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I'm already sending couple of DDs to engage his raiders.... have to fear his betties thou...

ORIGINAL: USS America

GreyJoy, is it possible for you to sacrifice a small unit or two from your India stack in a rear guard defense while the rest change over to move mode and haul ass out of there?

ORIGINAL: crsutton

Well, without air superiorty, troops can move down that road from Jodhpur without you spotting them. It happens to me all the time in China. Japanese troops just pop up out of the blue. If you have a light mobile unit, you might want to send it down the road towards Jodhpur just to be sure. Better than being caught unaware. Like I say, it would be hard for me to imagine him not trying such an obvious gambit.

I also just learned something very important. You need to push that "R" button and examine the road net as not all roads are on the map but all roads are important. Read PzBs AAR for a good example of this where he got cut off in Burma due to his misunderstanding of how movement worked.

ORIGINAL: wpurdom

Your immediate question is whether you have the strength to hold Hyderabad. So as not to be misleading, I'm afriad you can't do this without air cover and a lot better recon than you have to assess the relative strengths. To do it, you would have to be able to hold both Karachi and Hyderabad, plus have a stronger mobile force to keep the supply lines open in the crunch. Without having air parity its hard to be comfortable you would have the stronger mobile force.

If somehow you could determine you had the strength to hold both, such a defensive position would be a huge asset to you due to his large force being immobile with no city to rail from. I think in the end, without air parity, you will not be able to determine whether you can do this, in which case, I think you have to give up Hyderabad.


If you consider me one of the ones pushing immediate action in India, I apologize for being unclear. This wasn't my intent. When India fell off the reports, I thought from your last comments that you had given up on your current offensive due to the indications of the size of his force and your air inferiority. What I was and am pushing for is that you have a decision tree for how to determine when and how you can retake India. After you determine your defensive plan and see if there is an immediate assault, you will be back to that central problem.

I don't see how you can reclaim India without air parity. As you point out the move/combat mode speed differential puts the person without an airforce at a big disadvantage, especially in the presence of a well established rail network. Can you regain air parity operating from one base Karachi? If he takes Hyderabad, he may then do a close investment of Karachi. If this happens, the forces committed to the siege are out of the rail network, but after getting established in the square, he can probably hold there with less AV than you have in Karachi. If you can maintain a decent air presence, though, it also lets you bomb his siege force there under the best possible circumstances - without separate fighter coverage and with the lowest possible pilot losses.

Without a close investment of Karachi, you need to develop multiple threats plus disruption of the rail network by raiding mobile forces. But with the move/combat mode differential, it's hard to see that happening without a decent air presence that can bomb his units as well as yours.

If you can't undertake the land option, you have to go the sea route. Indeed, I think an invasion of Diego Garcia may be overdue. In 2 weeks the Med opens.

The following would be my approach to analyzing your amphibious options. You should be able to get local superiority popping out of the wormhole either at DG or Socotra. Make sure your CV's (or CVE's) or surface fleet are in a escort fleet that goes the same speed as the amphibious fleet so everyone goes the same speed (or doublecheck the mechanics of forming an amph fleet out of an escort fleet - I think it works but I haven't tested it - and put everything in one escort fleet in the sea corridor). Someone like Canoerebel could probably give you good advice on wht sort of land force to estimate for taking Diego Garcia. A quick bombardment plus recon can let you decide if you brought a big enough hammer the turn before you invade.

Any such offensive has to be with the understanding that Radar can reclaim the Indian Ocean by sending KB. So you have to pull out the invasion force lickety-split. But you can afford to leave a garrison of a similar size to what you destroy. If Radar is willing to commit KB, you can let him have the island back. If you leave an ambush force for a counterattack by less than KB, they need to be lurking away from the island, away from search planes, with AO's and ready to hit the wormhole. How you decide that KB is there or not, is up to you [:D]

Then you have the wait to see what happens. No reason you can't trade invasions back and forth if you don't have a better use for the assets you would use. If the invasion goes unanswered, then go after another island (or bolder, go after both Diego Garcia and Socotra at once). If the invasions go unanswered, then you have the freedom to operate in the Indian Ocean with recon superiority and you can start thinking about Ceylon. (if you ever go after Ceylon you likely need to take all the ports at once. You don't want a situation like Port Moresby where you have only one isolated base).

Of course the bolder option is just to suddenly descend on Ceylon - all ports at once from Austrailia with overwhelming force. It's something Nemo might do. Too risky for my taste, especially if you don't have a better understanding of the mechanics and the correlation of forces than your opponent.