Banzais Don't Make Victories - Anachro (A) vs John 3rd (J) BTS 5.7

[Anachro]

Also in the last turn: We knock Calcutta forts down to 2 and 1000 AV should be reinforcing Calcutta in next few days. John has moved 10k troops ti Diamond harbor, which is fine by me. Ceylon will be captured soon and then I'll bombard it.

Major re-orienting of forces in SoPac, targeting New Guinea and nearby chains. All carriers are heading back to Pearl for refuel and then will move to take advantage of some of the gaps I've seen in nav search.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: Anachro

This happened again the next turn. John flankspeed fled to Lunga with his carriers (none of his TFs ran into my minefield it seems, still unspotted). My carriers are southeast of Luganville 13 hexes away...and they are still fleeing an air threat. Keep in mind all their threat tolerances are set to "absolute," including this TF. It seems I am going to have to use Halsey as my TF commander, probably for the TF I set as the leader for everyone to follow.

I wonder if the "follow" command affects the parsing of the threat tolerance setting ...
For sure, a daisy-chained follow situation can confuse the game engine and cause some TFs to break out of the chain. This seems to happen if the TF # sequence does not directly line up with the sequence of follow settings.

[Anachro]

January 3rd, 1943

[BBfanboy]

Still on the TF retreating from air threat issue - something I should have thought of earlier:
Changing the routing to Absolute does not reset the flag for the retreat routine! You must get rid of the flag before the Absolute routing instruction will be used by the AI. The way to do that is to set the TF to return to home base (not just the return allowed setting but actually having home base as the target hex). The red retreat text will disappear at this point, then just re-select the hex you want the TF to go to.

[Anachro]

@BB Yup, TFs are still showing the "retreat" but doesn't seem to affect their course. I did re-route them home.

January 6th, 1943

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

Still on the TF retreating from air threat issue - something I should have thought of earlier:
Changing the routing to Absolute does not reset the flag for the retreat routine! You must get rid of the flag before the Absolute routing instruction will be used by the AI. The way to do that is to set the TF to return to home base (not just the return allowed setting but actually having home base as the target hex). The red retreat text will disappear at this point, then just re-select the hex you want the TF to go to.

Have run into this many times and concur with BBFanboy's technique for clearing the red flag that prevents you from redirecting the TF.

[Anachro]

Wow, I haven't posted in awhile, but will do so when I get the next turn back. We are around January 23 or so in game and India is free of Japanese forces (though Ceylon is still in Japanese hands). John has lost ~20-30k troops over the last 30 days there. However, due to my naval bombers performing poorly and their escorts inexplicably not going with them, John was able to extract about half his forces from Calcutta. The rest have been destroyed.

Now, I am focusing on repairing Calcutta and Chittagong, building airfields along the border, and buying out Indian divisions. Burmese invasion will happen by land, supported by sea when possible. John has ~70k men at Rangoon with ~200 fighters and ~150 bombers. Ceylon invasion will happen soon (debating whether to wait for my additional surface forces transiting to Capetown and then India or not), supported by significant LBA air cover; ~150 heavy bombers are at Madras and its level 9 airfield to knock out airpower and airfields on Ceylon.

[Anachro]

John seem to have gone camping with his kids; he said he'd post when he got to the camp which has wifi but I haven't received it yet...and lo and behold as I was typing this I get the turn from him by email. It seems he has gotten home. Will do a more extensive update tonight.

[Anachro]

January 23rd, 1943

Other than the above; it's useful to note a couple of things. Now that Allied sub torpedoes are somewhat better, I've repositioned my submarines to start acting as an economic nuisance and have been successful at that over the past month. John's comments to me were that he had "now activated his ASW defenses based on lessons learned in Canoerebel's game" and that "we should soon see results." He also mentioned nice positioning by my subs, which have hit a few TKs, xAKs, and XAKLs.

In other news, my carriers are moving to Pearl for some fun.

[jwolf]

Your defense and counterattack in India was superbly done IMHO. That was a great campaign for the Allied side.

I'm looking forward to the "fun" your carriers will enjoy after they deploy from Pearl.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: jwolf

Your defense and counterattack in India was superbly done IMHO. That was a great campaign for the Allied side.

I'm looking forward to the "fun" your carriers will enjoy after they deploy from Pearl.

