Downfall PBEM - Cruft vs. Fallschirmjaeger (no FJ pls)

[Captain Cruft]

Turn 4 - September 4 1945

Air losses for the day. I will comment later, but ... [:D][:D][:D]

[Captain Cruft]

Oh yes the Me-262s ...


I believe that's 30 to 1 for the day ...

[Captain Cruft]

OK so what happened?

Well, first off during the night the B-29s visited Yokohama again, this time at 15,000ft. The Denkos made their first kill, which was nice, but of course they could not stop the attack and subsequent damage.

I have lost about 15 factories to the FIRES thus far, mostly aircraft (Tokas) and engines (NE Turbojets). At this point I am not repairing anything since I have no clarity on the supply situation going forward.

Then during the day we had:-

An unescorted B-29 port attack on Niigata, where the "KB" starts out. I have Georges and Sams (the funny ones) on CAP here with half-decent pilots flying them. They did quite well and shot down 7 bombers, albeit receiving a few casualties in return. However, the main point was that the attack was sufficiently disrupted to achieve little. Two CMcs were sunk, that was about it.

There followed a huge number of sweeps and airfield attacks over Formosa from both the CVE fleets and the USAAF bases in the Philippines and Okinawa. There was little resistance (it has mostly been eradicated) so this was mostly a matter of shooting at thin air and making rubble bounce.

Then we had the main event - A bunch of actual CVs (4 or 5 at a guess) turned up off the coast of Kyushu just to the east of Amami Oshima. I had seen these guys coming from the Marianas direction but sort of assumed they were heading for Okinawa. I have no real way of attacking them anyway at this point so did nothing to prepare except maintain CAP.

Well, I'm really not sure what FJ was trying to achieve here but what happened was that the CVs launched numerous naval attacks on TFs loading/unloading at Fukuoka and Nagasaki. This was without any prior airbase suppression, just fighters escorting the SBDs and TBDs at 20,000ft.

So, my massed CAP, despite being highly variable in plane and pilot quality, managed to shoot down a lot of US carrier planes. While of course taking large casualties themselves. One thing which helped a lot (I mentioned it before) is that for some reason my fighters often seem to be able to get amongst the bombers and pick up some easy kills. I can only think this is something to do with altitude.

A few ships were sunk and badly damaged including a CVE and an E, but considering what would have happened if the carrier bombers were not level bombing from 20,000ft I got off very lightly.

All in all a very pleasing day, but it doesn't really change anything.

[Captain Cruft]

Visual sitrep.

All the Allied TFs that aren't obviously subs are carriers.

[Captain Cruft]

You don't need to be a stupendous flyer to get some kills in this sort of environment ...

[Cribtop]

13 CV and CVE TFs. This scenario is not for the faint of heart.

[bigbaba]

wow, the ME-262 unit has realy good kill stats. you plan to use them against allied B-29?

[sprior]

I'm playing this scenario as the allies in a pbem against Andy. we've got to mid Jan 46 and I've got some things right and some things wrong. Not sure I should give too much away but the allies have a LOT of stuff.

[Captain Cruft]

bigbaba,

I can't control where the B-29s will appear but if they do show up near the Karyus in the day-time then of course they will have a go at them. They will probably not be much better at shooting them down than any other fighter though.

Admiral Lord sprior,

Nice of you to drop in. Yes indeed the Allies do have a LOT of stuff ... I'll just do me best sir

Even if the Emperor has to be evacuated to Ulleungdo we will carry on the bitter end.

[Captain Cruft]

Note

We seem to have contracted the sync bug, so FJ is getting completely false combat replays. I am sending the combat report text file over and hopefully the thing will resolve itself at some point.

I thought this had been pretty much eradicated though?

[sprior]

I haven't seen the synch bug for years. Literally.

[Captain Cruft]

Matsu class destroyer.



Call me a fool but I am sending some of these out to have a go at intercepting the US CV fleet overnight. They are slow but do carry Long Lances ...

