RHS II scen 129 GP and me

[larryfulkerson]

In the recent past the supply level had fallen in all the home island cities in the region Honshu, the home
islands and so I went through all the home island cities turning off all the factory repairs and the expansion
of ports and airfields and this turn Tracker says Honshu is gaining supply so the crisis is over already. I
found out that you can't repair every cities factories at the same time and it's got to be staggered growth.
The levels of the other categories are trending downward still though and that means I'm not gathering enough
goodies yet. D'oh.

[larryfulkerson]

New moves from Brian: I have given orders for a landing at Cebu and it appears that Brian has mined the harbor
there. That's a complication I don't need. All my DMS ships are busy at Hong Kong clearing that harbor. I
guess I need to split them up and do both places simultaneously.

[larryfulkerson]

I checked out my DMS's and it appears that they are done with Hong Kong already. The green dot signifying Allied
mines is gone so I'm moving the TF to Takao for refuel and repairs for a couple of them and then on to Cebu. I
should be there in about a week or so.

[larryfulkerson]

I finally remembered to get the LCU at Cebu to start planning on Cebu and I've had a look at the relative size of
the two forces in that hex and I think I've bitten off more than I can chew. I think a second trip with more
troops and arty are going to be needed for this operation. I'll take a look around and see if I can't find some
resources from somewhere.

[larryfulkerson]

I flew this squadron to Wake yesterday even though there's no AF dudes there just to have some top cover. The AF
dudes are enroute from Tokyo and they should arrive in about a week. Meanwhile I expected somebody to be down
for maint. already but here they are all doing just fine. Maybe they will all be down in a week or so.

[larryfulkerson]

The third and final piece of the 21st Division is now unloading at Aparri and as soon as they have caught their
breath I'm going to put the division together and march it to Manila to stop the industry there from producing
anymore supplies for the defenders. It's aimed to help make the take-down easier and quicker.

EDIT The Allied air force has disappeared from Manila and I've been bombarding every day for about a week now
and I'm thinking that the defenders at Manila might be in some kind of disorder maybe. I can hope.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what's going on right now. I'm making landings at Rabaul and north of the Celebes and on the east coast of
Malaya still and I'm marching south on the PI roads from Aparri to Manila and I'm bombing night and day the targets
of Manila and Singapore. I've got a group of Betty's that are targeting Singapore's LI industry just to stop the
flow of supplies therefrom.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what's going on around the Rabaul area now. I seem to have landed some AF dudes by themselves at Hollandia and
I expect them to get killed once Brian finds out that's all that's there. And he will. So I'll have to invade that
place a second time probably. I don't have any troops nearby that I can rush into the AO to save the day. Lemme think
on it some more. Maybe I can take a fragment from Rabaul.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what's going on around the Singapore area. Actually this image starts around Rangoon or so and extends to
about Balikpapan. As I notated everybody in Malaya is in a footrace to Singapore. I've got my tanks out acting
independently roaring down the roads as fast as they can go. Just supplying them is a big problem. As the
airfields on the east coast of Malaya are maturing I can send the engineers to other bases in the interior.

[larryfulkerson]

I've sent my moves to Brian this am and now is the waiting. He's got an arm that's bothering him, his mouse arm, and
sometimes he needs to take a break, etc. So it may be a while yet. Meanwhile, here's what I see after I hit the 'Z'
key. I've got some holes in my search patterns. That means I have some float planes that I need to move around and
try to fill in the gaps where Brian's subs can lurk. Brian likes to lurk, he's a lurker.

[larryfulkerson]

My Chinese Junks are plying the waters of the river from Wuchang taking RES to Shanghi on the coast. They have the range
to just make it there. Unless I'm thinking of another route that's similar. There's one route up north that involves
Peiping but one of them needs to make a two-stage RES run so I've split up the ships and I'm shipping from two ports to
get the RES there. It's slower but it works. So I've found a use for those thimble-full-at-a-time ships. I've also
got a lot of them moving RES from what used to be known as Port Arthur, from there to Kiejo and then the larger, longer
ranged ships take it to Nagasaki. There's another RES run from Fusan across the channel to whatever port is closest.

