ORIGINAL: Alfred
GreyJoy,
Your comments in post #203 regarding India/Ceylon and China disclose that you still don’t “get” it.
For the first six months of the war, there are no good options for the Allies; your choice ranges from the disagreeable to the outright bad. One of the hardest things to do is to choose the least bad option when no good options are available. Essentially you fail to assess your means and then draw up a suitable plan, instead fixing upon some ideal outcome and then coming up short in trying to achieve it. That is a sure fire recipe for consistently missing the disagreeable option and choosing instead the bad option. Your performance in China is testimony to this statement.
Regarding your China performance and future plans for India, try assessing the following comments against whatever analytical process you actually engaged in.
(A) China
1. In an ideal world, no Allied pocket would ever occur. In the practical world of AE, not all pockets are the same.
(a) A Dutch pocket means little as you are losing poor quality troops with very limited reinforcements. Even if not pocketed they will quickly lose their combat value due to inability to replenish themselves.
(b) The usual Singapore pocket is a mixed bag. Some quality infantry is lost; some poor quality infantry with limited replacements is lost. Given time most of the pocketed infantry units can become quite valuable. At Singapore you usually will lose some HQs which will respawn, and some which don’t.
(c) Losing an atoll based quality USMC unit which is able to access plenty of replacements, is not good.
(d) Losing a Chinese unit, which will 30 days later respawn at 1/3 if destroyed in combat, is often a very good outcome for the Allied player. You spend no supply in respawning the unit, during the 30 day respawning period you have a reduced demand on your logistics, the respawned unit does not deplete your pools which otherwise often are under intense pressure (assuming you have units able to expend supplies to take replacements).
2. Some Allied pockets are a net loss, contributing little benefit to the Allied cause but a huge benefit to Japan. Some Allied pockets can come close to balancing the Allied/Japanese benefit ledger.
(a) Losing a complete USMC regiment at Canton Island is usually a large net loss on the benefit ledger. You lose 1 VP per 3 items destroyed; you lose a quality unit, your Trans Pacific SLOCs become more vulnerable. Unless you inflicted large casualties on the enemy or distracted them from pursuing more important strategic conquests elsewhere, you will come out very much in the red in this ledger.
(b) Losing a Chinese unit in a pocket may or may not be a good investment. Certainly the loss of VPs is of very low concern because you only lose 1 VP per 12 items destroyed. The respawning feature also greatly mitigates the loss. The key question is whether the Chinese pocket is centred on a vital to Japan position or the Chinese troops could have been more gainfully employed elsewhere.
In your case, early on in China you experienced a few pockets brought about by a combination of good play by your opponent + poor play by your + your inexperience + the poor initial disposition of Chinese forces as at 7 December 1941. You simply failed to systematically assess the factors which brought the situation about and instead concluded that any pocket in China was to be avoided at any cost. In other words, you panicked.
3. Your decision to abandon Changsha and Sian is simply unpardonable and is the direct reason why you are currently faced with the distinct possibility of losing even Chungking in the first half of 1942. Bravo, that may well be a unique Allied achievement. Because you panicked in the face of enemy outflanking manoeuvres, you failed to consider the following factors which differentiate these potential pockets from the earlier Chinese pockets and adjust your plans/actions accordingly.
(a) Changsha is good defensive terrain, one of the best in China. It’s at start fortification level is decent and quite a few units start off prepped for it. It is on one of the few railway lines so subject to the position elsewhere, for once you might be able to transfer forces to and from quicker than the enemy. If you don’t value all these features, then you have no idea how to conduct a defence.
(b) Sian is not on good defensive terrain but its approaches are good defensive terrain.
(c) Changsha in particular, but also Sian, generates useful auto supply daily. This supply cannot be stopped by Japan and hence these cities can never be completely cut off from some supply. Ideally you would never lose access to the outside world but consider what steps Japan would need to take to so cut off these cities completely from the outside world. Merely outflanking the cities does not suffice. The enemy would need to enter the city from each passable hex. That imposes a cost both in enemy units and time which otherwise would be able to continue their uninterrupted advance to Chungking.
