COmments on these combat results anyone?

[dwbradley]

I am Gilligan's opponent in this battle. I hope he does not mind me posting this reply I just sent to him.

There are three issues/questions that seem to be on the table.

First, were you outplayed? No way. Out-lucked, maybe. If anything you are the one who has outplayed me. When I saw the fleet approaching the string of barrier islands I was at first puzzled. I thought, "Those islands are pretty useless as bases and a long way from anywhere". But the forces detected were far greater than might be required to set up a harassing point to my north. It was with a sick, sinking feeling that I realized that the bases on Sakkalin Island were capable of being built up to level 7. They were within easy B-29 range of all of the Home Islands and might put all of Japan under escorted heavy-bomber attack by late '44. Truly a disaster in the making for me the Japanese player. I was forced to admit to myself that I had not reviewed this portion of the map for such a possibility. There's a line in one of Jerry Pournelle's novels about "surprise is an event that happens in the mind of the enemy commander". You certainly caused that event in my mind. Now, normally, bold moves carry with them some attendant risks. Think Inchon. MacArthur was brilliant but maybe also a bit lucky. Sakkalin is a long way from home and you were almost forced to go in blind for fear of giving the operation away. So, hat's off to you for having the imagination necessary to see this possibility and for having the large appendages necessary to attempt it. If it fails, and that's by no means certain (see my responses to the second and third issues below), then you are in no way diminished in my mind as an able and crafty opponent. You could have simply continued to bludgeon your way forward in the Philippines, Java, and perhaps the Marianas. Eventually, the allies would overcome the resistance or the game would come to the end of 1946. Instead you looked for the bold stroke that would make our game exciting and more interesting. I have been almost beside myself wondering what was going to happen (not done wondering yet) these past few turns. Hurrah, sir, Hurrah!

Second, Battle analysis. Ok, after I got over the shock of realizing that I just might be looking at my defeat coming a lot sooner than I had anticipated I spent a long time trying to decide just what I might be facing and what countermeasures I might have available. Since some things have now become evident by what happened in the last turn I will share with you some information that you would mightily liked to have had in early ’44. By early ’44 it had become evident to me that my empire was about to collapse. Attrition of planes and pilots had left me with almost none of either. Many squadrons were sitting around and could not even go to training for lack of planes. The IJN was in equally sad shape, with most capital ships with medium to high SYS damage and pending upgrades not carried out from as far back as ’42. Losses of CAs and CLs made the remaining crucial workhorses too valuable to risk as I had been doing in attempting to oppose your landings in ’43. Even DDs were in short supply. Yes, I still had all of my CVs but no squadrons and few escorts. I think an invasion of Luzon and or the Marianas at that point would not have been successfully opposed by me. One more big push by you and I would probably have resigned. But maybe you were exhausted too. You may remember some of my gloomy posts from that period. So I resolved to trade space for time, rebuild and only oppose the most critical points. By mid to late summer ’44 the rebuilding was essentially complete, new forces and equipment and advanced fighters had begun to arrive so the question now became how and when to use these tools to halt your advance? You supplied me with the answer to that question.

When I thought about your invasion force it seemed obvious to me that to make a base work so far from your logistical center you would have to bring more than enough of everything, with supplies enough to last for a long, long time. That explained the enormous amount of TFs. That made this a critically large investment and it would not make sense for you to come without every escort, CV and carrier-based plane you could scrape up. Fortunately for me I had my CVs reasonably close by. I couldn’t get to your fleet before landings commenced but could get there shortly afterward. If you could get a land base up and running you could fly in escort (the noxious P-38js were within transfer range) and maybe thumb your nose at me while you built up the airfield and then brought in bombers. I could not be certain how long the base (and you chose Shika) would hold after you landed ( not very long in my worst case estimation) so I had to react to try to take out the transports before you got enough stuff ashore to make the base viable in the long term. But first I would have to deal with the CVs. Although I had enjoyed some earlier good luck against your carriers you still had all of the Essex class and whatever else was available from the early war stuff and the large number of CVLs and CVEs. I thought the forces would be approximately equal in size. Any element of surprise I might have had was gone when my TFs tripped over your sub and alerted you to my approach. I decided that there was no time to dance around and finesse, I had to go for a knock-out. It seemed to me that you would probably bias your escort/CAP ratio toward CAP. That would be smart because if we traded losses of planes, pilots and ships you would win. I remembered how our earlier large fight near Midway resulted in a draw because the CAP consistently outnumbered the escort and slaughtered the airstrikes with almost no damage to the CVs. I resolved to load the CVs with mostly fighters (approximately 3-1), I set my CAP to 20%, and I tried to make up my deficiencies in CAP and strike aircraft with land-based LRCAP and land-based level bombers. You were rolling the dice with this invasion and now I was forced to roll the dice and bet everything too.

