Pacific at War 1941-1945 v.3.63 Don is Allies

[larryfulkerson]

I landed a division on the east coast of Malaya at Singora and Patani and they came all the way from the home islands so I couldn't make much of a bridgehead to speak of. I will be easy for Don to surround it and stall the Jap advance. I've moved some ships nearby to support. 1 CA ( range 2 ) and two CL's ( each range 1 ). Unfortunately there was no airfield at either city and I'll need another landing to grab one.

[larryfulkerson]

Don told me that he's always wanted to play this scenario and it's one of my favorites so I'm guessing this might be a really good game. If it starts to get boring to Don the plan is to switch sides or something. I've got a WITP-AE game going and it's just now starting as well, so it will be interesting to see how both games play out. I'll have to compare the two games and report the differences so that those of you who are trying to decide whether or not to get WITP-AE can have some more data points.

I sent my moves to Don yesterday and he's had all day today to post something but it hasn't appeared yet so he must have had some real life issue to deal with or something. I hope he posts about the hopes and plans he has for his side. I've tried to be open with what I'm doing, but at the same time, I've told Don that he can use all the OPSEC he thinks is needed. I'd like to keep this as an open friendly game and I encourage discussions with all you guys about whatever you'd like to discuss.

Is anybody reading this thing? Somebody post something.

[Zovs]

Larry, I normally don't do any gaming on the weekends, doing 'real life stuff' so Monday morning I'll do our turn and post some screen shots for you as best I can.

Looks like a hoot and a monster and a long term relationship all rolled into one. Just be patience with my slowness and crab walks lol.

Back to you soon and a post(ing) here with some screenies.

[thomasharvey]

Is anybody reading this thing? Somebody post something.

I am watching your progress. If one commander can't or won't continue I can fill in to finish it off...

[larryfulkerson]

Wow, that's really great news. Thomas dude, do me a favor and give Don lots of advice and guidance about what to do and stuff. I've been through this scenario before but it's probably going to take some getting used to for Don. Now that the game has started I've been trying to make it realistic, like it happened in the real thing, but pretty soon now I'm going to have to try something exotic like invading near Calcutta, or the NW US, or Pearl itself. I was wondering what kind of trouble I could cause invading the east coast of Australia. That would be cool. I'll see if I can't come up with some kind of complex plan.

[Zovs]

I forgot to take screen shots.

I did notice this oddity, never seen this before:



For the Allies, we dug in, and in China made some costly attacks to see what would happen, and then went on the defense. Tried a few attacks on a Jap held airfield and some ships at sea, was a bit costly. Then became cautions with my USN and moved them into protective zones.

Good fun, long war...good times...

[larryfulkerson]

New moves from Don. I don't remember watching the playback yet....I was presented with a list of Don's attacks so I thought I'd pick through the more interesting ones and see if I can't gleen a feel for what's going on. I read through the battle description for this battle and evidently I had parked a CA in the port in the SW corner of Timor and Don attacked it with a squadron of 22 x Beauforts based in Australia I'm guessing, and my fighters intercepted his aircraft: 44 x Zeros and 7 x Claudes and Don lost 6 of his attackers and I lost nothing at all anywhere. Didn't even scratch the paint. It wasn't quite worth the raid but sometimes you don't know that and have to strike anyway just to see what greeting you get. Now that Don knows that I have some fighters there for a CAP he will either quit attacking with unescorted bombers or quit attacking that base at all. He can always bring in the P-38's when he gets them...they have an unusual range for a fighter. This might be one situation where he could bomb the airfield at night and avoid my fighters altogether. But TOAW doesn't have a "night" mission. D'oh. The next best thing is to bring in some fighters that have enough range to escort the bombers.

EDIT: I got a second look at this picture just now and realized that there's no strategic map to orient this image at all. Timor is north of the NW corner of Australia about 20 hexes or so. The closest Allied airfields are probably at Broome. I'll have to send some DD's down there to take a look around. Either that or bring in some recon planes. Oh yeah, I don't have any recon planes. D'oh. How to get a feel for what's there now? Make a probing attack with my DD's. That will give me a list of the equipment that's there and I might get lucky and get a list of the names of the Allied units.

[larryfulkerson]

I had a DD parked at the port at this small island and Don attacked it with a squadron of Beauforts and my intercepting fighters shot all of them down.

[larryfulkerson]

I had left one of my SCTF's parked in Manila's bay and Don attacked it with the kitchen sink with all the aircraft in the PI I guess. Fortunately I had some defending fighters and I didn't lose much. Don lost a significant fraction of his attackers.

[larryfulkerson]

I dismissed the list of battles and the playback started and I watched that and then various screens flashed and then there was this: According to this there's 3 BB's gone permanently and 5 that need to be repaired before he can use them again. Depending on how heavily damaged the ships are and how much port space is available he can either repair those at Pearl's ports or move them to the west coast for repair.

