Banzais Don't Make Victories - Anachro (A) vs John 3rd (J) BTS 5.7

[Anachro]

@andav I agree with your advice on not going after the refineries and changing targets to other things, but I have to disagree on your assessment of oil for this mod. In John's scenario, the value of oil is at a premium due to the expanded Japanese industry and navy. Taking his ability to extract it from any significant source is valuable and worthwhile, as he needs it. So I'm happy to bomb his oil production at Magwe to 0 before moving on to more worthwhile targets. Without air cover it's going to go down to near 0 in a few days anyways. I bet John has significantly built up his industry as well.

@cheesesteak I'm happy with my initial gains and Port Moresby, etc. And think those will hold. Moreover it remains to be seen if Manus will fall. I think the operation or campaign in this area is still very much up in the air. Obviously, I lost more CVEs than I would like, but haven't lost any CVs, CVLs, BBs, BCs, or cruisers. If I can hold on to Manus and destroy troops at Lae while making John commit most of his forces here and burn fuel, I'll be very happy.

[Canoerebel]

John probably isn't defending Magwe because it's comparatively late. He might have in 1942.

[BBfanboy]

Anachro: haven't lost any CVs, CVLs, BBs, BCs, or cruisers.

Uh, oh! The War Gods hate when players make this kind of statement. You are now cursed!

[Bearcat2]

Thank you for the AAR!

[Anachro]

July 10th, 1943

I began the operation a while back: to relieve Hansa Bay and reinforce Manus. Unfortunately, Hansa fell a few days before I could land reinforcements. Moreover, one of my carrier TFs went on naval strike mode when I had been setting the rest to stick to cap and ASW and its bombers got chewed up, so while my carrier's cap is strong, the bomber wings are a little weak though can still pack a bunch. Most of the action, as a result, has been on the surface where I have done decently in naval battles and have devastated John's LBA through bombardment. In a series of engagements, I have definitely sunk a Japanese BC and DD and most likely sunk a CA for the cost (as of now) of two DDs. In the previous turn, bombardments against Madang and Rabaul destroy ~150-200 Japanese A/C on the ground, mauling John's LBA. This turn, two separate task forces hit Rabaul and destroyed another ~100 A/C. I had noticed in the previous weeks that John was heavily overstacking Rabaul and this takes his LBA largely out of the equation for any close-by engagement.





The question is what to do now that some of John's carriers (what am I kidding, it's probably most of them that haven't been damaged by subs, of which there are 3-4) have appeared northeast of Manus. They were in range of my carriers at 8 hexes away, but much like the USN at the Mariana's, up till now the primary duty of my carriers have been CAP defense and ASW (with nav strike seet to a max range of 3 for any nearby enemy ships; sadly, John's BC task force was four hexes away this turn). I could attempt to strike these carriers, but my bomber wings are at about 70%. However, my fighter wings are near full-strength at ~426 fighters. What should I do? Part me screams stick close and maintain CAP, the Jeb Stuart/John III in me says run after him; I'd imagine his LBA was concentrated at Rabaul and is weak at Truk, but I do not know for sure. The prudent thing is to not go charging off into the unknown.

That said, one of my transport convoys carrying a division got scared into turning back towards home, an APA even took a torp despite escorts. As of now, all Manus is getting as reinforcements are: supply, the NG Vol Rifles BN, and the 14th Armored regiment. Shame, but I think we can do this type of operation again in the future. John's frontline LBA has been shown to be vulnerable to bombardment.

I'll sleep on the turn for now.

[Anachro]

July 15th, 1943

Don't have much time to post, but I'll give the situation. There was a carrier battle and once again John stymied my ability to significantly inflict harm despite having superior carrier firepower (though I'm taking it as a tactical victory as a number of his carriers experience some form of damage that should put them out of the way temporarily). I lost 400 planes to ~200 for him. The main reason for this is that the coordination of my air wings was horrible and went in piecemeal, but honestly at this point I'm thinking of doing something unusual for a future battle and putting my bombers on ASW and my fighters on a day 1 80-100% CAP to kill off his bomber threat first before trying to do something the next day. The more worrisome thing is that these battles have taken place WITHOUT the Jack yet on Japanese carriers - how will I fare in a battle once he DOES have those? At least my pilot losses aren't too bad and, vice-versa, his elite KB pilots should be somewhat decimated.

Nonetheless, the operation in total did see a Japanese BC sunk for the cost of a couple destroyers and Manus did receive some reinforcements and much-needed supply. However, the divisional reinforcement coming was turned back by Japanese torpedo boats and I judged it not appropriate given the situation to turn it around. It'll recuperate and then we will try another reinforcement probably sometime soon once my carrier air wings are ready.



