Amphibious invasion of Pearl Harbor - results

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

And just how do you "hit a fixed target from a fixed firing location" when a) you can't see the target (well over half of the CD guns in question were sited in "dead ground" with only the well-protected and camoflauged base end stations on the forward slope), and b) if you stay in a "fixed firing position" until the second round arrives, it will be right at the base of your stack (yes, the fire control was that good..., it would be 50-50 for the first shell to hit you standing still, 100% for the second).

As I said, you have intel, pre-war, that gives the ships' fire controllers grid locations. You know where you are from piloting fixes. You adjust your guns to hit that grid square, from whatever angle gives you penetration. You can put the ship at dead stop at the time of firing to remove errors, because it's NIGHT. You get underway and move before the emplacements can respond. Even one ship length is a miss.

Fire control in 1942 was not "that good" at night. From ten miles away, at night, a CA's main battery is a single bright flash, followed by darkness. By the time you shoot back, he isn't there. But he STILL knows where YOU are.

[Graycompany]

Castor, What do you see as a good House rule for this. Limiting the number, or perhaps size of ships (Support) in Amphib TF? I would be interested in your thoughts on that.

[WITPPL]

To everybody who is interesting in this threat:

There were over 200 zeroes supporting the invasion at LR CAP from Kona, Hilo, Lahaina, KB.

Point is that Allied planes just left to a routine bombing of Lihue in the morning [:)] (that is why we have not seen air combat this day.

Lihue could have been taken but I needed a bait. It worked. Lots of resources were engaged there by my opponent.

Invasion came from EAST. Most fighting was for Lahaina and Lihue which is north. Christmas was secured earlier with Palmyra neutralized by constant cruisers patrol. Invasion TFs has left Johnston in the night, went south, turned East. Un detected. I was runing a few cargo TFs few hexes to the North of my PH invasion (while moving east, South of Johnston-Hawaii line), probably it helped to cover main force as they were detected 2 or 3 times.

East of Hawaii: Betties searched East and North east like mad. There were no enemy ships detected so I slowly moved N then NNW. I was moving slow waiting for Lahaina to be taken. Came right on time. Invaded the day after.

Regards.

[Graycompany]

Was a masterful plan, my question is, do you also do taxes?

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

ORIGINAL: herwin

I doubt it can be fixed without a rewrite of the land combat model to support in-hex combat. That's not in the cards for now.

well, it even worked better in WITP, or let´s say it at least produced a more acceptable result so let´s hope the best. The worst thing is the further we get in the game and the more threads and AARs are around, the more people will get the feeling of what you can do easily. In this case I would call it quite easy to take Pearl. Not sure the Japanese player did this for the first time or tried it against the AI too, but when going in without any pre invasion bombardments, no air attacks, just going there, land the sh*t and take the base normally should result in a major fail (and it would fail in 9 out of 10 times in WITP) with immense losses.

I see this sort of thing happening frequently in my neuronal modelling. There's a race condition or a non-linear interaction, and your intuition goes completely off the tracks. This is also quite frequently seen in professional military modelling when there are too many factors in a model. The model spits out a result, and you can't figure out what caused it and the only thing you know is that it's wrong.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: WITPPL

It was my CHOICE a well thought out CHOICE not to waste Betties and its pilots not to mention KB pilots and BBs to save some AKLs. Have You ever considered that there is no one way of doing things? Everything is just and only a risk management (what I do for life).

FWIW, in all this "the CD system doesn't work" talk I offer my recent experience taking that bastion of CD science--Wotje Island (huh?) I had the USS Pennsylvania, two CAs, and four DDs supporting a somewhat rambling invasion (hey, it's me, right?) I had two infantry regiments about 50% prepped, a Seabee unit, and a small, non-EAB combat engineer unit. Recon said there were about 5000 troops, about 30-ish guns, and no armor. I had been LBA and dive-bombing from three other islands for two weeks at a low but consistent rate, and had two fighter squadrons strafing daily for a week prior. My best info was there had been no re-supply of the island for about three months. I thought it was a simple mop up op. (Tarawa and Kwaj. hadn't had a whole lot of CD support.)

I got clocked. Two DDs sunk, both cruisers with 30-ish system damge and some float, the BB with 15 system and fires. There was counter-battery fire every phase from my ships, but it didn't put the CD OOC. In those phases I got the troops ashore with tough losses, including four xAKs and serious damage to eight other merchants, but zero, and I mean ZERO, supplies. Every LCU had a big red zero for supplies. I tried to use emergency barges from Mili to get supplies ashore, and lost about twelve, without landing even one ton of supplies.

For a second wave of resupply I used LSTs and DDs, and still couldn't get anything ashore. They got torn up too. (By now the BB and CAs had retired to lick their wounds.) Finally, out of anger more than anything, I ordered shock attacks without supplies, gambling that the Japanese were nearly out of supply. That worked in two attacks, and all three units (a Naval Guard, the Naval Fortress/CD unit, and a support unit) were wiped out.

Curious now, I re-loaded as Japanese and "peeked" at the remaining untaken islands nearby. A couple are CD farms just like Wotje. I may bypass them now that I know. This is, after all, a "learning" run-through game.

But I for one don't believe there's anything in the code that makes merchants immune while the AI focuses on small escorts.

[sfbaytf]

That is a good point. The IJN did not have specialized landing craft and that would make landing at many points very difficult. Especially a force so dependent on using boats to disembark troops. Much of the area on the windward side has reefs situated far offshore. That would force troops to wade in 6-10 foot water for at least a 1/2-1+ miles to reach the beach. I don't see how they would have brough heavy equipment ashore. You would need amtracs to operate in these areas. Resupply would be a real headache.