[Zovs]

Thanks for the screenshots Larry!

The first attacks were probes to see what was up and how much resistance I would get and a bit of a recon, it hurt me more than you so I won't do too many more of those without escorts (Dhoh!) lol.

The other one you had it pegged, I threw everything in I could and it still cost me some. I am pretty good an combined arms land warfare and learning how to do naval in the pacific stuff with you! lol

I must have missed the message for the sunk BB and the damaged ones, I'll have to try to find them and hide them for rebuilds.

My other tactic is a big fat secret with my carrier task forces lol.

Having a hoot with you Larry!

Don

[larryfulkerson]

During the playback I noticed all the Chinese Communists kicking my ass and my troops need another two or three divisions and some CS, a lot more CS. I found a light bomber group ( flying mostly the Mary ) to move up there and I thought I'd restrict the range to just cover my troops plus a little margin and set it to three-dots to make the CS more serious. The aircraft are going to turn yellow and maybe red after just one strike probably, so I'll have to bring in several more bombers for a reserve and some fighters for a CAP for all the bombers. If I have four available bomber units then one can be flying a mission and the other three can be resting after having turned yellow or worse.

Ships probably won't help as all the combatants are so far away from the beach.

[Zovs]

Greetings from the two factions in China Comrade Larry lol

[larryfulkerson]

I thought you guys might want to watch Don's moves during the playback. So I've attached the file I got from Don here below. Just unzip it and load the PBL file as if it's a saved game. My password is "password" without the quotes.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the supply situation in Malaya and as you can see there's way too little supply to do anything at all. If I had known that it was going to be so dreadfully low then I wouldn't have invaded. What in the world do I do now? I'll have to see if I can't blast through the bottleneck near Bangkok.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what I can see of the Pearl area. I can tell the types of ships but not their names. Pearl has lots of bombers and fighters and at least one PBY I believe. Several spotter planes. There's lots of ground units to choose from if I wanted to bomb something with my Emilys. Japan doesn't have any long-range strategic bombers so I don't have any serious weapons systems that can reach Pearl with any strength at all. Except the carriers. I'm wondering what kind of trouble I could cause by invading Pearl. I'll have to get Midway first to use it as a staging base. As a place to repair some of the damage of ships that have seen combat. Japan didn't have any repair yards this far away from the home islands except for Manila, Sarabaya Java, and I think Singapore and they couldn't use any of them until after they captured them and repaired them from any damage they might have from all the Jap bombing. Other than that they had a smaller repair yard at Okinawa, and one at Saigon. Oh yeah, there was a big shipyard at Hong Kong too. BB's are so large they have to re-arm at Hong Kong or the home islands in the WITP-AE game.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the shipyard at Yokohoma, just south of Tokyo. One of the new carriers is coming together for the Jap navy. It's the Shinason and can carry 70 planes at 32 knots and will be in combat in about a year from now. It's going to cost 4Meg Yen by the time it's done.

[thomasharvey]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

I dismissed the list of battles and the playback started and I watched that and then various screens flashed and then there was this: According to this there's 3 BB's gone permanently and 5 that need to be repaired before he can use them again. Depending on how heavily damaged the ships are and how much port space is available he can either repair those at Pearl's ports or move them to the west coast for repair.

The 5 surviving BBs will return when they did in history after they were repaired. For now they are not in play or on the map. If they had not been sunk in the Pearl Harbor attack they would be in the game now.

[larryfulkerson]

The 5 surviving BBs will return when they did in history after they were repaired. For now they are not in play or on the map. If they had not been sunk in the Pearl Harbor attack they would be in the game now.

Thanks for clearing that up, Thomas. I wish there was some way we could play this as a three-way so we could give you the Russians, or British, or all the minor allies for that matter. In one of my WITP-AE games with Brian about two years ago I was the Jap player and Brian was the Allies and I forgot about one squadron at Ominato that got left on a port attack mission and during the combat phase it attacked the port of Vladivostok and sank a sub and Brian's Soviet units were activated (about March of '42 ). It was an accident and Brian decided to just park the Soviet units where they were and ignore the activation for the rest of the game. I had by then so badly crippled the Jap economy that the game lasted for only another month or so.

[larryfulkerson]

I saw lots of ship traffic in and out of Pearl and there were lots of shots that had Allied ships moving north for quite a ways and I immediately thought of Alaska and the far north, but I'm taking a look and I don't see anything at all. I don't have any eyes on this AO. So I have no idea what's lurking up here. I'll need to make sure I have some long range patrol planes stationed in the NE corner of the home islands to watch the northern approaches. I wonder if it's possible to station a spotter plane on a CL or a CA and drive up here to take a look around with the spotter plane as my eyes. I'll have to see if I can try that.