21 May 1942
Ten turns ago I did a short recap and posted the game summary from the Intelligence screen. I thought I'd update that report after yesterday's action as it's pretty clear now this game has rapidly reached the point where the Allies have "turned the corner."
Koepang airfield on Timor Island is closed and will remain closed, with its port not far behind. The Allies use this base for virtual target practice, a kind of training exercise.
Rabaul airfield has been essentially evacuated by the Japanese. This is because B-17s from Port Moresby (currently 7-level airfield) bomb it every night from 6,000 feet, and any planes the Japanese player parks there will be immediately subject to destruction. Steve does maintain a unit of Zeroes at the base, probably out of the fear that if he did not my B-17s would come during daylight hours instead. And of course they definitely would! [:D] The trouble with that thinking, however, is that over the course of time some of those Zeroes (which do not fly CAP) will be caught on the ground. Meanwhile, it's just a matter of time before I get enough B-17s into Port Moresby to close the Rabaul airfield complex outright and for once and for all. I imagine this will happen sometime within the next month or so, call it the end of June.
The hands of the Japanese are tied, and they're damned if they and damned if they don't with respect to Rabaul. On the one hand, Steve probably feels the need to keep Rabaul as a stop against an easy Allied movement into either the eastern coast area of Papua New Guinea and/or an invasion of the lower Solomon Islands. On the other hand, what good is Rabaul as this "stop" if it is not effectively serviceable for his bombers? The answer is: no use at all.
So, Steve has a problem to solve.
The only two reasonable solutions which occur to me are 1) somehow reduce Port Moresby as a viable platform for those Forts or 2) give up the ghost and leave Rabaul to its eventual and inevitable fate.
Should Steve choose to resolve his dilemma via the former option his prospects are bleak indeed. Twenty turns ago I estimated it would require an invasion force of no less than six-plus divisions to entertain any hope whatsoever of storming Port Moresby. And that would be six-plus divisions
on the shore and ready to fight, with their supply guaranteed. So, he'd have to bring more, probably much more, because the approaches to Port Morseby by sea are covered out to a distance of the B-17s range, then as his invasion armada drew closer in it would come under the purview of B-25s and Marauders, and finally it would draw within the destructive arc of my SBDs.
It is not difficult to imagine that whatever number of transports he starts out with will be greatly reduced along the way, along with everything they carry.
But it gets worse yet for Steve, for today it would require more than six-plus divisions, as Port Moresby has been subsequently reinforced over the past 20 days, since that prior assessment. So, option one just isn't on the cards. I won't divulge all the details because I'm still playing this game, afterall, but the plain truth is the aftermath of any such attack by the Japanese would resemble a slaughterhouse, and it wouldn't be the Allies who were mostly licking their wounds.
Option two: option two doesn't look so attractive, either. The Japanese must draw the line somewhere, don't they? And the Solomon/New Britain archipelagoes seem like a natural choice after a glance at the map. Well, yes, but only if that line can be either reasonably defended in force, or, better still, used as collective base from which a kind of "stand-off" defense might be prosecuted. But that strategy would require access to multiple 4-level airfields which could not be systematically closed by long-range heavy bombers. Rabaul is the best airfield in that region, indeed, it would serve as the linchpin of any such defense, and it has already been closed. Lunga just worked its way up to a 3-level airfield either yesterday or the day before, I forget now, and so it'll be awhile before that's of any real use. And if you want to know, even should I, as the Allies, decide to move in that direction, I'd most likely postpone such an initiative until the Lunga airfield had already been so developed, which would agreeably grease my invasion skids, as then I could immediatley pile in a couple hundred fighters and bombers to help protect the rapid build-up of that place.
The Shortlands would be another possibility, Kavieng to the north of Rabaul another one still, etc. But when it all boils down, if the Japanese cannot keep the Rabaul terminal open for regular flight schedules then it's fantasy for them to believe that the New Britain/Solomons line might be of much use in terms of proactive defense, and at best equally unlikely to be held in a pinch.
So what can the Japanese do?
I'm not sure. I haven't played the Japanese side of the board yet. From what I've seen of this game thus far, though, I'd say it's wickedly out of balance in favor of the Allies, which undoubtedly is why the Allies in the game before us now enjoy such a superior position just halfway through the spring of 1942. The main reason for this is because the air model is so bloody. That's the short answer, and I guess I'll leave that there. It ought to be simple enough to figure out.
Well, all right, I'll break down. Let's tear a page from Mogami's book and do the "simple" math together, which spins merrily in this case around: 1) the respective pilot pools, where's it's no contest at all; 2) the fact the Allies enjoy a wealth of excellent medium bombers and a crazy game surplus of heavies, while the Japanese struggle along with a relative handful of mediocre mediums (for level-bombing purposes--on naval-attack missions the Bettys/Nells reign surpeme) and no heavies in their inventory at all; finally, 3) level bombing of naval assets has been modeled atrociously like everything else, and so it's too bloody like everything else, which means the Japanese are bound to lose more of their assets and at a faster rate than will the Allies. Meanwhile, the Allies keep getting stronger, due to reinforcements, vis-a-vis the Japanese. This is a game of viscious circles in which only the Allies can afford to play.
Back to what the Japanese can do. What can they do? Surrender, I guess. [:D]
Seriously, while the Japanese are not exactly dead in the water yet, they're slip-sliding in that direction fast.
Below is the game summary from the Intelligence screen updated through 21 May 1942. The summary I posted ten days ago can be found toward the top of page 8 of this thread, if you want to compare things for yourself.
A short analysis.
On 11 May 1942 the Japanese enjoyed a VP lead of 15343:6829, giving a ratio of 2.26:1 (rounded up). The new VP total comes out as 15674:7313 for a VP ratio of 2.14:1. In other words, the Japanese are beginning to go backward.
The other key indicator on the summary is the total points for bases owned.
Ten days ago the Japanese held 268 bases for a total of 3,006 points, whereas today they hold 269 for 3,041 points. The Allies twenty days ago held 180 bases worth 3,505 points. Now they own just 179 bases, one fewer, yet these fewer bases are actually
worth 3,729 points, a net increase of 224 points. This is because the Allies are
[developing their base assets faster than the Japanese can, in fact so much faster than the Japanese that even with a loss of net bases owned since the last report, over the interim the ratio of base points has improved for the Allies from 1.17:1 to 1.23:1 (rounded up). This represents a positive shift of five percent.
You can go over the respective reports and see that in each and every category the Allies are on the upswing while the Japanese are on the downswing. Straight on through the entire report, item by item.
Conclusion: effectively the game's ultimate conclusion is no longer in doubt, because from here on out the Allies will just get stronger and stronger, meanwhile the Japanese shall continue lose the war of attrition that is currently being waged to their detriment. We can (and will) look at the summary another month down the line, and it's for sure and certain that the game trend shown in that report will even more clearly pronounce the trend which is clearly indicated in the 21 May 1942 summary.
