String - The glorious and mighty Imperial Japan
Scenario #13
[:'(]
Some of you, those who frequent the Paradox Interactive OT forums, may be familiar with my WITP AAR there. That's the "for japanese eyes only" version, but today I got the thought of doing an open AAR on these forums as well. I decided to do the AAR on PI forums from the egoistical urge to get more readers, what would have been yet another AAR here was a unique one over there
Well whatever, it's here now too. The tide is beginning to turn and I thought I'd give AndyMac the opportunity he deserves to show the rest of the crowd here how persistant and dedicated he really is.Okay, this is a game that was started a long time ago, november or october 2004 i think. The original allied opponent was a guy called Sanch and this was the first PBEM for both of us. It quickly became apparent though that he was somewhat less familiar with game mechanics than I was.
The game started at 01/05/1942 (I'll use the european day/month/year system) and has now reached 16/03/1943. I'll give you a "short" report on how things have gone so far.
First the pacific :
As you may, or may not, know , the scenario #13 starts right before the battle of the coral sea. The starting OOB and orders are such that the battle should occur and so it did, with a few modifications. History was changed as I gathered Zeroes and Betties from the vicinty to Rabaul and reinforced the fighter squadrons on Shokaku and Zuikaku before sending them into the fray. My opponent left his carriers on the other side of new guinea, and at first ravaged the Buna invasion convoy. But his carriers were unable to move towards mine due to the landmass inbetween. Result was a devastating japanese carrier strike from range 4 which sank Yorktown and damaged Lexington so bad that she was easy pray for the Betties from Rabaul. American retaliation strike only damaged Shoho lightly (~25 sys)
So with the Coral sea battle won with little damage on the japanese side, Port moresby was invaded. The rest of the japanese carriers were also in the area by that time and in a very bloody week sank several allied heavy cruisers trying to intercept my carriers. [:-]
Port moresby was intitally underinvested, so it didn't fall before I sent in another brigade, but by the end of may it had fallen.
Meanwhile i had made two diversionary attacks, a failed paradrop on Derby, northern OZ and a small landing on Attu, which also failed to take the island. Surface raiding was also tried which ended with a CL sunk when she ran into a convoy screen of a CA and several DD's.
The rest of the american carriers showed them briefly before the fall of PM to bombard Apanama. They vanished after that again.
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By then I was content with the fact that I had eliminated 2 enemy carriers for no loss of my own so I had only one last operation planned, the capture of Baker and Canton islands to interdict supply lines to OZ.
This took some time to plan and gather forces so the KB was sitting idle at Kwajalein. Somewhere around 7th of june an enemy cruiser TF was detected in the triangle between Wallis, Baker and Canton islands, I suspected enemy carriers so I sent the KB on a highspeed raid.. What they found was just a small convoy escorted by just a few DD's. All ships were sunk ofcourse. Somewhat of a dissapointment but over the course of the next few days the carriers found several other small convoys and sank them. Also the raid revealed that Canton was defended by only a single base force while Baker had a larger garrison.. so I decided to go after Canton alone and leave Baker where it was.
It was then, when the KB was already quite low on fuel, when american carriers were found.. I think I almost jumped up from my chair when i saw the message "H8K Emily spots CV Enterprise".. there were however doubts if I could catch them. The KB was very low on fuel afterall. I decided to gamble however and sent the KB south highspeed. I also had the baby KB in the area covering the invasion force.
After two days of cat and mouse I caught Enterprise and Saratoga right inbetween baby KB and the big KB. Both american carriers were promtly sunk for the cost of about 40 planes. [8D] Btw, it later became apparent that the american carriers were also very very low on fuel.
This was when my previous opponent quit and AndyMac took over.
Canton was captured quickly afterwards and for about 3-4 months the pacific was quiet except two carrier raids on american supply lines to OZ, which yielded some nice results.
On the 2nd of september a massive Invasion hit New Hebrides and New Caledonia. Over 400 japanese ships snuk up to the Catalina Squadrons at Luganville undetected and within a week both Luganville and Efate were in japanese hands and were operating aircraft vs Noumea.
In the middle of September I landed on the northern tip of New Caledonia and marched down to Noumea and laid siege to it on the 4th of October. The start was slow as I had brought no HQ units but that problem was solved within two weeks. BB's were also making regular bombardment runs on the base. 3 and 4 alternating between days
Ten days later the KB raided Suva which had become a major allied base, sinking a CA 3 CL's and 2 CLAA's.. a nice catch
The siege of Noumea lasted well into November, and in the middle of the month it was clear that Andy was up to something. Allied subs were swarming the area (and falling victim to my ASW planes) and several large TF's were detected north of NZ. Noumea fell on the 24th of November though and the enemy pulled his TF's out.The capture of Noumea pushed the score over 4:1 limit, where it has remained ever since.
