Banzais Don't Make Victories - Anachro (A) vs John 3rd (J) BTS 5.7

[ushakov]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy
[&:]

'make a feint so it seems like you're continuing to pressure Port Blair'

At least I think, don't want to speak for GetAssista.

[GetAssista]

ORIGINAL: ushakov

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy
[&:]

'make a feint so it seems like you're continuing to pressure Port Blair'

At least I think, don't want to speak for GetAssista.

faint

Yeah, English is not my native, sorry. Faint pressure would not persuade John I suppose [:D]

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: GetAssista

ORIGINAL: ushakov

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy
[&:]

'make a feint so it seems like you're continuing to pressure Port Blair'

At least I think, don't want to speak for GetAssista.

faint

Yeah, English is not my native, sorry. Faint pressure would not persuade John I suppose [:D]

It depends on how big you are and if you landed on him after you fainted!
I thought that "a" was just clever maskirovka to hide your feint. [;)]

[Anachro]

Unfortunately, my laptop died, so I will be getting a new one this week. Deliveries might take too long, so might end up just going to my local bestbuy or something. I very much am debating. I think as long as I land more supply and some more troops, I can keep him from wiping out my forces for some time, or at all if I'm successful elsewhere. If I feel it looks more grim, I'll extract.

[Anachro]

Feb.24-27, 1944 - Dicey Battles in the Andaman Sea

Sorry for the delay in updates, but I got a new PC and then have been busy in real life. The game continues; however, feeling more and more unsettled about the precarious situation at Port Blair (where John managed to quickly bring another division in; Japan seemingly has endless divisions to spare with China settled), I opted to begin my next operation while simultaneously extracting troops from Port Blair. This meant the committal of carriers and they have been a bit ineffective hitting enemy ships in the face of strong Japanese LRCAP providing cover. A strike at Port Blair failed to do much damage and John's additional troops landed with the cost in my planes for me rather high. Over the next few days, we moved back to cover our transports and then back in. Spotting heavy enemy bombers at Tavoy with no CAP cover, our land-based heavy bombers and carrier A/C hit the place and numerous planes have been destroyed on the ground, as well as in the air from Japanese land-based naval attack hitting my carrier CAP. On the 25th, we destroyed ~160 planes on the ground and air, on the 26th, another 100+ planes, but the cost to our own A/C strength, while not calamitous, was not small. Moreover, we didn't do any damage to enemy ships (but I was not expecting them to appear so suddenly at Moulmein, so I had set lots of A/C to strike and decimate the airfields at Tavoy).

Interestingly enough, John was very telegraphed in his emails. Unfortunately, I have been told John likes to play psyops and try to get his opponent to do things through how he words his emails: very boisterous, but certainly not statements to always be accepted as truth of intention. In this case, John seems to have been very much hoping for a strike at my fleet hitting Moulmein. He guessed wrong, but it didn't hurt him too badly.

[Anachro]

Feb.27, 1944 - Battles in the Andaman Sea, Cont.

Seeing the situation of the previous turn; I decide to pull back my forces a few hexes so as not to have my invasion force get hit by SCTFs. For the next turn, I opt to setup my carriers to be in strike range while my SCTFs patrol around. In the ensuing night and day, my SCTFs run into a Japanese cruiser force, but get very poor results though all we lost is a (valuable) DMS. Fortunately, our carriers seem to do well and we can only surmise that 3-4 Japanese CA/CLs have been sunk by air attack. However, our forces are still in a precarious spot and at this junction I am very tempted to retreat and regroup. Instead of hitting the landing beach, I might pull back and send carriers, SCTFs, and empty transports to Port Blair instead to extract my beleaguered divisions there: this seems a bit safer with a better path for retreat. Once I replenish my carriers, I'll probably attempt to land again at my target...and perhaps without worrying about my transports for the next 1-2 turns I can sink some more Japanese surface ships.

What do you think? Or now that I'm here, should I continue on to the invasion beach? John has some powerful SCTFs in the vicinity, BBs, BCs, CBs, even a BB Musashi that was lightly damaged by one sub torpedo. John's before and after email quotes for this latest turn included.

[Bif1961]

Lose lips sink ships? [X(]

[GetAssista]

Do you have enough at Moulmein? Cause you need to concentrate on either PB extraction, or landings.
Or holding the beachhead in PB since it is such a good potential POW camp, that will constantly draw John in. If you have prepared reserves left that is.

