PAW 1941-45 me (Axis) vs warspite1 (Allies)

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a list of the planned battles and I'm hoping most of them will work
out just fine.

[larryfulkerson]

Timor island was calling to me so I had to see what was possible and what
do you know...I got ashore. Timor is close enough to Australia to bomb it
and there's multiple airfields on Timor so I'm going to stack it up with
planes soon.

[larryfulkerson]

Using the firepower of the ships for support I managed to gain one hex closer
to Manila. I'm going to need a fresh division at Manila soon. The one I'm
using has been using one-dot attacks but it's still running low on supplies
so I'll need to rotate him out of the combat zone and let him refit.

[larryfulkerson]

Rob tells me that there's some units that he forgot to move. I sent him
an email offering for him to do his moves again and send me the file and
we'd do it the old fashioned way, just sending files back and forth. I have
yet to hear back from Rob.

EDIT: Rob says no thanks...let's just keep going. Works for me.

I was moving my units and happened to notice the signature of a partisan
in my backfield. In the middle of a "cleared" area there was the border
around the enemy hex that stood out and gave the partisan's location away.
There appears to be potentially two of them over there.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a shot of the Hanoi / Haiphong area currently and you can see how I've
got a couple of divisions working on the rail heading east by trying to push
the Japs off the rails. I can repair the rails only if I own them. So there's
been some pushing and shoving for the past couple of turns.

Also, there's a couple of roads leading north that lead indirectly to the Burma
Road and I'd like to park some roadblocks on that bad boy to cut down on the
flow of supply to China from India.

I've been looking for the AVG to take it out specifically, by name, because it's
the best squadron the Allies have. This early in the war it's a major contributor
to the aerial defense, or was in the real thing. I watched a movie about them
back before some of you were born and it's my understanding that each pilot was
paid $500 for each Jap he shot down and there were some of the best pilots in
the world in that squadron. General Clare Chennault ran the AVG and hand picked
the pilots from the best pilots there were, military or civilian. It's important
to the war effort that I damage the American Volunteers Group.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a shot of the Hanoi / Haiphong area again and this time I have news. As I moved units north to try to outflank the Japs I discovered another unit after another unit and I'm worried about that wide open area now....there could be Japs of some kind or other in there. I need more troops here. Luckily, there's two divisions at Saigon that would love to come to the party. They were going to go to Manila to expedite the take-down but there are other divisions that can do that and I need to take care of this problem right now before I forget all about it. It's that important to me.

[larryfulkerson]

I found the two formations of the 15.1 Army and I was going to use them in Malaya....but this is more important, besides I can always dig up another five divisions from the Home Islands yet. I've got 31877 of 37500 sea cap remaining and that's about 7 divisions worth of lift depending on the specific divisions involved because they differ in configuration and equipment and so on. I'll see if I can find a good example and show you what I mean.

[larryfulkerson]

I drove a subchaser down to New Caledonia and ran into an Allied DD protecting the ports on the southwest side of the island and got damaged and lost one of my two subchaser ships from the unit. So I stopped moving so the firing would stop and I drove a carrier down there, Soryu I think, and I've scheduled an aerial attack on the DD. Meanwhile I ran some units down there and captured a port and an airfield. I flew some fighters in for a CAP and I'm trying to russle up some bombers for CS but New Caledonia is pretty far south and I don't have any bombers within range except those near Port Moresby and they are busy attacking Port Moresby currently.

[larryfulkerson]

I finally managed to get some Emily's and Betty's to Midway and their patrol arc includes Pearl harbor traffic and I've got 'em on Sea Int and one-dot for now. As soon as I see whether or not the losses are tolerable we may go to two-dots. In the very late war period I'm probably going to go to three-dots.

[larryfulkerson]

Clear the desks, I've found some Commonwealth ships in a TF and it includes a CV with only one bomber unit without any fighters at all as I recall. I need to get some two or three carriers together and go after this bad boy. The Americans will have three carriers with a couple of turns if not already so I need to keep mine together in case he comes at me with a DeathStar TF, all his carriers at once. This bad boy is parked at the Maldives and that's kind of out of my way but in TOAW the ships don't run out of fuel and no AO's are needed to keep them at sea and Rob may try to capture the Maldives away from me so I'll have to park a garrison there for insurance.

[larryfulkerson]

It's 17:22 local and I've moved everybody and I'm ready to pull the trigger on the battles. I've got quite a few of them this time. Some of them are just airstrikes and some of them are dedicated CS missions and there's a few invasions and I'll cover the more important ones for you.

EDIT: I've reviewed this page and I think it's safe to expose it to warspite1 now.

[larryfulkerson]

I thought I'd run a DD into the waters just offshore from Townsville in Australia and bombard those guys just to get a list of what's parked there. No damage to the boats and only a tiny bit of damage to the Allies but I DID get a list and it looks like maybe a Bn and I think I can push them over. I'll have to find where the supply points are and plan something exciting.

