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

[Mike Solli]

20 Oct 42

Sub War: The KXIII remained in Darwin today. The 48 Division TF is still there and loading. She launched a couple of torpedoes at an xAK and missed again(!) and had her bell rung by some more DC near misses. We'll see what happens tomorrow.

Burma: Ted is still hiding his air force, so I hit Cox's Bazaar with my 2E bombers, moderately damaging the airfield. I'll hit that airfield again tomorrow. I upgraded a second sentai to the Ki-43-IIa.

SE Fleet: Ted's 2 & 4E bombers hit Salamaua and Milne Bay. They're just targets now. The more time he spends hitting them, the better for me because I can work on defenses that matter.

China: I had Shaoyang become a friendly base. It was intact with level 1 forts, Manpower 2(0), Resources 40(0) and LI 20(0), along with 88k resources. I have the 1 Raiding Regiment sitting at Haiphong. I'll move a transport sentai there and drop them in. It may be a problem for Ted. I'll post a screenshot so you can see it, along with the rest of the region.

The red arrow is pointing at Shaoyang. You can see my 125k army is at Changsha and moving west to hit the base between Changsha and Shaoyang, where his Changsha defenses retreated to. Intel is showing ~88k troops there. I'm confident I'll push them out. I'm hoping I kill another 20k or so and trash the army further.

Other Stuff

Reinforcement: Ro-103 - will be based at Rabaul and cause havoc south of Pt. Moresby.

[Mike Solli]

21 Oct 42

Sub War: The KXVI, still hanging around Koepang, found the ASW TF she hit a few days ago and launched another attack against one of the 3 remaining SCs. This time she missed, but they didn't. She took 2 depth charge hits. While not reported sunk, she's got to be hurting. I'll trade an SC for an effective sub any day!

Back at Darwin, the XIII launched a couple of torpedoes at a PB (part of one of the ASW TFs in the hex). She missed as well, and was depth charged, but only some near misses. We'll see if she sticks around. The TF carrying the 48 Division, had completed loading and was already gone. All 3 TFs carrying 3 infantry divisions were safely evacuated!

Finally, at Milne Bay, an xAKL escorted by a PB has been in port a few days unloading supplies for the garrison there. The O21 launched against the xAKL and missed. Three Dutch sub attacks and they all missed! She wasn't damaged either.

Burma: The RAF didn't come out to play again. I bombed Cox's Bazaar's airfield again. The 33 Division, sitting on the trail just east of Cox's Bazaar, shock attacked the 267 Armored Brigade again, and trounced them again. The 16:1 attack smashed the armored brigade again causing 623(50) Allied losses to 520(1) Japanese casualties. The brigade was pushed back into Cox's Bazaar.

In the screen shot you can see the 33 Division sitting just east of Cox's Bazaar. To the NE of Akyab, my main army, 80k strong including 4 Infantry Divisions and 1 & 2 Tank Divisions, is facing ~58k Allied troops. They barrage me daily for no loss. My issue is a lack of supply there. The levels are slowly rising, but they are red for all of my units in the hex. I am going to send as much supply as I can spare to Rangoon, but it'll take a while to get there and there are areas it just doesn't want to go. (Note all the locations with a red "!". [8|]

SE Fleet: Milne Bay was the target of the day.

5 Fleet: A half dozen 4E bombers, ~3 dozen 2E bombers and a squadron of SBDs hit Adak in their daily raid.

China: I took Pingsiang (dot hex 2 hexes south of Changsha - check map above) netting me another 120(0) resources along with 178k resources in the hex.

Other Stuff

I've added to my R&D factories from some of the factories I hadn't assigned:

Oscar: +1 for 4 total
Tony: +2 for 6 total (I like the Ki-100)
Ki-201: +3 for 6 total

[Mike Solli]

22 Oct 42

Burma: Still no RAF. Hit Cox's Bazaar again.

