Excel Empire - F Krieg vs Great Went - DBB-C 28

[FeurerKrieg]

March 22nd, 1942

India/Burma
As mentioned yesterday, the 38th was about to unload at Jaffna. I have no air support at the base, but some was coming in with the 38th. So yesterday I moved the 24th and 77th Sentais to Jaffna to provide local CAP for the transports. The Brits send a couple Hurricane sweeps over Jaffna, but we do pretty well for flying out of a size 1 airfield. We lose about six Oscars and take down eight Hurricanes. I am assuming he flew sweeps because of the airfield indicator and didn't know there was a TF there. Tomorrow I expect we will have some bombers visiting us, since the TF has been detected now but by then I think all the troops will be off their ships.

In this screen below, you can see a TF west of Ceylon under clouds. I'm not sure why the battleships would be way out there unless they are avoiding my subs, so it could be British carriers. So I'm moving KB to a distance 7 hexes from this possible TF to see if we can get an attack with a range advantage if it is enemy carriers. We'll see what happens!

[center]
Ceylon situation[/center]

DEI
East of Kendari SS KXI slips past DD Hatsukaze and hits one of our small xAKLs.

Philippines
Near Cebu, Tagbilaran is occupied today.

We lose two mine sweepers at Bataan today, some more are en route. I'd like to have these mines cleared before the fast xAP's come through to pick up the 16th and 48th Divisions. I don't want to see those big fast troop ships getting hit. We sweep another 100 mines today.

We have some Sally's bombing LCU's on the island, but today three P-40E's show up and shoot down a couple of our bombers. We'll try bombing the base where they are flying from on Cebu.

Pacific
Somewhat quite again while Card Div 2 restocks and our units rest up a bit at Luganville. Also the artillery for the 8th Division is still a few days out from Luganville and I'd rather reform the 8th before they load up for Suva. In the meantime, the 28th Division, a tank regiment and two SNLF units will head to Noumea to secure that island. Hopefully by the time Noumea is captured, the 21st will have arrived from Port Moresby at Luganville and the 8th will be ready as well. Hopefully three divisions and some smaller units will be enough to take Suva. Not even sure if I will go for Suva given I'd have to face LBA and carriers. But if the US carriers turn up near India, I'd like to be ready to take advantage of that situation.

We capture Kiriwina Island.


China
Today the AVG catches some of our Ann's unescorted and takes out about a dozen of them.

We bounce the Chinese Division that approached us back into Kweilin.

Up north, on the secondary road that goes from Chengting to Paotow there has been a Chinese Corp and an HQ unit that I couldn't quite dislodge. I finally had another 1/3 of the 27th Division arrive there and they push the Chinese west. I will follow them until they have retreated across the river by the road to Yenan.

[FeurerKrieg]

March 23rd, 1942

India/Burma
I was expecting a bombardment of Koggala soon, so I had moved a a TF of Fuso, Hyuga, Ise and Nagato to Koggala, but instead of British ships all we find are mines and CA Mikuma hits one. The cruiser isn't in too bad of shape, but it heads back to Singapore all the same. We have some DMS's at Singapore that will sail up here and clear these mines.

Near Colombo, a TF with at least six destroyers (and therefore not an ASW TF) find I-154 and manage to get enough hits to force the sub to surface. Once surfaced it got shot to pieces and sunk.

Today the British make a full press effort on the TF at Jaffna. First a couple more Hurrican sweeps come in, and then seven Swordfish with an escort of 15 Hurricanes comes in. We do well and bring down several Hurricanes and all but one Swordfish. That last Swordfish makes a run on xAP Katori Maru, but is shot down by AA.

Then we get a close call, as there are indeed British carriers in the area! They show up much closer to India than expected, so if that TF yesterday was the carriers they moved pretty far. In any case, first they send 6 Albacores escorted by 9 Fulmars at the Battleships at Koggala. With the airfield down, the only CAP we had was 8 Pete float planes. We took out one Fulmar with Flak, but the Albacores all made their runs. Thankfully none of them hit.

The next strike came at Jaffna. 24 Albacores and 12 Fulmars hit our CAP of 24 Oscars. We shoot down a few fighters and two bombers. Of the 22 bomber that made it through, four of them get hits. One torpedo each hits a DD, E, and two AK. The E sinks, but the other three I will put into Pierside to try and get flooding down to the Major level. The DD is on fire unfortately so I can't put it in Pierside mode. All of the 38th Div was unloaded before the planes came in so that was good. Email comments indicate John was hoping to bag more ships than two. I'm not sure if he was going for the BBs or the Jaffna, but I think Jaffna.