The first thing that happened was that my CV TFs reacted to yours even though I had reaction set to zero. This meant that carriers were not exactly where I had wanted them to be in relation to Shika but your carriers also reacted. It seems to me now that not all of your CV TFs reacted, just the ones with the big Essex class ships. This may have proved important because it created some separation between groups of your carriers and may have led to the somewhat piecemeal nature of your attacks.

Your attacks went in first but it was your first strike and later my first strike from the CVs that were to prove decisive and to create the conditions for what was a stunning, almost incredible result.

From my notes, your first strike consisted of 108 F6Fs, 16 FM-2s, 72 TBMs, and 86 SB2Cs. My CAP consisted of 109 Zekes, 45 Jacks, 52 Georges, and 8 Franks. The Jacks, Georges, and Franks were LRCAP from local bases. I watched the detail blow-by-blow screen for this attack, which took approx. 2 hours to complete on my computer. I observed the following:
1. I seemed to have a large qualitative edge with the Franks, Georges, and Jacks over the F6Fs. I attribute this to two factors. One is that the game seems to give some advantage to defending CAP versus escort. This makes sense although I cannot say if the advantage so given is of the right proportion. The second is what I might call the Corsair factor. When the game matches some planes against other planes it seems that there are cases where some planes seem almost invincible. This makes sense maybe if we put a Brewster Buffalo against oh, say, a Frank or a George. I’m not so sure it makes sense between relatively equal planes with pilots of relatively equal experience. My overall fighter pilot experience of the pilots going in to this battle was approx. 78 but many were in the 80s and 90s. I had been saving up for a long time and knew I had to send the best I had.
2. For whatever reason, the individual combats were proportionally greater to Franks/Georges/Jacks vs F6Fs than Zekes vs F6Fs than I might have expected. This was particularly noteworthy with the Franks who started with 8 planes, lost planes down to zero and kept on entering combat. There were 2 Frank groups of 36 on LRCAP so the 8 may have been a FOW number. I did notice that the F6Fs kept on fighting for a while after their count reached zero.
3. The CAP vs. escort battles continued until there were no escorts left. I think I really had an approximate 2:1 advantage in CAP over escort so the ratio of kills of maybe 4-1 or 5-1 seems high but not out of the range of possibilities, given the factors cited above. We probably also entered that twilight zone of large air battles where these lopsided, one-way results seem to occur.
4. After eliminating the escort the CAP shot down or forced withdrawal of all of the attack planes. That’s the large air battle factor again I think.
Your forces then commenced a series of mostly rag-tag, uncoordinated for the most part, strikes which were chewed up by that same CAP. The FM-2 Wildcats seemed to be almost not a factor as they were clearly overmatched. Fifteen strikes in all went in with disastrous results for the strike planes.

The next critical event was after the Japanese strikes commenced. After a few Bettys and Frances struck at the transports at Shika without effect the first and largest of the IJN strikes went after your carriers. From my notes, the strike consisted of 106 Grace, 76 Judys, and 484 Zekes. The CAP consisted of 189 F6Fs and 53 FM-2s. I was too tired to contemplate sitting through the blow-by-blow for this one so I just hit the button and watched the scrolling screen as your CAP chewed through my escort. My tactic of loading up the escort proved to be just enough so that even though you shot down almost 400 Zekes (again, the best I had to send) eventually the weight of numbers prevailed and the escort was eliminated. Now the fox was in the hen house and three carriers got hit pretty hard.

The IJN and IJNAF then launched a number of piecemeal, somewhat uncoordinated attacks of their own. Many were unescorted and often encountered no CAP. Some did get hit by CAP and were wiped out but some found unprotected ships and scored some crucial hits. I have no idea why sometimes your CAP was not to be seen over the CVEs that were still functional and presumably still had some fighters left.

In the afternoon and the next day the IJN followed up on the advantage gained and pounded every ship they could find with help from land-based bombers.

So, is this an anomalous result? It is so one-sided in terms of ships attacked/lost that one would be tempted to think so. The air-to-air losses do not seem completely out of line to me. Is it possible in this game for the Japanese to win in 1944 what is, in effect, a reverse Marianas Turkey Shoot kind of victory? I think that the game did not malfunction in the sense of a bug but rather this is just how the games works (or doesn’t work) when these large encounters occur.

