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44-12-17:

44-12-19:

44-12-20:

44-12-21/22:
Allied recon picked up a large capitol shipcount in port Hiroshima.
The IJN has sat down on my fleet fuel and supply line running from Rabaul up to Mindano. Absolutely Crushing. Allied response is 4 days away.

44-23 and 24:
Manila has fallen.
Georgetown falls to the 77th LRP in a para assault.
Allies are knocking on the door at Singers.
Japs at Sendia are short on supply.
Gen Slims 14th army is 4 hexes from Shanghai...
Chinese outnumber IJN at Changsha 3-1 in bombardment.
But a IJN fleet in being retreats to Java.

44-12-27: Two turns, four days left in the game.
Sendai has fallen. IJA takes 27000 casualtis.
Changsha shock attack next turn with 10 chinese corp.
Singapore shack attack next turn with 3 divisions.

44-12-29:
With the fall of Sendai and Nigata the allies have broke thru IJA lines and established a north south axis of advance on Hodoki. Furthest point of advance is Iwate with 4Marine and 2 USA divs. All IJA units north of line are OOS. Large pocket w/ about 6 depleted divisions and alot of support units.

Hodoki??

Enjoying the final days of this epic slugfest.

Cheers,
CB

44-12-27:

Crossriver shock attack and buildup at Hongchow by CW Indian AR battalions loose in back country of China
The Chicom cant take Changsha by themselves plus supply lines are over extended from Rangoon.
Supply diverted from SWPAC and SOPAC to feed the Allied advance to Shanghai.
On Honshu, Niigate falls. Northern Honshu is prison camp.
Seems some CVs are hiding at Saipan.
Build up at Singers.
Build up at Taipei.
Clark Field is captured.

44-12-29: Allied Intel recieves a coded message send from a Tokyo spy:

The Emperor has summoned his war cabinet

44-12-29:
Sinapore fell on the 2nd day of this turn. 2 Airborne Brigades plus my favorite airmoble division, the 81st West African CW division which walked to Singers after being airlifted next door.
15thcorp and the Wingate HQ lead the attack.

Takeo is on the brink of falling.

Hangchow is close to falling. The 13th USA AR Div crossed the river into Hangchow in move mode and delivered a shock attack on day one with the Indian 268 mot bde who had arrived 2 days ago.


The chinese atttacks at Nanning and Changsha suffer from supply issues.

Mischer has found an IJN fleet at port at Tinian.

He recalls many a day in SOPAC as the IJN roamed free sinking transports in allied ports during 42/43.

Iwaki was cleared in one day under the command of Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. Simon knows the 4 marine divisions under his command chaff at his leadership.

To the north, an unknown Jap city called Nagaoka was the source of an unforeseen meeting engagement.

ON the afternoon of 44-12-28, 2 marine tank battalions advanced in pursuit of the enemy into Nagaoka. Unknown to the Marine tankers they walked into a trap on 44-12-29 and are counterattacked by the 22000 strong Jap garrison which included the elite IJA 86th div. After a massive one day battle in which the marine tankers held off the IJA, the USA 38th INF Div shows up with 2 artillery battalions attached. The Japs attacked into the move mode division on the 2nd day, and the rest is electronic history.

At Omino-to, 5 IJA equivalent Divisions attack the recovering 1st CAV division. The 7th Regiment declares "Broken Arrow" in a theatre wide call for massive naval gunfire and air support.

Allied propaganda does not like to admit we may have been outscored these last two turns. Except for the capture of Singapore, Iwaki and Sendai.

Wow. Allied sorties in one day over 35,000. wow.

That's a minimum of 35,000 supply in one day. For sorties alone. If IJ had a 4M supply cushion entering '45, if she had the 35,000 aircraft to sortie, she would use that 4M supply in just 120 days at MOST. And then the IJ economy would be totally broke. And the allies can keep that up for the entire year ... the 9000 sorties that John put up is about the most that the IJ can do on a continuous basis, the army needs supply too. That's fighting 4:1 odds ... you cannot win too many air battles with those odds.

After VE day, the IJ simply cannot hope to compete ....

January 2, 1945

The Emperor has ordered Japan to lay down its arms.

The
Game
Is
Over
!!!

Well done, gentlemen! Thanks for the AAR. Would be good to see some final data, such as ship losses and the like.

Cheers,
CB

Sure. Here is the final screen:

I can say for myself I am decompressing...I looked at the real time start date. Nov 2020. The victory board John posted says allied conditional.

IF you followed this game thru nov 43 I had a problem with learning the new invasion rules of Dababes.

Up till 2nd half 43 I thought I would be able to start a central pacific offensive.

I was wrong.

Combined with the stacking rules I had to learn a new ground game.

This new ground game will punish you in 6k stack limit island invasions if you invade overstacked..

So after my failed, booted into the sea, invasion of Line islands I called for a sandbox.

A sandbox is a nice way to say "I cant do this and I need time to develop"

I asked John to let me practice invading line islands without interference from the Jap fleet.

I believe Christmas island was reinvaded 3 times in replayed turns.

Running test of results (that I shared with John).

ON the tactical level I did learn the inner workings of the DaBabes mod.

Realistically this game was over and John had at least a marginal victory.

I do think we were both having fun running the game deep and John wanted to keep playing.

So we keep on going into 44.

On the Strategic level I realized no offensive will run thru the South or CentPac until the KB CV fleet was destroyed.

IJN had 3 fast CV TFs and 3 slow CVE TFs. IIRC one enemy CVTF could put up 400 planes

He also had 2/3 divisions in reserve that would counterinvade within 45 days.

I realized maybe the edges could be worked, but only if I knew where the KB CV fleet was located and some damage had been done to it.

So I had decided that The USN CV Fleet would need to exchange head to head, just like 2 Knights jousting with CV fleets.

John has this scary ability to chase down my transport fleets and sink them at sea or in port. Then he would get on this AAR and remind me how he always tracked me down., which I must admit is very disturbing to read. Somewhere in this AAR I posted from Tracker my AP/AK loses at over 725 ships and he had sunk 25% of my APAs.

He was headed in the right direction Strategically but, John ran out of gas at Canton Island in feb 44.

In late 42 I noticed his Tonin whalers following his CVs that had been spotted in eastern Pacific between west coast and HI. I wanted to kill the Tonin whalers more than the Cvs because in this senario IJN has alot of CVs, but only 8 Tonin Whalers.
We did sink a good number and this caused a large/fast AO shortage. This had the effect of shortening the range of the KBCVs. It paid off in spades in feb 44 off Canton Island.

Early feb 44 Allied recon was watching the CVs return from another AK raid as I was looking for a big Joust with John.
Allies wanted to catch KB low on Torpedoes.

I saw the CVs heading for the Marshalls and set the CVE's off. IIRC As the CVEs got to Johnson Island I noticed the IJN CV fleet move 2 hexes in a 2 day turn.

To be honest, I feel no remorse in denial of John's request for a redo after that battle. He is a completely experienced naval player.

I did mention to John the following rule. "if USA uses more than 3 Nukes then for each extra nuke used on Japan is a one level reduction in victory level".

After my sandbox, and then the Feb 44 naval battle off Canton Island, I decided I will need to concede a victory level to John.

Without that decisive naval battle the USA might never have made it to Japan.

We have a draw.

more data. allied tracker.

Why are some of the fighter groups shown as LB (level bomber?) or PT (patrol-torpedo?)?