When all is said and done, the Brits lose 14 Hurricanes, 8 Fulmars, 7 Swordfish and 2 Albacores. We lose 3 Oscars and 2 Petes.

After all that, the British BBs do make a bombarment, but it is at Colombo, not Koggala. Ramillies and Revenge are still with the cruisers and they do a decent amount of damage to my troops at Colombo.

Tomorrow we will move KB (Shokaku, Zuikaku, Soryu and Hiryu) north and again try to get a seven hex strike on the enemy carriers. I am a bit nervous on this one since the British carriers need to get hit by torpedoes to really do much to them. Plus we are a long way from a good port if we get hit. However, we have a numerical advantage in fighters and TBs so if we can get a good outcome it could help reduce the British ability to retake Ceylon by killing some carriers or battleships. Hopefully 2 less Albacores and 8 less Fulmars will help us out too.

[center]
Ceylon situation[/center]

Philippines
Baybay is occupied today. This is a bit of problem since Baybay has a garrison requirement but I got the base as a freebie. I'll have to run a small unit down there ASAP. We lose 1 VP today from this base.

Another 40 mines are cleared by the last AMc of the first 4 I had sent to Bataan.

Pacific
We capture Mussau Island today.

China
We cross the river west out of Nanchang and the shock attack on the Chinese thre forces an immediate retreat. We will try to move west and isolate the Chinese attacking Pingsiang.

No attack on Pingsiang today, I imagine they need to wait for supply again.

Submarines
There is a message in the ops report today that says I-7 detects a surfaced submarine but it immediately dives.

Other
Previous reports of CL De Ruyter are incorrect - bummer.

[FeurerKrieg]

March 24th, 1942
Carrier action!

India/Burma
After the last two days of non-engagements, today is a lively one in around Ceylon.

In a 'boring' night strike, 9 Hudson's bomb Jaffna, destroying one Oscar on the ground. The daybreak brings lots more action. Hurricanes sweep Jaffna and we shoot one down with no loss to our Oscars.

More interestingly, the British CV's move southwest and end up very close to our own carrier TF. Our fleet launches a strike, and initially six Kates arrive ahead of the rest. They get shot down, although the CAP is clearly very light, which should bode well for us.

A bit later, the main strike arrives - 47 A6M2, 63 Kates, and 35 Vals hit an enemy CAP of only 8 Sea Hurricanes, 8 Martlets and 1 Hurricane IIb. Our fighters make easy work of the CAP and our bombers go in unmolested. With 63 Kates it should be a bloodbath, but sadly they were not feeling it today. Still, we manage to put three torpedoes into Indomitable, 1 Torpedo into Formidable, and 1 deck penetrating bomb into Hermes. The cruiser Boise also eats one fish. DD Nizam is hit by a bomb, and three bombs on Indomitable don't penetrate, but do start 'heavy fires'.

The counterstrike launched by the Brits consists of 12 Fulmars, 8 Martlets and 27 Albacore TBs. We have 49 A6M2 on CAP and although we tear apart the fighters for no loss of our own, our Zeros totally miss the TBs! So 27 Albacores come in at four of our big carriers! Clearly the Brits are better with torpedoes than us today - while we had landed 5 torps with 63 Kates, they manage 6 hits with 27 Albacores. Ugh. Shokaku gets the worst of it with three hits, and Hiryu, Soryu and Zuikaku all take one each.

In the afternoon, Shokaku's Zeros and Vals, which relocated to Koggala (now operational) fly a strike at the British BBs still lingering at Koggala. The Vals put a couple bombs on Ramilles but it doesn't seem to do much. The rest of Shokaku's planes get some revenge and fly after the enemy carriers. 6 Zeros and 11 Vals put some bombs on Formidable and Hermes. The three bomb hits on Formidable don't penetrate, but do seem to cause some fires. The one on Hermes does penetrate however, hopefully putting the flight deck out of commission. Finally, 3 Zeros and 3 Kates hit another TF and put three torpedoes into KV Freesia. Why they can manage three hits on a little ship like that and not a big ship like Formidable is beyond me.

Meanwhile, our other three carriers are still flying planes, and 13 Kates and a few zeros find some transports northeast of the enemy carriers. We hit two xAK's sinking one clearly, and the other will hopefully go down with one torpedo hit.

