Tophat vs ADavidB - Back at It

[ADavidB]

July 17 -

Tophat was complaining about the rain in China with this turn. But it's not just China; there is too much rain occurring too frequently everywhere. I don't think that I've had a day without rain in San Fran for 4 or 5 game-months. But as I've mentioned before, the impossibly bad weather is affecting both of us, which makes it almost tolerable.

Sawu Island, yet another no-name base, was automatically occupied by the Japanese today. I don't think that either of us could find it if we tried. It's probably in the DEI. Tophat landed more troops at Lautem and followed up with a bombardment attack by his cruiser TF. I then sent in my B-17s which blew past the Zeros on LR CAP, shooting down a couple of them, and hitting the invading troops hard. Afterwards one of my Hudson squadrons flew in and tried to hit the invasion TF but they couldn't get any clear shots. However, the MSW that was bombed yesterday sank today, so that worked out alright. Finally, Tophat tried a land attack which suffered a surprising setback:

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Ground combat at Lautem

Japanese Deliberate attack

Attacking force 3242 troops, 16 guns, 0 vehicles

Defending force 3237 troops, 37 guns, 1 vehicles

Japanese assault odds: 0 to 1 (fort level 4)

Japanese ground losses:
117 casualties reported
Guns lost 2
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I don't know why Tophat's troops did so badly - the Dutch defenders are certainly not in great shape.

Tophat is getting very serious about Soerabaja. He sent his BBs in again, and this time their bombardment took on a whole new dimension of destructive power in comparison with the earlier naval bombardments:

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Naval bombardment of Soerabaja, at 22, 65 - Coastal Guns Fire Back!

18 Coastal gun shots fired in defense.
Japanese Ships
BB Hyuga
BB Ise
BB Yamashiro
BB Fuso
BB Nagato, Shell hits 3

Allied ground losses:
2910 casualties reported
Guns lost 60
Vehicles lost 10

Airbase hits 1
Runway hits 3
Port hits 11
Port supply hits 2
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Maybe the BBs did better because fewer CD guns fired at them, but this is certainly a huge jump in destructiveness in comparison with the previous times! Tophat then followed this up with a number of aerial bombardments and finally a deliberate attack:

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Ground combat at Soerabaja

Japanese Deliberate attack

Attacking force 158305 troops, 1541 guns, 76 vehicles

Defending force 42807 troops, 210 guns, 33 vehicles

Japanese engineers reduce fortifications to 7

Japanese assault odds: 1 to 1 (fort level 7)

Japanese Assault reduces fortifications to 7

Japanese ground losses:
1765 casualties reported
Guns lost 63
Vehicles lost 2

Allied ground losses:
2308 casualties reported
Guns lost 59
Vehicles lost 5
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Japanese forces at Soerabaja are making progress, but it isn't happening quickly.

Elsewhere, my B-17s flew against Baker Island again, but the CAP was fairly strong and the bombers didn't accomplish much. But at least they didn't suffer bad casualties.

BTW - I just realized before this turn that I now have "Seafires" available. So I went to the Brit CVs and changed the fighters in one ship from Fulmars to Seafires. There is so much to watch out for in this game.

Dave Baranyi

[ADavidB]

July 18 -

Tophat has gone back to flying his bombers at higher altitudes, presumably to cut down on flak damage and the associated operational losses. So that means that the effectiveness of his aerial bombardments has gone down a bit too. However, because most of his bomber pilots are now well experienced the loss of accuracy is not as much as it would be with rookie pilots.

I'm mainly raiding troops right now, so I don't have as much to worry about as far as flak goes. Therefore, my Wellingtons went into Hengchow at 6K feet and hit Tophat's besieging troops quite hard. Not only that, but Tophat didn't have any LR CAP in place either - he is probably spreading out some of his fighters to protect his air fields.

I'm almost done with pulling my fighters out of Sian. This has multiple benefits:

- The planes are back away from the fray so they aren't being hammered by sweeps of ace Japanese air units

- The rear bases have much more in the ways of supplies and support which allow the squadrons to rebuild more quickly

- The Indian bases are in range so I can transfer out the squadrons that have lost a lot of experience and train them in safety

- The supply going into Sian can be used to build up the base and pass some along to Homan

I have to admit that I am taking full advantage of the weather situation - unless the weather changes its current pattern I can count on it to prevent Tophat from establishing a continuous air offensive. Since my air counter-offensive is designed to be more of a "hit and run" approach I am not affected as much by the occasional "rain out" because I don't want to fly every day.