(d) Japan cannot afford to simply continue its advance and leave Changsha and Sian in Chinese hands in its rear. Both cities lie astride important Japanese LOCs and the Japanese advance will lose oomph due to logistical difficulties whilst these cities remain under Chinese control.
4. You are well aware of the speed of advance of the enemy and the slow movement rate of your own Chinese troops. Knowing that you still insist on abandoning positions to move onto another position which itself will already be quite untenable long before you arrive. In the process you accomplish the following.
(a) Lose the benefit of whatever fortification level you have in the old position. Without the benefit of forts/entrenchments, your LCUs suffer greater damage from enemy air attacks.
(b) Expose your poor quality units to greater fatigue/disruption in their cross country sightseeing tour.
(c) In some instances removed the Sword of Damocles hanging over your opponent. A good example is the situation around Ichang. Your screen shots show the powerful Chinese units to the west and north of Ichang with movement arrows away from Ichang. Those units are amongst the most powerful in the entire Chinese OOB and they occupy excellent defensive terrain. If they should be moved at all, they should be moved to Changteh. Left at their initial position they indirectly defend Changteh by threatening to move into Ichang the moment Japan advances towards Changteh.
5. Much do you comment on the hordes of enemy aircraft operating in China. Yet have you really closely looked at the air war.
(a) It is not uncommon for an enemy sweep to be conducted by only 3 planes. Why did you not oppose such sweeps with the AVG?
(b) If the enemy is using so many fighters to sweep and escort his bombers which are wreaking your infrastructure and slowing down your units, what does he have left to protect his own advancing columns or rear area infrastructure from your own bomber attacks.
(c) What prevents you from conducting night air operations? Even with your 20k altitude HR, night operations can still be a nuisance.
(d) Why are you not flying your bombers on recon? Recon at 20K is almost immune from AA and rarely gets intercepted. It will not give you high quality intel but it will give you some which will assist your LCUs to inflict greater casualties.
(B) India
I see wishful thinking here, removed from a cold assessment of the possibilities. Your comments regarding Ceylon display a serious misunderstanding of the situation.
1. For the sake of the argument, let’s assume that you are right and Japan cannot land on any western Indian beach or Bombay as long as Colombo remains under Allied control. What are the factors which achieve this equable outcome?
(a) The Royal Navy? The very same force which you just managed to evacuate off map just before the mid January 1942 KB raid. I suppose if you weigh anchor immediately upon identification of the invasion fleet the RN will arrive on map in time to catch the withdrawing invasion fleet.
(b) Ah, but what if you keep the RN on station. Yes, the mighty Hermes strikes terror into the hearts of Japanese players. Even though you already have lost the Repulse and the Prince of Wales, those “R” class battleships are still fast enough to catch enemy merchantmen. However not too many Allied players drool at the prospect of those battleships going up against the KB or the enemy battle line.
(c) Then there is the Royal Air Force. Yes, equipped with Buffaloes, Blenheims, Lysanders, Wapiti and Audax, they are bound to get through the KB CAP of Zeroes to deliver penetrating hits. Obviously the performance of level bombers in the anti ship role in defending Java from invasion was an aberration and the same performance will not be repeated off Ceylon. Face it; at this stage of the war only your torpedo equipped squadrons pose a real threat and you have only a handful of such squadrons, with practically no replacements and in the case of the Vildebeest limited to short range operations. Of course that assumes your fighters will be able to neutralise the enemy CAP.
(d) Taking into account your aircraft replacement rates and the probably shallow pool of trained pilots, just how long do you think the RAF would remain a credible effective force? Who do you think will be worn down the quickest, the British or the Japanese?
2. But must an invasion fleet headed to Bombay or Karachi pass close enough to Colombo to even be discovered and then subjected to attack. The answer is no. Just as your opponent has regularly bypasses and outflanked land units in China, the same can be done at sea. And he has already done so. Recall the KB raid on Colombo and Diego Garcia. You had no warning then, so what makes you think that an invasion fleet could not take a similar route and arrive unannounced at its destination?
