k.

[JohnDillworth]

Dan, how many B-29's do you have and what do reinforcements look like? If you did this much damage with a handful of planes one wonders what 100 might do

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: Kofiman

That's not quite the way fire reports work, IIRC. The fire number for an attack is the total amount of fire present, and individual attacks add to it, but don't start from zero.

That's still a lot of fires, but it's not 200k.

Dead on correct. Plus there is Fog of War in the fires number too. I think you missed a golden opportunity here, if in fact Osaka was protected by a half dozen night fighters as seems the case.

Osaka is the 2nd greatest target when considering Japan's industrial supply generation, and its huge manpower numbers means fires are ridiculously easy to start.

The weather was harsh on your strikes, and the Japanese seem to be flying at uniform altitudes which you can take advantage of.

For a well defended base like Nagasaki, I like your mixing up of altitudes...but instead of hitting Kanoya you should have hit adjacent targets to Nagasaki in an attempt to get his night time CAP to bleed over to less important bases. You can take advantage of this by watching and understanding the time to target for different heavy bomber models and using the bombers with faster arrival times to hit the less important bases adjacent to the primary strike.

You can see by the attached graphic, that Tokyo and Osaka are by far and away the most important supply generators for Japan and the most vulnerable to fires. Consequently, they should be the most heavily protected which doesn't seem to be the case here.

Of course, there are so many more things that can be targeted from engine, plane, vehicle, shipyards, to oil, refineries, and even resources. There is one hex that has close to 1000 resource production...and that is an easy 2000 vp.

You need to decide the goal of your strategic bombing...general vp generation, destruction of the supply generation of Japan, destruction of the plane or engine building, destruction of vehicles/armaments industry...or even specifically destroying Japan's fighter or night fighter production capability.

So many choices and all of them viable...to different degrees.

A quick word about the Nicks and Irvings you are facing. They are first generation NF...and you can wear them out very easily as quite frankly there aren't enough squadrons of them. I haven't checked the map and counted hexes, but since you hit Harbin...threatening or bombing Port Arthur, Mudken, Heijo, Fusan, Keijo will further stretch Japan's night fighting strength.

B29s stretch the night fighters, and the B24s & company do the real punishment. Don't forget you can make city attacks even with Avengers too.

I hope you are getting an idea for where the AA concentrations are for future raid planning plus formulating your overall strategic bombing goals/tactics/direction.

[Canoerebel]

"...you missed a golden opportunity..."

That implies that I should have known better and/or that I should have done more.

I was pretty sure that Osaka was lightly guarded. Given several weeks of good reconnaissance, I knew he didn't have many fighters there. That could have changed at any moment, as the recon should have tipped John's hand to my interest in the base. It turned out that he didn't increase his CAP so that the recon was good. But I knew the importance of the base and its apparent vulnerability.

I moved forward as many B-29s as my forward bases could reasonably hold, and all the B-29s were targeted on Osaka. I did all I could under the current limitations: Foochow supply is too low (7k) for 4EB and I overloaded Taichu in order to get a strike in (and that strike took five turns before it flew, due to weather).

My priority for now is Manpower, Resources and Victory Points. My thinking, at this early point, is that Victory Points offers the quickest and most direct route to victory. So, as noted earlier, getting a big airfield within B-24J range of Kyushu and southern Honshu is my highest priority. Hence the pending operation to take Ningpo.

This turn, 100k supply and additional aviation support will come ashore at Taichu, which has an 8.3 airfield. These changes will probably allow me to bring forward from Manila all of the remaining B-29s.

So while I'm inexperienced in the late game and in strategic bombing, I'm not sitting here without an idea what to do.

[Canoerebel]

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth

Dan, how many B-29's do you have and what do reinforcements look like? If you did this much damage with a handful of planes one wonders what 100 might do

I probably have more than 100 B-29s at the moment. The improved, nighttime version comes online in December (six weeks), I believe.

Some of you will recall that I lost 35+ B-29s over Singapore months and months back. That wiped out my reserves. The reserves were built back up to about 20, but a few recent raids with high flak losses now have those numbers back down to about 7. So I'll have to be careful in using my Superforts. I don't want to fritter them away. I'm using them, but their real utility should come when the B-24s (and some fighters) draw within range. Then the combination of fighters and bombers should really make things tough for John.

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

2K feet is best for damage.

Bad for balloons.

Firebombing I usually do 8, 9, 10, or 11k. Accuracy not as important.

I disagree.

More hits = more better.

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

I'll find out soon enough. If weather permits, I set three or four squadrons to hit Kagoshima at 2k. If my squadrons get eaten alive, I'll blame lokasenna.

You should be somewhat mindful of balloons. If the base size is high enough (I think port + AF greater than 6), then balloons will be present at 6K feet or less. Sometimes I avoid them, sometimes I don't. I don't have any hard and fast rule for doing so - I just do it by feel.

Extremely heavy flak can also be deadly. But if you can take the losses and think you'll get a higher ROI (lose 10 planes = 20 VPs, cause 300 VPs in damage vs. lose 4 planes = 8 VPs, cause 100 VPs in damage)...

[Lecivius]

FWIW (not much) I have lost a ton of bombers over Rabaul to those darned balloons. After that, I always fly at 7k at night. Maybe the damage isn't there, but neither are those things [:@]

[Canoerebel]

10/15/44

Naval Battle of Pescadores: John pulled the trigger, sending in two good combat TFs to tangle with the host of Allied shipping between Formosa and China; I don't know if he was specifically targeting the landing at Pescadores or shipping at Taichu or something else. But his TFs ran afoul of a host of Allied combat TFs and never made it through these powerful screening forces.

The outcome was a serious setback for the Japanese navy. From the movie the defeat appeared far more dramatic than from a simple tally of the Combat Report (appended below). I think he lost (permanently or long term) three of the four capital ships he committed. He's already shy on both kinds of cruisers, he got a good look at many of my combat TFs, and I do think this left him with little he'd be willing to commit in the next few days.

With KB South and East already far away, my main concern for Fancy Pants was an all-out enemy naval attack possibly combined with kamikazes. The more those threats diminish, the freer I am to move forward. This clash increases the likelihood that the invasion of Ningpo will take place in the short term. And if the Allies continue to prevail, the likelihood of an invasion of Korea increases (an Allied army is already 80% prepped).

John's body language also indicate that he didn't like the outcome of this battle. I think this - and other things - made it a tough day for him. More later.