Tophat didn't send his ships out to hit Soerabaja this turn, although a number of air attacks occurred. Then the Tabbys tried to fly through the flak, but they suffered a lot of damaged and destroyed planes. Finally Tophat tried another deliberate attack:

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Ground combat at Soerabaja

Japanese Deliberate attack

Attacking force 156703 troops, 1468 guns, 73 vehicles

Defending force 40396 troops, 148 guns, 27 vehicles

Japanese engineers reduce fortifications to 6

Japanese assault odds: 2 to 1 (fort level 6)

Japanese Assault reduces fortifications to 6

Japanese ground losses:
2507 casualties reported
Guns lost 23
Vehicles lost 2

Allied ground losses:
1019 casualties reported
Guns lost 41
Vehicles lost 2
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Despite the positive results, the end is obviously near. All Tophat has to do now is to be persistent and Soerabaja will likely be his before the end of July. Tophat didn't try another assault on Lautem, nor did he try to land more troops. Another empty base, Wetar, received automatic occupation by the Japanese this turn.

So in light of Tophat's imminent capture of Soerabaja and the associated "clean up" of the remaining Allied bases in the DEI I am now working on the next phase of my strategy as I attempt to anticipate Tophat's next moves. The question is - where will the Japanese forces be sent next?

I expect Tophat to continue with his offensive in China. If he moves to China the bombers and fighters that are currently committed to the DEI offensive then I will definitely be unable to stop his air attacks. Tophat has too many air bases in China for me to be able to stand up to a bigger air assault there.

I would be very surprised if Tophat attempted to move into India at this late date. I now have large numbers of troops, combat ships and aircraft in India and all of my bases are well built up and heavily defended. Tophat would have to commit a sizable percentage of the Combined Fleet to an Indian Invasion, including a number of CVs. And the moment he tries that I will hit the Central Pacific with the full strength of the US Naval, Air and Ground forces.

Tophat could follow up on this conquest of the DEI with an attack on Northern Australia. I haven't brought more troops into the three malarial bases beyond the base forces that started in each. And while Darwin has level 9 fortifications I haven't kept troops in beyond the original troops either. The units that I evacuated from the Philippines into Darwin have long since been moved to non-malarial bases in Eastern and Southern Australia.

Therefore, if Tophat decides to invade the bases in Northern Australia I won't fight "to the death". I will immediately pull out those isolated base forces in the malarial bases if they are threatened. And if it appears that there is a threat to cut off the forces in Darwin they will be pulled back too. The major reason for not trying to defend Northern Australia in 1942 is because of the distances between the four bases, and their distances from the rest of Australia. It is too hard to supply those bases and there is no way to set up the sort of mutually-supporting defense that is needed to stop a serious attack. If the game allowed for the establishment of new bases at locations of your choosing then I would have been busy in the surrounding territory building up air bases that are away from the sea. But that isn't an option, so I don't want to waste good forces against the full-brunt of a Japanese combined attack if I can't do something to blunt it.

I don’t expect Tophat to bother with any serious invasion of Alaska; however, I have all of the Northern Command forces in Alaska just in case. It won't be long before Winter Weather arrives again and that will slow down any offensive in that region.

I expect Tophat to start to expand in Eastern PNG and the South Seas, particularly when he frees up the troops that are in the DEI. Therefore, I am moving forces into that region that can disrupt probing attacks and thus force Tophat to commit large attacks on relatively trivial targets. BTW - in support of this, Auckland is now a level 9 port, so I can provide full support to my naval forces in the region. As well, I am also spreading support ships through the region. And the first of the upcoming swarm of US engineering units are starting to arrive at the more easterly of the South Seas bases.

I have maintained a "nuisance defense" at Midway, Johnson and Palmyra Islands. I have and RCT, CD, AA, and Base Force in each and the bases are nearly fully "maxed out", including fortifications. My strategy is to prevent Tophat from trying a "nuisance" invasion with a couple of NLF units - he will have to commit a Divisional-strength attack. Any Divisional strength attack will take some time to get organized, and time is no longer on Tophat's side. By mid August all of six of my fleet carriers will have Avengers on them. I am also busily building up French Frigate Shoals as a fighter way-station to allow fighters to shuttle in and out of Midway. In addition, I have built up Christmas Island as my major supply base in the Eastern South Pacific, and am building up another "shuttle base" on a dot island between the Line Islands and Pago-Pago/Canton.