The loss reports in ships to both sides for the month. Take the Japanese carriers lost with a grain of salt: the most likely one lost is the CVE Tatsuta-maru which took a number of mine hits and two torpedo hits, but, somehow, based on intelligence and reports from the days after those attacks, I doubt that she has sunk. This list does not include transports lost, of which there are a number. The list also doesn't include the Japanese CA Myoko, which, based on planes destroyed on the ground, sank on July 10th.



In India, we landed at Diego Garcia and though I judged the forces landed sufficient to take the base based on initial combat from the first 1-2 days, the base has not fallen and will most likely be reinforced. Hopefully, the forces on the ground there hold out until reinforcements arrive. John has forces in the area, but they cannot stick around Diego permanently.

[Anachro]

CR asked me to give an update so I shall do so. I'll do one more detailed later on when I have access to my PC so I can post pictures and definitive numbers (right now I only have access to my Surface tablet). It is late 1943 and the situation is thus:

Strategic Level
Major area of tension is primarily the area in and around New Guinea at the moment, with static lines in both the Indian Ocean and the Central and Northern Pacific.

Theaters
Indian Theater:Operationally, Allies forces are gathering in the Indian Ocean with some damaged ships slated for that area heading to or currently repairing at Capetown. There is a large list of ground forces preparing or already fully prepared for targets with the major holdup being getting naval and transport assets in place.

At the tactical level, my invasion of DG was spooked because I didn't have full recon and was super scared about unseen Japanese carriers appearing from the south or east. As such, I didn't get the full forces earmarked for the operation offloaded, John counterattacked, and I lost some AV. That said, DG is a far ways away from Japanese territory, with a known line of communication. Knowing that John has surface and transport forces in the areas, I have been harrying this LoC with small CL/DD task forces and even a 1 CVL TF fleet that has appeared opportunistically. Thanks to this, John has lost a few destroyers , 1-3 very nice 28 VP tankers, a number of xAKs and xAPs, as well as 5 8VP tankers of some sort. He has divisions on DG, but their extraction has proved a bit more troublesome and his mini-KB carrier TF has either left the theater or his repairing/upgrading at Singers.


Australia/Guinea: In the Guinea/Australian theater, John has had successful counter landings (taking back basically everything north of Lae (and including Lae), but his most recent attempt to retake Manus Island might have been a bit too aggressive with too little of his own men. Three divisions landed, but their margin in AV superiority was too small when I had a partial division, artillery, and forts and his first attack saw him lose more men than me. Given John's previous counterlandings (as well as him forecasting his intentions with focused bombardments of Manus) I had been preparing for a push on Manus with earmarked counterlanding forces of my own and a large portion of the Allied fleet. Thus, in the previous week or two in the game, I have landed an additional division, armored battalions, bombarded the island, and John now has inferior AV on the island and while in my first deliberate attack I had a bad 1 to 4 roll, I had 700 casualties and he had 1900.

Moreover, John messed up in extracting his landing TF and my CVs sank a number of DDs (7-8), xAPs, and even 2 of his scout cruisers (the new CS class John added to the game as part of this mod). The only real messup on my part was misclicking "set for TF" as opposed to "set for all TBs in hex" so a number of my TBs got slaughtered as they attacked unescorted when I wanted them on ASW duty (this was when I had my fighters focused purely on CAP while I unloaded my counterlanding forces).

Last turn, I sent my forces back (they are currently 8 or so hexes north of Milne Bay) and just in time as a Japanese CV unit or two has appeared northeast of Kavieng (and it shows ~400-500 fighters). My TFs are currently all heading to Milne Bay to take advantage of CAP. Once the immediate danger has passed, we will refuel and re-arm. We will then make a new concerted effort on Lae and Fischaven to take those airfields and slowly put pressure on John's ability to have uninterrupted access to the surrounding waters of Manus. I can't emphasize that John has three divisions in danger of destruction on Manus, at this point I can see his only option to be to try and extract them. He can also double-down, do lots of naval bombardments, and land more forces; the likelihood of this is not small. Forts at Manus just got up to 3.

Misc: Elsewhere, we have plans for the North Pacific.

[Canoerebel]

Hey, I asked for that update about two months ago!

But I'm glad you're back and posting. [:)]

[jwolf]

Thanks for the update; I had feared that no news meant bad news. Glad to see that is (mostly) not true. It sounds like the two of you have great match in progress with a lot of tough fighting. I hope that attritional fighting will favor the Allies, as it did historically, but with this mod I don't know.

