Notes from a Small Island

[Canoerebel]

12/9/44

Uruppu: As Death Star and The Herd move towards the Sea of Okhtosk, Erik stands down his forces. He probably overlooked a few squadrons here and there, resulting in a few small clashes like this one.

[Canoerebel]

12/9/44

Shimishura Jima: If there are damaged IJA fighters here, the 4EB couldn't find them. The supply hits mean something.

[Canoerebel]

12/9/44

Uruppu: Enemy AVs may be climbing steadily, indicating there's still supply at Uruppu, or the AV may not be climbing. I can't tell, because the data seems inconsistent.

[Canoerebel]

12/10/44

Toyohara: Massed enemy LBA raids on Toyohara today costs Erik more aircraft than he destroyed. That suits me, partly because I have zillions of the aircraft he's destroying. But this raid was strong enough to cause moderate damage to the airfield, which I don't want to permit. So I'll post some fighters forward tomorrow (though I think he'll stand down).

Why the recent IJ focus on Toyohara? It might be that Erik sees it as a target of opportunity - a chance to use his bombers. From that standpoint it isn't really working mathematically for him.

I think the threat level to Toyohara long term is almost nil. I can protect the airfield to easily, it's too big with too many engineers to remain suppressed, and the stout garrison means he can't ever attack.

But he can employ nuclear bombardments, so I've had combat TFs patrolling/visiting the port each night for months. I might step those up a bit.

[Canoerebel]

12/10/44

Uruppu: Massed Allied bombing raids encounter no fighter opposition and score negligible hits on dug-in enemy ground troops, and score 8 supply hits.

Allied ground bombardment is decently effective.

I think the Allies army will attack tomorrow, preceded by BB New Jersey TF and BB Alabama TF bombardments.

[Canoerebel]

12/10/44

NoPac: Some intel about Paramushiro that strikes me as unlikely but possible.

[Canoerebel]

12/11/44

Uruppu: The turn opens with two bombardments, time to coincide with a general attack today and to take advantage of cover by DS after the withdrawal. Unfortunately, in positioning DS, I forgot I had upped aircraft range from 6 to 7 a few days back. I will pay a price for that.

[Canoerebel]

12/11/44

Uruppu: The biggest of many, many raids targeting Uruppu ground troops and airfield today. Other than a handful of supply hits, little damage done.

[Canoerebel]

12/11/44

Kushiro: The largest of many raids targeting riff-raff seven hexes distant. This kind of thing is embarrassing and harmful. The planes are replaceable, but Navy pilots are dear.


Overall, I think I'll lose 75 aircraft at Kurshiro during the course of the day. But, boy, my guys do manage to sink two LSTs.

[Canoerebel]

12/11/44

Uruppu: Allied attack yields wildly disparate results. One the plus side, the Allies get a 1:1, drop forts to 5, detect a supply malus, and inflict more squads destroyed on the Japanese. On the negative side, the Allies suffer a huge and disproportionate number of disablements.

I goofed up the screen capture of the "after" AVs, but overall noted a serious decline in the Japanese OOB.

I want to see if the Allied disablements affected a limited number of units or was widespread. That will help me decide what to do going forward. I suspect Allied AV will have dropped from 2900 to about 2100. Japanese AV should be down to 900 or a bit less.

One silver lining: I don't want Uruppu to appear on the brink yet, so I'm going to rest my days, trusting that Erik will conclude my army is beat up (which it is).

He's already thinking, "What's next?" He's making plans and deployments. I'm watching and hoping his conclusions don't match my intentions.

[Canoerebel]

12/11/44

Air Losses: Yikes, Navy fighter Armageddon, as I lose 162 F4F-3 and F4F-5!

[Canoerebel]

12/11/44

Uruppu: Mostly good news for the Allied ground unit at Uruppu:

1. Post-attack AV is nearly 2,400 (much better than expected).
2. The big combat engineer unit only dropped about 35 in AV (far less than it's sister unit at Ketoi, which was neutered almost immediately). This is the unit I need in order to reduce forts. At something approaching this rate, it should be able to fight until forts are down to 4 or 3 or perhaps 2.
3. One RCT really took it on the chin, but other than that disablements are spread around. I think my army will be able to attack within a week, should I need to or wish to do so.