BTW - in case you are wondering, I currently have 8 full-strength combat divisions in the Hawaiian Islands, along with all kinds of other combat and support troops. The only troops left on the West Coast are the dedicated West Coast and Canadian troops. I also have over 1200 combat aircraft in the Central Pacific, not counting the carrier aircraft. All of the Hawaiian bases are built up to full capacity in order to hold and support these forces. And I have only lost a handful of APs so far in the Game, so I have all the transport capability that I need for a naval blitzkrieg. Therefore, "Plan Orange" is never far from my mind if I am given the opportunity. But this all depends upon what Tophat does; I won't throw my forces against the KB unless I can clearly prevail, which won't be the case until mid-1943. But if the KB is committed to battle three or four weeks sailing away, I will strike!

Dave Baranyi

[ADavidB]

July 19 -

Tophat's major focus was Soerabaja again this turn. He wants to get things over with there sooner rather than later. The BBs came back in to bombard again. Only four CD guns fired and got one hit, and the BBs did about half the damage they did the last time, but it was still a lot. Then a lot of Japanese bombers flew in at medium altitudes with some success, but still received some flak damage too. Then finally Tophat tried another deliberate attack:

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Ground combat at Soerabaja

Japanese Deliberate attack

Attacking force 154177 troops, 1405 guns, 71 vehicles

Defending force 38337 troops, 105 guns, 17 vehicles

Japanese engineers reduce fortifications to 5

Japanese assault odds: 1 to 1 (fort level 5)

Japanese Assault reduces fortifications to 5

Japanese ground losses:
1850 casualties reported
Guns lost 32
Vehicles lost 4

Allied ground losses:
810 casualties reported
Guns lost 19
Vehicles lost 2
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As you can see, the number of Dutch effectives in the ground forces is dropping rapidly. I would guess that it won't take more than three more attempts, if that many, for the Japanese to finally capture Soerabaja. I wonder if my engineers will wreck the place? There are lots of them there and they've certainly had the time.

In China Tophat just sent a fairly odd mix of planes to bomb Hengchow. There wasn't a lot of damage done. My Chinese bombers attacked the Japanese besiegers of Kungchang. I was resting the Wellingtons and will send them against Wuhan next turn, weather permitting. I also pulled more Mohawks out of China and started converting some of them to Spitfires. Right now I have three decent Hurricane squadrons in China.

My B-17s in Canton took off against Baker at high altitude, but other than destroying and damaging a few Zeros, they didn't accomplish anything. My B-17s in Darwin hit the Japanese besiegers of Lautem again, blowing past the Zeros on LR CAP as if they weren't there. Then my Hudsons tried to attack the invasion TF, but they didn't get any hits after duking it out with the LR CAP.

Tophat is now moving forces around in a big way, so it looks as if I will get to see his next moves in a short while. I'm getting my forces in position too, so I may be able to surprise an invasion or two.

Dave Baranyi

[anarchyintheuk]

Holding S that far into July is impressive. Can't wait for when the counteroffensive starts.

[ADavidB]

ORIGINAL: anarchyintheuk

Holding S that far into July is impressive. Can't wait for when the counteroffensive starts.

But you will have to wait...[;)]

I'm not going on a "serious" counter-offensive until I have some "serious" weapons in my inventory. Unless Tophat does something dumb, and he hasn't so far, so I don't expect him to, I will have to follow the historical time table to a good extent, with a fair shift "to the right" on the GANTT chart because he still has the full KB.

BTW - It appears that Tophat is not satisfied with resting on his laurels and is preparing for more offensives. So I'll have my hands full for quite a while yet before I can try to turn things around.

Thanks for the comments -

Dave Baranyi

[KDonovan]

how many divisions does he have at Soerabaja?.....cause you have to figure that after he takes that base...it will be a month before those divisions are rested enough for further ops

[ADavidB]

ORIGINAL: KDonovan

how many divisions does he have at Soerabaja?.....cause you have to figure that after he takes that base...it will be a month before those divisions are rested enough for further ops

He has a lot of troops of all sorts, but not all of the troops that participated in the Luzon or Malaya invasions are in Java. So you are right, I'll have a bit of a breather before those troops move forward. But I'm planning months in advance, so that "breather" will disappear soon enough.