[Anachro]

August 15th, 1943

The current situation around Manus. We had a bad attack last turn and so I will now opt to simply sit and let him attack while I dig in. If he lands more forces, hopefully I can put greater pressure by taking other bases around Manus and make his situation precarious. For now, my forces will move back to Townsville to rest and recuperate while I prepare for an amphibious operation against Lae, further reinforcement of Manus, and perhaps an invasion of Horn Island if I feel secure elsewhere. All my submarine transports will continually supply Manus (which has a precarious 4.5k supply at the moment), as more submarines are coming to patrol the area and further mine the base.



Here are some of the engagements from the past month, as well as current intelligence estimates on losses. I took out enemy carrier losses because I do not believe any Japanese carriers have sunk. I sank two of the CS ships shown, not much, but I'll take it.



Also, some engagements between DG and Malaya along John's LoC.

Night Time Surface Combat, near Diego Garcia at 23,71, Range 13,000 Yards

Japanese Ships
DD Kamikaze, Shell hits 2, on fire
DD Oite, Shell hits 2, on fire
E Oki, Shell hits 2, on fire
E Kanju, Shell hits 3, on fire
PB Teibo Maru #2, Shell hits 10, heavy fires, heavy damage
TK Kaizyo Maru, Shell hits 1
TK Kuroshio Maru, Shell hits 2
AV Kunikawa Maru
xAK Kirikawa Maru
xAK Mansei Maru
xAK Reiyo Maru
xAK Taihei Maru, Shell hits 1
xAK Yamafuku Maru
xAK Saiho Maru, Shell hits 1, on fire
xAK Akitsushima Maru, Shell hits 2

Allied Ships
CL Perth
CL Denver
DD Gwin
DD Monssen
DD Morris
DD Warramunga
DD Rotherham

Night Time Surface Combat, near Diego Garcia at 24,71, Range 11,000 Yards

Japanese Ships
DD Kamikaze, on fire
DD Oite, on fire
TK Kaizyo Maru, Shell hits 4
TK Kuroshio Maru, Shell hits 3, on fire
AV Kunikawa Maru, Shell hits 5, on fire, heavy damage
xAK Mansei Maru, Shell hits 4, heavy fires
xAK Reiyo Maru, Shell hits 1, Torpedo hits 1, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAK Taihei Maru, Shell hits 7, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAK Yamafuku Maru, Shell hits 2
xAK Akitsushima Maru, on fire

Allied Ships
CL Perth
CL Denver
DD Gwin
DD Monssen
DD Morris
DD Warramunga
DD Rotherham

Night Time Surface Combat, near Sabang at 25,71, Range 11,000 Yards

Japanese Ships
DD Kamikaze, heavy fires
DD Oite, Shell hits 7, and is sunk
TK Kaizyo Maru, Shell hits 3
xAK Yamafuku Maru, Shell hits 1

Allied Ships
CL Perth
CL Denver
DD Gwin, Shell hits 1, on fire
DD Monssen
DD Morris
DD Warramunga
DD Rotherham

Sub attack near Diego Garcia at 19,64

Japanese Ships
TK Kuroshio Maru, Torpedo hits 2, on fire, heavy damage

Allied Ships
SS KXVII

[ny59giants]

I would use PBYs and transport planes to get supplies to Manus. You get and have more than enough C-47s to use up. [:D]

Pull off Avengers and add more fighters on your large CVs. Train up all those Avengers you have and those coming in on CVLs and CVEs in NavT, NavB, and either ASW or Gnd. The third skill going up will raise the Exp levels that you will need when you are stronger and can use DS to crush KB.

[Anachro]

I have a LOT of C-47's in India conducting transport missions (the areas closer to the Burmese border are always short on supply); I need more in Aussieland! Will try and work on that. However, the SST's won't hurt. I've converted all I can (I think I have around 6 at the moment), and between them they can get close to 1k supply per run.

As for my carriers, thanks to the horrendous air casualties through mistakes, etc., I've already been doing things like transferring off decimated British squadrons for American substitutes, etc. One thing I've found in the game so far is that Commonwealth (or more likely just British) naval A/C production is not in any way commensurate with the potential attrition of the war, especially considering the fact that John turned off withdrawals so I have all the British carriers available. That, coupled with the upgrades to British carriers to increase their a/c capacity, means I have a lot of under-strength British air wings with no or very little replacements. This has probably been my biggest observation.

I suspect I will be converting some Marine airwings to permanent carrier service on British ships, at least until I get more aircraft. Guess I can train up more British naval aviators in the mean time.

