Quisling! An AFB does Japan (No PanzerKat)

[John B.]

ORIGINAL: Bif1961

Japanese MTBs had two torpedoes each so 15 reported hits would be 5 torpedo hits over 100% which would be 10 hits possible from 5 MTBs.

Well, the crews may have embellished just a little. But they clearly did some damage!

[John B.]

This was a good and a bad turn for the Japanese. First, the good news. Scott lost a lot of medium bombers to flak over Nagasaki where he attempted to put the airfield out of commission and failed. Also, my night bombing got through and killed some allied fighters on the ground. That is always welcome.

I finally figured out how to use my air dropped mines and, thus far, all they've done is to give his minesweepers something to do (an AMc was reported hit but continued to sweep mines).

[John B.]

The bad news is that on the Chinese coast Scott had an unexpected breakthrough. I guess the boys could not continue to take the incessent pounding from the air that they have endured. More than 100 medium bombers per turn plus the strat bomber force now and again.

[John B.]

This may be my worst land defeat of the war! Ouch!

[John B.]

December 29th was a pretty ho hum turn. [>:] Which is good news for the Empire of Japan. I sent some mavises and Emilys on a long range night bombing mission over what I think is Scott's Strat bombing base and they ran into night fighters. Oh well, it was worth a shot.

[John B.]

But, here is a very troubling development. I thought that if you upgraded an aircraft factory to the next fighter on the upgrade tree there was no damage done to the factory so you could (a) start producing the fighter right away and (b) you did not have to pay to repair the factories.

But, here you can see that I attempted to upgrade a Frank-a factory to a Frank-b factory and it was damaged. If this is true, I'll wind up paying 430,000 in supply just to upgrade my Frank factories and I'll lose out on their production in the interim. Is there something that I'm missing?

[RangerJoe]

Frank a upgrades to Frank r. Frank b upgrades to Frank r. There is no other link between Frank a and Frank b.

[John B.]

Oh I see. Thanks for the quick response!!

[John B.]

We're almost at the end of 1944 and this time Scott's bombers did not fare so well over my divisions on China's coast. This was the result with just about 40% of the Manchuria flak in the hex. I imagine Scott won't come in at 8,000 feet again. [:D] But, at some point he'll so a shore bombardment and he's also likely to hit other parts of the Chinese front. But, it was nice to get a little payback.

Scott has also taken to bombing Strat bombing targets in Japan where I'm not defending with flak. Not much can be done about it, I'm afraid. I just have to grin and bear it.

[John B.]

Here are the actual report air losses from last turn.

[John B.]

December 39, 1944. A number of heavies shot down over Nagasaki (including a reported 6 B-29s) but it was clear weather and Scott got in some good strat bombing on the city. I'm not repairing anything so eventually I'll send the Nagasaki flak elsewhere but not yet.

[BBfanboy]

December 39th, eh? Is this the extended game feature or the "hidden war" I keep hearing about?

[John B.]

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

December 39th, eh? Is this the extended game feature or the "hidden war" I keep hearing about?

LoL, it just seems like December 39th.

[John B.]

Well now it's 1945 and the Empire of Japan is still alive. Just 9 more months (or 12 more depending on what the victory conditions actually are) and we can finally sign that peace deal in D.C. .

January 1st started things off quite nicely. I was able to pull off an effective shore bombardment that appears to have shut down one of the airfields that Scott was running fighter sweeps from. It was exactly 8 hexes away from Hiroshima so the Hiei was able to sprint there, shell it, and get home. I also put in every DD that was still afloat into bombardment and managed to avoid any opposition and sink 5 PFs in the bargain. It was a very lucky break!

Because I also overloaded Nagasaki with fighters hoping that Scott would run a third strat bombing mission in a row there. I have 500+ fighters there and the airfields capacity was about 250. Scott did get three fighter sweeps through from a different base (of more than 100 planes per sweep) but then the bombers started coming.

[John B.]

And there were very heavy losses among the PBY-Liberators and the British bombers. It also appeared that the flak was more effective likely because bombers were already damaged pressed the attack and wound up being shot down. There was almost no additional damage to Nagasaki. Good for both VPs and any reduction in his ability to blast my cities is welcome!

But, Scott's fighter sweeps did have a very positive kill ratio for him.

[John B.]

And the VP chart to start the year show that I'm still winning. Scott needs to pick up about 70,000 VP to bring it home.

[John B.]

Here is where things stand to start off the new year. First, a shout out to the pixel boys at Port Blair. They are the edge of the empire. They have a brigade, 3,200 supply points, and a mission to stand pat as long as possible.

[John B.]

SouthEast Asia is almost gone. I managed to extricate all of my divisions from here plus almost all the support troops while holding several allied divisions at bay. I could not get any supply to these areas so I could not hold them anyway. Now, I'll see if Saigon can delay Scott a bit longer before he can press into China in force.

[John B.]

Here in China I've circled the areas where the fighting continues to rage. Scott keeps pounding away with air as I've devoted most of my fighters to the HI. I think his landing near the Vietnamese boarder is a bit too late to trap anything coming from Vietnam and, hopefully, will lead no where. But, otherwise, terrain has been my friend here in Southern China. My big fear is an invasion up north in the clear terrain which would cut off my troops from resupply from Manchuria (such as it is).

I don't know if taking China back will be enough to give Scott the win or if he'll have to invade the HI.

[John B.]

The current resource situation. I have no idea if this is good or bad. But, I comfort myself with the more than 1 million fuel and 2.7 million supply I still have on hand.