Other suitable landing areas without reefs have mild to very serious undertow and depending on the tides, wind and weather can be very rough and trecherous. I could see alot of casualties if conditions were not optimal. Parts of Oahu have a combination of lava rocks, cliffs and tides that make naval landings impossible. Even today fishermen get swept out to sea. There is a reason why you see "memorial" posts alongside the road and names like "the witches brew" are given to currents that will easily sweep you out to the ocean never to be found.

Someone should make a lets invade Hawaii game with 500m hexes. I would certainly be interested. May be time to dig into the historical archives and see just what were the defenses at Oahu in 42.

[WITPPL]

ORIGINAL: Graycompany

Was a masterful plan, my question is, do you also do taxes?

[:D]

No but i have once structured large investment scheme under six tax jurisdictions. Area similiar to our map was covered [:D]

[EUBanana]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

I've not actually seen an invasion directly against coastal defence in AE yet myself aside from Presterjohn landing at Diamond Harbor. But Diamond Harbor just had 4 or so 6 inch guns, and Presterjohn brought about six battleships to support the landings, so I wasn't really expecting much out of them.

Certainly in WitP attacking coastal guns directly was very painful. Those USMC ART units with the long barrelled guns were particularly deadly - if they were around the IJN would do well to invade somewhere else.

The routine has been changed in AE though, all this 'X fires to suppress defences' stuff is new. Maybe this is a skewed result now brought up. Not many ever try to land troops in the face of defences on the scale of Hawaii or Bataan in games. I wonder if it had been playtested for such extremes.

[WITPPL]

Hey, Bluebook,

What were Your troops OPS Status during an invasion?

Rest? Reserve? Combat?

Maybe this is "the clue" as old russians are saying...

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: castor troy


Clearing the beach? The USN wasn´t able to clear the beaches and destroy the Japanese CD at targets that nearly had the same number of guns. How should the IJN be able to do that in 42? Of course they could clear the beaches that have no defense but those probably are seen as areas where you can´t land anyway. It´s not that easy to disembark a couple of division onto a beachhead that isn´t suitable I guess. Those that were suitable would have CD that isn´t easily cleared at all and for sure not a day before the invasion goes in IMO.

I found this highly macro, 30,000-ft illustration of Oahu's defenses:

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/daily ... ws2map.gif

Demonstrably, the planners were defending PH and Honolulu, not the north or west coasts. As I've said, invading PH would have been insane. Kaneohe or Barber's Point, maybe not, at least from a CD perspective.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Graycompany

Was a masterful plan, my question is, do you also do taxes?

Maybe a better question: Does he get away with NOT paying taxes?[:)]

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: John Lansford

Area night bombardment against fortified positions is a waste of shells. 

IIRC, the USN and RN used ship to shore bombardment (area, night) effectively in the Torch landings against the fortified gun emplacements of the Vichy in North Africa.

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: Bluebook

Ok, this is going to be a somewhat long post because Im going to quote the combat report in relevant parts.

Couple of comments:

512 shell hits is "nothing"?

2nd: Where was the airforce and the navy?

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: sfbaytf
I'm waiting for the invasion of San Francisco AAR. Regardless of whether this is "gamey" or not you have to give credit for the audacity and the ability to plan and organize this feat.

Has the attack on Pearl Harbor / Oahu been successful? Did I miss an update indicating that the IJA forces have landed with supplies and have defeated the entrenched American forces?

Shall we see how this audacious enterprise unfolds with the infantry assault before we crown anyone's tactical or strategic genius or assault the game engine?

[Rob Brennan UK]

Kudos on both players for having a really out of the box war ! Wippl for thinking this up ! and BlueBook for taking it on the chin and carrying on !

I hope you both continue to have a fun game (as thats why we play it after all)

Got to say i am v v curious about the next few turns.

Arguing about the exact positon/facing of any CD guns in the game is utterly pointless. We all know that CD guns are treated as units not as historically placed and covering each piece of potential landing space. so stop arguing whats actually impossible to model in game and if you feel its unrealistic then argue ways to improve it, not just cry foul.

[WITPPL]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

ORIGINAL: sfbaytf
I'm waiting for the invasion of San Francisco AAR. Regardless of whether this is "gamey" or not you have to give credit for the audacity and the ability to plan and organize this feat.

Has the attack on Pearl Harbor / Oahu been successful? Did I miss an update indicating that the IJA forces have landed with supplies and have defeated the entrenched American forces?

Shall we see how this audacious enterprise unfolds with the infantry assault before we crown anyone's tactical or strategic genius or assault the game engine?

[Bluebook]

ORIGINAL: WITPPL

Hey, Bluebook,

What were Your troops OPS Status during an invasion?

Rest? Reserve? Combat?

Maybe this is "the clue" as old russians are saying...

All were on combat ops-status.

[Nikademus]

oops.....misread post. delete. [:D]

[sfbaytf]

Kinda makes sense. Had Japan invaded the west side they would have to traverse the Koolau range to get to Pearl Harbor. Much of the Koolau is sheer cliffs and impassible. Coming from the West is from the windward side. The trade winds blow the clouds which then get trapped by the Koolau and then dump copious amounts of rain, thus creating plenty of jungle. Most of the sea area on the west is where the reefs are-no way to just easily unload onto a beach.

As an invader you have 2 choices. Invade PH directly which many believed insane as it was very well defended or Kanahoe or BB point, but then you have the issue of resupply and a very long and difficult overland fight to reach Pearl. Coming from Kaneohe would allow the American to defend the few choke points. There are large parts of the west side that are swamp-even when I lived there US Marine amtracs that were clled out to fight fire in the swamp got bogged down. I would bet that during WW2 there was only primative roads on the Windward side. Resupply would be very difficult.

The North Shore area may be completely unsuitable as the tides and water conditions would make it very risky.