Clouds in the afternoon seemed to shield the carriers from a better strike by our TF, or maybe we were just out of ops points. Hard to say. In any case, that battle could have gone better. On the plus side, while Indomitable appears to be burning badly, none of our ships have much in the way of fire. Shokaku has one point of fire, and the other three have zero. Shokaku is probably a goner, sitting at 80 Float damage. Even if she doesn't sink on her own, I'm sure in a day or two the area will be swarming with enemy subs and Shokaku will be lucky to go a hex a day. Still, maybe we'll get lucky. Stranger things happen (like 6 hits from 27 Albacores versus 5 from 63 Kates!) Just in case, I've dispatched two four ship ASW TFs with Mod-2 depth charge destroyers from Singapore to meet up with Shokaku. Until they arrive, the other carriers will stick around with their Vals on ASW duty. Maybe we can get some sub kills?

Tactically a British win so far - I suspect we will get Indomitable, and thankfully that is the biggest British CV in the group, but it still fields less planes than Shokaku so it isn't a favorable trade. Maybe our subs will get Formidable or Hermes, that would help even it up a bit. Even so, I think on a strategic level it isn't so bad. The Brits will not be able to easily threaten my SLOC to Ceylon for a little while yet unless they use surface ships with no aircover, which isn't a threat that would last long. Hermes and Formidable should be out at least long enough for me to take Colombo and then I'll have LBA around for them to deal with next time, freeing my carriers to focus on the Pacific.

Air losses today:
Allies:
Hurricane IIb 17
Martlet II 10
Fulmar II 9
Sea Hurricane 3
Albacore 2

Japan:
B5N1 Kate 6
B5N2 Kate 5
D3A1 Val 4
A6M2 Zero 3
Ki-43-Ic Oscar 1 (ground loss)

CV Status:
Shokaku Sys: 34 Float: 80(64) Eng: 53(38) Fire: 1
Zuikaku Sys: 20 Float: 30(24) Eng: 13(11) Fire: 1
Soryu Sys: 1 Float: 42(36) Eng: 0(0) Fire: 0
Hiryu Sys: 11 Float: 25(21) Eng: 0(0) Fire: 0

[center]
Japanese air attacks


British air attacks[/center]

Philippines
The base of Dinagat near Leyte is occupied today.

16 more mines are swept at Bataan.

We try bombing the base where the enemy P-40E's are, but we don't do much damage and lose 3 Sallys for our trouble. I think I'll put them on ASW over the Bataan since there are enemy subs hanging out there.

[JocMeister]

Did you get any extra "damage message" besides "heavy damage" from Indomitable? They are pretty tough to sink and I wouldn´t count her out completely. The early Brit CVs are great bomb/TB magnets but as you say the only carry about a CVE worth of planes so their use is limited.

Just wanted you to know I´m reading but seldom have anything constructive to say! [:)]

[offenseman]

What an interesting battle! Well fought by both sides but a shame your pilots did not execute more efficiently. Keeping fingers crossed that Shokaku will get to port. Then the battle becomes a major victory!

[FeurerKrieg]

Hi Joc - I read your posts constantly as well, have you subscribed.

While I don't think Indomitable is sunk yet, I don't think it will get away from my subs and air units in Koggala. We'll see though!

Offenseman - Yes, if Shok can make it home that would definitely change the picture! I have to say it is unlikely though. It is a lot of hexes to get to any port that can help, and even the Dutch subs alone are probably enough to track her down given her slow speed.

[obvert]

All I can say is YUCK! [:(]

Was your CAP set up high and the TBs going in low? Seems like a tough result for those odds. Who is your TF commander on the KB?

[FeurerKrieg]

CAP was staggered, some high, some low, some middle. Yamaguchi is in charge of that TF. Brits just got lucky - it happens.

[GreyJoy]

Weather...if weather is bad torpedo bombers can become useless.

[FeurerKrieg]

Weather was bad in the Brit CV hex. In the afternoon we only got one small strike in at them. You are probably onto something there, GJ!

[FeurerKrieg]

March 25th, 1942

India/Burma
Mostly quite in the evening, our battleship TF sails north just in case they can catch the Hermes or Formidable, but don't seem to find anything. They will give chase one more day as we spot the enemy TFs near Trivandrum so they are still in range. Just don't want to get too far north and see our BB's get hit by more Swordfish or land based Albacores.

With the daylight, Shokaku's Kates fly from Koggala right away and find the CV Indomitable in the same place as yesterday, and put another torpedo into the ship, sinking her. A couple planes go down with the ship. In the afternoon another Shokaku strike from Koggala is launched, this time Vals and Zeros find Indomitable's escort, the DD Isis and the Vals put a bomb on target. We show heavy fires, but that probably isn't enough to do in the destroyer. Certainly there is no sign of Indomitable, so I'm pretty sure that CV has been sunk.

