LoBaron + Robbrennan vs Offenceman, allied secret AAR

[seydlitz_slith]

No worries, the few secret memories about Mike's detailed plans that I remember I shall certainly keep to myself. He already has it hard enough fighting you guys.

In general terms, however, the Marshalls are always give away islands expected to be lost. Ponape matters because it allows the allies to bomb Truk and start to interrupt sea traffic in the area, even if it is only with Catalinas. Anything in the Marianas and Bonins really hurt because they break the air bridge that allows him to fly fighters and medium bombers down from Japan. This gets more important as you get into 1943 since the new fighters, both Army and Navy all have much shorter ranges.

[LoBaron]

Well in theory he could still shuttle them down using bases in the Philippines and
NG, but I see it the same way.


Back to the current situation:

Dec 7th ´42:

Good news for the USN today!
While I watched the replay, my GFU felt her doubts about my sanity confirmed when
I had a wide grin on my face, watching a Japanese SAG dismantle USN transports off Marcus
Island.

Night Time Surface Combat, near Marcus Island at 123,85, Range 2,000 Yards

Japanese Ships
BB Kongo
BB Haruna
BB Hiei
CA Mikuma
CA Kako
DD Akizuki
DD Kagero
DD Oshio
DD Natsugumo
DD Minegumo
DD Kasumi

Allied Ships
xAK West Cape, Shell hits 4, Torpedo hits 2, and is sunk
xAK West Ira, Shell hits 23, and is sunk
xAK West Ivis, Shell hits 14, and is sunk
YMS-127, Shell hits 1, and is sunk
YMS-86, Shell hits 18, and is sunk

After the carnage they bombarded the base, causeing a few losses but this did not change the
fate of the last few Japanese defenders who charged into a wall of machine gun fire shouting
BANZAI one final time.

The impressive fleet was spotted by a submarine one day later, retreating to Guam.

What this means is obvious, I now can tick off 3 dangerous BBs, 2 CAs and a couple of destroyers from
the list of potential opposition against Left Hammer. They wont make it in time.

In two more days the fleets will reach their assigned stations and attack Guadalcanal.
I will post a map with more details on operation Left Hammer later today.

[Rob Brennan UK]

Drat , page was cancelled in mid post [:@], so im going to do a summary instead [:@].

Bombers hit the RTA divs 1 and 7 in Burma with no Japanese opposition in the air , will continue tomorrow. (2 hexes W of swebo ). Allied are considering an attack along this axis dur to a lack of Japanese bombers in theatre, recon cant find any and java is getting pummelled. Java AAA shot down 9 more Helens today and the AAA guns do get supplies from the other units FYI.

don/Seydelitz , hello again , nice to see you and hope all is well. thanks for dropping by and here is Burma for you :- ,, any questions pls feel free.

[LoBaron]

I hate it when this happens. Best tactic would be write on word/wordpad and then copy/paste, but I don´t even do that myself.


Here is the promised battle map, sorry somehow it looks like a 10 year olds painting. I don´t have much software in this
are to speak of and try my best with paint.

I hope it is still decipherable:




You can also see additional features like the sub protection belt NE fo Guadalcanal.
Mike has already sent the turn back, too bad I can only watch it late evening tonight.

[Rob Brennan UK]

8th and 9th Dec 1942

Good day for the allies , I'll let LoBaron fill you in on the USA side of the war. Here is the news from the Commonwealth home office.

Liberation !

Horn Island has been retaken by stout Australian troops in record time. Odd how recon here was 2k men while Marcus was only 1k, and there was not much resistance to talk about. 1st wave took the place with ease and day 2 saw the Japanese once again dying in droves on HMG fire.

Ground combat at Horn Island (91,128)

Allied Shock attack

Attacking force 6350 troops, 14 guns, 89 vehicles, Assault Value = 318

Defending force 716 troops, 0 guns, 0 vehicles, Assault Value = 8

Allied adjusted assault: 262

Japanese adjusted defense: 1

Allied assault odds: 262 to 1

Combat modifiers
Defender:
Attacker: shock(+)

Japanese ground losses:
744 casualties reported
Squads: 37 destroyed, 0 disabled
Non Combat: 72 destroyed, 0 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Units destroyed 1


Allied ground losses:
6 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 3 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled


Assaulting units:
2/4th Armoured Regiment
2nd Australian Div /3
1st Medium Rgt /2