Third, what do we do now? Well you certainly face a difficult situation but maybe not hopeless. If your forces can quickly take Shika and you can get planes to them they should be able to hold out for quite some time until sufficient cavalry arrives. Hell, for all I know you may have sufficient naval forces in the area to deliver some stunning reverses to me and realize that nightmare scenario I described above concerning B-29 bases on Sakkalin. You are still more powerful than me overall and will continue to receive more stuff than I. You have Corsairs and B-29s and more Essex carriers to come. Your lost squadrons will return even if their ships do not. You must decide if it is worth it to you to continue the fight. The Japanese player has the obligation to fight as long as the allied player wants to continue in order to make up for all of the one-sided fun the Japanese player gets in 1942. It’s your call sir and I will support whatever you decide.

If you want to post about this turn please do so and feel free to use any or all of this somewhat rambling but I hope somewhat coherent monolog.

Once again, cheers to you for going for the bold stroke. It looks like it may not come off but the greater shame would be not to try.

Dave

[Tom Hunter]

Dave,

Thanks for adding all this very helpful information.

Its interesting to see that Japan can put together a really strong strike group that late in the game.

I don't see any problem with the result, both sides sent huge numbers of planes into a very large important battle and one of them lost.

The fact that in the real war the Americans did this to the Japanese and in this battle Japan did it to the Americans does not mean it's not ok.

The problem with his strategy is it falls between too stools instead of sitting on one or the other.

He did not raid or recon so that he could get strategic suprise.

But he can't get strategic suprise because the target is so deep into Japanese terrirtory that you have time to react.

So he ends up with the worst of both worlds and suffers a major defeat.

[WhoCares]

Not to forget that these are exactly the battles we want to see in our games - just not on the receiving end [8|][:'(]

[Oleg Mastruko]

ORIGINAL: dwbradley
hat's off to you for having the imagination necessary to see this possibility and for having the large appendages necessary to attempt it. If it fails, and that's by no means certain (see my responses to the second and third issues below), then you are in no way diminished in my mind as an able and crafty opponent. You could have simply continued to bludgeon your way forward in the Philippines, Java, and perhaps the Marianas. Eventually, the allies would overcome the resistance or the game would come to the end of 1946. Instead you looked for the bold stroke that would make our game exciting and more interesting. I have been almost beside myself wondering what was going to happen (not done wondering yet) these past few turns. Hurrah, sir, Hurrah!

Get a room, you two...

Old art of ridiculing and taunting your opponent in mails, if not in public, seems to have completely disappeared in this time of political correctness [:D] (joking)

Seriously, thanks for your long explanation, and congrats on very good game. [&o] What is the date in your game, and major losses so far? Seems like very interesting game overall, and you got very far date-wise.

O.

[anarchyintheuk]

The most important tactical factor in the outcome was the IJN only splitting into 3-4 strikes (in the right order, all your escorts first) while the USN, for whatever reason, decided to split into about 15 strikes. If you have any TBMs left load your CAG as a 180lb GP.

Shooting down the entire USN CAP on the first strike didn't hurt either.

[dwbradley]

One important aspect I neglected to mention is that the game is being played with 2-day turns. So from the time of detection to the start of landings was two turns. The combat discussed above occurred onthe third turn after detection. I really was in a panic and was indeed fortunate to have forces near enough of suitable size to contest this move.

Game is Tanaka scenario started under 1.3 and continued with upgrades to 1.6. We started in December 2004 and have progressed in game time to October 1944.

Major actions? Let me think about that and maybe I'll post a summary and maybe Gilligan would be willing to comment. I tend to play my cards pretty close to the chest so I don't give anything away, but we'll see.

[ADavidB]

Game is Tanaka scenario started under 1.3 and continued with upgrades to 1.6. We started in December 2004 and have progressed in game time to October 1944.

Okay, you are definitely not going to want Gilligan to quit at this point...[X(]

Dave

[1275psi]

Well, as a long time japanese player, UV and WITP, nothing encourages a person more than this - so if I am good enough, and my opponent makes a mistake -I have a chance.

Of course I have to be good enough.

But this has convinced me to put some good pilots into a "bank" for when the franks arrive.

My final opinion of the result above - it really just shows great japanese play, ballsy allied play -and the wonderful vagrancies of war! -with out which we could all just read books instead of playing WITP[:'(]

[Oleg Mastruko]

ORIGINAL: dwbradley
Game is Tanaka scenario started under 1.3 and continued with upgrades to 1.6. We started in December 2004 and have progressed in game time to October 1944.

