Ocean of Blood. FatR (J) vs. Bigred (A).

[FatR]

Fighter Program

OK, now for the hard part. In a stock game, it is actually the easy part. Basically just build lots and lots of Nakajima Ha-35 and start expanding production of Najajima Ha-45 somewhere in late 1943.

Reluctant Admiral mod, however, adds one historical correction (Tojo now uses Nakajima Ha-34) and several major changes to Zero model line that can make Nakajima Ha-35 completely obsolete by late 1943, instead of late 1945, in favor of Mitsubishi Ha-33.

IJAAF fighter program still remains relatively uncomplicated, since, as mentioned above, Nakajima Ha-34 will be one of my main engine types anyway. I'm putting major effort into advancing Tojo and will probably build it in parallel with Frank until late 1944 at the very least. Considering likely economic difficulties at that point, probably for the entire war. Part of Oscar production will be switched to Tojo when the latter is available, as well as my Nate plant. I tentatively aim for 70 Oscars and 100 Tojos per month at that point. Frank is aslo a focus of serious research effort. Ki-84b has a better service rating in this mod, and I want it to be the defining end-war IJAAF fighter.

As about Army fighter-bombers, I plan to make Ki-45 KAIa instead of the latter Ki-45 versions until Ki-102 fighter-bomber arrives. KAIb and KAIc just suck because of their low-accuracy main cannons. I'll build a few KAIc just to upgrade 27th Sentai to them.

Now for the main conundrum. I'm about to reach production of 290 Ha-35 engines per month. Even with Ki-48 out of picture, and A6M3 not building (I was mistaken earlier - Yokosuka Ku T-3 requires A6M3b to upgrade from its floatplanes, so there isn't much reason to build A6M3) this stil isn't nearly enough, considering that Rufe and Nick arrive soon and I want at least 30 per month of both (current consumption is 270/month). With availability of Ki-44 the demand will be reduced by about 60/month, J1N1-C will add about 20/month, but then, in 1943, the production will take a huge hit (at least 130/140 month), if I try to keep my forces full of top-notch planes, as Kate, Rufe and Ha-35-using Zero fighter will become obsolete. The latter will be replaced by A6M8 with its Mitsubishi Ha-33 engine. Further complicating things, A7M2 will be available in late 1944, and it will require a new engine (Mitsubishi Ha-43) again.

Unlike the situation with Mitsubishi Ha-32, practically no decent late-war planes use Ha-35. Except for A6M7, which sucks, but has no competitors for the Navy's best fighter-bomber spot. There is that suicide box Ki-115, but it is available very late. The remaining production of Ki-43s (for training and escort purposes) won't be able to consume much of the produced engines. And with huge plants that make Ha-35s, conversions will be not only exceedingly costly, but slow.

After considering all this, I decided on the following:

1)I'll expand Nakajima Ha-35 production to 310/month (subject to further expansion in case of massive losses). With the existing surplus, this should enable us to provide everything, except A6M3b, with engines until the availability of Tojo alleviates the burden. And accumulation of suprlus of other airframes might allow us to produce A6M3b intermittently as well. But we don't need that many of them at this point, they are useable only to a limited number of airgroups.

2)I'll NOT upgrade the main Zero plant to A6M8 and I'll NOT switch Nakajima Ha-35 production to Mitshubishi Ha-33. I'll keep A6M5b and redirect my research effort towards bringing A7M2 into production even earlier. The reason for this is purely economical. I don't believe Japan can afford switching the main engine consumed by IJN fighters twice per war. With superior versions of Ha-35 Zero available early, and, hopefully, Allied fleet smashed hard in 1942, I believe the Empire will be able to hold on until A7M production kicks in.
Eventually, the big 200/month plant will be converted to Mitsubishi Ha-43, and the smaller plant will keep producing engines for A6M7 and Ki-115. Moreover, J1N1-S will be used as the Navy's primary night fighter instead of P1Y2-S. It is mostly inferior, but it uses Ha-35, instead of Mitshubishi Ha-32, which will be intensively used by IJNAF's twin-engined bombers, torpedo bombers and float fighters.

