Once Again into the Breach - Mike (J) vs. tc464 (A)

[jrcar]

Heinlein, LL and logistics, I too love all three[&o]

Congrats on the new job, sonds good!

Lots of small tankers and ships that can convert arrive late in 1942. By 1943 we had a surplus. We had slightly different priorities for fuel, which we have mentioned in the AAR. Shipping a fair bit of oil as well as the fuel is rapidly drawn down... we often have TF idle waiting for fuel and oil to arrive (we have ended up repairing all the oil centres that we had captured damaged).

Nice work atrriting the enemy fighters over PM like you are doing.

Good luck with the Darwin invasion.

Cheers
Rob

[DivePac88]

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

Do you use the 7950 TKs for that? I think my issue is that I just don't have enough TKs to go around. I spent some time making notes of what I need to do next turn and am going to keep an average of 5-6 TKs accelerated from now on until I'm comfortable with the flow. I'm pretty sure that everything will be fine by late June when the Std-Cs finish their conversion.

I have also, in the past built-up merchant shipyard capacity; so I can accelerate some S converted the Std-A and Std B xAKs to TKs, which becomes available after 6/42.

[Mike Solli]

Hi guys. Been busy evenings doing paperwork for my upcoming job. I did manage to get a few turns in though. [;)]

7 Apr 42

Pretty quiet turn. Some Betties did a night bombing attack of PM and destroyed a P-40. Too bad it wasn't a Kittyhawk.

Two Zeros met the bombers hitting the tank regiment near Paushan shooting down 3x Hudson Is. Not bad.

A Dutch sub put a torpedo into an xAKL at Timoeka that was hit yesterday. She went down like a rock. Waste of a couple of torpedoes. She was doomed anyway.

I got my first TK reinforcement today. She's headed to Balikpapan to haul oil from there to Davao.

Like I said, not much happening today.

[Mike Solli]

8 Apr 42

Sub War

The xAKL that took a torpedo at Timoeka yesterday took another one today and went down. Fortunately, she landed (stranded actually) her troops on the beach. I’ll pick them up eventually.

SE Fleet

Another sweep of Pt. Moresby destroyed a Kittyhawk for the loss of a Zero, with another Zero destroyed on the ground at Lae by B-17s.

Philippines

A 2:1 attack against Bataan reduced the forts from 3 to 2. The raw AV was reduced from 300 to about 250. The end is near. Unfortunately, the Japanese infantry is pretty fatigued and has a lot of disabled infantry. Two punch drunk fighters, as they say.

Burma

The Allies won’t come up to play.

SRA

I finally landed at Ambon. Dutch CD guns sank an xAK but the troops got safely ashore. Tomorrow they attack.

[Mike Solli]

9 Apr 42

Sub War

Nothing new to report.

SE Fleet

My fighters swept Pt. Moresby again and B-17s bombed Lae again.

Overall, I lost a Zero (shot down by B-17s) vs. 2x Kittyhawks shot down.

Burma

No Brits came up again. My Sallies bomb Akyab daily keeping this airfield damaged.

Over the tank regiment, the Brits sent more bombers and I sent a whopping 2 Zeros for LRCAP. They shot down 2x Blenheim IVs. Soon I’ll have AS at Lashio and will be able to keep more Zeros there, hopefully to shoot down the bombers more quickly.

SRA

A DA at Ambon netted 2:1 odds and reduced the forts from 3 to 2. Losses were light on both sides. I’ll try again tomorrow.

Other Stuff

Reinforcements:

14 Ku T-1 (14x Mavis)
14 Ku T-1 Det (2x Emily)
14 Ku S-1 (9x Rufes)

They all belong to the 21 Air Flotilla which is stationed in the southern SRA. I can use the long range recon down there. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the Rufes yet though.

[Mike Solli]

10 Apr 42

Sub War

Nothing new to report. Moving some subs in the central Pacific to hunt for new game.

5 Fleet

Tomorrow, an amphib TF will reach Dutch Harbor to remove some of the infantry there and pull it back to Adak.

4 Fleet

Nothing new to report.

SE Fleet

The Allied fighters didn’t come up and play over Pt. Moresby.