3. For the sake of the argument, let’s assume your opponent does share your views regarding Ceylon and decides he must first capture Ceylon. Can you identify a single AAR where the Allied player has thrown back an early 1942 determined and expertly executed Japanese invasion of Ceylon? I can’t think of one off the top of my head. That alone should indicate the odds are poor. So the value in defending Ceylon (or in the words of the earlier discussion, the Ceylon pocket) is whether the time bought allows for the defence of India to be improved. That requires you to;
(a) know exactly what reinforcements you gain balanced against what you will lose in the Ceylon pocket,
(b) how you can maximise the value of the bought time.
Come back to me when you have done that exercise and then demonstrate why Ceylon is a must defend location.
4. To counter a landing between Madras and Calcutta you are assembling a rapid reaction force of 600-800 AV. That equates to 2 divisions. A rapid reaction force is one possible plan but you have to carefully factor in the following.
(a) You have provided no details as to the quality of the rapid reaction force. Adjusted Assault Values only impact on whether an attack is successful or is beaten back. Often what appears to be an impressive Assault Value on paper becomes a very small Adjusted Assault Value.
(b) It is firepower, not assault value which kills enemy troops. At this stage of the war, my money is on the invading Japanese having both superior Assault Value and firepower than your Rapid reaction Force.
(c) If Japan invades India, how big do you think the invasion force will be? My money is that it will brush aside your contemplated Rapid Reaction Force and easily get off the beach. Then again we may well see a rerun of china where the enemy forces move more quickly than do your own. This is why you need to think long and hard as to whether you should really defend Ceylon or whether those troops would be better used as part of your Rapid Reaction Force, and the airplanes used in the interior of India rather than wasted against the KB cap.
At the end of the day you must determine what you have, what it can accomplish and then determine the best plan to utilise your assets. When there are no good options you just have to be ruthless.
Alfred
Alfred (and to all those who kindly replied in my thread): thanks a lot for the time and efforts spent to teach me these hard lessons.
I understand i haven't showed a decent skill level to face my opponent and i know that, especially in the first days of war, i've been pretty lazy, not being able to concentrate and focus on the big picture but being overwhelmed by the events.
However, despite i admit the 90% of the things you said are right, i respectfully disagree with some points of your analysis, especially for what concerns China.
For sure i didn't give to you readers enough elements to judge properly what i have faced there.
My goal was to follow the many examples we have here on the forum and defend Changsha till the very last man, knowing it is the core of Chinese defences.
However what differes this match much from the others i've read is that Rader brought most of the forces initially used to smash Malaya to Hypong (near Hanoi) and from there he moved towards Nanning with the whole 25th Army, supported by not less than 200 IJN bombers and some 50 crack zeros. That side of my perimeter was almost defenceless and, as you know, losing nanning and Liuchow would have cut the railroad which, as you have just said, so important for the chinese. In fact, untill i understood what was going on there, my plan was simple: defend the area around Changsha using the wood terrain hexes and keeping free my RR in order to guarantee a constant flow of supplies to my front line units. When i got what was up there i tried to send my Chungking Army to reinforce the Liuchow sector, keeping at the same time garrisoned Changsa area. However HK fell in those days and he used the masses that conquered HK, reinforced by more LCUs not attached to the Chinese sector restricted HQ, to march from HK up to Wuchow, thus applying lot of pressure on the Liuchow area which was know threatened from south and west. In the meanwhile, using the air power (consider that most of the IJAAF was in China at that moment) he crushed the perimeter on Changsha flanks, directly threatening my RR. At that moment i was really unbalanced, with the Chungking army on half the way to Liuchow and with japanese masses ready to cut the RR west of Changsha.
If i had ordered my guys to defend Changsha till the last man he simply could have marched right towards Chungking from Liuchow.