Did Tanaka significantly boost Japanese pilot pool/replacements/experience for his scenario?

O.

[dwbradley]

ORIGINAL: Oleg Mastruko

ORIGINAL: dwbradley
Game is Tanaka scenario started under 1.3 and continued with upgrades to 1.6. We started in December 2004 and have progressed in game time to October 1944.

Did Tanaka significantly boost Japanese pilot pool/replacements/experience for his scenario?

O.

I don't think so but at any rate I quickly squandered what I had. This was/is my first PBEM WITP game and it has been very much an OJT kind of experience. It was months into the game as I struggled with pilot management that I stumbled across the whole area of pilot training. Gilligan has also been most helpful in my education, with many stinging lessons early on (ASW/sub activity and mine warfare come to mind but there were more).

[Gilligan]

Ok guys,

Just got back from the doctor, and good news. He says I am going to live, but I have to give up WiTP, or at least give up command of anything but the West Coast forces, if I want to remain alive.

Talk about a sleepness night....anyhow, to address some of the comments/questions:

1) My 8 Essex class CV were in 4 divisions of 2 CV each, with one having 1 or 2 baby CV along for the ride. I didn't have much in the way of CLAA or BB for air defense, but I did have 15 CVL/CVE also on hand to cover the actual landinf force.

2) My F6F pilots averaged about 72 in experience. The FM-2, which I just recently learned was useless against anything but a Nate, averaged about 60 in experience.

3) I had the CAP over my CVs set to 60%.

4) DW had about 3 turns warning, meaning 6 days, but 3 turns worth to get help into the area.

5) Recon consisted of a ouji board, and a dead chicken. I noticed his airbases around the Island were all at 1...I didn't know if that was correct, or if I wasn't seeing them built up do to FOW, but I was counting on him not being able to move much into the area for land based AC support...I guessed wrong. LRCAP isn't effected by AB size, as DW has so graciously pointed out.

6) We had a bit of a go at each other back in '42 NE of PH when he tried to sneak in and disrupt my shipping out of the west coast..actually he caught a large TF of TK and mauled them badly. I had my CV on had at PH at the time, and we connected, resulting in alot of downed planes and not much else. So, I thought I had thinned the herd so to speak regarding his Naval pilots, as I haven't seen his CV since then, in combat anyhow.

Anything DW says about my fighting abilities is a pack of lies..I am generally geting my arse handed to me, nearing Robberson proportions, as I have lost what...8-10 CV for his 0..it's really ugly. The killing grounds are still fresh..my TFs are now offloading in Shikka, with, I'd say, about 20 FM-2 for cover. The next couple of turns are going to be a horror flick, with DW playing the role of maniac killer and me starring as the girl in high heels running thru the woods....we all know how that turns out every time.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Gilligan
... and me starring as the girl in high heels running thru the woods...

Give us your word that there will be NO VIDEO!

[:D]

[mogami]

Hi, I can't wait for Brady to try this.

[Gen.Hoepner]

ORIGINAL: Oleg Mastruko

ORIGINAL: dwbradley
Game is Tanaka scenario started under 1.3 and continued with upgrades to 1.6. We started in December 2004 and have progressed in game time to October 1944.

Did Tanaka significantly boost Japanese pilot pool/replacements/experience for his scenario?

O.

If i remember well the Tanaka scenario only modified the some upgrade paths for the nates ( they upgraded to Tony instead of OscarII). Nothing more.

[siRkid]

I say stick it out and keep us imformed. By the way how long RT have you two been at this game? In all the time i've played WITP I've never once made it to 1944. This thread is a great read.

[dwbradley]

ORIGINAL: Kid

I say stick it out and keep us imformed. By the way how long RT have you two been at this game? In all the time i've played WITP I've never once made it to 1944. This thread is a great read.

We have been enjoying this pleasure/pain since December of last year.

Gilligan has decided to press on regardless, for which I am grateful. This game can deliver highs and lows not easily obtained by other legally addictive pastimes. We are just two WITP junkies muddling along and getting our fixes. There was an earlier request for some more information so that this situation could be understood in context. That is, what the hell has happened between 12/7/41 and the current game date (10/17/44 as of this post). This isn’t the AAR section and I am somewhat uneasy at the prospect of trying to describe all that has occurred to bring us to this point. That could be a considerable task and for both of us to spill our guts might compromise operations underway or in the works (How do those guys in the AAR section make this work?). Give me a few days and I will see if I can put together some sort of history of the game until now that Gilligan and I both seem to agree on. Perhaps we can do the same for periodic updates. It is quite surprising to me that our game is of interest.