Just an experiment really. I have loads of the blighters and they're all going to end up sunk one way or the other.

[Captain Cruft]

Turn 5 - September 5 1945


I thought I would try a kamikaze attack on the CVs. It didn't work, only a single bomber made it through the CAP and no ordnance was delivered. These were not my best planes and pilots though, it's just more experimentation.

As you can see the weather is very bad, and one of the US CV TFs is on the cusp of entering the Yellow Sea, However, for some reason there were no attacks at all today from the carriers. Just the usual superfluous pounding of Formosa plus an airfield attack by unescorted B-24s on Fusan, which did little damage.

The Ki-201s claimed another 7 kills for one more plane down. So overall that's 54 for 4, or 13.5 to 1. A very nice ratio indeed and one that the entire airforce will need to be achieving later on if we are to stand any chance of survival.

On the water, my overnight DD escapade did nothing, not even any "reactions". I will keep trying though.

Strategically speaking, the B-29s moved to Osaka during the night, where my IJA night fighters proved equally as useless as the navy ones at Tokyo. Little damage as usual, and I note that I seem to be accumulating an HI surplus of around 4,000 per turn. This might just be because I have a lot of aircraft production turned off though.

Pilot-wise, I am now drawing untrained numptys into the IJN training/kamikaze units, and the IJA pool is down to about 30.

[Captain Cruft]

I don't like to give combat reports in the thread but here is the last turn's for download if you're interested.

[bigbaba]

whats the armament of the japanese version of ME-262 in AE? 4x30mm like the german ones?

if yes it would be intresting to see them against a US combat box over japan.

[Captain Cruft]

Turn 6 - September 6 1945


CVs successfully interdicting Shanghai traffic. Ouchie. Plus it looks like a landing is on it's way to Formosa

This made me laugh:

Naval bombardment of Laoag at 81,72

Allied Ships
BB Arkansas
BB Mississippi
BB New Mexico
BB Idaho
BB Tennessee
BB California
BB Pennsylvania
BB Nevada
BB West Virginia
BB Colorado
BB Maryland
CA San Francisco
CA Minneapolis
CA New Orleans
CA Salt Lake City
CA Pensacola
CA Louisville
CA Chester
CA Indianapolis
CA Portland
DD Roe
DD Hughes
DD Sampson
DD Niblack
DD Frankford

Japanese ground losses:
4220 casualties reported
Squads: 72 destroyed, 147 disabled
Non Combat: 103 destroyed, 139 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Guns lost 48 (9 destroyed, 39 disabled)

The units were wiped out ...

[Captain Cruft]

The combat report. Air losses were light and about even.

[Captain Cruft]

Turn 7 - September 7 1945


Hands off my Festung!

I had two of these unescorted attacks today from the CVs on some sub-chasers patrolling at Tsushima. Very nice, and good praccie for the fighters in the area. However, over at Shanghai (not illustrated) I had about 30 tankers and their escorts completely annihilated by the bulk of the carrier force.

There was nothing I could about the latter since the TF was stranded in the Yellow Sea last turn and did not have the legs to get anywhere else.

So, the Yellow Sea blockade (for that is what it seems to be) is now complete, and I cannot move anything out of China save by air. This is bad, but not entirely unexpected. I will just have to be patient, and also see how many of the 240 odd ships tied up at Shanghai can be moved up-river. He may not attack the port with his CV planes because of the flak, but there is nothing to stop a medium/heavy bomber strike from Okinawa.

The Ki-201s were 9 for 0 this turn. I continue to be amazed at how well these perform.

[Captain Cruft]

Turn is on its way back to FJ ...

We have sorted the sync bug BTW - he was using the beta patch and I wasn't so he made a separate install with the official version and this cured it.

Back in the actual game, I am going to try some Shindens and J2M5s as night fighters at Tokyo/Yokohama. There have been no daylight attacks in this area at all, and besides there are a bazillion Oscars and the like to fend them off should they occur.

They can't possibly do any worse than the Judys and Denkos.

[Alikchi2]

Nice work so far.