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

[Anachro]

Given that his CVL force is hanging around down there, it could very well be that he is planning an evacuation.

[Anachro]

Also, responding to Lowpe's suggestion of putting SAGs down at Colombo. Don't see how I can until the airfields there are repaired and CAP can be provided.

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: Anachro

Also, responding to Lowpe's suggestion of putting SAGs down at Colombo. Don't see how I can until the airfields there are repaired and CAP can be provided.

Put one squadron of 3-4 destroyers down there...set them on low threat/direct, home port Colombo and fly one squadron of LRCAP over Colombo. If Japan has no recon on Colombo the first day send them there flank speed and disband them to port so they are hidden for a day....if this is the case I would send more ships and really surprise him.[;)]

There is almost no way Japan will risk tangling with the CAP at Triv with carrier planes, and the southern fleet has no bombers.

Use those 4 destroyers to deplete the ammo in the in southern task forces staging hit and run attacks against them, they should easily make it back to Colombo for air cap each day.

BTW, four destroyers will not draw a large heavy attack no matter what.

PS: Make sure you have night naval search from Colombo and perhaps from Triv blanketing the area you want to send the PT Boats and Destroyers. Make sure all PT boats have lower task force numbers than the Destroyer squadron, too. Perhaps even a night naval attack by flying boats or float planes very low from Colombo too! Hit him on all fronts! You might not get any hits, but you are looking to max your DL any way you can...so that destroyer squadron can make a torpedo launch on those CVs.

[CaptBeefheart]

I might suggest reorganizing your surface forces into Fast BB+DD, Slow BB+DD, CA+DD, CL+DD etc. task forces. I think I first learned from CRSutton that the TF moves at the speed of the slowest ship, so slow BBs will keep CLs and CAs from getting quickly into or away from the action. Also, it helps if the guns have about the same range.

I like Lowpe's idea a lot. Also, how many engineers do you have at Colombo and how are their repairs doing?

Cheers,
CB

[jwolf]

I think Canoerebel had it right when he said that John is trying to flush you out. Kind of like the TRex in Jurassic Park. By keeping your cool, you are foiling his plan ... and he seems to be flailing trying to find an alternative. Air attrition of your LBA against his (mostly) carrier air should go way into your favor pretty quickly, if it came to that.

I could understand the Japanese trying to rescue troops out of Ceylon ... but to put more onto the island?? Just can't figure that out. [&:]

[Anachro]

April 8th, 1943

Wow, that's a lot of Japanese task forces! John is certainly spending a lot of fuel moving all those thingies around; it kind of reminds me of the fuel expended by the IJN in real life on its Midway operation, though obviously to a lesser degree. He is retiring to Diego, but might simply be refueling, restaging for an extended effort. If sigint is true, he is reinforcing Ceylon, and ships that look like a convoy appear to be approaching Koggala. On top of this, his troops at Dambulla are moving east...to Colombo? It could be he is trying to pull what he did against CR at Sabang...but Sabang was a lot closer to his supply lines than Ceylon would be. This could all be an elaborate attempt for preparing an evacuation.

I won't be submitting the turn for awhile as I go through the suggestions here. Perhaps I can now flank speed my offloaded carriers north. Once I can, I have divisions waiting at Trivandrum and elsewhere to quickly be send to reinforce the 1100 AV at Colombo. I'm having my LRP brigades also reinforce Colombo by air. What do you think John's plans are? He admits in his emails that he spends a lot of time on his orders here in India with all that's going on.

Not a lot happened but it took FOREVER for me to do orders!

[Canoerebel]

Why are you (still) thinking about flanking your carriers away? Why? They're safer where they're at and you may need them/want them before all is said and done. (This is based upon my understanding that you have enough combat TFs and LBA to at least stand toe-to-toe with John.)

If he does take the offensive on Ceylon, he may find himself in the reverse of the situation in his game against me - He may find you doing to him on Ceylon what he did to me at Sabang. You have so much in proximity while he has distance to content with.

No doubt you're doing this, but every sub available needs to be reporting for duty here. And if you think he's preparing for an all-out campaign for Ceylon, at least give thought to transferring assets from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean via the south route around Oz (assuming your sea lanes are relatively safe).