SE Fleet: A squadron of SBDs out of Pt. Moresby sank the resupply convoy (PB and xAKL) at Milne Bay sinking both. Oh well. All I have there is an SNLF company and an AS battalion. They'll fight to the end, if Ted chooses to attack there. I hope he does. I have 72 Betties waiting for that. He hit the port there with 43x 4E bombers. Only light damage though.

He keeps sending a handful of 2E bombers to Madang. I'm attempting to LRCAP the place with a sentai of Nicks tomorrow. Hopefully, more than 4 will show up this time. [8|]

Australia: Ted shock attacked Fenton (the dot hex 2 hexes south of Darwin) and took it. Losses were 58(1) Aussies to 1055(65). That was wildly inaccurate for the Japanese. I actually took a few losses and a few disablements. They mostly ran. [:D] Anyway, they're running north to Darwin where they will make their last stand behind level 3 forts. We'll see if they last more than one attack.

[Mike Solli]

23 Oct 42

Sub War: No less than 7 sub attacks occurred today. Allied subs attacked 3 of my ships - all unsuccessfully - and my ASW forces made 4 additional attacks on Allied subs. Only one was effective. I got a hit on a US fleet sub south of Davao. I suspect it was the same sub I hit earlier, so FOW probably has reared it's ugly head.

Burma & SE Fleet: Same old thing for them. Oh yeah, remember my attempted ambush of Ted's 2E bombers that hit Madang daily? Well, 6 Nicks showed up for the party and the 25x A20As were escorted by 6x P40Ks. I shot down 3 P40s (plus an op loss) vs. 1 Nick op loss (pilot KIA). The bombers got through, but all they bombed was jungle.

China: My army finally finished crossing the river and shock attacked Siangtan, successfully trashing the former Changsha garrison. The 7:1 attack caused 3307(19) Japanese losses against 23361(1554) Chinese. The remnants fled to the base to the south. I'll head there in a couple of days. The infrastructure was captured in good shape: Manpower - 1(1), Resources - 35(5) and LI - 18(2). I'll keep this as is.

Other Stuff:

Reinforcement: DD Niizuki - Akitsuki class - headed to Davao for KB duty.

The Ryujo and Hosho completed their upgrades and are headed back to Davao.

[Mike Solli]

24 Oct 42

This turn really isn't worth talking about. Nothing happened, other than some bombing here and there that didn't do much at all except waste supply.

The Ha-44 advanced a month.

Reinforcement: TK Meisan Maru - last of the 8 accelerated 11.6k TKs. Along with the others, this one will head to Singapore to haul fuel to the Home Islands.

[Mike Solli]

25 Oct 42

Sub War: I have a bunch of subs surrounding Adak. They are ready for the inevitable invasion. So far, Ted is happy sending a handful of SCs there to attack my subs and try to kill some of the mines in the hex. I have only ~35. Wish I had more. Anyway, there were about half a dozen battles between the SCs and my subs. A couple subs launched torpedoes at some of the SCs and one torpedo hit, obliterating the poor little thing. I did notice that they carry 3 different types of ASW weapons, but not much ammunition. That's good. They won't stick around long before they have to head back to Dutch Harbor to replenish. Maybe I can pick off another couple.

The only other "excitement" was my night bombing Helens got lucky and destroyed a P40K on the ground at Pt. Moresby and damaged another dozen planes there. Other than that, the usual bombing of PNG by the Allies and Cox's Bazaar by the Japanese ensued. Cox's Bazaar's airfield is up to 60% damaged. I'm going for Chittagong tomorrow. I'd like to keep all the front line airfields (Akyab, Cox's Bazaar and Chittagong) damaged so Ted can't station fighters there. Unfortunately, it's taking all my bombers in Burma so I don't have any available to harass his troops.

The highlight of the day was the advancement of the Ki-43-IIb research to 3/43 and the A6M5b to 5/44.

