Oct. 5, 1942
Both Baker and Canton Islands have been successfully evacuated. Those SNLFs are being transferred to the Marshals. Six regiment sized garrison units are now sitting in Yokohama. Five will be used to garrison the Gilberts. One is bound for Padang on Sumatra. The 1st Division is at Keijo. When I have enough PPs in about 2 weeks, it will be sent to DEI. I currently have two SNLFs at Wake. After considering the value of this island, I have decided to pull one of them out and bring it down to the Marshals. I have also decided to not defend Majuro.
ORIGINAL: SqzMyLemon
Hi cag,
I have a question regarding your pilot training. To what level do you train pilots up to before sending them to the group/general reserve and bring in a new class of trainees to your training squadrons? I have some units in China for example that seem to train the experience level to about 50 and skills in the 60's, then it slows right down, so I tend to switch out the pilots at this stage and send in all new inexperienced pilots. I then take these 50+ pilots and begin placing some in frontline units to gain actual combat experience. Mind you, this is mostly for army air units, I tend to train up the naval flyers higher before bringing in a new batch. I'm curious what your ideas are on training and if you are keeping pilots in longer for a higher experience rating before transferring them out?
I guess great minds think alike. This is just what I do! I started out wanting higher experience since I was used to UV/WitP where experience is the end all and be all. But my standards have been going down. I am now satisfied if they get up to around 54-56. I do let fighter pilots get their A2A skills up to 70. I also want their defense skill to be at least 50, though I am find this harder to obtain. I also tend to like to bring in lower experience pilots into elite formations so that they can hopefully get some benefit from flying with more experienced pilots.
My big shortage is with fighter pilots, particularly IJN fighter pilots. I have lots of bomber pilots in the reserve pool. Those guys cross train on several different skills, such as Grnd, NavB, NavT and ASW, so their exp levels tend to get up into the 50s before I release them to the pool. For some of my fighter squadrons I am having them fly CAP to try to increase their experience level. I don't like the idea of a fighter pilot with less than 50 exp in the front line.
One last note: every time I get an 80+ exp pilot, unless he is the group leader, I dump him into TRACOM.
ORIGINAL: Swenslim
I think it is impossible for Japan player guard all this bases. Allied player dont even need to invade them, he can quickly build airfield and port on any dot or emty base. Atolls of Caroline islands can not be defended at all because you can station there 2 SNLFs squds max and air support unit, if allied player want them he will have. Japan player can only hope for decisive win in CV battle that will compulse allied player to abandon invasion for few months.
On my opinion there are few bases of forward perometr that have strategical importence for whole Japan defence. allied player will not be able to push forward untill he will take them or shut their facilities. This bases are - Koepang, Ambon, Port Moresby, Rabaul, Truk, Rangoon. This bases must become impenitrable fortresses.
To get a decisive CV engagement, I need to be able to hold a base for a few turns before it falls to give time for the CVs to show up and for LBA to attack. If he just sails in and takes it on the initial shock attack, there will be no need for his CVs to stick around. An SNLF unit is about 1/2 regiment sized. Sitting behind level 4 forts it is not going to fall to anything less than a full division assault in one turn. Indeed, if his initial shock attack fails to dislodge the defenders, then it will take him several days to regroup before he can attack again.
So, you say, he will just use a full division or more. True. But then that limits the number of atolls his can take in one go. The greater the force devoted to one assault, the fewer assaults he can make. If he only takes 1-3 atolls on the first go round, that leaves me with other atolls around from which I can bomb and sweep his airfields. Also, it takes time to prep for his next target. Without adequate preparation, amphib invasions suffer huge numbers of disablements. Thus, for every island he need to prep for and cannot take on the cheap, the more time I am buying. My plan is not to stop the allied advance, but to slow it down.
Also, I do not believe in the one big base theory. That did not work for Japan IRL and I don't think it would work here. The allies simply went around Rabaul and Truk. My goal, as stated above, is to make it so the allies can only take a limited number of bases per offensive operation, leaving me with numerous other bases from which to attack his newly acquired base. A big part of the problem that Cuttlefish had was that Q-Ball took numerous bases all in one go making a Japanese counter impossible since the allies now had multiple airbases from which they could attack. My goal is to prevent the allies from grabbing a large number of bases in one offensive.