+1

From your map, it looks like you should be able to isolate Ceylon and take it in a couple of months. The Columbo shipyard will be the biggest prize but clearing out his search bases will be great for you too.[:)]

[Anachro]

I think I can take Ceylon earlier than that. I have 2 divisions prepped + various smaller units (regiments, armor, etc.) sitting at port in India. Biggest worry is a mini-KB hiding at Diego Garcia or something (John has CVEs or some CVs in the Indian area). I have two CVLs currently at port in India, with CV Ranger and CVL Hermes on the way from Capetown. These will provide cover, amplified by air bases I've build up at India's southern tip. We will stick near the coasts for our landing (LRCAP) and use North Male as a naval recon base.

[jwolf]

Out of curiosity -- is Ceylon even defendable, or worth defending, for the Japanese at this point in your game? I'm wondering how much effort it's worth, strategically, for the Japanese side. Maybe they can defend it indefinitely with KB support, but that would leave the whole Pacific wide open.

[Anachro]

It is not worth defending and I don't think John is keeping a huge garrison there. Probably a regiment or two at most. I'd rather take it though than bypass it, as failing to do so would seriously complicate my LoC as I move towards Burma/DEI.

[jwolf]

Oh I absolutely agree it is very useful for the Allies, especially that nice shipyard. Just wondering what is the most likely perspective from the Japanese side.

[Anachro]

Perspective from Japanese side, especially with John's very long-range bombers (which I suspect he is using for nav search to see deep into my interior), is that it gives him good recon over any ships moving in the seas around Bombay and further south. It's very hard to surprise him as his deep recon capabilities mean all my ships get spotted from very far out. It also hampers any efforts by me to move on Burma, etc. by sea. This makes it valuable for him, but more as a roadblock than a serious barrier, as I have multiple locations I can land at, nearby large air bases that can provide LBA cover and conduct heavy bombing, and a shorter LoC for resupply and reinforcement.

What Japan can do is keep a KB or mini KB nearby in Diego Garcia or somewhere else that might be able to quickly pounce on a landing force. At the moment, my ability to have good recon anywhere south or west of Ceylon is very limited until I can get a floatplane base setup at North Male.

[Anachro]

January 24th, 1943

My subs take an xAP and an xAK down this turn and the xAP seems to be a decent one. At first, I thought it was an American ship from the name, but then saw the "maru." It sinks southeast of Haha-jima, heading perhaps to or from Marcus Island. The xAP Montevideo Mary is decently speedy at 17, with a troop capacity of 1700. Nice! I'm enjoying seeing my subs actually do something; now to see them sink a CV.

The real interesting thing is the intel on Ceylon. John has 10,000 men at Colombo and 5,000 men at Trincomalee, which seems more than were there in previous recon efforts. Interesting. He also has a level 3 airfield at Koggala with fighter wings.

[DOCUP]

Welcome back. Great job in India.

[Anachro]

@Docup Thanks!

January 25th, 1943

I begin the process of dismantling airfields on Ceylon, launching a strike with all my heavy bombers that hit Colombo unimpeded. There are a large number of hits on its airbase, airbase supply, and runway. We stay at 8,000 feet to avoid damage from air balloons. Trincomalee is showing 43 airfield damage, but looks to under repair as it was at 64 last turn based on recon. Meanwhile, we launch long range sweeps on Koggala where we knew John had some fighter wings. Unfortunately, John had a lot more in the past and we suffer more attrition than we would have liked from the action: our Wildcats suffer, but our Lightnings and Corsairs perform well.

It becomes apparent why, however. We had set Beaufighters to naval strike a couple turns ago as we saw a convoy leaving Rangoon apparently headed for Ceylon. Instead of hitting some convoy in the middle of the ocean, they head for Koggala where they find two valuable AOs (and TBs) that John's TBs seem to be covering. I can only thing John is trying to extract fuel from Ceylon, as much as he can. Unfortunately for him (and thankfully I had set sweeps on Koggala), his AO's both take hits and are shown to be suffering heavy fires (they must have fuel or oil in them). We also hear sinking sounds and a second Beaufighter strike finds no AOs, only TBs. I'll take it, despite the cost in fighters.

[Anachro]

The ships hit are two Shiretoko-class AOs, which are not John's best or fastest AO's, but it's always good to sink them. They have good endurance and can act as additional tankers.



John starts with 12 Shiretoko-class AO's, 6 NTL class AO's, and 5 TL class AO's. He only gets 4 additional AOs over the course of the game. If the two above are sunk (and we heard sinking sounds so at least one), that would bring the total to 8 AO's, all Shiretoko's, sunk so far. That said, we haven't destroyed many TKs yet.