Rising Sun over the Rockies - F.K. vs OSO - Wake captured by US

[FeurerKrieg]

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[vettim89]

From an AFB perspective, that is one ugly strategic map!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! [&o][&o][&o]

[FeurerKrieg]

That means, that from a JFB perspective - it's BEAUTIFUL!! [:D]

[FeurerKrieg]

Our old friend the Johnston Island bombing bug has cropped up again. We need to figure out a way to fix this or this game will be dead. If anyone has any ideas, pop over to the Tech Support thread for more details about the bug.

Grrrr... my second game that is getting stopped due to a bug.

[FeurerKrieg]

July 1st, 1942
Today a Chinese HQ unit, the 8th War Area HQ, surrendered on the trails to Sining. One division will now march to Sining to complete the capture of that base, another Division is already on the road to Hami near the southwestern Mongolia border. That airbase may be useful if we ever end up in a conflict with Russia.

Iwo Jima expanded its airfields today, as did Meiktila in Burma. (sz 3 and 4)

[FeurerKrieg]

July 2nd, 1942
Very quiet today. Standard air attack on Changsha.

Batavia and Upolu expaned airfields today. (sz 5 and 4)

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July 3rd, 1942
Today an Chinese corp surrender in the pocket near Hangkow. 6,000 POWs were taken. The remaining units should surrender soon as well.
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Chinese pocket is slowly destroyed.[/center]

Rahaeng airfield was completed today (sz 4), adding an important southern airfield to our network of defenses in Burma.

[FeurerKrieg]

July 4th, 1942
Normal air attacks.

Christmas Island (Pacific) finished construction on some basic port facilities. (Sz 1 port)

Also - The Tojo has hit the front lines. The 84th Ftr Chutai in Rangoon has received 8 new Tojos, and 4 of the old prototype units used early in the war. Production is cruising along at about 2 planes a day.

[FeurerKrieg]

Just FYI - we are pushing on for now. I ran a bunch of test turns with different bomber units stood down and I can't find a definitive 'bad' air unit, because I think the RND interferes with the experiment if you will.

However, in the process I notice something else that gave me a new hypothesis. No Emily planes were ever damaged or destroyed. Perhaps when one of them was supposed to be destroyed it caused the crash? So I've moved my patrol plane unit off the island and we'll see what happened.

The other thing that seemed to be noticeable, is that odds are a second run, with a different RND seed, will not crash.

So for now we will play on and see what happens.

[FeurerKrieg]

July 5th, 1942
Nearly no action today aside from low level ground fighting in China.

Morotai and Weda both opened airfields today (sz 1). Kavieng expanded their airfield as well. (sz 2)

[FeurerKrieg]

Planning for our next major operation, Operation Joukai is complete.

Here is the OOB:
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Below is a map illustrating the plan.
The Northern China Army will move from Ichang and attack southwest to cut off Changsha at Hengchow. Several smaller units have been allocated to the 11th Army, and these will spread out to prevent any Chinese attempts to cut our tenuous supply line.

At the same time, or slightly after, the SAA with seven crack divisions, veterans of Singapore, Manila and New Zealand, will attempt to break the stalemate at Liuchow and route the Chinese units there. Then, elements of the Chinese Expeditionary Force will either occupy Liuchow, or pursue the Chinese units northwest, either way, the goal is prevent a Chinese attempt to cut our supply line through Liuchow.
Meanwhile, the SAA units will head east towards Hengchow and attempt to connect with the NCA. Once that connection is made, the SAA will head to Hong Kong via the road south out of Hengchow and load up to head to Burma. It is our plan to have these troops in Burma/Malaya no later than the end of September.

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Operation Joukai major movements[/center]

[FeurerKrieg]

July 6th, 1942
P-40E's over Adak flew a sweep mission, presumably to clear the way for bombers that would attack my supply ships at Adak. Our Zeros were caught in poor position on defense and we lost 6 of them. No enemy planes were downed, although two were damaged. One pilot was rescued. The ships had left in the night though, so there were no targets for the bombers.
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Air action over Adak Island[/center]

In the Chinese pocket, the 4th Group Army and 33rd Group Army surrendered. 5300 POWs were taken. With their leaders surrendered, the 41st and 55th Chinese Corps will likely surrender tomorrow, freeing up our troops in this pocket to join the NCA attack in Operation Joukai.

[FeurerKrieg]

July 7th, 1942
Air attacks on Changsha. In the pocket, as expected, the remaining Chinese troops surrendered. 12,000 POWs taken.
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A pocket is finally crushed[/center]

141 B-17E's at 35,000ft attacked Johnston Island today, destroying one Zero on the ground. Damage was otherwise light. The Nick fighter can't arrive soon enough!

[FeurerKrieg]

July 8th, 1942
Extremely quiet today - only three entries in the entire combat report.

Bombing on Changsha and the troops there shelling each other.