The B-17s did fly over Lae again (24 of them). One of my 2 Zeros that were flying CAP shot one of the beasts down! Banzai! The B-17s did moderate damage to the airfield and destroyed a Sally and Zero on the ground. Boo! I moved the Betty daitai to Gasmata for safety.

That Betty daitai flew against two Allied TFs a few hexes off Pt. Moresby. They sank an xAKL for no loss. One interesting thing happened. Two P-39Ds showed up as CAP over one of the TFs. My Zero escort shot one down. He’s back to using P-39s again. Heh, heh….

More AS is flowing to Truk, and from there to the SE Fleet area. I want to have 24-48 AS at all of my airfields and 72-96 AS at the major airfields (Rabaul, Lae and Gasmata). Currently, Lae has 72 and Gasmata has 96 (11 Air Fleet HQ just landed there). I want to be able to move my air units around as Ted bombs them. I intend to have more airfields than he can bomb effectively. Buna’s airfield is almost to level 2. There are 24 AS within a day or two of landing there. Milne Bay’s airfield is almost completely repaired. Once I get either one of those airfields in shape (which will be soon), I’ll move some Zeros and Sallies there to carry on bombing/sweeps.

I need more bombers (and fighters too) in this area to be able to successfully bomb Pt. Moresby into the stone age. I’m considering sending the entire 5 Air Division here after the Bataan succumbs. That would give me 78 Oscars and about 90 bombers in addition to the 27 Sallies and the 80+ Betties there now. Two thirds of the bombers are 1E though. I’ll bite the bullet and pay the 75 PP cost to convert the two sentai to Sallies. The bomber chutai will remain 1E and change pilots to ASW pilots for this area. He still has some subs down here. If I do this, then the only air power I will have in the southern SRA will be the 21 Air Flotilla. Not a lot, but it may have to do. I really want to hurt him around Pt. Moresby. If I can keep the airfield damaged (not enough bombers present to do that yet) then I can cut Pt. Moresby off and starve them out for a few months. I estimate that it’ll take 100+ bombers full time to do it, and lots of airfields too. If I do send the 5 Air Division here, that would allow me to use the Betties only in the Naval Attack mode, which is what I prefer.

As I mentioned above, I moved the 11 Air Fleet HQ to Gasmata. That’ll give me torpedo capability to all of the airfields in the area. Now I can move my Betties around and still be able to use them as TBs. Very nice.

Philippines

More bombardment today….

China

That stubborn 5 unit stack is finally dying. Today’s attack caused 1869(239) Chinese casualties to no Japanese casualties. We’re almost there.

The army that will take Sian is moving into the hex. Sian is surrounded on 5 sides so far.

The Loyang attack force is still crawling forward.

Burma

Ted has given up the ghost on Akyab. The airfield is battered and he is pulling troops out of that base. I’m not sure how many but at least some are heading up the road toward Chittagong. If not all of the forces pull out, I’ll surround the remaining troops.

More AS is enroute or arriving daily at Rangoon and disembarking to move forward. The 3 Air Division HQ will arrive in a day or two. It will move to Tongoo to set up shop there. That will be my main bomber base.

There are only a handful of planes at Akyab (probably damaged planes he can’t move). There are 30+ fighters at Chittagong and the remainder of his fighters and all of his bombers at Imphal. I am going to send another CA TF to bombard Chittagong shortly. Unfortunately, some of my CAs at Singapore are upgrading (and will be for another 3 weeks) and some are headed to Soerabaja (will discuss that below). I don’t have many available, but I’ll use what I can. I’m tempted to send a couple of AKEs to Rangoon to reduce the turnaround time for a bombardment TF. I’ll probably do that tomorrow. If I can close Chittagong by sea and get air superiority over Imphal, I’ll force Ted to withdraw his air power or risk its destruction.

SRA

Another DA at Ambon almost took that base. The 3:1 attack against level 2 forts reduced them to level 1 and caused 254(2) Dutch casualties to 71(1) Japanese casualties. I’ll attack again tomorrow.

Those damn Do-24Ks are still flying. This morning, Ted told me that there are still 4 detachments totaling 12 Do-24s. They hit a TF at Namlea badly damaging an xAK. She’ll probably sink. I know the area the planes are flying from, and there are only a few bases they could be. I’m reconning them one by one and a small invasion TF is enroute. I’ll get ‘em. Fortunately, they’re restricted so they’re ultimately doomed.