Any signs of supply situation in PB? Battleship bombardments do wonders in this department, and I see you using your old battlewagons in surface TFs.

[Bearcat2]

Pathetic showing by your Surface TF's for 1944; who were leading these TF's?

[mind_messing]

I'll nit pick if I can be so bold.

Some pointers that I think may help are:

- Split the DMS off into their own separate TF. They're there to sweep mines, not fight in the battle line.

- Split the cruisers off from the BB fleets and into their own separate TF with lots of DD's. One TF for the light cruisers, one for the heavy cruisers. Their role is to ruin the IJN DD and cruiser fleet with lots of light and medium calibre shells.

- What does having the CLAA's in the battle line add that isn't done better by removing them and replacing them with 3 Fletchers? The advantage of this approach is that it will give you two cruiser forces that are reasonably expendable to use in an attrition role to wear away at the IJN forces before any of your big ticket VP ships see combat.

- Gaggles of destroyers to swarm (or even a few two or three ship TF's) to chase down stragglers running back to Singapore.

- Positioning of your carriers - bad spot to pick for them to fight from IMO. Can't run north immediately, can't run east, can run south, but closer to IJ bases. In the IJ position I'd be ramming every ship, sub and plane to the east of Rangoon to catch stragglers and TF's out of position. I'd seek to move south where there's more room to move.

From my own experiences with these kinds of engagements, the side with the most task forces (IOW, uncommitted) that have ammo left at the end of the battle tend to sweep up the side that doesn't. 3 SCTFs will not be enough.

[Anachro]

@MM I have 7 SCTFs (which I am certainly happy to change up, I had the DMS embedded as I initially planned that force as a bombardment force where an embedded DMS helps avoid mines): 1 cruiser force, 1 small BC force, 1 fast BB/BC force, and three slow BB/DD forces. I am with you, mind_messing, on what I'd do if I was John. As for CLAAs, they are there for extra because I had nothing else on hand: beggars cant be choosers. Good news: more destroyers, cruisers, and the newest fast American BBs and some French BC is on their way to the Indian theater from Australia currently.

@GetAssista The supply situation at PB is very dire and I need to extract the forces there to get them to recover. This was my biggest mistake this whole op was not landing enough supply there and my AV has suffered. I have additional reinforcements I can bring in but it will take time to get them and I'm not sure I have that time: I can, of course, use my surface fleet for bombardments here while extracting. Moulmein has enough to survive for now, though I have additional reinforcements waiting in the wings to be landed there, which I will probably eventually do with more supply: these ops will be easier once the full Allied SCTF might is here.

@Bearcat All the forces are led by good admirals: Halsey, Palliser, etc. I think the bigger problem was speed of the enemy force versus my own perhaps, also I'm not sure if Japanese radar is better or worse than historical in this mod as in some cases their radar detected my TF before mine detected the enemy (this is 1944 though which I am less experienced with).

Also, I just realized when analysing the Japanese CAs that sunk that they all have ASW capabilities (value of 2), wish I could say the same for my CAs...haha.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: Bearcat2

Pathetic showing by your Surface TF's for 1944; who were leading these TF's?

Weather can do that no matter how good the radar and leaders and crew experience. Weather might also explain why IJ LBA did not find and attack the transport TF.

Looks like John did not expect the Allied TFs to move in closer to Moulmein, so his BB-heavy TFs may be off toward PB or the other side of the Andamans. He likes to use full speed a lot when he senses prey is near.

[mind_messing]

@Bearcat All the forces are led by good admirals: Halsey, Palliser, etc. I think the bigger problem was speed of the enemy force versus my own perhaps, also I'm not sure if Japanese radar is better or worse than historical in this mod as in some cases their radar detected my TF before mine detected the enemy (this is 1944 though which I am less experienced with).

I think you need to check the specific ship captains, especially on the bigger ships.

As Japan I cherry-pick the 70+ Naval skill commanders as the surface fleet is small enough to enable that.

For the more extensive Allied fleet you need to be a bit more selective, but getting 60+ on all the capital ships is definitely possible.

To be honest it does sound more like a crew skill issue than IJ radar being more effective. Worth remembering how naval DL works, and there's no excuse for the Allies at this stage to not flood the area with search planes (both day and night).

