ORIGINAL: Tankerace
Ok, let me clarify.
1.) My main battle fleet will stay in Phillippine and Pacific Waters. Only may massive submarine force will blockade Japan.
2.) My landing in Indo China will be in range of air units, and not until I am sufficiently prepared to do this. You are underestimating the Soviet Air Force. If you keep to your time table (which you must), you will have to commit everything.
3.) The IJN. To keep the supply lines to your troops in Russia, you will have to detail most of your destroyers. This, unless you want my submarines to send your flattops to the bottom, hampers how much you can deploy. In addition, you are on the defensive. The bulk of my plan is to get a foothold in the central Pacific, and get troops, going all the way around Aussie land, to the PI. If you don't take my airfields, then I can sink, or at least hamper your navy. You forget, You are not going to want to risk your carriers, as you won't get as many as I will. This goes in my favor. With your escorts attempting to keep the flow of goods to Siberia, your IJN can't be in the South China Sea, Central Pacific, Southern Pacific, and Northern Pacifc. In addition, I gave you a rough outline of my plan. I can attack from either avenue, or two at once.
4.) IJN Airforce. That is going to be the real tricky part. That will only hamper my French Indo China operations. Worst Case, I can't make a landing. So, I simply beef up Malay and the DEI. Doesn't matter to me, the result is the same.
The mistake you are making is that you don't see yourself committing your airforce to Russia. This is a naive thought inviting disaster. While you might knock out the Soviet AF, you still have to dig out the ground troops. The quickest way will be to bomb them. And your planes can't be dropping bombs on Soviet troops and my carriers at the same time.
My plan is all about Stalling. You are already on a 14 month time table on December 7. If you go Russia first, with luck on my part you may reduce that to an 8 month time table, by the time you're troops can go into India. Another 5 months slogging through Malay, India, and China, that leaves you just three months to grab the DEI and PI. That is 11 months, from Dec. 41, so this is November '42. By now, I can stick so many troops in the PI, I can hold you there for 4, and defacto, you're industry is broke. Not to mention, your fleet train is so badly damaged that if it is getting resources to Japn to restart the industry, then it can't be taking positions I hold in the SoPac and CentPac theaters. This means from a standard game, you have advanced my invasion time table by a year.
To say my plan is not feasible, is to furth criticize you're own plan. I actually messed with WitP checking things, and seeing how feasible it would be. I didn't just say "Hey, what if I did this."
The soviet air force consists of obsolete planes that are easily shot down. The japanese air forces in china, manhcuko and the home islands are easily up to the task of knocking them out of the sky. You overestimate the Russian troops, they aren't that difficult to beat. I don't want to have ships in the southern pacific or central pacific, I already said I was abandoning the central pacific. If by the southern pacific you mean new caledonia, fiji, and american samoa, I won't be there either. How is it that the submarine forces of the allies suddenly perform so much better than they did historically just because I invaded Russia? If you can interdict supply ships heading from the home islands to russia, then you can interdict japanese supply ships headed anywhere and you could just starve out all japanese forces. If you put submarines that close to the home islands they won't be there long.
Hirohito
