AFTER ACTION REPORTS FOR Jan 15, 44
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Sub attack near Chichi-jima at 110,73
Japanese Ships
E Kamome
E Tsubame
Allied Ships
SS Tautog
SS Tautog launches 4 torpedoes at E Kamome
Tautog diving deep ....
E Tsubame fails to find sub, continues to search...
E Tsubame fails to find sub, continues to search...
E Tsubame fails to find sub, continues to search...
E Tsubame attacking submerged sub ....
E Tsubame fails to find sub, continues to search...
Escort abandons search for sub
Two more days have passed and both days our long range nav search spotted the Allied Armada. There must be several carriers as I lost over a dozen search aircraft. Yesterday already proved that my assumption about the invasion area was wrong! [X(] That's the problem in war, often one is thinking too much like "what would I do?" instead of "what would the enemy do?" and in this case there was no other plausible invasion site to me other than at the two bases East of Madras. As you can see on the screenshot below the Allied task forces keep moving East and it now seems like the target is Akyab. Wooof! Akyab is garrisoned but it won't hold against what he possible brings as it has to be the kitchen sink when he's doing such an operation. I had no beer to spill over my keyboard this time but I was looking at the replay and map again and said to myself that he can't be serious to mount that operation. I have Calcutta in the North, a level 9 airfield, Rangoon in the South, same as Calcutta and Mandalay to the East with a level 8 airfield. All airfields can be used to full extent and then there are even more smaller ones around.
The enemy has to cross the whole Bay of Bengal to move in reinforcements and/or supply and he can't go nowhere fast from Akyab. He can build up the base and pose a threat but if I get one good naval bombardment all his aircraft there will die in the long run. No aircraft, no defense. I have big mobile reserves that I can bring into the area and like it was at Darwin, I will have plenty of time to react as there are no roads the enemy can use to march out of Akyab and threaten Rangoon or the rest of Burma. In theory it might sound like a good idea to cut off my Armies in India but I'm confident that it will rather turn into a big Allied POW camp that can't be supplied without horrendous losses than the start of a succesful Burma campaign.
Of course if he can really pull this off and completely cut off my Armies in India then I have to honestly applaud him. But then the question will be how should he stop me from just marching out of India?
I understood the operation against the Marshalls halve a year ago, it was a plausible target to me, even though I would have seized the Gilberts first. It turned out bad for the Allied as the IJN fully succeeded but that operation was nowhere as dangerous as the one he seems to pull off now. So far the Allied have lost 9 CV, 2 CVL plus a good dozen CVE, I don't know what he can bring into the Bay of Bengal in 01/44 after such losses. Most likely more CVE but how many CV/CVL? 3-5? [&:] Surely nothing that would resemble a death star I'd say.
Anyways, while I didn't do much else than sending out subs two turns ago it was orange Alert last turn when I started to look more worried at the Allied move and it's red Alert now. We are now moving in every available aircraft without totally stripping other fronts of course and the fleet is in high Alert too now. There is nothing I can do to stop the invasion so the first goal is to destroy or heavily damage the Allied fleet assets so we can move in our mobile reserves to take on the Allied ground troops. Gonna be quite task I guess and the game is going from 0 to 100 in no time again.
The SRA was high on my list of a bigger Allied move early 44 (not that early though) but a move like this was nowhere on my list even though I can react to it with a delay due to my plannings to defend the SRA.
; Julia Child