Australia

My invasion forces are congregating/loading at Soerabaja. Based on my recon of the bases, it looks like Ted doesn’t have much on the coast to oppose me. I think he put too much in Pt. Moresby. There are only a couple of units in Darwin. I’m going to land everything there and take the place. Then I’ll break up one division and use the 3 brigades to take the remaining coastal bases. I’ll then recombine it and drop it off at Hedland. The 5 Division will be a floating reserve. I’ll drop them only if I need the support. I don’t think I will. I’m also considering invading Perth. I think he’s using Perth to import fuel from India/off map. Is Perth below the line where he would get reinforcements?

Most of the coastal bases seem to be unoccupied. If they are, I have two para units available to assist in taking some of those bases (a raiding regiment and an SNLF unit). (If I happen to find the base with the Do-24s, I may use one of the units to take it out.)

I have a TF of 2 BB, 3 CA, 1 CL, 5 DD headed to Soerabaja along with MKB (Shoho, Zuiho, Hosho) for support. The surface TF and MKB will stay to the west to prevent an incursion. I suspect Ted has some surface forces at Hedland. That’s the first place they will check out. Subs will provide a screen to the east but I don’t expect enemy forces to come from that quarter.

Once I take Darwin, I will fly in Zeros and recon from the 21 Air Flotilla for protection. The Netties will remain at Koepang and only move to Darwin if needed.

Once the area is secured, I will withdraw all but 1 division and support in Australia. That remaining division will be withdrawn when I can move other, more expendable, units there for defense. The goal is to hold that area through the end of 1942. Should Ted counterattack, I’ll do a fighting withdrawal with those expendable units and pull out the valuable support units. I’ll try to fly out the better expendable units should that be necessary.

The goal of this operation is to delay the Allied bombing of the southern SRA. If I can cause undue casualties to Aussie units and kill some, so much the better.

Other Stuff

My economy is really starting to pick up. In the 10 days of this month, I’ve increased both supply and fuel by 100k. Very nice. Oil points have increased by 90k and resource points have increased by 540k. I have noticed that there are over 2 million resource points (almost a quarter of the total amount) in Hokkaido. I need to send more xAKs there to move it to Honshu.

HI has increased by 13k this month. That’s not much, but it’ll start to skyrocket in a couple of months when my armament goal hits 100k. Armament points are at 72k, up 6k this month. At that rate, I’ll hit 100k by then end of May. After that happens, I’ll shut off 500 armament factories. That should help the HI stockpile rate quite nicely.

I had to stop acceleration on 1 CV today. Something (or things) worth 54 naval shipbuilding points kicked in. My naval shipbuilding point pool is down to 94 (a bit lower than I like) so the excess points will be allowed to build. Once the Junyo arrives (in about 3 weeks), that’ll free up 84 points. At that time I’ll restart the CV acceleration. I’ll probably accelerate another DD or two as well.

I have 3x TKs accelerating. I’ll get one in 2 weeks and the other 2 in a month. That should tide me over until the Std-Cs come out in late June. Then I suspect I’ll be in pretty good shape.

Vehicle points are doing well too. I went over 10k on 6 Apr 42. I upgraded 2x tank regiments which dropped me to 9200 and am going up from there. My goal is to upgrade all tank regiments in the future 1 and 2 Tank Divisions. I’ll continue to upgrade them each time the pool exceeds 10k.

When I get the units to fill out those two tank divisions, I’ll need 1035 PPs to transfer them from the Kwantung Army to the 25 Army. I am currently at 1009 PPs and will keep that number above 1050 to be safe. Those units don’t arrive until Jun 42, so this shouldn’t be an issue.

In a few days I get another 2E bomber unit for training. This will be the first unit to train my future Kamikaze pilots. Won’t those rookies be surprised! I’m not sure what goals I will have for those guys. I don’t expect to use the 50/70 I use for the other guys.

I’m still having an issue with IJN fighter pilots, but not from the reason you may think. There are basically two sets of IJN fighter pilots that are considered trained, 70+/70+ and 50+/70+. I have plenty of the former but not enough of the latter. My goal is to stock up on the former to be reserved for KB. The latter will be primarily land based replacements. Some of my land based fighter units are short on pilots but I don’t want to use the 70+ exp pilots for them. I need to wait until the next cull (15 Apr) to get those replacements. What hurt was that I got a couple of reinforcement land based fighter units that sucked all of the 50+ exp pilots out of the pool. My goal for land based fighter units is 1/3 70+ exp and 2/3 50+ exp. I’m also noticing that the 50+ pilots in combat gain experience pretty quickly. Nice!