He is mainly using NLFs in the Central Pacific so far since I'm not opposing him actively. I expect him to continue to try to "push" while setting traps for any overreaction from me. Right now it looks like he has regained interest in PNG.

Thanks for the comments -

Dave Baranyi

[ADavidB]

July 20 -

Lots of small things went on this turn. First off, a US sub tried to sneak in after the invasion TF at Lautem, but was driven off by the escorts. Oddly enough, Tophat has a fair number of troops in Lautem but hasn't tried to capture the base in a while. My Hudsons scouted that Japanese TF but didn't try to attack.

My Wellingtons in China did do a nice attack on Wuhan. Tophat only had a handful of Nates on CAP so the Brits only suffered limited damage while hitting the airfield quite hard. But they only found and damaged some Babs on the ground. Oh well, Tophat won this round of "shell game" but I'll eventually catch some of his bombers. [:D]

Tophat finally sent his three big fighter Daitais on a sweep of Chunking. I had two squadrons of Hurricanes on 50% CAP, so this worked out to 23 Hurricanes in the air against 26 A6M2s and 54 A6M3s. The end result was 13 Hurricanes shot down and 8 A6M3s shot down. That A6M2 Daitai is Tophat's best and always does a number on my fighters - in this case it scored the majority of Hurricanes that were shot down. But it is still nice to see that the Brits did okay against that crowd of A6M3s. So I've moved another Hurricane squadron in with slightly better experience. If Tophat comes right back with another sweep his fighters will be just a bit more tired, which might make a difference.

At the same time, my IL-4cs hit the airfield at Changsha. I knew that there weren't any planes there, but I wanted to give my Chinese pilots a bit more "cheap" experience, and this will also make Tophat think twice about putting any planes into Changsha during his next "shell game" move. [;)]

Meanwhile, at Soerabaja over 100 Japanese bombers hit from fairly high altitudes. They didn't receive much damage but they didn't cause much damage either. The BBs didn't come back this time so the overall result was that my troops in Soerabaja were able to recover a little bit despite the artillery bombardment. This doesn't mean that they will last much longer, but the fight does continue to cost Tophat time and supplies.

In a surprising move, Tophat bombed the port at Port Moresby this turn with Nells from Rabaul. Fortunately the Sailfish wasn't hit, but I sent it off to Australia despite there still being some flotation damage. It looks as if Tophat may be regaining his interest in PNG.

And in one other rare occurrence, a Betty on Patrol was damaged by flak from one of my subs in the DEI.

Dave Baranyi

[ADavidB]

July 21 -

I spoke too soon last time - the BBs were back at Soerabaja again this turn. They caused a lot of damage but the CD guns were still able to get six hits on Hyuga. However, I doubt that those hits caused any damage. Tophat followed up with big air raids and then another deliberate attack:

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Ground combat at Soerabaja

Japanese Deliberate attack

Attacking force 153001 troops, 1348 guns, 69 vehicles

Defending force 34360 troops, 53 guns, 12 vehicles

Japanese engineers reduce fortifications to 4

Japanese assault odds: 2 to 1 (fort level 4)

Japanese Assault reduces fortifications to 4

Japanese ground losses:
1419 casualties reported
Guns lost 21
Vehicles lost 2

Allied ground losses:
1624 casualties reported
Guns lost 17
Vehicles lost 1
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To give you an idea of what Tophat has brought to the siege I am attaching a screen shot below from the attack. That's a good, balanced attack force.



Tophat sent bombers off to a number of other places too, including Hengchow and Kweilin in China and Lautem in Timor. The Zero sweeps stayed at home. No Allied bomber attacks fly because I was resting the majority of my bomber units and the couple of Chinese units that I had set to fly were rained out. But I've set more bombers to attack next turn.

The good news for me this turn was that Silversides found a small transport TF off of Wake and put a torpedo into a tanker.

Dave Baranyi

[ADavidB]

July 22 -

Tophat finally captured Soerabaja. His troops made a deliberate attack that reduced the fortifications to 3 while obtaining 7:1 attack odds. If I am reading the info screen on the base now, my engineers did some significant damage. So the first stage of the Game is effectively over. I'm about two and a half months better than history as far as my defense goes. Now to see what Tophat will do and what I can do about it.