[Anachro]

August 16th, 1943

It seems the big guns (and transports) are coming to Manus and it remains to be seen for what purpose. I'm guessing John will try nuke bombardments coupled with more landings to try and take the island, but I have level 3 forts and ~550 AV so I should be able to hold for a bit. More prudently, John might try to extract his forces. We'll see what happens. Rather than chase and burn fuel, I will continue my planned retirement to Townsville to re-fuel and prepare for an invasion of Lae that can simultaneously be used for reinforcing Manus. The only question mark is John's carrier force. Based on days of recon, it appears to be a CV TF coupled with tankers, but could easily be two CV TFs. I'm not sure what John was planning: either he's trying to lure me away to follow them so he has more of a free-hand around Manus, or perhaps he is trying to draw me into a CAP trap around Guadalcanal. I'm not too sure. I'd expect he'd either wheel west or back northwest this turn, but I then again I also though he'd do that this past turn as well.

Happy to let him burn fuel on all of this. Those heavy BBs and CVs won't be cheap in fuel consumption.



Other places feel very ripe for invasion; the biggest hurdle is the need for carrier concentration to help these invasion targets. It's hard to conduct a safe operation in this game/mod without full carrier coordination.

[CaptBeefheart]

I hear you on the lack of Brit aircraft production. If I remember correctly, there's a big gap in TB production between Albacores and Avengers. You run into one or two vicious CAP traps and you'll have no FAA torpedo bombers for a year. Is it the same in the RTS mod? Also, do you have Juan's aircraft purchase system in that mod? Any boosts to production?

I agree that USMC squadrons are needed to fill out the RN carriers.

Cheers,
CB

[Anachro]

It's the same in the RTS mod, yes, from what I can tell. If it has been boosted, not much or enough. The aircraft purchase system is in place, but again, seems to have very little options for purchasing additional British naval a/c.

There is another problem that has come up that I know I have seen before on these forums. I had a marine division and an army division both divided into their A/B/C parts. They all had the same chain of command, but for some reason after dividing them I could not re-combine them into their full division. They have no hanging parts anywhere else, they are all in the same hex. However, the option to re-combine them was/is grayed out. Randomly, the Marine option to recombine became available one turn and I recombined it. The Army division still does not allow me to recombine A/B/C. I'll post a picture when I get the next turn from John.

[witpqs]

That's almost certainly going to be a device mismatch, where one or two units upgraded some device which the other one or two did not.

[Anachro]

Figured it was a TOE thing. The next turn sees mini-KB (with LOTS of fighters, so John must have increased his fighter ratio on his CVs) move due west and is now either sitting at a hex besides Shortlands. Nothing much to say, we keep our CVs from disbanding in port at Townsville in case John tries an aggressive maneuver to catch our ships napping there. We also set a CAP trap for Milne Bay just in-case. Nothing against Manus this turn except fighter sweeps. We expect the enemy BBs to hit next turn or the one after, but I have reduced navsearch percentage to preserve recon planes until I really need them. On the flip side, an Allied cruiser TF bombards Horn Island for good results, inflicting ~350 casualties on units there (of which one is one of John's new CD units introduced in this mod). The island might be susceptible to a strong bombardment prior and during invasion.

New pictures will come next turn.

[Anachro]

Also, my yearly made-from-scratch Thanksgiving blueberry pie. I think I posted one last year too.

[Anachro]

I literally just sent the turn to John and he responds immediately by email:

This COULD be an exciting turn…

I hope he tries for an aggressive strike on Townsville or something. More likely, it's an unexpected strike somewhere else OR he tries to mass bombard Manus and reduce forts/take it. Who knows? Guess we'll find out.

[Anachro]

August 18th, 1943

I'm not really sure what John meant by an "exciting" turn. Perhaps he was hoping to hit some of my shipping? Other than that, can't think of much. Instead, he walks right into a CAP trap at Milne Bay where I had a large number of CAP and LRCAP covering the base and 1DD/1xAK; while the damage done isn't too catastrophic, John loses 93 naval planes and aviators to a loss of 23 land-based fighters for myself. Interestingly, perhaps because of my bombardment last turn, a mini-KB appears northwest of Horn Island. This could either be a new mini KB or perhaps the mini-KB that was previously operating near Diego Garcia. I don't know. Portland Roads nearby shows 9/10 DL so perhaps John will try an airfield strike there, or a naval strike as I have two crippled subs in port.

My carriers are fine sitting at Townsville, though part of me wishes I attacked John's carriers. I'd expect him to move back north with his carriers this turn, but I have a number of undetected subs around the area. The expected bombardments at Manus haven't appeared yet. Instead, supply slowly rises currently through air transport and forts are building. My AV has recovered to ~600 currently at the base.