3)I'm already building up a reserve of Mitshubishi Ha-33 engines. The production will be further expanded in the future. A third Zero plant, specifically for A6M8, and with modest production, will be eventually added. As Mitshubishi Ha-33 powers land-based interceptor versions of Zero, some of the late-war Fleet kamikaze planes, plus the final version of Oscar also uses it in this mod, it is not likely to become utterly obsolete even if A6M8 is phased out entirely and Ki-100 is never produced (althouh if the state of Japanese economy allows it at all, I'd prefer to try and build some Ki-100 instead of Ki-43, if only to check if MVR boost given to it in this mod, managed to make this plane decent).

[John 3rd]

Hey Sir. Thanks for the detailed discussion on the plane types and engines. We've just restarted our campaign with RA, 2b and am debating the choices before me as the war starts. With you and BK the chief developers in aircraft and alternatives for RA, I am very interested in your thoughts!

[FatR]

You might want to disregard my ramblings, I'm overtly cautious with my production here[:)]. Actually, upgrading factories seems to be rather cheap. But disruptions of production still are a major concern. This is probably a more important reason to minimize the number of major production changes.

[FatR]

While I'm waiting for another turn from Geoff, I want to add, that another principle of my air program, which is implicit, but not stated directly, in the plans above, is avoiding overbuilding early in the war. I wouldn't have been making as many planes as I do if not for huge losses (primarily of IJAAF bombers), and I am, as you can see, not afraid to shut down facilies, if I have enough planes in the pool. While I can easily increase the production by a few hundred planes more, I prefer to delay new investments in aircraft industry to the point when later-generations planes, particularly ones whose advanced modifications will serve me until the end or, at least, until very late in the war, such as Tojo and Helen, become available.

[FatR]

Western Java Invaded

On the map below is the situation on February 20th. Kalidjati was taken by an airborne assault (2nd Raiding Regiment), with a squadron of Dutch bombers destroyed on the ground in the process. Yubari is pulling troops towards mountain bases, but I doubt he has AV to hold anything except Malang for any amount of time, simply because nearly all Dutch infantry is in Malang (where it repelled my initial assault with 5:1 odds, so I might consider pulling a part of my forces from there and leaving only a regiment to besiege the Dutch).

Allied forces put little and futile resistance on the sea (losing 2 PT boats and having a sub or two damaged) and none in the air. In term of ships, losses during the invasion of Java so far are limited to one short-legged AP (to a sub attack).

My biggest mistake of this campaign was not adding 4th Tank Regiment from Philippines to the invasion. True, Japanese tanks are very weak, but they should have been sufficient for routing base forces.



...In the meantime, dozens of warships, subs transports and LCUs are converging on Truk. We'll start loading the Midway invasion in 3-4 days, as soon as some fast AKs and xAPs will return to Tokyo from DEI. While at the moment I have plenty of slow 3-hex xAKs modified for carrying troops, nearly all of my fast transports are busy somewhere.

[FatR]

The Battle of Pucheng

Oh, the buffed China is such a black hole in this mod. Primarily for my aviation. On February 20, goddamn AVG made its return, challenging my planes in the skies over Pucheng, which I bombed every day for nearly a week, except for 19th, when planes did not fly due to thunderstorms. Seeing poor results on 18th in such bad weather, also I stood down some airgroups for 19th and forgot to reissue them orders for 20th, which contributed to the ensuing Japanese defeat. We got 6-8 fighters in exchange for 3 (notably, some of the enemies flew H-81s instead of P-40Es again), but almost 15 bombers were shot down, most of them IJN planes with their precious pilots. I cannot use them this way, and in fact I needed these units to go back to training anyway (they are mostly newly arrived units of 9th Air Fleet, with pilots not quite up to stuff - fresh Nell units have no experience in NavSearch, as is typical for Netty kokutais, and so on).

So, seeing as the weather seems to be clearing, I ordered another, hopefully the final 250-plane raid on Pucheng and a deliberate attack. We have only a little bit over 2000 AV against approximately 4200, in mildly rough terrain and with level 1 Chinese forts, but the Chinese army should be without supply, as all roads connecting to Pucheng have my units sitting on them for several days now (see the map below). Yubari tried to sally forth from Chuhsien and cut my own supply line, but the rearguard brigade allowed Japanese to keep the control of the hexsides and therefore the road.