[Mike Solli]

Ted's sub attack frequency is increasing at an alarming rate. Life is going to seriously suck when his torpedoes get better in January. [:(]

I'm working on a defense plan to protect my merchant convoys. I have a set route for my convoys that come to the Home Islands from Singapore. They hug the coast wherever possible. I am going to attempt to provide air coverage over the entire route if possible. This will be composed of float planes for the most part. I have pulled the 4 float plane units from Chitose and Chiyoda and have increased them to 24 aircraft each. They have been filled out with ASW trained crews and am training them in naval search for the next couple of months. They, along with many other FP units will be posted along the SLOC from Singapore to locate (and occasionally attack, but this is secondary) enemy subs. I will also station ASW TFs along this route. I have 13 ASW TFs that are each composed of 1x Minekaze class DD and 3x CHa- class SCs. This is in addition to the multitude of Ch- and CHa classes in ASW TFs.

Overall, I have the following allocated to ASW TFs:

13x Minekaze class DD
8x Otori class TB
44x CHa- class SC
33x Ch- class SC

In addition to the above, I have the following for merchant TF escorts (and ASW TFs):

4x E Shimushu
3x APD
19x DMS
7x DD Wakatake
5x PC Momi
7x DD Momi
4x TB Tomozuru
200+ PB (To'su, Kiso and Ansyu-C)

I am upgrading CMs to Es as I can. They keep their mine capacity and gain depth charge racks. Can't hurt.

In addition, I have 99 "modern" DDs for escorts for my warships.

[Mike Solli]

Been bantering back and forth with Ted today. He made an interesting comment about Burma:

I won't even mention India. What a mess. You've completely stymied me there.

I'll post some screenshots about this tonight. I don't think he realizes that my army has very little supply there. I'll wager that his cut off troops have less supply.

[Mike Solli]

26 Oct 42

Allied bombing of Adak and Salamaua today along with Japanese bombing of Chittagong airfield. Only 2% damage from 54 bombers. [8|] I'll try again tomorrow. I have 3 sentai of fighters sweep Chittagong before the bombers go in. The RAF is hiding out right now.

Supply is going only to a couple of bases in Burma. Most of Burma is covered in "!".

I'm using some transports to fly supply in to my army. We'll see if that makes a difference. I doubt it.

During our emails back and forth today, Ted also made a comment about being afraid of my Betties. He wants to whittle them down before he starts invading. He said he doesn't want to lose a regiment before they even get to the shore. Can't say I blame him. Anyway, he said he had an idea about where some of my Betties were and was going to work on them, presumably from the air. I've had a 45 plane daitai of Betties stationed at Shortland Island for quite a while. I just happened to put a sentai of Oscars there last turn, just in case. It turned out that it was a good idea. He sent 38x P-38s on a bombing run of that airbase this turn. The Oscars did ok. They shot one down, while flak got another Lightning. The bombing run did no damage. We'll see what happens tomorrow. I moved the Betties to Truk for R&R.

Edit: I forgot about the Allied attack on Wyndham, a little base in northern Australia. I had the 14 Naval Guard sitting there since I first invaded upteen months ago. Unfortunately, I never could spare any engineers to build forts. Ah well, the Emperor protects! We don't need no stinkin' forts! The 193 Tank Battalion showed up yesterday and attacked today. The 1:21 odds attack [X(] caused 35(0) Japanese casualties to no Allies casualties. Really? I checked my unit out and there were no losses, no squad distruption and fatigue was 3 and no unit disruption. I'm doing a shock attack tomorrow. We'll show them Yankees!

[Mike Solli]

While I'm killing time waiting to get back to my hooch to run the turn I've been pondering the game. I realized I didn't tell you something potentially important. A turn or two ago, I sent KB1 (Akagi, Kaga, Soryu) north from Truk to a point ~5-6 hexes west of Adak. They're going to hang out there and hopefully catch an invasion fleet before it gets to Adak. I would love to smash a fleet of his. That would definitely cause him to pause with any future offensive endeavors for a bit. The fast replenishment fleet was hanging out at Davao. They've sortied and are heading to the west of KB1 to support them should KB1 have to hang around for awhile. The only concern is Allied subs, but I haven't seen a single one up there at all.