[larryfulkerson]

Everybody else was out of ammo except these three boats and they bombarded Manila and caused some minor assorted damage to the equipment in the hex but I'm really going to have to wait for the BB's to rearm before I can expect some substantial hits. And I need to do it soon because the supply level in this area is 1 supply point per hex. And that means they are good for only one serious attack and then they need to be replaced with a fresh formation. I've three formations left in the home islands and a little sea cap left so maybe I can move one of them to here in the PI.

[larryfulkerson]

Almost halfway between Perth and Melborne close to the southern coast I spied a "medium naval" unit so I put together a carrier TF and using about 2/3 of it's range I launched an airstrike on what turned out to be an Allied CA and sank it with minor losses even though I used three-dots on the attack. The bombers were escorted but no Allied planes showed up. The problem now is to get the carrier group out of Allied airspace.

[MikeJ19]

Larry,

Great job on the AAR. This is a huge Area of operations and I would be lost. It would take me forever to do a turn.

I really enjoy your writing style and the graphics - well done.

Good luck

[larryfulkerson]

I think you spell it Espirito Santo or something like that....anyway, I invaded and forced my way ashore even though there was a small garrison there. Now to work on New Caledonia. I plan to work my way down the chain of islands until I get to New Zealand if possible. Rob may stop progress by the time I get to Tahiti.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: MikeJ19
Larry,

Great job on the AAR. This is a huge Area of operations and I would be lost. It would take me forever to do a turn.

I really enjoy your writing style and the graphics - well done.

Good luck

Hey there Mike man....good to hear from you again. Thanks so much for your kind words. You are too kind by half. I'm glad you are enjoying my product. I'm publishing stuff as it happens while I'm doing my moves. It's halted between attacks right now as I posted the last post. As soon as I alt-tab to go back to TOAW I'll go to the next attack and post something about it, if it's relavent to what's already posted or if it's important.

It's a huge scenario. I just hope Rob isn't lost. It's a good thing he's playing the Allied side because the names of most of the places is well known. The Jap side has all these strange spelled cities and ports, etc. And the types of planes and their performance particulars isn't memorized by me yet and I'm constantly making small mistakes. I found some bombers on AS one time, yesterday. It was deep in northern China at the time so there was no crisis. It took me two full days to do my first turn because that's the turn where you have to set the missions for the planes and set the ships in motion and get the LCU's marching somewhere etc. But I'm not complaining. This is a top notch scenario and this is my fifth time through it, I think. Some number like that. I helped Thomas Harvey playtest this bad boy. He beat me everytime. I have yet to win at this game.

When the war started there were about 20 aircraft units that had but a single plane so I have to rest those guys until they fill up again, or at least 3/4 full or so. The typical aircraft unit alledgedly holds about 42 planes and some of them now, T3, have about 17 or so. So I'm sending them to China to do INT missions until they gain enough proficiency to protect themselves in air-to-air combat. The best pilots I have are the carrier bomber pilots and fighter pilots. They have a proficiency in the 80's so I need to use them wisely. I've flown some of the long-range Emily's and Betty's to those bases at the perimeter last turn and they can reach out almost 100 hexes and I found a Commonwealth Task Force that includes a CV near the Maldives and I'm putting together a TF even as we speak to hunt them down and sink them. Actually this is a bad time to go hunting with the big guns because I'm using them to bombard Port Moresby and Manila and eventually I'll get around to Singapore and Balikpapan and Java, etc. If Rob will just park his ships somewhere and not get any ideas about adventure I'm okay with just watching them with caution because the turns are weekly and that gives the Allies ships enough range to do a raid whenever they feel like it so I need to keep enough ships together as a group for self protection if nothing else.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what just now happened at Port Moresby....it fell to the Japs and now the planning can begin for leaping across the channel to Australia. Maybe I need to push further south first to isolate Aust. from the west coast. I need to find a lot of those independent Brigades and replace the divisional elements that have invaded places and now need to be replaced with a garrison unit so they the invading units, can invade someplace else.

[MikeJ19]

It is huge. I have a general view/understanding of the war in the Pacific, but trying to come up with a good approach would be a challenge. I'm really interested in how the naval way goes. I have not played with many naval forces - the Allied ships at D-day are my only attempt so far. I get ground units - for the most part - but air and sea are a challenge as I lack the basic knowledge.

With the Japanese forces, this would be even more of a challenge.

Have fun!

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: MikeJ19
It is huge. I have a general view/understanding of the war in the Pacific, but trying to come up with a good approach would be a challenge. I'm really interested in how the naval way goes. I have not played with many naval forces - the Allied ships at D-day are my only attempt so far. I get ground units - for the most part - but air and sea are a challenge as I lack the basic knowledge.

With the Japanese forces, this would be even more of a challenge.

Have fun!

I'll go over the naval stuff especially well.