In other news, the northern army made it safely to Nanyang. One of its divisions is very much trashed and has only about 50 AV due to massive disablement, the rest need a bit of R&R as well.

[FatR]

Battle of Pucheng: Outcome at the Moment

Well, not really a satisfying one it was:

Ground combat at Pucheng (86,57)
Japanese Deliberate attack
Attacking force 58730 troops, 553 guns, 206 vehicles, Assault Value = 2041
Defending force 135182 troops, 760 guns, 0 vehicles, Assault Value = 4344
Japanese engineers reduce fortifications to 0
Japanese adjusted assault: 1242
Allied adjusted defense: 1379
Japanese assault odds: 1 to 2 (fort level 0)

Combat modifiers
Defender: terrain(+), disruption(-), preparation(-), experience(-), supply(-)
Attacker:

Japanese ground losses:
3176 casualties reported
Squads: 10 destroyed, 281 disabled
Non Combat: 12 destroyed, 387 disabled
Engineers: 1 destroyed, 49 disabled

Allied ground losses:
1579 casualties reported
Squads: 2 destroyed, 161 disabled
Non Combat: 6 destroyed, 98 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 6 disabled

Assaulting units:
15th Division
1st Ind.Mixed Brigade
39th Division
17th Division
22nd Division
56th Infantry Brigade
138th Infantry Regiment
13th Army
RGC Army
4th Mortar Battalion

Defending units:
58th Chinese/B Corps
58th Chinese/A Corps
74th Chinese Corps
44th Chinese Corps
70th Chinese Corps
72nd Chinese Corps
86th Chinese/B Corps
86th Chinese/A Corps
86th Chinese/C Corps
50th Chinese Corps
78th Chinese Corps
49th Chinese Corps
26th Chinese Corps
58th Chinese/C Corps
23rd Group Army
3rd War Area
30th Group Army


Considering all the modifiers, stacked against the Chinese, this was quite underwelming. Aviation took out about 70 squads more in Pucheng on this turn, but the result remain ufavorable. Japanese AV dropped by almost 500. Unless Yubari remains really passive, he'll be able to break my blockade before I can starve and grind down his troops.

The only bright spot in China is the fact that Japan currently produces 29 infantry squads/day, and China only 6-7. Also, I hope their huge army will exhaust their supply in the near future. But my own supply situation is not particularly good. In fact, reserves at Home Islands are dropping steadily. I'm going to reorient my shipping towards hauling supply to China from Formosa (where Japanese have a 130+ k of supply stockpiled at the moment), and them maybe Luzon as well. This should also save some fuel.

[LoBaron]

FatR just an idea (and please also treat it with a grain of salt because my overall picture of the situation neccesarily is bad):

If you are at least somehow able to keep up the pressure at Pucheng. If possible attack.

supply(-) means only that some of the units are already affected by the supply level, it doesn´t tell you if they are out of supply
in general. This could mean that currently only 1 unit up to now has less than required supply.

What makes this so dangerous to your opponent that you can repair disabled squads and keep up combat operations. The longer
he also has to do both the faster his supply level will drop. If you continue to attack (if possible) you will overwhelm him sooner than you think.
He wont be able to bring his disabled squads back to combat readiness as you are able to.

[FatR]

I plan to continue. In fact, I have no choice but to continue pounding Pucheng - should Japanese give up there, it will be impossible to defend against the threats that Chinese can create from their central position. My troops are about to reopen the line of communications with Foochow on the coast, so even if Yubari sallies forth from Chuhsien with everything and cuts the road to Shangai area, my besieging army will be able to get supply.