One thing I can't do anymore is send lots of unescorted medium bombers on attacks. I guessed wrong and Tophat guessed right in regards to my 48 bomber Wellington attack on Wuchow. Tophat had two strong Daitais of Zeros and even some Nates on CAP. As Tophat wrote to me, it was a good thing for me that he didn't have his good Daitai there. [X(] I lost 23 Wellingtons, but the remainder fought their way through, hitting the airport and causing the loss of 17 A6M3s and a couple of Nates; mainly on the ground but also in the air and via operational losses. Tophat also lost an ace pilot who had 13 kills. BTW - Tophat is still 400 aircraft ahead of me in losses, which is around 25% more losses than me.

My IL-4cs also ran into lots of CAP over Canton and damaged a handful of planes but otherwise didn't do a lot of damage on the ground and suffered damage themselves. So it appears that my days of open bombing in China are pretty much over until I start to get some long range fighters. I'm accelerating my pull-back of the Brit air units to India in case Tophat gets some ideas about heading that direction.

My one clear piece of good news this turn was that the tanker that my sub torpedoed off of Wake a day or so sank today. Every little bit counts.

Dave Baranyi

[ADavidB]

July 23 -

I was lucky in a couple of ways this turn. First off, another Japanese AP sank; this was another of the ships that my bombers hit during the Japanese invasions of Timor. Then, in a even better case of luck, it turns out that somehow I didn't set all of my bombers to rest at Chungking last turn and so a couple of partial squadrons set off for Wuchow this turn. The lucky part was that the weather was lousy and the planes turned back without finding the target. If they had reached Wuchow they would have been creamed by the Japanese CAP. So for next turn I made certain that all of the bombers were all set to 10% naval search, which is as good as resting while still doing something.

Tophat sent his massed Sallys after Homan this turn. They did some damage, but not a significant amount. As long as Tophat continues to spread his attacks around to different bases each turn (I suspect that he is trying to avoid my CAP) there won't be any significant accumulation of damage.

I had two planned bombing runs for this turn and they went well. Thirty-nine Forts from the B-17E group that I have in Darwin attacked the airfield at Dili. They blasted the Zeros on CAP, destroying and damaging a handful, and hammered the base. This bomber group is starting to get some nice levels of experience. However, I probably won't leave them in Darwin too much longer - sooner or later Tophat is going to get tired of my bombing raids and send his BBs in to bombard Darwin.

The B-17 squadron in Canton also flew, but this attack was a deliberate "CAP Killer" raid at high altitude. The Forts came in at 30K feet and smashed those Zeros who were able to reach them. This is an effective means for the pilots to gain experience while causing Tophat's Zero pilot pool to slowly bleed.

The only other interesting news was that a Japanese sub was spotted off the East Coast of Australia for the first time. I don't have any shipping in that area, but I do have a handful of DDs sitting around, so I sent out two ASW TFs just in case I get "lucky" again. [:D]

BTW - I wanted to give you an idea of what my current "big ship" situation is like. So I'm posting a listing of the currently available Allied CVs below, and I'll post the same listing for BBs in the next post. I have over three pages of listings for cruisers of all types, so I won't post that. Suffice to say, I am quite comfortable with the current status of my Allied Naval Forces. [;)]

BTW 2 - Next turn I'll be converting Devastators to Avengers on the fifth out of my six US Fleet carriers. So by game-month's end I'll have all six squadrons converted.

Dave Baranyi

[ADavidB]

Here are my BBs...

Dave Baranyi

[Andy Mac]

Ouch 23 Wellingtons its the pilot loss that really hurts the RAF pilot pool is not inexausatable the way the USAAF one is.

Whats the pilot pool status ?

Also will you risk a CV battle if you get Avengers on all Carriers ?

[ADavidB]

ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

Ouch 23 Wellingtons its the pilot loss that really hurts the RAF pilot pool is not inexausatable the way the USAAF one is.

Whats the pilot pool status ?

Also will you risk a CV battle if you get Avengers on all Carriers ?

My Brit pilot numbers are still fairly good, as you can see below. My pool of Wellingtons is a bit low for my tastes, but that's why I've got them heading back to India. But I'm still relatively pleased with the level of Japanese air losses - I'll post an update as of July 24 in the next post.

As far as carriers go - the Avengers allow me to attack Tophat's task forces, particularly invasion task forces, much more effectively. So now I'm in a position where I am comfortable to "go hunting". As far as the KB goes, If I have to fight, I will, and having Avengers makes things a lot better for me. But I'd rather use my carriers as "threats" and let my LBA take care of the KB if necessary.