I've modified the air components of the CVs:

Akagi: 36 A6M3a, 18 D3A1, 27 B5N2
Kaga: 36 A6M3a, 18 D3A1, 18 B5N2
Soryu: 27 A6M3a, 18 D3A1, 18 B5N2

[Mike Solli]

27 Oct 42

Sub War: The half dozen subs I have stationed from Sydney east are paying off again. The I-173, just a few hexes off the coast of Sydney, caught an xAK in the morning with a torpedo. Later in the day the same two ships met and the cargo ship took another torpedo leaving her with heavy fires and damage. Sinking sounds happened just after that, but she didn't report as being sunk. I'll count that one.

Burma: Ted came up to play today. My Oscar IIa finally got it's first taste of battle over Chittagong. Results were rather blah. They lost 2 aircraft to 2 P40Es shot down. Hmm...

A sentai of Tojos then arrived at Chittagong and shot down the 1 remaining P40. The skies were swept clean for the 54 bombers that visited and did a better job on the airfield, leaving it 22% damaged.

19 Tojos visited Cox's Bazaar and ran into 24 P40Es. For a loss of 2 Tojos, 7 P40s were shot down. Banzai! Also, 3 more P40s were op losses. Not a bad day in the air!

Then, Ted visited Mandalay with 26 Liberators and 32 miscellaneous 2E bombers. I had no CAP. Fortunately, his aim was off. He destroyed a Tojo on the ground and did minor damage to the airfield. I put a sentai of Tojos on CAP for tomorrow. We'll see if he tries it again.

SE Fleet: In addition to the daily Allied bombing of PNG, a couple dozen P38s ran into some Oscars over Shortland Island before strafing the airfield. The Oscars shot down 2 P38 for one Oscar op loss (pilot was ok). The remaining P38s did no damage to the airfield.

Australia: The 14 Naval Guard shock attacked the 193 Tank Battalion pushing it out of Wyndham and destroying several tanks. The Japanese troops took a couple of disruptions but no losses. We'll see what Ted does there. I have some xAKs sitting in the hex that can pull them out if needed. I'll wait a day or two to see what happens.

[Mike Solli]

28 Oct 42

Lots of action today. Fun turn. (Gotta enjoy them while they last.)

Sub War: The rotten little SCs were hanging around Adak again. One of them spotted the I-8 and damaged her with a hedgehog. Damage was slight at 4-3-0-0 but she lost her Glen (op loss) and another sub is one day sail away so I'm sending here back to Etorofu to repair that minor damage and draw another Glen.

KB1 is still 4 days from being in position to do some damage. I think I am going to have one of the 36 plane Zero daitai fly LRCAP over Adak to take a chunk out of some of the bombers hitting Adak daily. I'm not sure if I'm going to do it right away or try to stay hidden for a bit to see if Ted is planning an invasion. I'd really love to hit the invasion and bombardment fleets. I still have 4 days to decide. A lot can happen in 4 days.

Burma: At Chittagong, My Oscar IIas had another lackluster day. They shot down a couple of P40Es for two of their own shot down plus an op loss. I always get excited when a new model becomes operational and then this happens. I should expect too much. The only real difference between this model and the Ic is 1 more hex of range. Ah well. They did succeed in clearing the skies so the 74 2E bombers were able to increase airfield damage to 31%. I'll keep at it.

Ted visited Mandalay again. I had stationed there 2 sentai of Tojos and a chutai of Oscars (Ic). One Tojo sentai was sweeping Cox's Bazaar and the Oscars were sweeping Akyab. The other Tojo sentai flew CAP. Ted apparently expected some trouble so he had 22 P40Ks escorting 27x 4E and 32x 2E bombers. My 33 Tojos did an amazing job, shooting down 13 P40s (+2 op losses) and 3 Blenheim IVs (+1 op loss) for a loss of only 1 Tojo (+1 op loss and 2 pilots). Crew experience soared for this sentai. [:D] The bombers got through and did light damage to the airfield, but not all of it was repaired, and destroyed a Tojo on the ground. I moved all the planes out except the CAP Tojos and left them to counter any bombing attempt tomorrow.