[Anachro]

The search plane pools in this mod are simply pitiful relative to the attrition they take from enemy CAP, etc. I do not have much there and and always short on supply, even using the mod that lets me buy out extras; I did of course set all my search assets to night and day search at 100% for the turn. I also have replaced all my captains with better ones, even my destroyers. I do not have enought 70+ ones, but all should at least be 60+ naval skill and hopefully 60+ aggressiveness, at the least 55+ aggressiveness. As for where John's BBs went: besides the ones currently at PB, I suspect he flanked west to try and hit my ships and then down south, perhaps to Victoria Point, which has been the staging and re-arming point for John's SCTFs. I have placed numerous mines on the shallow hex between there and PB that numerous IJN SCTFs pass through, but frustratingly none have passed encountered those minefields yet, even when passing through the hex.

I have a SCTF with the carriers, I'll send that south to hit the IJN survivors just one hext south and send my invasion force back north towards safety. My SCTFs and Carriers will move towards Port Blair, with the carriers first moving northwest to try and avoid entanglements. Probably.

[Anachro]

Admirals are as follows:

1. 3CA/2CLAA/5DD: My weakest force, currently with the carriers, led by Captain Morgan, which is the weakest of my TF leaders at 60NAV/50 Aggression.

2. 1BC/5DD: Small, fast force centered around the BC Constellation, led by Admiral Halsey 76NAV/90 Aggression.

3. 1BB/1BC/2CA/1CL/6DD: Fast BB/BC force led by British Admiral Somerville 78NAV/85 Aggression.

4, 5, 6: Three slower BB forces led by Norman Scott of Guadalcanal fame (74/61), Admiral Merrill (75/62), and Ching Lee (83/71).

I misstated above; I only have 6 SCTFs, not 7.

[Lowpe]

Seeing how you are fighting John in his mod, I throw my two cents in on TF composition.

Create a couple of 4 ship destroyer skirmishing task forces. Give them high naval low aggression leaders. Give them low task force numbers.

Use them like cavalry. They go in first to skirmish or patrol the flanks of you main SAG, they get the IJN to launch torpedoes and waste ammo on them before your serious ships get involved. They might even get a lucky torpedo hit in.

It is a great use of leaders that normally never get picked. Plus, they boost detection levels.

I would not be afraid of sending such task forces against any IJN SAG.

Some games it seems every Allied TF is led by Lee or Somerville. Get so tired of seeing them.[;)]

[Anachro]

Yes, I have tried this in the past. The problem is do you set such DD SCTFs to simply follow the others with a higher reaction number? How do you protect when moving? I've had so many cases where in this PBEM match so far where I've had fast DD and CL/DD SCTFs supposedly covering my carriers/transports for such a purpose only to see John somehow get his forces through to my carriers or transports instead (luckily it hasn't hurt me yet in such engagements).

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: Anachro

Yes, I have tried this in the past. The problem is do you set such DD SCTFs to simply follow the others with a higher reaction number? How do you protect when moving? I've had so many cases where in this PBEM match so far where I've had fast DD and CL/DD SCTFs supposedly covering my carriers/transports for such a purpose only to see John somehow get his forces through to my carriers or transports instead (luckily it hasn't hurt me yet in such engagements).

It is not easy, but never use follow. You really have to work the patrol settings, mdl, dl, for them. Counting hexes.

Offensively, it is a lot easier to use them as skirmishers.

[mind_messing]

Second Lowpe's suggestions. The big fleet engagements have a frustrating habit of going Japan's way. The Allied method of death by destroyer is much better in my view.


My approach to naval search is that more is always better. Working a little NavS training into your level bomber training programme pays big dividends in places where the search planes suffer. Thankfully most of the Allied level bombers get radar as the norm.

On seeing Lee and Somerville, Loka managed to get Mush Morton off a sub and in command of a DD force at one point. Saw some brutal actions around Palembang with IJN CA's.

[Anachro]

I will probably ponder today and put the orders in some time tonight; the two forces shown near me on the map are the damaged and out-of-ammo DD forces that remain. I'm pretty confident all 3 CAs and the CL sunk, as well as 3-4 DDs. Thus, I don't think I am in danger too much at the moment: the transports will retire as we move on Port Blair. Pressure can be applied to PB to make it a prison even without troops on the ground and I really need to extract my troops before they are destroyed and need to be rebuilt completely. I expect to see John's heavies make a reappearance over the next few days however.

Luckily, BB Yamato is sunk. BB Musashi is operational but did take damage from one torpedo which got a "belt armor pierced" and "critical damage" message. BB Shinano is coming if not already operational, and I'm almost certain John has the other 1-2 Yamato-class BBs he can build on the way in production. Then there are his remaining CVEs and CVs. Need to be cautious.