The damage suffered by Navy air will force me to re-evaluate my plans. It'll take a few days for replacement pilots and airfrarmes to be ready to go. Do I want to handle another ingress/egress movement? Maybe. That might actually be a good way to get things going again.

[Canoerebel]

12/11/44

Uruppu: Fatigue and disruption for the attacking units is negligible. 37th Division is typical or perhaps a bit high. The AI wants my Army to attack again, but I'll let them rest a few days or more, depending on the yet-to-be-worked-out desired sequence for what's to happen.

[Canoerebel]

I've rearranged recon, hoping for better detection on Onnekotan and Paramushiro. It looks like the garrison at the former is down a bit and at the latter a great deal.

There are no plans for those two islands short term, but the info might give some insight into Erik's thinking. If he is drawing down his outlying garrisons is it because the Allies have methodically reduce two of the middle isladnds despite stout defenses? Does he apprehend an invasion of the Home Islands?

[RangerJoe]

It could also mean that his supply is going down and he can't replace it. While it would be easier to take with fewer defenders, they would be in supply that much longer.

[Canoerebel]

12/12/44

Uruppu: Allied bombers score another handful of supply hits, while the Allied ground bombardment inflicts minimal casualties.

Other than that it was quiet in this theater. Death Star returned to port for the first time in months and will replenish/draw replacements for everything possible as soon as possible.

[RangerJoe]

The good news is that destroyed squads equal disabled squads. That probably means that there are a lot of troops eating but not contributing to the defense other than being targets. Either that or you got lucky. [;)]

The 6th garrison unit had 6 AV recently, the 4th Amp. brigade had 75, the 48th Ind. Mixed Brigade had 121, the Nanking Naval Guard had 7, and that independent Bn had 4. All are much lower so those are "permanent" reductions and/or he is saving parts of those units. That is much more percentage wise than on the two divisions. That is good work on those smaller units.

[Canoerebel]

It seems that the smaller units get chewed on sooner than the big ones, for both sides.

Paramushiro now shows about 54k garrison, down from the original 80k+ but far more than detection showed a couple of days ago. The actual number, as further detection should indicate, might be somewhere north of 70k.

Onnekotan Jima is down a bit, so I put some P-38s on LRCAP from Ketoi to see if they might find transports. They did, downing about 8 Tabbys. Erik is either brining in supply or drawing down his garrison, probably the latter.

Death Star arrived in port today, replenishing and ships with minor accumulated damage disbanding for quick repairs. Most of the old TBM-1Cs upgraded to the TBF. As stocks permitted, air squadrons were brought up to the maximum number that can fit on each carrier. Death Star should be ready to go to sea in about three days.

Barring a wild change in the current map and assessment of enemy plans and capabilities, the Allied plan is set for the next few weeks.

4.3 million supply at Shikuka. More than 1 million fuel with hundreds of thousands more to come ashore from TKs over the next few days.

The supply is more than sufficient to handle whatever needs Shikuka would have for a year or more, but of course will be drawn down regularly to "fund" the chain of invasions to come over the next months. So the ingress/egress program will continue. There are 250,000 Allied TFs transiting the Gulf of Alaska and vicinity. Erik probalby knows or guesses. I'm trying to take prudent precautions. A certain other former opponent would try something, even if it meant nothing more than nibbling at the edges to measure Allied patrols and then deciding it was too risky.

[BBfanboy]

I thought the TBF came first and was replaced by the TBM-1C, which was replaced by the TBM-3?

I know the TBF was so designated because it was made in Flint while the TBM was made in Mobile AFAIK. The Mobile plant opened later so some refinements to the design were made based on experience with the earlier TBF.

[RangerJoe]

TBF and TBM are designations for the same type of aircraft which happened to be built in different factories by different companies. TBF= Torpedo Bomber Grumman TBM = Torpedo Bomber General Motors.

Notes on the Avenger Torpedo Bomber

I think that Grumman later concentrated on the Hellcat so the later models were all built by G. But the game might use the same nomenclature for the early planes no matter what company built them.

The P-51B/C models were the same just built in different locations but the P-51D was built in both locations.

There was also this discussion;

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