Consider that Rader is to smart to try to eliminate the pockets he creates. He never faced my stacks frontally. He bypassed them , leaving a couple of strong LCU to guard the contested hex and reducing my AVs with his bombers. every attempt of mine to break these pockets have failed, while the japs contented to isolate them and pass beyond with the bulk of their armies.
I decided to abbandon Changsha at the very last minute, when the RR was already cut and when Liuchow had already fallen. If i had not taken that hard decision i could have had, within the next 2 weeks, 2000 Jap AVs sitting in Chungking, sieging the city and cutting every single supply lines towards the fronts.
In the north i think i was more guilty. I didn't understood in time that i was getting encirled at Chengchow and Loyang, where my best defences were. He cut my retreat route and, using the clear terrain and his tanks, annihilated any attempt of mine to break the pocket. When the pocket was closed and my best units were cut out from any supply route, he sent his dreaded tanks up to Sian and Nanyang.
I had no option but to abbandon Sian area and save those 1000 AVs that were left in that area.
With the abbandon of Chansha and Sian it's true that i've lost China, but at least i managed to get to Central China some 6000 AVs that, if God wants it, could attrit the Japs for some more time.
if i had not taken those decisions, probably now Chungking would be alread in Japs' hands.
I'm not saying that i didn't make any mistake. i've made a LOT of mistakes. I've been lazy and i wasn't able to look any further than a couple of turns at the beginning...but i really feel that you are undervaluating Rader's chinese strategy which has been, more or less, perfect.
He understood that the only real soft spot in China at 7th Dec 41 is Nanning area. From there he can easily conquest Liuchow and than march all the way north, bypassing the whole Changsha area. He used many assets taken from other threatres when i didn't have the strenght to threat him in those very same threatres (Malaya, PI and Pacific).
Last thing about China concerns the use of allied air forces. He really brought everything there. I tried to use the AVG during the first days but, after a couple of victories he started to sweep every single base and bomb the hell out of everything...my AVG got grounded two times in Whucow because of his raids and i even risked of losing it when his forces approached Whuchow with one of my AVG unit still grounded because the base had been bombed for 4 days in a row...could risk to lose those exp pilots so i decided to move back to Chungking...since that moment he had so many numbers in the air that i couldn't really hope to fight at with good chances in the air, so i ordered the AVG to move back to Burma...
For what concerns India, i understand what you say, but, at the same time, i'm not seeing any possibile different winning strategy.
Your analysis basically says: RN is useless at this stage of war. RAF is useless too. My Indian LCUs are of little use against 12 Japanese divisions and the only good troops i have in India (UK and AUS - and some AUS units have been sent to OZ) are too few to really make any difference. So what am i supposed to do?
I'm trying to understand where i can stand and fight in the interior...but the rail/road infrastructure of India is so developed that he can always deny a face-to-face fight unless he knows he has a superior firepower and simply bypass me using his armoured corps.
However don't think i wanna do the same mistakes i've done in China. If i'll see i cannot face him, i will deny the fight and fall back on safer positions, thus gaining time. In India, differently from China, time means reinforcements.
i won't neither make suicide runs with my RN. but, the simple presence of it in the waters around India will make him less confident and will force him to use all his naval assets to cover his possibile invasions. The KB is too strong, i know. But 've already ruined his day at Miri in december when the force Z sneaked into his invasion TF north of Borneo and killed something like 10000 men.
I've read through the AAR of CR against Q-Ball and saw what Japan can throw at you (and Q-Ball invaded India in late march...now we're still in late Feb!) and i ain't no fool. But i have to start from somewhere.
Hopefully my reaction force will be enough to slow down the first landings and force him to commit everything in one single hot spot. Then i'll fall back and will try to defend the interior important cities, where the KB won't be able to catch me and where my RAF will be able to give me some cover.
Oh, i forgot to say something. In China, since when my front units got bypassed and bombed to dust, i've tried always to harras his comunication and supply lines (look at the screen shots). However he seems to have units everywhere with enough firepower to fight back and push back my "partisans"...
Thanks again for all your inputs...and let's hope he goes for Oz and not for India...
