PAW with Sarsfield as Allies, Larry as Japs

[larryfulkerson]

Here's some of my losses in planes and ships. One of my BB's got killed by the CD guns at Singapore. One of my CV's got sank by LBA while crusing too close to Ceylon. And some assorted DD's were lost and unfortunately they were those that aren't being built at all. I've got only 10 Kates on hand and I'm making only 3 per turn. Those are my main anti-ship plane and I need those to keep the Allies at bay. I'll have to be more careful with them for a while. I've lost about 1200 Rifle Squads so far. But there's 35,000+ still assigned. We're doing okie dokie so far.

[larryfulkerson]

By accident I found an Allied TF SE of Brisbane that has one CV in it. There's not a lot of LBA to protect it either. I think I need to make a run at it to see if I can't do some damage.

Edit: On my trip south I was intercepted by Allied LBA and one of my CV's got some damage so my fighters weren't able to keep the Allied bombers away from my CV's so I retreated.

[larryfulkerson]

I'm starting to get serious about repairing the rail from Bangkok to Singapore. Those folks down there aren't doing so very well. There's not enough supply to move AND fire. They are having to save up their supply to get enough to do something useful. I'm using the red-green-yellow rule so if they aren't green I don't fire them. And there are precious few green ones south of Kuala Lumpur. I'm trying to clear the terrain of enemy troops and it's a slow motion process because of the lack of supply.

[larryfulkerson]

The takedown of the PI is taking about as long as I thought it might. Officially in RL Manila didn't fall until about April so I may still be on schedule. I'm using the ships a lot to do the bombardment of the Allied units and it seems to be helping. Karl has two separate AA units in his stack so I hesitate to use aircraft to bombard. At least there's no more partisans. I hesitate to predict when the PI will be cleared.

[larryfulkerson]

The battle in south China is ongoing. The progress is slow and there's a lot of rail left to repair before I can use it. I'm wondering if I have some more people I can ship to this area. I doubt it. Almost everybody I have is performing some mission somewhere.

[larryfulkerson]

The battle for Port Moresby is ongoing still. The defenders are down to a single engineer unit so I'm guessing it won't be long before I own the Port. The ships are helping provide support and I think it's making a difference.

[larryfulkerson]

Manila finally fell. It took a while and my losses were heavy but it's done now. The next task is to clear Bataan. All the troops fighting at Manila can now be moved to their next targets. I'm thinking Java.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what the DEI looks like. I'm still trying to clear some of the islands of Allied units and I've run out of fresh units. I'm going to have to use the troops on the PI for any further progress in the islands. I'd like to use the DEI as a buffer so that the Allies can't use it for bases for their bombers. I'm thinking principally of Sumatra and Java here.

[larryfulkerson]

There's not a lot going on in the Rabaul area right now besides the fighting going on at Port Moresby Karl has started moving his units at the southmost edge of the map where I can't reach them. So I need to grab some more places further south. Australia isn't isolated from the West Coast yet. Karl is even able to fly some planes to Australia from some of the smaller islands further to the east of this image. I've got to put a stop to that somehow.

[larryfulkerson]

A short search SE of India revealed a small Allied TF that includes one CV unit escorted by a smaller naval unit. It's protected by a couple of fighter units so I'd best take more than one carrier on the strike mission. I've already demonstrated that one carrier doesn't have enough aircraft aboard to prevent the Allied bombers from striking my ships. I need at least two carriers and more would be better. I doubt that Karl will leave the Ceylon environment with his carrier TF but there's the threat that he might. I've got a DD posted south of Java that he might try to sink. That DD is the bait so that I might get him to wonder into range of my LBA.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the condition of the aircraft right now. For some reason Industry 2 got listed separate from the rest of the Industry group. Industry 10 as well. Go figure. Some of my bombers are resting because they are yellow but the rest of them are on line and conducting missions. This means that my carrier planes are rested and ready for action. I can conduct carrier strikes.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's some of my losses so far. Really light....not as high as I was expecting.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's all the ships that I have left. I think there's enough there to fight a war with. I'm optimistic about the near future. It really depends on how fast Karl runs his operational tempo. So far he's been staying out of my way so we haven't had very many sea battles. That may change when he gets another new carrier.

[larryfulkerson]

I have a long range patrol aircraft unit close enough to Pearl to give me a view of Pearl and here's what I can see. There's not a lot in the way of ships at Pearl and as a matter of fact I have no idea where the Allied carriers are now. I suspect they are in or near New Zealand somewhere. Or at least in the south end of the map.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what's going on in the SE Pacific area. There's at least three smaller islands I need to grab yet to cut off the movement of aircraft to Australia from airfields to the east. So I'm going to have to move the fleet over here to have them on hand to do the bombardment and support the take down of the defenders. The carriers are at Truk giving the aircraft a rest but that has been accomplished already so the TF's are now ready to depart for operations east of New Caledonia.

I've been wondering if it's possible to grab one of the ports on the east coast of Australia and hold onto it for any length of time. I could probably start an operation bombing Brisbane from New Caledonia to reduce the defenders sufficiently so that ground forces can overrun the city with it's ports and airfields. It will probably take at least a division to take and hold the city. Allied aircraft from further east usually arrive at Brisbane so if I grab that maybe no more Allied aircraft will enter this section of the theater.

[larryfulkerson]

I found a small stack of light carriers near Java and drove it toward Ceylon to take a shot at the Allied CV parked there and I neglected to check out the conditions of the ships in the stack and CVE Hosho was damaged in a previous turn and doesn't have as many movement points as the rest of the stack and it got stuck in a poor defensive position. It's within range of Allied aircraft from Ceylon so I'll have to keep the other carriers within fighter range of it to give it some protection from Allied LBA from Ceylon and I'll need to drive some heavy naval assets to it's hex to give it some protection from sorties of the Allied ships in the Ceylon area. And as a matter of fact the rest of the carriers don't have any serious escorts in their TF either so they will need some escorts too. I'll have to split the TF into several TF's. The attack on the Allied CV is scheduled.

[larryfulkerson]

Port Moresby fell finally so now I own the ports and airfields. I'm now ready to begin bombing of cities in Australia. I have bombers that can reach all the way down to Brisbane so I can make a nuscience of myself.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the results of the strike on the Allied CVE near Ceylon. I sank it without much effort and lost only a few aircraft. Depending on the condition of the aircraft followup strikes might be indicated.

[larryfulkerson]

Two out of three of my bombers were still green so I did a second strike on another stack of Allied ships and I seem to have sunk an Allied CV and a BB. All the planes on the CV were lost which is a bonus. I lost a lot of Zeros however and I guess that's from flak over the ships or something. Maybe the fighters attacked the ships I mean. This was still a pretty good strike.

[larryfulkerson]

I was checking out the production of the field guns [ I'm using the type 95 75mm gun for the most part ] when I stumbled upon the news that I'm not building any Marys or Claudes or Nates. And there aren't that many left on hand. And I don't start building any type II Oscars until T42 so I'm anticipating a drop in the number of assigned Claudes and Nates until there's only a few left. I'll have to check out the aircraft units to see which ones I'll need to park in the home islands and which are okay to go in harm's way. I'll keep you posted.