Myitkyina expanded its airfield today (sz 3). A supply convoy from Tokyo arrived at Rangoon today to unload about 50,000 tons of supplies.

The Southern Area Army continues to sail towards Canton. Large supply convoys have loaded up at Tokyo and will head to the various islands of the Pacific to keep them all over 20,000 supplies. Another 200,000 supplies will be delivered to Canton for the SAA to use in Operation Joukai. Yesterday a shipment of oil arrived at Auckland. The factories there now have enough oil to last for about one year.

[FeurerKrieg]

July 9th, 1942
Bombing at Changsha and Wallis Island expanded its airfield. (sz 3)

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No more Lily-I's on the front line.[/center]


Weather for tomorrow in Burma is 'only' rainy, so we will try another attack on Dacca. Wish us luck!

[FeurerKrieg]

July 10th, 1942
Today we had some action!

Our plan in Burma went off perfectly. Keeping with the strategy of not fighting unless we can do significant damage, we gave the Allies a sting today at Dacca.

Sensing something was up, the Allies launched a sweep and a small bombing run on Mandalay. The Oscars based there were on LRCAP over Magwe so the bombers did not destroy any planes on the ground. However, the sweep of 39 Hurricanes and 35 P-40E's was more than the 3 Tojo's flying from Magwe could handle. Two more Tojos joined the fight, but they too were lost. One Tojo pilot did manage to take a Hurricane with him.
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One Ki-44 gets revenge[/center]

After that though, our first strike hit Dacca. Over 100 A6M3 Zeros flew sweep against the Hurricanes and P-43A's on CAP there. 9 Zeros were lost in the fight, but 29 enemy planes, mostly of the RAF were shot down. One of our pilots, LTJG Koizumi with 2 kills (and 86 Exp) bailed out and was rescued and returned to his unit. On the heels of the sweep, over fifty Army bomber flew in low and braved heavy flak but hit the airfield hard destroying several enemy planes.
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First strike - fighters on sweep[/center]

A short time later, our larger strike arrived. The deplete CAP of 5 Hurricanes were no match for the 54 A6M2's escorting our long range bombers. The Liz and Betty bombers pounded the airbase even harder than the army bombers, destroying many airplanes on the ground, including some of the hated enemy four engined bombers.
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Second strike - fighters on escort[/center]

Losses for the day amounted to 32 aircraft lost for Japan versus 86 aircraft of the Allies.
Of those, the Allies lost 35 planes in A2A and Japan lost 14.

On the ground, the Allies lost:
15 Hurricane IIb
14 Blenheim IV
2 Hurricane IID/IV
5 B-25C Mitchell
4 LB-30 Liberator
4 Wellington III
3 B-26B Marader
2 Liberator III

Our planes will fly back to safer bases immediately and rest. The bombers especially took a lot of damage, although not a single Liz bomber was lost.

[FeurerKrieg]

July 11th, 1942
A handful of Allies bombers hit Magwe, but our planes were long gone.

B-25 bombers hit Adak Island also, but all the bombs missed the island and no damage was taken.

SS KXVII was hit by a Lily II while trying to enter the Java Sea.
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Dutch sub is hit[/center]

Saipan finished work on its airfield. (Sz 5)

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July 12th, 1942
Many enemy submarines were spotted near Truk today. A Val hit SS Tambor and an Alf hit SS Narwhal.
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High levels of submarine activity[/center]

Other than that, it was quiet.

[FeurerKrieg]

July 13th, 1942
Several of our Destroyers dropped depth charges around Truk, but no confirmed kills. SS Narwhal was reported hit by a Helen bomber.

Wau, Sian and Shanghai all expanded their airfields today. (4, 4, 6)

[FeurerKrieg]

July 14, 1942
Little action today other than bombign and bombarding at Changsha.

A new aircraft was spotted on CAP over Calcutta today with Chinese markings - the P-66 Vanguard.
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Vultee Vanguard in Chinese service[/center]

In 1938, Richard W. Palmer started the detailed design of the V-48 fighter member of the quartet. The aircraft featured a metal covered, semi-monocoque fuselage and fully retractable landing gear powered by a Pratt & Whitney R-1830 radial air-cooled engine. During construction of the first prototype, a decision was made to lengthen the propeller shaft and install a tight cowling to provide a pointed nose to reduce drag. The first aircraft flew in September 1939, and was assigned registration number NX21755. The fighter was named the Vanguard.

Flight tests revealed the aircraft was suffering from inadequate cooling. Measures to modify the cooling ducting were of little avail. After re-evaluating the design, and noting that the insignificant drag decrease was not worth the added weight and ducting problems, the second prototype, which was assigned the model number V-48X and registration NX19999, was modified with a conventional cowl and the first aircraft were similarly modified. The second aircraft first flew on 11 February 1940. As a result of flight tests, a number of changes were made to the design including substantially increasing the areas of the horizontal and vertical tail surfaces.