[Mike Solli]

11 Apr 42

Sub War

Nada.

5 Fleet

The 74 Infantry Regiment is being withdrawn from Dutch Harbor (every time I write that I think of Deadliest Catch) and pulled back to Adak as a garrison.

4 Fleet

Nothing new to report.

SE Fleet

A small skirmish over Pt. Moresby cost a Zero and Kittyhawk. My pilot was recovered.

The B-17s visited Lae again shooting down a defending Zero and putting more damage on the airfield. Two B-17s were reported lost on the way home.

The 11 Air Fleet HQ is now operational at Gasmata. This is great! Torpedoes everywhere. To celebrate, a dozen Betties flew with torpedoes and sank an AM and xAKL in Pt. Moresby harbor for no loss.

Philippines

More bombing of Bataan reduced the raw AV to <250. Another DA will go in tomorrow.

China

The attacks against the 5 surrounded units just east of Sinyang finally came to fruition. Four of the 5 units were finally destroyed in the attack. For no Japanese loss, 7232(1043) Chinese were destroyed. Another attack tomorrow to finish off that last unit. Then, they march one hex to take care of the remaining 3 units of the 45-50 units that were cut off at the beginning of the war.

The Sian attack force is going to bombard Sian tomorrow to test the waters. There are an estimated 130k Chinese troops so this may take a while. I am going to buy out some of the Manchurian artillery that has been hanging out so far this war and send them to China. They will be needed at Sian. There is a good sized army there but only 1 artillery regiment.

Burma

The British Akyab garrison is definitely in retreat. It’s too bad that I don’t have the ability to cut them off. There are an estimated 40k troops in the garrison and crawling through the jungle doesn’t allow much maneuver. That’s ok. Akyab is out of commission and now I’m setting my sights on Chittagong (fighter base – about 33 fighters) and Imphal (bomber base – 30 or so bombers and half a dozen fighters).

As I type, my ground forces are working on 2 fronts. They are flowing forward (more like crawling, really) to cut off and invest Imphal, but this will take some time, and moving toward taking Akyab. I have quite a bit of artillery supporting the Imphal force, which may be needed. There are also some tank regiments along to zip up and down the road network once I get there. The Akyab force is the 56 Division and some AT units. After taking Akyab, they’ll form a defensive line along the river in the jungle to defend that part of the world. Hopefully, Ted will be content to remain at Chittagong. By July, I’ll have more reinforcements for Burma – the two Tank Divisions and another Infantry Division (yet to be named) from Manchuoko.

For the Imphal invasion, I have 4x infantry divisions, a couple tank regiments and a lot of artillery. The goal is to make that portion of the world untenable for Ted. I want him to withdraw, pushing back his forward airfields. For me, this is all about air power. Eventually, he’ll overwhelm me in the air, but I want to delay that for as long as I can. If I can take the Imphal complex, I can forward base some fighters here to continue to take the war to Ted. I’m pretty happy with the air war here so far. Ted’s low on fighters. My Oscar pool is ~75 or so and I’m looking for the Tojo IIa by July. Right now the Tojo R&D factories (3x30) are not completely repaired but they are getting very close. I’m considering shutting off my Oscar factories until the pool is reduced to <50. I don’t want a huge pool of Oscar Ics once the Tojo comes out. They’ll pump out 90 Tojos a month.

My Zero pool is currently empty and I can use a couple dozen more to fill out my two new daitai but they can’t receive more planes for another 4 and 6 days. By the time they can receive planes, I’ll be able to give them 12 and at least 6 more planes respectively. The loss of Zeros is higher than I had planned but not by much. I’ll cope. There are other places where I can pull out some of the reserve Zeros to replenish the pool if needed. With my Zero factories at 100, I get 3-4 planes a day.

If you recall, I’m skipping the A6M3 altogether. My next upgrade will be the A6M3a. I’ll use them for my carrier planes and use the A6M2 on land. With the pool expected to be low, I should be able to replenish the pool with planes as I upgrade daitai. I’m happy with my A6M2 situation.