What this reminds of more than my Sabang moments against John is my Shikuka moments against Erik/Obvert. In that case, I holed up at Shikuka and Erik threw everything in the world at me. It was very tough fighting for about three months, both sides lost a heckuva lot, but the Allies held the field of battle when the campaign ended. A lot of Japanese ships went down. I think you can do that here if I'm reading things right. But I doubt John would throw his assets at a Shikuka-like fortress. He's a bully. He likes to overwhelm and pick on 98-pound weaklings. He isn't fond of taking on Jack Dempsey.

[Anachro]

My sea lanes are safe. The main carrier force is already on its way to Australia, having just arrived at Tahiti. In fact the majority of Allies forces are in Australia or on their way there.

The real question is I could transfer those to India, but the main Allied forces are in Australia, prepped and ready for invasions in the Austalian/Guinea theater.

[Canoerebel]

Seems like you've got this thought through.

I don't think you need to move whole armies. That would be slow, would blunt your other efforts, and won't even be necessary. A campaign for Ceylon will be decided by ships and aircraft. Once decided, finishing off the surviving enemy units would be relatively simple, no matter how big and fearsome that force seemed to be at first.

[Lowpe]

How built up is Addu? Can you night bomb the port this turn with heavies? Close the runway during following days? You might catch oilers, tankers, akes'.

Close those five bases and he can't rearm easily, and he will be easy to bleed down and he will have to retire the carriers.

Open up another front on him, like you plan to.

[Anachro]

Addu is a level 1(2) port. He has been using is for recon. I can check to see if anything is there. Some of my heavies need to re-arm though. My closest big port is Cochin; my only fast BB is the Prince of Wales. I am going to move some DDs down to Colombo to hit whatever he plans to put in at Koggala, unless that SAG to the southeast also comes. For now they will to and disband at Colombo. Unfortunately, he has 9/10 recon there. To others' questions, Colombo is now at 1 runway damage, 100 air service damage, and 25 port damage, with 40 engineers and 8 engineer vehicles. Unfortunately, I had a bit of a SNAFU where one invasion support convoy failed to follow others and remained Calicut; this saved them (and a lot of engineers/combat engineers) from John's carriers, but they are now stuck on the mainland for now.

Here are some of my forces in the area. Between Madras, Cochin, Trivandrum, and Tanjore, I have 700 fighters, 150 DBs, 30 TBs, 12 night beaufighters, 290 land bombers, and 113 transport planes. With the runway working, I could...perhaps put bombers there on low range to hit his surface ships moving to Koggala.



Invasion targets:

[BBfanboy]

Anachro: I won't be submitting the turn for awhile as I go through the suggestions here. Perhaps I can now flank speed my offloaded carriers north. Once I can, I have divisions waiting at Trivandrum and elsewhere to quickly be send to reinforce the 1100 AV at Colombo. I'm having my LRP brigades also reinforce Colombo by air. What do you think John's plans are? He admits in his emails that he spends a lot of time on his orders here in India with all that's going on.

Unless this scenario gives Japan a considerable number of new divisions, I suspect his conundrum is that he wants to evacuate Ceylon but doesn't dare to try while you hold Colombo. So he is trying to dislodge you with the troops he has there and faking bringing in reinforcements. The latter is easily done by using ships to load fragments of distant area units and sending them to Ceylon (to create the SIGINT showing reinforcements). He lands the fragment at Ceylon and then has the transport to load up the troops he wants to evacuate. Even if he only gets out cadres he can save his units from the buy-back trash heap.

His initial plan for this area looks like he wanted to trap you with the strong CV force hidden to the NW while other ships started his evacuation of Ceylon (before you even took Colombo). Your moves surprised him and you didn't play into his confrontation trap the way he expected. So now he may be bringing the rest of his carriers to try and neutralize your air power so he can evacuate from Trincomalee.

Unless you want to fight the decisive carrier battle here, I think you should keep your US carrier force where he cannot concentrate his force against them without having to contend with Allied LBA too. I.E. run them up the west side of the map and bring them East in the Cochin area to reinforce. You will need lots of SCTFs too.