Defending units:
83rd Naval Guard Unit


One Peculiarity occurred when the support TF with 2 Base forces and CD guns unloaded on the very NE tip of Australia much to the surprise of Allied high command ! I thought it was best to stand off one hex until the place had been secured before sending in the support troops. Soem over eager commander however mistook Australia's NE tip with Horn island and unloaded . whoops ! It's not even a dot base so how im going to reload the CD guns is a mystery, i suspect they will have a long walk in the outback 1st. Unloading has been cancelled and any remaining men have been ordered to unload on HI rather than try and reload over a coral reef. Rescue efforts will be sent in a few days once the dust settles. Allied a/c have been reset to anti naval ops in case Japan sends in surface interference raids and with 32 torpedo armed Beauforts we have the edge vs CA's should they come calling. The P39's are still LRCAPing HI and last turn bagged a couple of Mavis LR transports.


Oven in Burma a lot of AC were flying but no-one actually met each other as allies continued to hammer the Thai divisions in the open and Japan hit Akyabs airfields killing 2 Hurricanes on the ground as no CAP was ordered (thankfully as a 90 plane Oscar sweep preceded the Bombers). Ledo is now a L9 airfield so stacking restrictions are now a thing of the past , thankfully.

Here is the position in Australia. PM is looking tempting all of a sudden and SWPAC HQ has changed prepping to the new target as I seriously doubt Japan will try and re-invade Horn Island.

[seydlitz_slith]

Rob,
You need to have a court of inquiry regarding the landing of the CD unit on the wrong beach. That is seriously hilarious. Maybe you should leave it there to guard the shoal entrance.

Lenny,
Plan looks good. Ontang Java....what does Mike appear to have there? I can't quite say that I have ever seen that captured in a game, but often ships skirt the hexes just north of the place on their way to the Solomons.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: seydlitz

Rob,
You need to have a court of inquiry regarding the landing of the CD unit on the wrong beach. That is seriously hilarious. Maybe you should leave it there to guard the shoal entrance.

Now if the unit took replacements and got a device that was static so the whole unit could no longer be moved, that would be really funny! [:D]

[LoBaron]

Good question Don, I will be able to tell you more next turn as - wanting to know the same -
I sent recon aircraft there. It is a good base to cover the routes from Truk to Guadalcanal,
my sub belt has not spotted any ASW activity to speak of originating from there.

Anyways, here is the situation on 9th Dec ´42:





The only ship loss on D-days was DM Breese, running the sub belt south of Guadalcanal on the
way back to Noumea after helping to mine The Slot.

ASW attack near Rennell Island at 114,140

Japanese Ships
SS I-176

Allied Ships
DM Breese, Torpedo hits 1, on fire, heavy damage
DM Montgomery


Well, theres a German saying: 'Wo gehobelt wird, fallen Späne', I think 'From chipping come chips.'
has exactly the same meaning though I like the way its worded in German slightly better.


No air action to speak of until now, but I expected that more or less since Mike did
not spot the invasion until Dec 8th, too late to react.
I am expecting first resistance over the next 2 days, so my air cover increased flights.
The crews are still fresh as I used minimum LRCAP for the initial landings.
Setup is same as before: High cover over Tassa, Lunga and Munda from Ndeni P38s and low
CAP from carrier AC.

As you can see on the map I will pull back into the triangle of the landings, the amphibs have
unloaded all troops and the rest of the supplies will be dumped at Lunga.
North of Lunga only the minesweepser and SAGs remain.

The return trip will be tough for sure, I bet I will dodge subs all the way down when
looking at all the sightings. For that reason the DMs on return from their mission changed
to ASW to cover the CVs which havent been spotted up to now.

Next turn will be critical as the first window of opportunity to counter my attack. If nothing
sensational happens though, Guadalcanal will be mine by tomorrow evening.



As small comment at the end: I was really surprised to find all of Guadalcanal deserted.
Not a single Japanese has been spotted. Strange. Is this a part of Mikes defensive plan?
If yes I don´t understand it as I will have airbases up in less than a months and can start
to attrit his southern defensive belt. Up to now by a cheap fast move nearly without a loss.

Mike often comments on the cost of him retweaking industry because he and Don had different
philosophies on how to handle it and he says that robbed him of a few options.
I wonder if securing the Solomons was one of em.