Ted tried to oust my army in the hex on the road between Akyab and Cox's Bazaar, unsuccessfully. I hope he used up a bunch of supply in the process too. Anyway, the attack turned out to be 1:6 (ouch) and caused 516(12+69 vehicles) Japanese to 1822(73+20 vehicles) Allied casualties. The only unit of mine that really took damage was the 14 tank regiment. I'd been trying to pull them out of the hex (they are ~2/3 of the way out) but all but 2 of the tank losses were theirs. They're trashed, but if I get them out, they'll rebuild easily. My two tank divisions took a total of 2 tank losses. My troops (other than the 14th) are still in great shape, but their supply situation is still poor. I'll wager that Ted won't try another attack any time soon. Here's the combat result:

Ground combat at 55,44 (near Cox's Bazar)

Allied Deliberate attack

Attacking force 46697 troops, 773 guns, 1307 vehicles, Assault Value = 1637

Defending force 66041 troops, 874 guns, 1692 vehicles, Assault Value = 2282

Allied adjusted assault: 461

Japanese adjusted defense: 3069

Allied assault odds: 1 to 6

Combat modifiers
Defender: terrain(+), supply(-)
Attacker:

Japanese ground losses:
516 casualties reported
Squads: 1 destroyed, 44 disabled
Non Combat: 10 destroyed, 43 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 4 disabled
Guns lost 24 (1 destroyed, 23 disabled)
Vehicles lost 86 (69 destroyed, 17 disabled)


Allied ground losses:
1822 casualties reported
Squads: 50 destroyed, 168 disabled
Non Combat: 8 destroyed, 116 disabled
Engineers: 1 destroyed, 28 disabled
Guns lost 36 (14 destroyed, 22 disabled)
Vehicles lost 198 (20 destroyed, 178 disabled)


Assaulting units:
7th Armoured Brigade
7th Australian Division
19th Indian Division
44th Indian Brigade
45th Indian Brigade
150th RAC Regiment
2nd British Division
2/11th Field Regiment
6th Medium Regiment
2/13th Field Regiment
48th Light AA Regiment
24th Indian Mountain Gun Regiment
2/9th Field Regiment
6th Heavy AA Regiment

Defending units:
14th Tank Regiment
18th Division
1st Tank Division
Imperial Guards Division
55th Division
56th Division
2nd Tank Division
15th Army
3rd Ind. Mountain Gun Regiment
14th Ind.Art.Mortar Battalion
18th Medium Field Artillery Regiment
3rd Medium Field Artillery Regiment
21st Medium Field Artillery Battalion

SE Fleet: Aside from the daily bombing of PNG, Ted sent a flight of 7 P38s to sweep Gasmata. 15 A6M2s countered them shooting down 1 P38 for the loss of 2 Zeros and 1 pilot each KIA and WIA. I can't wait for 1 November because the A6M5 becomes operational. My intent is to replace all the A6M2s in SE Fleet area with the A6M5 and keep the A6M3a on my carriers (because of their range). I don't have enough A6M3as for all my carriers, but I'll put some A6M5s on them for CAP purposes.

Currently, I'm researching the A6M5b. It will become operational in mid-43. The model I really want is the A6M5c, which has armor. I need to calculate when to change the R&D to the M5c to bring it on as soon as possible after the M5b becomes operational. If I do it right, they'll become operational a month or less apart.

China: I attacked Henyang successfully today, trashing the defenders, who were primarily the previously trashed Chengsha defenders. This was the third time I pummeled them. The 3:1 attack caused 16275(1395) Chinese casualties for only 2638(11) Japanese losses. The infrastructure was trashed: Manpower 2(0), Resources 1(109) and LI 1(39). I won't rebuild anything. There were 2 reasons for this attack: 1. It cleared the railway of Chinese troops and 2. It reduced Chinese supply production by a further 40 supply per day. I have several options for this army now:

1. I can head south along the rail line to take Kukong, further battering the army along the way.
2. I can head west to take Nanning, completing the land route from Malaya to Manchuoko.
3. I can head NW to clear the bases to Kweiyang thus further isolating Ted's bastion around Chunking.