I have 1x60 A6M3a fully repaired and 5x30 A6M3 almost completely repaired. As they are repaired, they will upgrade to the A6M3a. Once the A6M3a comes online, I’ll let 120 become operational, upgrading the 3x30 to the A6M5. There are currently 2x30 A6M5 fully repaired (from the A6M2-N). The 5x30 A6M5 should help accelerate that quite a bit. I’ll decide whether or not to make one of them operational when the time comes.

Note that the 100 A6M2s will be shut off (when the A6M3a becomes operational) and wait until late war to be turned back on when the Sen Baku becomes operational (and then will follow the upgrade path). This means that late war, there should be a large and steady supply of the late war Zeros/Zekes available.

How in the world did I get on that topic?!

SRA

All of my commodities are steadily climbing, which is a good sign. I’m able to ship supply out of Japan to wherever it is needed. Next is China. I’m going to ship ~100k supply there to get the supply levels up a bit. The shortage of supply there is causing my attacks to wait on supply. Not good. It isn’t critical but I wanted to wait until I was sure that there was sufficient supply elsewhere first. I will have to ship more supply to Soerabaja. Right now there is enough supply there to continue to repair/expand oil, refinery, resource, repair yard and HI for about a month. I’m building the repair yard to 20. It’s nice to have a bit of that capability down there.

Ambon finally fell today. I captured some 139WH-3s and a Catalina, but no Do-24s. I did spot their base though. It’s on one of the islands SE of Java. It’s where I thought he had them and an invasion TF is a couple hexes away from there. They’ll land their troops there tomorrow. He’s running out of places to hide them. Heh, heh.

The rabble in Sumatra is being pushed north and south along the west coast. There isn’t much left but they’re still there. The bad part of all this is that it’s taking 2x infantry divisions (2 Division pushing south and 4 Division pushing north) to do it. Once Sumatra is cleared, 4 Division will become the garrison and I’m not sure what will happen to 2 Division. Reserve possibly….

Other Stuff

Reinforcement: xAK Teishun Maru at Saigon – This is a Gozan class, the smallest xAK in the Japanese inventory. It’s a nice class, small and 12 kts. I like ‘em.

The Soryu is completely repaired and is leaving Tokyo Harbor bound for Truk. She should arrive in about 4-5 days to merge with KB.

I’m thinking about pulling KB back to Saipan. There are Allied subs prowling around Truk. My surface and air ASW are doing nothing but locating them. I’ll probably make my decision tomorrow. If I decide to move KB, then the Soryu will just head for Saipan.

[Empire101]

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

10 Apr 42

The B-17s did fly over Lae again (24 of them). One of my 2 Zeros that were flying CAP shot one of the beasts down! Banzai!

It feels so good when you bring down one of those monsters!!!

Things looking good in Burma, keep up the pressure!!

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

Vehicle points are doing well too. I went over 10k on 6 Apr 42. I upgraded 2x tank regiments which dropped me to 9200 and am going up from there. My goal is to upgrade all tank regiments in the future 1 and 2 Tank Divisions. I’ll continue to upgrade them each time the pool exceeds 10k.

Now why did'nt I think of that.

How many vehicle points are you producing a turn Mike?
I'm curious to know as I am constantly running out of points, even though I've expanded my capacity to over 400 points a turn.


As I've said before, your AAR's are a must read for all JFB's[&o][&o]

[Mike Solli]

Hi Empire. I'm only producing 150 vehicle points a turn. I upgraded another tank regiment and on 13 Apr (the turn I just finished) I got a bunch of ground reinforcements and the vehicle point pool dropped to 7500. Ouch. No more voluntarily using points for awhile.

I'm very cautious with my vehicle points. I won't upgrade anything else until I get to 10k points, which will be at the end of April at the earliest.

[Historiker]

Is Perth below the line where he would get reinforcements?

No. The hex below Brisbane is the LOD.

[Mike Solli]

12 Apr 42

Quiet day again today, but some very nice things happened.

SE Fleet

The Zero daitai that sweeps Pt. Moresby daily caught 6x Kittyhawks and shot down 4 of them with a fifth crashing on the way home. Banzai!

The other daitai of Zeros that is flying CAP over Lae shot down 2 B-17s at a cost of a Sally destroyed on the ground.