[witpqs]

LoBaron,

If you are not liking your AAR tools (I think you mentioned that), here is what I use:

Greenshot for screen capture, free & open source and very easy.
http://greenshot.org/

Paint.net for editing the screen captures, free but not open source. Very easy & quick for the kind of edits people do for AARs (much faster to use than regular Paint). Not as powerful as GIMP and those big full-featured programs, but surprisingly powerful for the easy stuff.
http://www.getpaint.net/

Emacs as a text editor, free & open source. Great for programming, I also use it for typing my AAR entries then just cut & paste. You can get a spell checker added in also.
http://www.emacswiki.org/

[LoBaron]

Thanks! [:)]

[Rob Brennan UK]

If some bright spark of an engineer manages to cobble together a concrete emplacement for a 15" CD gun there won't be any court martials , just summary executions [;)]

There really is no defence for me in this daft action , BUT I'm going to try anyway

1) the hex looked like sea
2) not a dot base and we have house rules that state we cannot land on non dot hexes , the computer should know this !
3) TF should have had 'do not unload' ticked , this I will admit to (grudgingly).
4) It looked like SEA !!! ..

Thank you , <salutes the judge in the black cap and marches out to the firing squad >

[SoliInvictus202]

actually from my experience there is no issue with reloading them onto the ships right away - I had the same thing happen to me somewhere on Celebes.. - and after the first landing, which also happened because IT LOOKED LIKE SEA, I simply decided to reload the stuff, in my case a Naval Guard and a Base Force, and was done 2 or 3 turns laters.... -took ages of course but the walk to Makassar would have been even longer [;)]

just my 2cts

[seydlitz_slith]

Well, I have no idea what Mike may have done/not done with Japan's industry, but I doubt that it has anything to do with Guadalcanal being undefended.

I personally may put troops there and at Tulagi, but normally build my bases up around Shortland and Bougainville. Building at Lunga just creates an airbase for the allies to use and putting more troops on the island just provides more targets for the enemy's 4E bombers. My guess is that you are still outside of his planned defensive perimeter. If he is doing it right and instead building his inner perimeter up first, then he will be tough to dig out when you reach it.

[LoBaron]

Don you are right with your asessment of what Lunga represents.

I disagree with the conclusions though.
True, if you send Japanese troops and planes to Lunga the consequences usually are target practice for heavies
and a built up AF for the Allies (not neccesarily though if you keep it as a fighter base only and have some bomber at Munda for support).
But this applies to about every base further up or down the Solomons, the Santa Cruz Islands or the New Hebrides.
There will always be such an option at the outermost bases of the Japanese defensive perimeter except if you capture Noumea.

The disadvantage of letting me capture Lunga and the surrounding bases is I get those lvl5 natural/lvl 8 expanded AFs (I chose Lunga and Rennell Island)
to attack Rabaul, and this cannot be good to hand over without the delay of a fight. I got so many engineer troops in the area that I am able to get from lvl0 to
lvl4-5 in probably less than 2 months.

If I was playing Japan I would dislike having my defensive perimeter so close to Rabaul.
Mike could have an inner defensive perimeter with the Admiralties and Hollandia, so Rabaul is probably less important to him than historical, but still.

[Rob Brennan UK]

The Australian SNAFU is not nearly as bad as it could be fortunately. for some odd reason only one of the BF unloaded and then only about 20% of it, the rest are now happily ensconced on horn island.

The main transports and SC units are on withdraw orders from Horn island today and sail back to townsville under sporadic fighter cover. Some remaining transports are covered by a few spits from Portland roads.

with Horn island in allied hands (and the 2nd Australian is now equipped with 42 squads instead of militia (when they upgraded I have no idea as they shipped with militia ! , magic ships no doubt [;)]). This now opens up Merauke and Terapo IN New Guinea as potential work arounds should PM prove too tough for the Australians.

Plenty of sub action from Japan today , with several American YP's being sunk around the Solomons and off the west coast of America. Still no sign of KB.

TTFN

[witpqs]

It's been a long time since I saw a TF unload on me without orders, but back in WITP it happened enough that when they stopped "1 hex short" the turn before I always made sure it was an all-sea hex where they couldn't unload.

Regarding the squads upgrading en route, the troops boarded their ships to each find a large box from MOD marked "Merry Christmas! (a bit early)" which contained their new personal equipment! [:D]

[Rob Brennan UK]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

It's been a long time since I saw a TF unload on me without orders, but back in WITP it happened enough that when they stopped "1 hex short" the turn before I always made sure it was an all-sea hex where they couldn't unload.