I am leaning toward option #1 because I would like to destroy that army. In addition, I would isolate 11 Chinese units in the south central region of China. By eliminating those 25 units, I would control the entire south central portion of China, shortening my front line. The danger is that Ted has ~500k troops in Chunking but I am keeping an eye on them and so far they haven't moved. I'm going to let my army rest a couple of turns so I have a bit of time to ponder what to do. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Mike Solli]

Here are the options I see with my army in China:

[Quixote]

How much AV do you have to play with at Hengyang right now, Mike?

[Mike Solli]

Minus the garrison, 2200 AV. I also have 10 heavy artillery reg/bns and a med art reg.

[Quixote]

Then I'd vote for option 4.[:'(] Skip the swing over to Changteh and just go straight north to Chihkiang, then west. You'll isolate even more Chinese units this way, and keep him back-pedaling. (The 20 LI at Changteh is not going to keep whatever units he has there in rice and bullets for too much longer than if you took it first anyway, and you'll get an even bigger jump towards Chungking and the Central Plains that way.)

[Mike Solli]

ORIGINAL: Quixote

Then I'd vote for option 4.[:'(] Skip the swing over to Changteh and just go straight north to Chihkiang, then west. You'll isolate even more Chinese units this way, and keep him back-pedaling. (The 20 LI at Changteh is not going to keep whatever units he has there in rice and bullets for too much longer than if you took it first anyway, and you'll get an even bigger jump towards Chungking and the Central Plains that way.)

Interesting idea. I'm doing a recon of those bases to see what's there. I don't think anything in that area can stand up to that army, especially with all that heavy artillery. Some more info: The hex just SW of Ichang has a 120k man Chinese army in it. I have about half that many troops but a nice artillery force there that bombards it daily. It also gets visited by ~45 Sallies each day too. The strength is slowly dwindling so I'm pretty sure the bombardment/bombing is wearing it down. Your option would cut them off.

There is only 1 Chinese unit NW of Changsha so that is not a concern. My only concern is the battered army.

I'll make a decision when I get my next turn. I suspect there isn't much up there. I may be able to do your option and head south to keep mauling that army. That would be ideal. We'll see.

[Mike Solli]

29 Oct 42

Sub War: I unsuccessfully attacked a couple of US fleet subs south of the Home Islands. I think Ted is trying to get intel on where my convoy routes are. He's not going to find it there. My routes end at the nearest point in the Home Islands and I have an ungodly number of planes flying naval search missions there.

Burma: Not sure if it was the weather, but my fighters flew, my bombers didn't, and Ted didn't oppose me at all. Too bad.

SE Fleet: Ted sent P38s over Gasmata and Shortlands. Not so hot a day in the air. Overall, I ended up losing a Zero (WIA), 4 Oscars + an op loss (3 KIA, 1 WIA) and two Tojo op losses vs. 2 P38s. *Sigh*

Australia: It turns out that Ted had sent 2 Aussie divisions and a tank brigade against a garrison unit at ~50% strength plus a small slice of an AV battalion behind level 3 forts. They didn't stand a chance. The deliberate assault netted 58:1 odds and trashed the garrison unit: 2115(83) Japanese to 75(1) Aussies. So much for Darwin. [8|]

I decided to pull out the Naval Guard unit from Wyndham. It's going to serve no purpose defending a base for no reason with no forts against a couple of divisions.

Overall, just another blah turn.

[Xargun]

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

Here are the options I see with my army in China:

My preference would be to clean up your backyard first - get all the Chinese units north of the Changsha rail or you risk a depleted Chinese army grabbing an important base on your supply lines and you being stuck.

Also, you should have troops in Indo-China that can take Nanning - thats what I always do.

[Mike Solli]

Xargun, good idea about Nanning. I have the 5 Division sitting in Singapore doing nothing. I can easily use them to take Nanning. I do agree with you. I don't like leaving that beat up Chinese army just sitting there. I'm going to see what is in the bases to the NW and then decide what to do.