[center]


CV Indomitable goes under[/center]

Our carriers crawl south at an agonizingly slow rate. All the carriers except Shokaku drop their flood damage down to their major levels, so barring sub attacks I think they will be fine. Shokaku stays afloat, although we get this message - "Damage Control parties trapped in flooded compartment aboard CV Shokaku ...". Sys and Eng damage stay constant, and the one point of fire is put out. Flooding however goes up to 82 (an increase of 2). Also, clearly the crew has suffered some casualties as well, as experience for the ship dropped from 67/60 to 61/54. That is a bummer since crew experience is a big driver of getting rid of some of this float damage.

Shokaku: Sys 34 Flt 82(64) Eng 53(38)

On land, the Brits try another deliberate attack at Colombo and get 1:2 odds taking 2600 casaulties to our 600. Definitely a good thing for us. They also lost 81 vehicles.

In Burma, we send some Nells to hit the port at Rangoon and score a couple hits - an xAKL is hit as well as an AMc. The AMc sinks on impact.

DEI
Between Ambon and Moluccas, a dot base called Batjan is our freebie today.

In Borneo, we capture Jesselton and force a RN Base Force to retreat. We will follow westerward until they have arrived at their last base where they should surrender.

Pacific
Milne Bay goes to airfield size 1.

We use a fast transport TF to drop some troops on Efate today. Perhaps we can get the American CV's to show themselves so I'll know where they are. I'm somewhat worried they will suddenly show up off Ceylon and sink my carriers.

We capture Emirau Island today.

China
Near Kweilin/Luichow, another Chinese unit comes out into our strong point and we attack pushing it back.

[obvert]

The game continues to amaze me. I hadn't known about the crew exp drop when severely damaged. Thanks for posting that.

Hope you get em there safely. I had a similar situation, just closer to the Malayan coast by about 15 hexes, and made it to Victoria Point after a week of agonizing days. The ship got repaired and is good as new now though.

[FeurerKrieg]

The day the ship was hit, the experience didn't drop. Looking at tracker history (keep in mind I'm farther in the game than I have reported here) the drops in experience seem to come with messages such as the one I mentioned above. So when you see something about crew lost fighting fires, or crew trapped in flooded compartments, and other crew related message - those seem to correspond to a drop in ship experience.

[FeurerKrieg]

Question for any Allied players reading this:

If you have are the Allies, and you have a capital ship near India that is over 20,000 tons, where do you send it to fix major damage? Cape Town? Or is there a closer big repair yard I'm missing? How long does it take to get to Cape Town from Ceylon?

[JocMeister]

Definitively Cape Town. The trip is actually pretty quick.

[FeurerKrieg]

I put this together tonight by looking at the upgrades to path for each night fighter in Tracker. The useful part is the cross-type upgrades since those are hard to find. Once you move a unit to night fighter, then in PDU On you can switch to any other night fighter unit. Note that the Yokosuka unit is actually a float plane unit that can be upgraded to night fighters - pretty useful if you ask me.

The cross-type upgrade dates shown is the available date of that units 'gateway' into being a night fighter unit. For the units that arrive as night fighters the date listed is when the unit arrives. Obviously the cross-type upgrade dates can be affected by R&D.

If anyone wants the excel sheet, (or any that I post) just PM me.

[FeurerKrieg]

I added the 82n IF to this list, although in my game it doesn't show an upgrade to the Dinah. In a scenario 1 file I had though, it does show the upgrade to Dinah. It could be that I already did an upgrade with that unit and that is why it is no longer showing in my file, or it is a difference between scen 1 and DBB. I'm not sure what units are used to construct the 28th but that one is upgradeable to Dinah NF's as well. I suspect that might be another one that is either different in DBB or else I already upgraded it and lost the NF path.

[FeurerKrieg]

March 26th, 1942

India/Burma
The pesky British surface fleet shows up on the EAST side of Ceylon and shells Jaffna. Thankfully our ships are long gone, other than a couple at pier for repairs. The two ships there are spared, but we lose 53(!!) Oscars on the ground. The airfield is closed now, but the 38th is moving on Trincomalee and Koggala is clearly open with TBs flying so aside from the pain of losing a bunch of Oscars, this isn't a major problem. We have plenty of Oscars in the pool but I won't be able to shut those factories off as early as I had hoped I guess.

Interestingly, the Brits are now somewhat trapped in the Bay of Bengal. I have three strong carriers still on the west side of Ceylon, so he'll have to be careful about trying to get back to India. Granted, I'll have to watch out for a surface attack too!