China

The last unit in China finally succumbed, losing 1462(266) to 12(0) Japanese. The Japanese army is now moving to destroy the last 3 Chinese units.

Philippines

A 2:1 DA at Bataan reduced the forts from 2 to 1 and caused 691(61) Allied losses. We're getting there.

Other Stuff

I bought out 4x heavy artillery regiments and 6x heavy artillery battalions for use in China now and outside of China later. They're strat moving to Sian to help take that base out. Can't wait!

[Mike Solli]

ORIGINAL: Historiker

Is Perth below the line where he would get reinforcements?

No. The hex below Brisbane is the LOD.

Very good. Thanks Historiker!

[Mike Solli]

13 Apr 12

Two more Kittyhawks were shot down over PM with no Zero losses. Over Lae, we traded a B-17 and a Zero shot down but no pilot loss for me.

At Buna, 3x Do-24s hit an xAK badly damaging her. She was part of a TF dropping a JAAF AF Bn at Buna. She'll get part or all of the unit unloaded before she sinks fortunately.

I think I know where these Do-24s are coming from. I'll get them yet.

I did take Denpasar, which had a Do-24 det stationed there. I destroyed one Do-24 on the ground. I'll get them all. I estimate ~10 left.

Reinforcements:

13 Air Flotilla HQ - 3 Air Flotilla - Hamamatsu
26 Air Flotilla HQ - 11 Air Fleet - Not sure where to send this one yet.
13 Mortar Bn - 5 Army (Kwantung)
18, 19, 85-89 Naval Guard Units - SE Fleet - 18 & 19 to Aleutians and the rest to SE Fleet.
3, 6 SNLF Co - SE Fleet - Will assist in taking dot hexes in SRA.
11, 12 heavy artillery bns - Kwantung

[Mike Solli]

14 Apr 12

Sub War

Nothing new to report.

5 Fleet

The 74 Infantry Regiment is still loading on the transports. It’s taking a while because the ships are Adens, pretty big cargo ships, and the port can’t handle them.

4 Fleet

Wake Island’s forts reached level 5. They should hit level 6 in a few months.

KB (including the Soryu) has arrived at Saipan. That will be their base for now.

SE Fleet

Two more Kittyhawks were shot down over Pt. Moresby for the loss of a single Zero with its pilot MIA.

Ted’s B-17s (24 today – it’s dropped from 30 a few days ago) hit Gasmata today. There was a Zero and Betty daitai there. The Betties were on naval attack and the Zeros were set to sweep PM. I neglected to have any on CAP. That’s been rectified. The B-17s caused light damage to the airfield and destroyed 2x Betties on the ground. There are 4x Zero Chutai defending Rabaul. I set them partly to LRCAP Gasmata along with 40% CAP for the Gasmata Zero unit. So, there will be some 1-2 dozen fighters in the air over Gasmata tomorrow. Ted’s got a dilemma with his B-17s. He can focus on badly damaging one airfield with repeated attacks, but loses his B-17s more quickly that way or can spread the damage around, which reduces the damage against his bombers but also doesn’t put any of my airfields out of commission. He’s choosing to save his B-17s it seems.

At Buna, those damn Do-24s hit and sank the remaining 2 xAKs dropping off the AS. In addition, the xAK hit by them yesterday sank as well. Luckily, 97% of the unit survived. I now can station a Zero daitai there once the airfield reaches level 2.

Milne Bay’s airfield is completely repaired now. I’d love to place a chutai of Zeros there but there isn’t any AS there yet. I have one at Rabaul that is allocated to Milne Bay, but I don’t want to risk any more xAKs. I will fly them in starting tomorrow. I have 27 Tinas and 5 Mavis transports there to do the job.

Truk’s fuel supply is critical. It’s under 10k. The fast replenishment fleet is there with 77k fuel. I’m going to unload it at Truk and move it to the Cam Ranh Bay to refill. Then it will go to Saipan to stick with KB. There are still 7x 7950 TKs hauling fuel from Balikpapan to Truk but they can’t keep up. Gotta rethink this. I really need more TKs. Over 2 months before the Std- series will begin to complete their conversions.