I'm afraid, though, that Chinese have far more uncommitted AV than I do, and my aviation can't be everywhere to slow down their movements. If Yubari merely moves more troops to Chuhsien, I'll just cut them off again, but a strong drive against Amoy or/and Nanchang can be very problematic to defend against. At the moment just one Chinese unit attempts to move past Nanchang, only a tank regiment blocks it for the moment, but IJAAF bomber force will dance on its head on the next turn, so I doubt it will be able to successfully attack. But a massive attack, particularly against both targets, can be very problematic. I'm pondering moving half of the 500 AV present from the stand-off at Canton, where our position is pretty secure, if my esteemed opponents attempts another move towards the coast.

[FatR]

Recent News

Cagayan fell on February 23 after I brought the entire 16th Division there. This Mindanao adventure was incredibly costly as far as operational tempo is concerned.

On Java Japanese troops took Batavia without a fight. Enemy still concentrates in mountain base hexes. Unfortunately, Japanese stil will not be able to cleansweep Java entirely in February, simply due to the constraints of troop movement. This, alongside with my big mistake of Singapore, where I allowed British to rebuild their forts, because aircraft losses mounted too heavily, makes a large landing on Oahu before the expiration of the amphibious bonus virtually impossible. I clearly need to readjust my strategic plans, although I'm going for surrounding islands anyway.

Two echelons of Midway invasion force (the second carries the garrizon units) had sailed from Tokyo. The Combined Fleet had sailed from Truk on 25th, with 5 CVs, 1 CVL, 9 BBs, 6 CAs and a whole lot of DDs. KB-2 with Soryu, Kirishima, 2 CAs and the rest of Japanese CVLs and CVEs is ordered to sail on 26th. It'll hang to the northwest of Kwajalein, to move into position should USN gives battle at Midway and pursue stragglers. I placed Ryujo instead of Soryu into the main KB force because it carriers more Zeros and better pilots. I've concentrated quite a lot of subs at Kwajalein and now they are moving out - Glen carriers will form a picked line of the both sides of French Frigate Shoals, while shorter-legged subs will patrol around Oahu.


In China there are currently 3 points of interest, marked on the map below. In the zone 1, 2 Chinese corps pushed a newly-raised brigade from the road to Pucheng, now it retreats to Nanyang to recover as a part of the city's garrizon. In the zone 2, 2 brigades and one tank regiment, heavily supported by aviation, caught a Chinese corps in open terrain and routed it on 24th, at practically no cost, bringing the number of Chinese squads destroyed in February to over 480 (not alot, compared to our earlier victories, but at least far higher than their replacement rate and about twice as high as Japanese infantry casualties).

In the zone 3, Chinese are evacuating Sinyang. Maybe Yubari intends to assault Hankow with all his might, but as Hankow has over 800 AV, heavy urban terrain and level 5 forts that are about to reach level 6, I very much doubt his army will be able to do so, particularly after running the gauntlet of massed Japanese air raids on the way. Maybe he just want to retreat before his force is cut off and defeated. Still good news, as I won't need to exhaust my forces battling his large army at the forested terrain at Sinyang. If I'm lucky, Japanese will even be able to catch his rearguard in the open. Thankfully, my main force at Nanyang was ordered to move even before Chinese started their maneuver.

[Yakface]

Hi FatR. Was just readin your AAR (nice work BTW) and I had a thought:

ORIGINAL: FatR

My troops are about to reopen the line of communications with Foochow on the coast

Did one of your units march from Foochow to Pucheng? I don't know which hexside you entered the Pucheng hex from originally, but unless a unit crossed the hexside from which you are trying to draw supplies, you will not be able to supply across it.

[FatR]

Originally my forces entered Pucheng by the road from the northwest. Now a regiment from the coast marched there from Foochow and changed the hexside ownership, so supplies continue flowing.