[larryfulkerson]

Brian got his moves to me about noon or so and it's 19:29 local now and it's looking like I'm going to need the
rest of the night to get better organized. I went through all the LCU's one at a time last night, tonight I'll
do the ships and save the aircraft for tomorrow night.

In one of my wilder ideas I thought about the shortage of ground pounders so I took the biggest training
squadron I have ( 210 pilots ) and stuffed it with those pilots that are right on the verge of being fully
trained. I'm aiming for a skill level of about 70 before they graduate and I'm stocking up this squadron
with nothing but the "almost" pilots to get more aircrews trained right away. And concentrate on the rest
of the pilots in other squadrons. This will be the high-stress accellerated advanced course.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's some more statistics that you might find mildly interesting. I've pulled all the Navy pilots in the pool
into the operational squadrons overstuffing them for training purposes and now the pool is empty. D'oh. I'll
have to find my reserve of pilots in the operational squadrons. That's going to mean that I'll have to cull the
lower performers out of all the operational squadrons and put them into a dedicated training squadron like God
intended.

EDIT: Yeah, I mis-spoke in the quote in the picture. I was pulling FROM the reserve of course.

[larryfulkerson]

Okay, the situation has changed and I forgot to post the situation right now speaking strategically. I'm
STILL swimming in PP's and I've been buying out LCU's from Manchuria and Korea and China to get them to
load on ships. There's a backlog of troops needing shipping at Shanghi, Fusan, and Tokyo, not to mention
that I need to collect all that arty at Hong Kong and move it to the PI for the take down of Manila.

[larryfulkerson]

Sometimes I forget to set the troop transport to NOT load supplies because I intend the supply to come in a separate
trip. Forget enough times and Tokyo will suffer from lack of supply. It's having problems recovering it's
supply level so I thought I'd help out by unloading all the support ships in the harbor. It's not much but it'll
help.

[larryfulkerson]

Babeldoab is down to it's last 15k of fuel so I thought it prudent to send another shipment so they don't run
completely out like usually happens. So I put together a TF to carry about 35K fuel to Karor ( new name for
Babeldoab ) and the only escorts left to use are the short-range little boys. Ships for harbor use. They are
going to have to do an enroute refueling almost every day.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: Yaab
In RHS, Sonia and Ann aircraft are flagged as dive bombers, so you will score more hits with them against enemies with no AA or CAP cover.

That's good to know and I appreciate you saying so. I remember seeing casualties in the hundreds in some attacks. I
was marveling at the skill of the pilots. What you revealed is more like it. Thanks for saying so.

[larryfulkerson]

The sub attacks have gotten out of hand around the home islands. I get four or five contacts per day and some of
them sinks a ship or two per turn. I've started laying mines in likely sub places in the water to discourage the
movement of the subs. Maybe sink one or two.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a list of the ground units of the 16th Army. I was going to use them
to help in the take down of Manila but my goodness, they are scattered all
over the map. It'll take weeks to get all the pieces together again, find
replacements for them in some cases, etc. I'm not sure that's a task that
can be done quickly even with dedicated shipping. But I'm going to attempt
it just the same. For the Java take down, say.

[larryfulkerson]

I was checking the TF's again just now because I found another one with the
"do not unload" turned on again. About three TF's have made it to the hex,
stayed overnight, and then left the next morning like they knew what they
were doing. I caught them before they got too far but still. But three
out of about 15 or so isn't all that bad, yet. I've started checking them
every turn.

Anyway, TF 15 just now I noticed, has a cargo of tanks and it's loaded
amphibiously and all that and it's a level 2 port but still I'm not sure
those lighters are going to cooperate at the docks. Those tanks might not
unload. I may have to divert them to Wewak and drive them over to Hollandia.