Current status of important airfields:

Rangoon – No damage, level 7, AS 96
Lae – 0-29-47 damage, level 4, AS 96
Gasmata – 0-14-6 damage, level 3, AS 96
Buna – No damage, level 1, AS 24
Milne Bay – No damage, level 2, AS 0 (24 AS enroute by air)

Philippines

More bombardment today. I’ve set all of my bombers to ground bombing now (only one was ground bombing with the rest hitting the airfield previously) because there is significant airfield damage. I want to reduce the AV as quickly as possible to force the capitulation of this base. I have other missions for the 14 Army. There are only 3 Allied units that are still combat effective:

4 Marine Regiment: 21 AV
Provincial GMC: 7 AV
2 Constabulary Division: 189 AV

My infantry still needs a day or two of rest before they can attack again. In the meantime, bomb, bomb, bomb!

China

Nothing much going on except movement and bombarding Sian. I have one artillery regiment there and tried to bombard with all the infantry divisions too. The net result was some disruption to my infantry in addition to the normal damage the artillery typically does to the Chinese. From now on, only artillery units will bombard. Speaking of artillery, the 10x heavy artillery units are beginning to move from Manchuoko to China. It’ll be awhile, but their presence will definitely make a difference when they arrive. I changed them to Southern Army so they ultimately will end up either defending strategic bases or in Burma. We’ll see. One thing I need to do is to get AS to an airfield within Japanese 1E range of Sian so I can use the CEA air force effectively against Sian. That’s on the list to do tomorrow.

Burma

I noticed that Ted moved only some of the Akyab garrison out. It appears that he’s concerned about them being surrounded (good concern on his part) and moved some of the units one hex up the road. I will continue to bombard the airfield and garrison and maneuver to attempt to surround them. The base farther up the road between Akyab and Chittagong (Cox’s Bazaar?) is empty. I might just drop the raiding regiment there. Wouldn’t that drive him nuts?!

Six Zeros met 22 enemy 2E bombers over Katha, the base Ted is going after now. They shot down 3x Blenheim IVs with a Hudson IIIa op loss. I lost 2x Zero op losses but no pilots.

The ground forces are still crawling toward Imphal and Akyab. It’ll be awhile.

SRA

Most of my large transports have arrived back at Singapore and are repairing their damage. The 12,800 capacity TKs are all repaired and loading up on fuel for their next trip. The 5x Tonans will be ready to go in a couple of days and will haul oil and resources. Finally, the 11,600 capacity TKs will haul fuel as well. Lookin’ good here!

Australia

The forces continue to congregate at Koepang for the invasion of Darwin. A few more days and then they’ll be off. There is a fuel shortage at Koepang as well. The slow replenishment fleet (56k fuel) is on its way there to take care of that.

Other Stuff

Reinforcements:

171 Cav Reg, 71 Mtn Gun Reg, 71 Eng Reg – These units are moving to meet up with the 3 infantry regiments and will form the 71 Division. This average division will remain on the Manchurian frontier to guard against the Soviet horde.

5 Ku S-1 (9 Rufes) – 13 Air Flotilla – Takao – Trainers in Formosa.
38 Sentai (27 Dinah II) – 1 Air Division – Sapporo – Will convert to Babs and train recon in Japan.
94 Sentai (27 Sally Ic) – 1 Air Division – Tokyo – Will convert to Lily and train low naval (future Kamikazes) in Japan. I’ll bet those rookies are surprised!
203 Sentai (27 Oscars) – 2 Air Division – Ominato – Will convert to Nates and train as fighters. They’ll most likely move to Manchuoko.

The bomber sentai that is training low naval is my first – ever. I’m not sure if I should train them up to the 50/70 standard of everyone else or less. At the 50/70 standard, they will graduate about 12 per month. Any suggestions would be most welcome. Note that most of the reinforcement training bomber groups (both air forces) will now be allocated to low Naval training.

I also culled my training units today:

IJN
Fighter: 3
NavS: 6
ASW: 9
Rcn: 3
NavB: 38!