[FatR]

On Artillery

At the moment, Japanese forces are storming the fortifications of Singapore once again, taking horrible, disproportional, crippling casualties in the process. Singapore is bloody difficult to take with the nerfed artillery, and in the future games I'll either plan the Mersing invasion better or leave Singapore for last. Anyway, now I have a bit data that allows us to gauge the effects of artillery during the assaults, as we had two attacks against level 3 forts in the same place, that differed mostly in the number of ART units that supported the assault:


February 13th:
Ground combat at Singapore (50,84)
Japanese Deliberate attack
Attacking force 66851 troops, 753 guns, 239 vehicles, Assault Value = 2134
Defending force 35303 troops, 531 guns, 441 vehicles, Assault Value = 794
Japanese engineers reduce fortifications to 2
Japanese adjusted assault: 1738
Allied adjusted defense: 1981
Japanese assault odds: 1 to 2 (fort level 2)
Combat modifiers
Defender: terrain(+), forts(+), morale(-), experience(-)
Attacker:

Japanese ground losses:
2414 casualties reported
Squads: 111 destroyed, 144 disabled
Non Combat: 133 destroyed, 184 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 18 disabled
Guns lost 17 (3 destroyed, 14 disabled)

Allied ground losses:
1305 casualties reported
Squads: 22 destroyed, 43 disabled
Non Combat: 52 destroyed, 136 disabled
Engineers: 3 destroyed, 20 disabled
Vehicles lost 63 (11 destroyed, 52 disabled)


Assaulting units:
113th Infantry Regiment
4th Division
33rd Division
40th Brigade
5th Division
148th Infantry Regiment
56th Recon Regiment
56th Engineer Regiment
18th Division
41st Infantry Regiment
Southern Army
1st RF Gun Battalion
92nd JAAF AF Bn
25th Army
3rd Ind. Mountain Gun Regiment
18th Medium Field Artillery Regiment
3rd Medium Field Artillery Regiment
56th Field Artillery Regiment
96th JAAF AF Bn


February 26th:
Ground combat at Singapore (50,84)
Japanese Deliberate attack
Attacking force 70562 troops, 946 guns, 435 vehicles, Assault Value = 2219
Defending force 35571 troops, 527 guns, 424 vehicles, Assault Value = 822
Japanese adjusted assault: 2534
Allied adjusted defense: 1549
Japanese assault odds: 1 to 1 (fort level 3)
Japanese Assault reduces fortifications to 2

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

Japanese ground losses:
4817 casualties reported
Squads: 12 destroyed, 328 disabled
Non Combat: 4 destroyed, 380 disabled
Engineers: 2 destroyed, 47 disabled
Vehicles lost 73 (1 destroyed, 72 disabled)

Allied ground losses:
1977 casualties reported
Squads: 23 destroyed, 44 disabled
Non Combat: 29 destroyed, 237 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 12 disabled
Vehicles lost 46 (2 destroyed, 44 disabled)
Units destroyed 1

Assaulting units:
40th Brigade
5th Division
56th Engineer Regiment
56th Recon Regiment
33rd Division
18th Division
4th Division
148th Infantry Regiment
41st Infantry Regiment
Southern Army
10th Ind. Mountain Gun Regiment
56th Field Artillery Regiment
3rd Ind.Hvy.Art. Battalion
25th Army
8th Medium Field Artillery Regiment
9th Ind.Hvy.Art. Battalion
20th Ind. Mtn Gun Battalion
1st Hvy.Artillery Regiment
2nd Ind.Hvy.Art. Battalion
15th Ind.Art.Mortar Battalion
92nd JAAF AF Bn
2nd Ind.Art.Mortar Battalion
1st Medium Field Artillery Regiment
18th Medium Field Artillery Regiment
3rd Medium Field Artillery Regiment
3rd Ind. Mountain Gun Regiment
1st RF Gun Battalion
2nd Mortar Battalion
96th JAAF AF Bn


Judging by these combat results:

1)Artillery does not mitigate one's own casualties at all. In fact, because everything fires at everything, the enemy seems to take more shots at you and inflicts worse damage. Although it is certain that Allied troops had more experience the second time, the difference is too great to be explained just by that.
2)The impact of artillery on enemy casualties seems to be minimal. It is possible that higher Allied losses during the second assault were due to sheer luck.
3)Artillery significantly influences the modified AV.

[FatR]

I was somewhat busy, so my monthly update reflects the situation on March 3rd. Anyway, as this is the day just before first Japanese shells start falling on Midway, it will also serve as a good boundary date as well.

The Victory Screen At The Moment

Except for February 21, when Japanese lost over 500 VPs for some reason I failed to find, the point gap continued to increase.