Also in the night phase, RO-65 takes a shot at a destroyer and misses. RO-65 takes a little damage from ASW but is otherwise fine.

In the air search phase, Shokaku Vals from Koggala get two hits on DD Isis, and then Zeros and 7 more Vals attack the ship directly, getting a third hit. The ship shows fire and heavy damage, but it is sitting right on Colombo so it can disband there. Hopefully we can take Colombo before it is fixed enough to leave. There were 17 Hurricanes on CAP over the DD, so we lost 5 Zeros and downed one Hurricane, but the Vals went in untouched.

We had intel on ships at Addu Atoll, so we moved our good carriers a little closer to investigate. We managed to find some ships and hit and likely sunk the tankers British Justice, British Arhitect, and Ferncastle. We definitely sunk DD Express, PC Sonavati, and xAK Penrith Castle. Not a bad haul of tonnage.

[center]
Attack on ships at Addu Atoll[/center]

Finally, I had seen ship icons at Cochin (north of Trivandrum) so I went ahead and sent the battleships in to shell the place. The enemy ships were gone so we end up just hitting some troops that were there. The BB's will make there way back towards Trimcomalee.

On land, the Allies go for a big push and surprisingly launch a shock attack at Colombo. We repel the attack with a 1:2 (898:1859) result and the Allies take about 4000 casualties to our 1500. They also lost 86 vehicles. Looking at the displayed AVs, this attack appears to have really hurt them a lot.

We get a glimmer of hope on Shokaku today - flotation damage drops to 78!
Shokaku: 34S/78F(-4)/53E

DEI
Bettys out of Koepang get a hit on TM-4 during the search phase, so that ship is probably a goner. The TM's look like the finally decided to make a run for Australia, so the way is clear for my transports to grab up the last few bases in this area.

A couple hexes west of Darwin, RO-34 finds an xAKL and shoots the ship up pretty good with both the deck gun and AA. It might make it to Darwin, but it may well have sunk.

We take a small island called Salajar near Celebes today.

Philippines
Mostly quiet here, although Manila goes to airfield size 4 today. Subs are all gone, so our transport can freely move into port now.

Pacific
We occupy Ferguson Island today.

We capture Efate with the unit dropped by a fast transport TF yesterday.

China
On the road from Nanchang to Changsha, we try to attack some Chinese and find a stack bigger than we can take down. We get 1:13 odds, and take pretty heavy casualties. We will retreat back to Nanchang to heal up. I'll have to rely on the two divisions heading around the southern road to Pingsiang for relief of that base. We'll keep up the air pressure.

At Pingsiang, the Chinese do attack and we manage to hold on. They get 2:1, but we have level 1 forts. The base really could fall anytime, but if the Chinese wait for supplies we will get the place reinforced and it will be a nice turnaround.

Other
We get a couple Port Units at Tokyo. These will go to Palembang to assist with stevedoreing.

[offenseman]

Great action lately and great news for Shokaku! Let's hope they keep the bucket brigade going.

Nice NF work as well. Thanks!

[FeurerKrieg]

March 27th, 1942
A tiny break in the action today.

India/Burma
We have been sweeping Rangoon mostly daily for quiet a while with no enemy planes in sight. Today the Allies give it go and our first sweep of 27 Oscars meet 14 H81-A3 and 13 Buffalos. We do pretty well, taking down 8 Buffaloes and 6 H81's while only losing a single Oscar.

[center]
Shooting down Allied planes[/center]

At Ceylon, Hurricanes continue to fly sweeps of Jaffna.

I've started recon of the various ports on the south (game) coast of India to try and figure out where the British surface fleet went too. Nothing spotted yet - it has vanished. Our carriers return to sail with Shokaku and do ASW searches, and our BB's head towards the same area.

DEI
Sipora, and small island off Padang is occupied today.

Pacific
Rabaul expands to port size 5, which will help with reloading the fleets operating in that area.

Tinian expands to airfield size 4, which is where I will stop it.

The Wake Coast Gun Battalion arrived today, so Wake now has some punch on the shoreline.

China
The Chinese attack at Pingsiang, but we manage to somehow get 1:2 odds with no forts. We manage to build a level after the fight, so that should be we are at least safe for another day. Reinforcements are getting closer everyday. It looks like another Chinese Corp has joined the fight on their side, so it will be a close one for sure.

West of Nanchang, the Chinese we ran into yesterday counterattack and get a 2:1 forcing us to retreat. We'll cross the river back to Nanchang and rebuild there.

[center]
Route of troops retreating to Nanchang and also the route of reinforcement to Pingsiang[/center]