Alternately, keep your US CVs off NW Oz and invade somewhere he has to defend when the time comes. Oosthaven/Palembang anyone?

[Lowpe]

I wasn't clear enough, if you bomb it tonight with heavy bombers/patrols that can reach you might score some ships there.[:)]

Colombo certainly can field fighters now, and you can range 8 hexes with destroyers and still get back from there. You will be able to rearm torpedo and he won't be able to if you deny him akes' at Addu.

Do you need your carriers to start the New Guinea offensive?

Where are your Corsairs?

Triv to Addu is 16 hexes, you should be able to do night search and some good night bombing runs if you have planes within reach...

[BBfanboy]

Can you still rearm torpedoes if the Port damage is 25? I know that once Singapore port was damaged at beginning of the game I could not rearm Prince of Wales and Repulse. They had to flee to Colombo with no main armament ammo! Fortunately the IJN had their SCTFs elsewhere.

[CaptBeefheart]

It's too bad you don't have more engineers at Colombo. I'd say you'd be better served flying in aviation support and engineers there rather than the LRPs. I don't see how he dislodges what you have there already in the short term. Do you have any AKEs nearby to re-arm your BBs? Also, if you get enough naval support at Triv (or likewise Cochin or Calicut), you'll be able to rearm your 15-inch guns. You'd have to check the manual to see how much you'd need. Looks like Triv might already have 250 naval support.

Cheers,
CB

[Anachro]

I'm not sure on the torps. I want to build up forts there, but can't until base repaired, but I'm guessing John will soon bombard Colombo. I will be basing some air units there most likely next turn to see if he leaves any unprotected riffraff nearby. Won't get the turn back to John till tomorrow, however; I'm a bit exhausted at the moment and can't focus on it. I do like the idea of night bombing Addu to see what's there this coming turn.

As for the New Guinea offensive, it would be good to have some carrier protection as KB1 (stronger than KB2 in the pics above) just appeared off Midway and so is known to be in the vicinity. It might be based out oft he Marianas though, so far enough away. I have built up the airbases above Cooktown and they can provide LBA to a certain extent, and I could rely on my CVEs for air protection while my BBs provide surface cover. This would free up my big boy CVs for movement to India. Oh, CV Essex arrives in 40 days. I have some LBA Corsairs in India at Trivandrum (36 I think); some in Australia. I don't have carrier-capable Corsairs yet, which are crucial in this scenario for later CV battles.

[Anachro]

ORIGINAL: CaptBeefheart

It's too bad you don't have more engineers at Colombo. I'd say you'd be better served flying in aviation support and engineers there rather than the LRPs. I don't see how he dislodges what you have there already in the short term. Do you have any AKEs nearby to re-arm your BBs? Also, if you get enough naval support at Triv (or likewise Cochin or Calicut), you'll be able to rearm your 15-inch guns. You'd have to check the manual to see how much you'd need. Looks like Triv might already have 250 naval support.

Cheers,
CB

This is good advice; I could certainly ship in a lot of naval support. No AKEs nearby. I have more engineers on their way to Tanjore where by transports are located.

[CaptBeefheart]

Whaddya know? I managed to find a BBFanboy post with the relevant manual page:

What's Triv's port level, by the way?

Cheers,
CB

[Anachro]

Colombo is a level 9 port and so can rearm anything; I suppose I can run my BBs there and back quickly. Trivandrum is only level 2 at the moment.

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

Can you still rearm torpedoes if the Port damage is 25? I know that once Singapore port was damaged at beginning of the game I could not rearm Prince of Wales and Repulse. They had to flee to Colombo with no main armament ammo! Fortunately the IJN had their SCTFs elsewhere.

BB I am not really sure.[&:] I know Singers is damaged at game start (50%?) so that would be a pretty big hit on rearming I would think.

Colombo is significantly less damaged (by half). I kind of figured that the Allies would have some AD or AKEs at Triv they could run in, but that is not the case....

I am not sure what the formula is for reducing the rearm points for damage on the port. I believe that for a lot of calculations any damage on a port reduces the effective size of the port by 1 but I don't think that holds for rearming.