IJA
Fighter: 60!
GrdB: 15
Tr: 5
ASW: 2

There were a couple of surprises. Getting 60 IJA fighters was wonderful. I’ve maxed out all of my IJA frontline fighter units with pilots and will add an additional 4 to each of them. That’s significant. My only issue with them is that there is a supply shortage in the Burma region. Rangoon has >20k supply, but the airfield is only at 6.40. The closest level 7 airfields are Bangkok and Singapore but neither has 20k supply. That will be rectified soon at Singapore but hasn’t happened yet. Once I get Rangoon up to a level 7 airfield, I should be good to go there, but the airfield is building pretty slowly. Still a few weeks from hitting the magic 7. Until Rangoon reaches level 7 or Bangkok gets 20k supply, replacing planes is still an issue in Burma.

I’m also starting to get a nice pile of DB pilots in the IJN. I use them only in KB and KB hasn’t been very active. Once I reach ~100 NavB pilots in the pool (probably at the end of this month), I’m going to start to use the training DB units to train NavT trained pilots. That should get those guys out much more quickly. Once they start flowing out of the pipeline, then I’ll find a happy medium for both to train at a good rate.

I’d like to get IJA ASW pilots out more quickly but there are quite a few that are close. I’m starting to place some of the 1E bomber units in areas where they will perform ASW missions but am pulling the ASW pilots out of the pool as quickly as they complete their training.

There are still a shortage of IJN fighter pilots but that should get better within the next month or so. At the end of March, I got a 45 Claude training unit (60 pilots!) and it is working on graduating its first group of pilots. They’re not there yet, but that group hopefully will end my shortage (at least for a while). Just to clarify, I do not have a shortage of pilots in the pool. I have ~40 pilots with experience >70. My shortage is of the 50+ experience pilots. I’m saving the 70+ pilots for KB. I try to keep my land based Zero units at about 1/3 70+ and 2/3 50+ pilots. As the percentage of 70+ pilots increases, I pull the excess into the reserve.

[crsutton]

Just be careful with Akyab. It can be a trap for the Japanese player because the southern most land hexside is impassible.

[PaxMondo]

Man, you are cranking the turns!

PS: good crop of pilots ... nice!

[zuluhour]

After I read your posts and look down at the banner I involuntarily smile every time. Heres a little info I could use help on. Are the Bettys reliable at 720nm(18hexes) to find and attack naval targets? As search aircraft seem to max out around 480nm(12hexes), I'm curious if say Bettys from Truk will attack Kavieng with the same reliabilty as they would at 2/3rds that range. I also wonder if attack aircraft set to night and short range, say 80nm, will intercept bombardment and surface combat TFs. I spied around at a few AARs but have not seen a night air intercept on naval forces. Thanks for a very enjoyable read as well as a wealth of detailed game information. [&o] noob salute!

[GreyJoy]

ORIGINAL: zuluhour

After I read your posts and look down at the banner I involuntarily smile every time. Heres a little info I could use help on. Are the Bettys reliable at 720nm(18hexes) to find and attack naval targets? As search aircraft seem to max out around 480nm(12hexes), I'm curious if say Bettys from Truk will attack Kavieng with the same reliabilty as they would at 2/3rds that range. I also wonder if attack aircraft set to night and short range, say 80nm, will intercept bombardment and surface combat TFs. I spied around at a few AARs but have not seen a night air intercept on naval forces. Thanks for a very enjoyable read as well as a wealth of detailed game information. [&o] noob salute!

mmm...if i remember well Rader in our game managed to torpedo at night 1 BB and 2 CLs of mine using Emilies.... but my ships were not moving, they were in shallow waters and very close to the land...so the navigation must have been easier for the brave japanese aviators.... a mid-ocean intercept at night is, imho, almost impossible to be seen!

[zuluhour]

As an after thought, how about night attacks on ships in port by torpedo aircraft at low altitude? or against unloading amphibious forces? Terry has creamed my amphiboius troop ship lift ability and I cannot afford one more large disaster with no PPs and an inexperienced carrier air arm.
ps. sorry for hijack Mike.

[Mike Solli]

Hi guys. This is all good discussion and I'm sure it gives readers lots of ideas. It certainly gives me many ideas. I'm not sure about distances for Betty attacks. I'll keep track of the distances from now on. Most if not all of the attacks recently have originated at Gasmata and targeted Pt. Moresby or within a couple of hexes of PM. There's been practically no sign of ships anywhere else on the map.

Akyab, yeah I see the potential for encirclement. Ted is building up other bases close by, trying to do to me what I am trying to do to PM with my ring of bases. The problem in Burma is that I have multiple bases as well.