Japanese tanks in China

[grisouille_slith]

Hello all
Well I'm playing the allies in feb42. My opponent use stacks of 4 or 5 tank regiments in China. I can't stop them even in rougth terrain. My infantry units are slaughterned without result... Last combat :

Ground combat at 86,41 (near Loyang)
Japanese Deliberate attack

Attacking force 3030 troops, 0 guns, 452 vehicles, Assault Value = 254

Defending force 4395 troops, 43 guns, 0 vehicles, Assault Value = 156

Japanese adjusted assault: 154

Allied adjusted defense: 201

Japanese assault odds: 1 to 2

Combat modifiers
Defender: terrain(+), leaders(+), experience(-)
Attacker:

Allied ground losses:
588 casualties reported
Squads: 3 destroyed, 69 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 3 disabled
Engineers: 1 destroyed, 5 disabled

Assaulting units:
5th Tank Regiment
3rd Tank Regiment
9th Tank Regiment
23rd Tank Regiment

Defending units:
61st Chinese Corps

Any advice will be appreciated...

Thank you. Have a nice sunday..

[Platoonist]

Japanese tanks do seem a bit over-powered when concentrated into a Death Star. China does start the game with two anti-tank regiments in Chungking. Try to work them into the path of this armored column. However, as China your best bet is probably to try and surround them and cut them off. And maybe try to present them with more than one corps at a time in defense. The Chinese do better in groups.

[BBfanboy]

I just looked in my Ver. 1126a/Scenario 1 game and big Chinese Corps all have a TOE of 12 x 37mm A/T guns. The small Chinese Corps get 2 of these. They start with few or now A/T guns but when they start to get supply they get that device because the pools are pretty good. It has helped a lot to keep the Japanese tank units honest!

[RangerJoe]

You can also fly in 2pdr AT guns as well as 37mm AT guns from Allied units.

You can also move in Allied units from Burma, including Allied armor. The Japanese tanks don't like Valentines or even Stuarts.

Look at Lowpe's AAR about how he did it.

If you are playing a human opponent, you should ask in your heading that your opponent not open this thread.

[JanSako]

Because doing such (sending out multiple unsupported tank regiments) is quite unhistorical, some people play with a House Rule that tank regiments on attack must always be supported by Infantry at a ration if 1:1, exception being that a single tank regiment is allowed to attack on its own.
In one of my games a variant to this allows tank-only mass attacks in CLEAR terrain.
Japanese doctrine generally preferred the tanks to be the supporting element to infantry. In fact, due to the prevailing terrain in the PTO it was the case for all sides...

[Yaab]

grisouille_slith, from the combat report I can surmise that you were attacked by circa 200 tanks and you probably had 12 AT guns plus another 15 field guns at your disposal. You were bound to "lose" - you actually stood your ground, but suffered high losses without disabling a single Jap tank.

Mass your units instead defending with single units.

Develop your bases in China to airfield level 2 so you can fly fighters with bombs (US Airacobras, of which you have lots, carry 1 x 250 kg bomb, albeit at short range), just remember to fly your fighters at 6000 feet so they ALL load bombs. Jap tank units have zero o little organic AA in them, so if they have no fighter cover you can a bomb them with impunity. If you have fighters with no bombs, use them to strafe Jap tank columns at 100 feet, this will add fatigue and disruption to Jap tank units and make them weaker in land fights

Add HQ units to your infantry stacks to keep their AV from dropping precipitously in combat.

Watch your supply. Units in non-base hexes do not get the yellow "!" point when undersupplied, so you may get into a combat and suffer "supply-" modifier.