After that Norfolk island was taken and then it was quiet until the 6th of january 1943 when the KB launched a surprise raid on Sidney harbor, hoping to catch the remaining american CV's there.. Instead they found a large number of BB's there which recieved little damage due to the very heavy AA fire. In the end, for the loss of numerous good pilots only BB Tennessee was heavily damaged.
This raid showed Andy where the KB was and prompted him to launch his first major offensive, the invasion of Canton island. While he was landing through huge minefields (over 6k mines there) and withering CD fire I was loading reinforcements at Truk. Most of the Combined Fleet was being assembled at Kwajalein.
To make a long story short.. some of his troops were left beind due to a mistake, the others suffered heavily from mines and CD's and the island had level 9 forts and over 250 AP's of troops there.
All of his assaults failed and didn't even reduce the fort level.
In february the reinforcement convoys arrived under the cover of the might of the Combined fleet, all BB's and CV's were in the area and the allied ships withdrew. I landed over 100k troops on the island, from almost 300 troop ships. Our surface ships raided nearby atolls sinking barges, AV's and AVD's while the KB raided Wallis Island (which was now a major allied base) twice, sinking a large number of merchant ships there.
It was when the second raid took place (and the KB was 8 hexes southwest of Canton) that we decteted enemy carriers about 8 hexes northeast of Canton. So the carriers were ordered back and..
At range five we only carried bombs but Essex, Hornet and Wasp were all devastaded but CV Illustrious survived. At that time I didn't know that the scuttled ships didn't show up immediatly on the intel screen, so when only the Wasp and Illustrious was detected on the next morning I thought that the Essex and Hornet had got away and pursued them towards Palmyra. Wasp was sunk by betties from Canton but Illustrious escaped. My carriers then ran into 6 CVE's which were sunk over the course of two days... While pursueing the carriers I had several clashes with the airforce at Palmyra (corsairs) and by the end of the battle my carrier air arm was quite depleted.
Also, while chasing down the enemy I had sent a large cruiser taskforce out towards Palmyra which met two american BB's and escorts. I lost two CA's there, the first of the war. The two american BB's were sunk too.
With the forces from Canton island I finally took Baker island, removing the thron in the side of supply lines to Canton island.
After that it has been rather quiet in the pacific, other than the occasional heavy bomber raid on Canton
Ship losses by the end of February:
TK 21 / 0
SS 34 / 19
SC 7 / 0
PT 85 / 1 [X(]
PG 6 / 2
PC 1 / 1
MSW 20 / 3
DMS 7 / 0
DM 2 / 0
DD 30 / 5
BB 2 / 0
CV 7 / 0
CVE 6 / 0
CLAA 2 / 0
CL 4 / 3
CA 7 / 2
AVD 5 / 0
AV 2 / 0
AP 9 / 6
AO 4 / 0
AK 68 / 2
AD 2 / 1
+ some allied landing craft
China
China is all japanese by now. Sanch tried to start an offensive with the chinese and paid dearly for it. One after another the chinese cities were surrounded on the railway line and overrun. The last city, Chengtu, fell in late december IIRC and while there are some chinese troops trapped in the coutryside the theatre is quiet, except for the japanese aircraft training.
SRA
Was mostly quiet until the beginning of january 1943 when a large concentration of aircraft was seen in northern OZ. I gathered most of the army bombers and after some several heavy air battles shut down darwin and Wyndham airfields, destroying a large number of allied planes on the ground. In march he finally managed to reopen the airfields and has now taken Aru, Tenimbar and Kai islands (which were ungarrisoned) by surprise raids. Lautem, the airfield from where i based my bombers, was also shut down by heavy bombers.
Burma
I used Mandalay as my bomber base to shut down every single airfield within sally range. Sanch, and later on AndyMac tried to contest this several times with bad results on their side. It was only in late december 1942 when Andy managed to establish his airbase at Dacca. After a failed attempt in early february he finally shut down Mandalay airfield in the beginning of March, using corsairs to escort hundreds of bombers.
So this is that.. Andy is finally hitting back with his LBA. I'll post the current intel screen when I do the last turn.