Regarding the squads upgrading en route, the troops boarded their ships to each find a large box from MOD marked "Merry Christmas! (a bit early)" which contained their new personal equipment! [:D]

5) I thought it WAS SEA !!!! [:D][:D]


The upgrade was indeed welcome but I'll have to keep an eye out for the 43 squads as a lot of Base forces gobbled up the 42's early and numbers diminish in 43/44 , hopefully by then the Americans will have some spare foot sloggers I can borrow [;)]


the C47 autopilot crash settings are starting to annoy me a bit now .. is this recognised as a bug ? as i cant believe its WAD given how few other types crash with almost identical pilots. lost 3 in 2 days flying from Ledo (AF 10) to myth 3 hexes away and AF 5 , not even going over the hump .. grrr .. c'est la vie I guess . or more accurately c'est la guerre.

I'm wittering today as we have a small game delay due to RL sticking its unwanted thieving nose in recently.

TTFN

[tiger111]

Hi Rob &nbsp; `tis me.

What`s WAD?&nbsp; You`re both doing stirling work here,keep it up.

[LoBaron]

WAD is "Working As Designed"

Rob can it be related to mission frequency? You are flying a lot of transports up there.
When I shuttle troops around in the south pac I usually do this with squads on 40%-50% rest
and my TCS did not have a single op loss for weeks now.

The few transports I lost were from shuttle flights.


Ok back to Left Hammer:

Dec 10 - 11, 42:

Horray!
Lunga, Tulagi, Tassafaronga and Rennell Island are secured, all troops have
unloaded safely with the exception of Rennell Isl.
This was always something I found slightly annoying. Unloading from amphibs is
easier and you can unload larger devices when the base concerned is in enemy hands.
I can beach a tank at Lunga if want to, but its not possible to unload 150mm arty on
a base that already belongs to me like Rennell before I build a lvl2 port.

Slightly unrealistic no? [:'(]

Mikes reaction to the invasion consisted of sending about every sub in the area
to Guadalcanal and stacking Shortlands with aircraft.

Subs:

The battles up do now were inconclusive.
We traded 2 YMS for heavy damage to two submarines (a RO and an I-boat)
I assumed that the RO is a kill but according to Mike only I-18 received dmg
and will survive. FOW, who knows.

AFTER ACTION REPORTS FOR Dec 10, 42
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ASW attack near Tassafaronga at 113,137

Japanese Ships
SS I-18, hits 15, heavy damage

Allied Ships
DD Meredith
BB Pennsylvania
CA Minneapolis
CL Concord
CL Leander
DD Meade
DD Balch
DD Downes



ASW attack near Tassafaronga at 113,137

Japanese Ships
SS RO-67, hits 5, heavy damage

Allied Ships
DD Meredith
CA Minneapolis
CL Concord
CL Leander
DD Balch
DD Downes
DD Meade


Sub attack near Tassafaronga at 113,137

Japanese Ships
SS RO-67

Allied Ships
YMS-119, Torpedo hits 1, on fire, heavy damage
YMS-95

Sub attack near Lunga at 114,138

Japanese Ships
SS I-28

Allied Ships
YMS-117, Torpedo hits 1, heavy damage
YMS-116

Aircraft:

I am more afraid of this developement. Shortland now hosts about 160
aircraft according to recon.

Conclusion:

Time to get the hell out. No way I will expose the CVTFs, SAGs and the Amphibs
to a concerted attack from Nasty Netty and KB before the airfields at Guadalcanal
are ready.

The ships are ordered south, unloading has been suspended. Lunga has already 20k+ supplies,
the only suboptimal supply situation is on Tulagi but I do not need to adress this immediately.
Due to the lack of information about KB whereabouts I will not try to avoid the IJN sub
belt but run straight to safety. He got torps, I got DCs, we will se who hits most.

The next tasks will be:

- build up defenses and airfields
- shuttle in AAA and support troops and additional supplies
- establish an ASW zone if possible (depends on air opposition naturally)
- use every chance to attrit IJA/IJN forces in the area

[LoBaron]

Don, concerning Ontang java, the place is more crowded than I anticipated.

After the bases at Guadalcanal have been established I will begin a major effort
recon on the Japanese defensive perimeter. OJ seems to be an integral part of it
which is a wise thing to do, he has quite some mutually supporting bases here.

Will be a tough nut to crack. [;)]