As each month goes by, the Allied forces and positions get stronger and stronger, and Tophat's supply lines to the front get longer and longer. And Tophat now has a tough decision in front of him - he can keep the KB together in one place and allow me to use my forces in other places, or he can split up the KB and fight me on even or less than even terms. That's the message in the previous couple of postings - I now have more battleships than the Japanese and as many carriers. The quality of my forces may not be quite as good, but if the KB is sitting in Truk and Kwajalein, it can't react in the Far East. And if it goes to the Far East or Australia it can't get back to the Central Pacific for several weeks. And my forces can get to the Fronts in a matter of days everywhere.

So I hope that Tophat keeps on playing it "safe and smart", because that strategy allows me to continue to build my forces. I haven't allowed Tophat to get into a position where he can threaten an Auto Victory, so I'm in no hurry. I don't need to "defeat" the Japanese in 1942 - I just have to avoid losing to them. Come October I'll get P-38s. They aren't modelled in the game as the true killers that they were in the War, but once I have plenty of them that won't matter. And in February 1943 I start to get Corsairs, which are modelled reasonably like their historical counterparts. So by the Summer of 1943 I should be able to do pretty much whatever I want - as long as I don't fritter away my forces ahead of time.

At least that's my theory...[:D]

Thanks for the comments -

Dave Baranyi

[ADavidB]

Here are the air losses as of July 24. I've lost more Wellingtons than I had hoped, but they did their job and can now be rested up while I wait for the next updates for them. But Tophat's air losses are the most interesting to look at. The air campaign has been quite costly for him, and it will only get costlier as he tries to move forward. I haven't lost many "first class" aircraft - I have been battling the Japanese mainly with second line air craft. So I've got a lot to look forward to as we go into the next stage of the War.

Dave Baranyi

[ADavidB]

July 24 -

This was a fairly quiet turn. Tophat is busy deciding upon his next moves and putting his plans in place, and I am equally busy keeping my plans on track. Never-the-less, there was still some action.

Tophat landed more troops at Lautem and bombed it as usual. I'm still resting my B-17s at Darwin and hoping that my Hudsons will attack some ships, but the rain is keeping my guys on the ground.

Rain also affected much of China, but Tophat was able to get off another big air attack on Homan. These attacks aren't doing much damage, but they are using some supplies each turn. It's just a good thing that I don't have any Chinese troops in coastal bases where the Japanese battleships could come in - the BBs really made the difference in Soerabaja.

I forgot to stand down the B-17s at Canton this turn, so they attacked Baker again. Fortunately, they were still at high altitude, so I didn't lose any of them, but they didn't do much because they were still fatigued from the last mission. So this turn I made certain that my first action was to stand them down.

I haven't been doing any bombardments in China for quite some time, but my troops in Kungchang have built up nicely and their Japanese opponents have weakened a lot, so I'm going to try a bombardment just to see what the Chinese can accomplish. Now if only my bombers would fly again after the Japanese besiegers.

August is nearing but there aren't any significant reinforcements coming in the next couple of weeks, and only a handful of Brit cruisers are getting upgrades. Also, it appears that no Allied ships will get upgrades in September. I'll just have to make certain that my ships are in shipyard ports come October.

Dave Baranyi

[ADavidB]

July 25 -

Lots of odds and ends happened this turn. Things started out with the Japanese automatically occupying Dobodura. I've never quite figured out what the controlling factor is for automatic occupation - there are other empty bases sitting around that have remained in Allied hands game-months after all the nearby bases have been captured or occupied. I presume that there is some sort of "die roll" effect involved.

Japanese troops are still landing at Lautem. I can't believe that these are all combat troops; I bet that Tophat is also landing support troops simultaneously. Bettys flew in and attacked my troops at Lautem, and my Hudsons flew and attacked the invasion fleet off of the base. Zeros on LR CAP intercepted the first flight of Hudsons, hitting the bombers hard with the result that there were no hits on the ships. A second partial flight of Hudsons then attacked, and the LR CAP was now gone but these bombers also didn't get any hits. However, when a third squadron of Hudsons flew in no CAP appeared, and two APs were hit with bombs. I'm sending my B-17Es in next turn on a ground attack on the Japanese troops at Lautem and to see if my bombers can "hunt" some Zeros.