[FatR]

The Pacific

Combined Fleet approaches Midway. No signs of surface USN units presence so far. Only Catalinas are spotted on the airfield. I wanted to use just CAs to bombard the island before the landing, but the old BB TF mananed to burn most of its fuel somewhere, so it'll bombard and retreat towards Wake to reload fuel and shells at Kwajalein. Two squadrons of Kates will support the landing with the rest remaining on naval attack.

Behind the lines, amphibious TFs for Hilo, Lahaina and Johnston are loading and moving to Kwajalein. I planned to take Johnston with 40th Brigade, but it is still tied in Singapore, so I'll storm the island with 16th Regiment, probably after the main landing at Hawaii, so it can be bombarded and bombed to my heart's content. The main landing itself will happen immediately after Midway, unless the carrier battle happens at Midway and its curse will fall upon IJN again. Or if Yubari decides to hold back totally, in which case it might be wise to temporarily unload troops at Kwajalein and waint until newly-arrived Junyo and repaired Chitose rejoin the fleet.

[FatR]

DEI

Java is about to be finished. Only in Malang Dutch have enough AV to resist at all and their forces in the wester part of the island, which retreated to Tjilatjap rather than contest Japanese advance from Batavia might be cut off before reaching it. Imperial Guards brigade now moves to Samarinda to take it and Balikpapan.

In bad news, Singapore still holds. I've discovered that bombing at 25k feet allows Japanese bombers to fly above the flak and still hit the airfield good enough to keep it damaged (because flak does not screw their accuracy), but alas, I should have experimented with altitude setting much earlier. Because I didn't Singapore took the role of Bataan in this game.

[FatR]

Burma

British decided to cut their losses and retreat to India. A wise move, unfortunately. Not much else to say.

[FatR]

China

Another new attack at Pucheng failed disastrously, causing 1.5k Chinese casualties to over 9k Japanese, even though odds were pretty close.

Looks like Allies are retreating in central China. They troops seem to be heading out of Hankow. I'll do my best to intercept them. Hopefully, with the help of aviation we'll be able to catch at least some units in open terrain.

[FatR]

Detailed Air Losses

Still very heavy. In China it is simply impossible to provide fighters for every airfield from which my bombers fly, and very active bombing campaign obviously leads to high operational losses. But at least Allied losses are pretty heavy too, and, unlike Japanese, they lose more fighters than bombers (particularly in the air), simply because Allied bombers do not fly nearly as much. Japanese fighter losses aren't very high and most of them are operational losses.

[FatR]

Pilot Losses and Pilot Situation

The total number of losses is horrible. However, as you can see looking at the list of best pilots, my fighter aviation is far from overloaded. There are no extreme individual scores and very little losses among top pilots, which indicates the safe degree of air superiority.

Also it should be noted, that while around January the pilot situation temporarily deteriorated, by now we might be better off than at the beginning of the war (except for KB squadrons, as uber-elite pilots from there are practically irreplaceable - but I didn't lose many so far). The lion's share of the pilot losses are IJAAF's bomber pilots, and these train their main relevant skill simply by flying missions.

While we're at it, a few notes about training. I try to fill both frontline and training squadrons with pilots to the maximum, so that very fatigued pilots can be rotated out of of combat without grounding any planes. This also creates a reserve of pilots in the frontline units. I try to train unrestricted fighter units whenever the situation allows such luxury.

Fighters I train in Air skill and Strafing (the latter mostly to raise their Defense further), Army bombers in GrdB only, GrdB + LowN or ASW + LowN. For Navy, I train divebomber crews on NavB and ASW, torpedo bomber, Netty and patrol crews on NavT, NavS and, if the time allows, NavB/GrdB. Short-legged seaplanes are trained on ASW + LowN. I have quite a number of squadrons training for ASW duties and only two actually flying ASW patrols. With their current planes they hardly have a hope of actually sinking anything, so better use the easy times to make them hardcore subhuntes. And their LowN skill will make all those small 4-12 planes squadrons potentially useful at repelling Allied invasions later in the game as well.