There was a lot of rain in China again, so Tophat only got off one weak bomber attack at Kweilin that hit nothing and also received no flak damage. This lull in Japanese air attacks is good because it is allowing my forces to continue to recover in China. My Chinese bombers hit the Japanese troops at Kungchang again, causing a nice bit of damage, and then my ground troops followed up with a nice bombardment. But I don't want to use up too much in the way of supplies on bombardments because I would rather use the supplies to continue to rebuild my Chinese forces, so I reset the Chinese troops at Kungchang to "defense" again for next turn. BTW - next turn I am also sending my Wellingtons off to hit the Japanese troops at Homan; Tophat is sending yet another 2 units to Homan to join the 25 that he already has there. I keep on checking the "Soviet Activation" warning, but somehow Tophat has avoided triggering it, despite the number of units that he has committed to sieges in China.

Dave Baranyi

[ADavidB]

July 26 -

This was an odd turn in several ways. First off, the SIGINT reports had a lot more "radio" intercepts than usual instead of the more normal reports of units or quantities of troops and so on. Then there were a lot less "sightings" than usual - the Ops Report was about a third of its usual size. I'm not sure what, if any, significance there is to these two occurrences.

Another odd thing about this turn was that CAP was absent on both sides. Tophat was able to bomb Homan and Kweilin without Allied interference, and I was able to bomb Japanese troops at Homan and Lautem without any LR CAP showing up. I wonder if Tophat is upgrading his fighter units?

In other news, Tophat tried another deliberate attack at Lautem, but it failed again. It turns out that he just has one big NLF unit there, so I'm not sure why he keeps on coming back to unload more troops. Maybe he initially sent only part of a unit, or my early air attacks on his TFs caused his ships to return to port without unloading fully the first time. In any event, the invasion ships that were damaged last turn by Hudsons started to return to Kendari, and one of my subs got in position to try to attack a cripple, but it missed. That's okay; there are a couple more Allied subs in the route back to Kendari.

Otherwise, things were quiet so I was happy to be able to continue to position and build up my forces.

Dave Baranyi

[ADavidB]

July 27 -

Tophat and I played more aerial cat-and-mouse in China this turn. Tophat put some LR CAP over Homan, but I bombed the Japanese troops at Hengchow instead. I'm resting all of my China-based bombers next turn just so Tophat gets to tire out more of his fighters flying LR CAP as he tries to guess where I'll strike next. There actually isn't a lot of reason for me to go into a serious bombing campaign right now anyway, particularly in China. Most of my Chinese troops are finally coming to full strength and going into the "black" in supply, and I don't want to affect that right now. So I'll continue to send out the occasional nuisance raid, but otherwise I'll focus on rebuilding my replacement air inventories.

The Japanese troops at Lautem tried another deliberate attack and failed again, although the fortifications dropped again. I expect that the next attack ought to capture the base. Never-the-less, I am sending my B-17s again to hit the ground troops, as much for practice as anything else.

Otherwise, things were quiet at the front lines and busy in the rear for me, and likely for Tophat too.

Dave Baranyi

[ADavidB]

July 28 -

Wow! A minor miracle occurred today (or maybe not so minor a miracle, depending upon how you look at it). The Tennessee finally reduced its system damage down to 3 and received its April 1942 upgrade, including radar! This is the first of the Pearl Harbor BBs to be repaired down to "upgrade" capability. The Tennessee is now on its way back to Pearl to join the other three 20-knot BBs that have radar and are fully repaired. I still have three Pearl Harbor survivors in West Coast ports undergoing repairs, along with three more fully repaired BBs in the West Coast that won't get radar until the October 1942 upgrade. (I won't send an Allied combat ship to the Front Lines unless it has radar.)

Widespread rain was the other "big" news as air offenses everywhere were washed out. Tophat did get some Lilys off to bomb Homan, but they didn't do much damage. However, Tophat has just brought even more artillery units into the force that is besieging Homan, and their first bombardment was quite strong. (I think that there are now 8 Japanese dedicated artillery units attacking Homan.) So to slow things down a bit in Homan I am sending Chinese as well as British bombers to attack the Japanese troops next turn. But Gawd Knows if the rain will let up enough to let the attacks happen.

And as I pretty much expected, the Japanese invaders captured Lautem this turn. All the Dutch troops surrendered. The DEI is finally under total Japanese control.

Dave Baranyi