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Losing Timor that early is death for the japanese player... you can take your time in retaking it but you must commit to this battle wholeheartedly... Do you want to go for Timor itself or try to attack northern OZ ? what forces are available and from when ?

You have to go through your whole naval, terrestrial and aerial arsenal and start elaborating your reactions.. With Seabees he can have 4-10 bases built up very very quickly and from then on he will hop to Java and destroy you.. it might take him till mid 43 to hold Java, but by then Palembang and Borneo's oilfields will be ruble.. this means that by 1/44 it is game over.

You have your decisive battle cut out right there for you. I am eagerly awaiting to see what you do with it...

This game has been and will always be about logistics. Rather than take on the powerful point of the spear, hit him where he is more vulnerable - the follow up logistical tail.

Right now the center of his position is very strong due to the probable number of ships involved. But what about his right flank - Darwin; or left flank - Exmouth down to Perth??  Your strength is still in massing ALL your carriers. If you have moved back mini-KB to Soerabaja, then could you have KB meet them there and hit his left flank??  I tend to look at the map in basic Napoleonic ways. [;)]

It is inevitible that the Allied player will gain a foothold and start the war of attrition. However, once in Timor, he is in a position to start it early and the sooner the Allies can push the attrition issue, the sooner the party is going to end for Japan. For this reason I think you have to fight here and throw him out. (It won't be easy but you will never be stronger)The ideal situation for Japan is to keep the Allies out of the perimiter until 1943 at least. Good luck.

Ny59Giants is right on how to attack him. You obviously don't have to go head on for the Koepang invasion, but you do have to kill this operation one way or the other... 

Hmmmm, You really need to throw him out of the Timor area. No matter what it cost for you.
 
If you let him keep these bases than it will be all over for you.
 
The operation might be very costly but it is doable if you commit into it.
 
Good luck with the campaign.

It's probably too late to throw him out at this point.  Once Q-Ball is established, this becomes a Guadalcanal situation.  Of course, Cuttlefish will think of the best way he can to address the situation, and we can all wager that it will hurt Q-Ball's forces, but evicting the Allies from a strongly gained position (assuming that's what's happening) isn't going to be possible at this point of the game; at least not with major bases (Darwin, etc.) nearby.

I would not face his initial onslaught, specially not launching my forces in bites against it.

You will have initially a lonely developed  airbase , -koepang- vs three -Ambon, Makassar and kendhari - Den pasar can help here too.... so at this stage of the war (no corsairs) it should be quite doable obtaining air superiority in their intended objetives.

Then bring KB and Combined fleet, with 3 divisions (from noumea?) and deploy them in timor.  A fight with on-par CV forces under your LBA umbrella with the objetive under Japanese air control seems not the worst situation for late 42 on my own point of view.


 

I won't presume to offer any advice here, as I'm not remotely qualified to make suggestions, but I do want to say the combination of this AAR and Q-ball's provides the most tense, dramatic and suspenseful reading I've come across in quite a while. There's nothing like a finely poised confrontation between two able combatants. So thanks, good luck and good hunting!

one of the difficulties in AE for the Jap player is the multiplicity of dot bases in areas such as Solomons or DEI or Burma/India that can be be built up by armies of Seabees... There is just no way Cuttlefish will have more bases in the area because very soon the 6 or 10 small bases around Koepang will all be swarmed with fighter squadrons, PTboats, etc.. And there is no hope of suppressing those with surface raids, they are just too many...

This looks bad bad bad... I honestly believe that this is the decisive battle.... Throw him out one way or the other and you can still play,  fail to do so and by mid late 1943 you can't move your ships around because of lack of fuel and your industry stalls.

veji is exactly right.  One of the real differences between AE and WitP is the tremendous number of potential aribases on islands and dot hexes.  The Allies can afford to bypass many of the major bases because there are usually a number of equally useful bases nearby that can be built as large or larger.  I want to see how this plays out over time - both in these games and in many games to come - but I've felt from the outset that this is the single biggest advantage to the Allies in AE.  I wonder whether it may prove to be too much of an advantage, though nobody's played far enough to tell yet.  It will take many games - with many efforts by capable Japanese players to thwart the Allied advance - to determine if it is too easy for the Allied player to bypass historically important bases by taking and building up bases that played small roles in the war; even then there is the question of whether the Allies could have built up these bases had they wished to do so.  Probably so.  If Q-Ball gets ashore in big numbers, he's soon going to have all kinds of bases in the southeastern DEI, making life difficult for Cuttlefish.

Enough of the doom. CF still has a very strong and capable AF and Navy. He has greater stocks of better planes. This may be the guadalcanal battle, but the historical one had no KB present and was on the end of a very long supply line. He does not have those detriments in this campaign.
He also has a very important location to put his own swarms of subs.
 
Make him pay CF!

I guess it comes down to whether you think you can control the sea around Timor now, if yes then the allied troops are going down sooner or later, if not then the slow fighting retreat begins.

From my little experience, surface ships are better for killing lots of transports, aircraft for killing off the enemy carriers and warships. A problem may be (if you decide to intervene) the large number of enemy task forces.. you don't want to strike at a transport fleet whilst he hits your carrier fleet.

If you can win a decisive carrier battle you should be able to hold Timor and put the allies and the back foot for a long time. Its an opportunity, you now know where his carrier force is and this early in the war with intact KB and BB fleet you can make the allies pay for their impertinence.

Good luck.

Indeed. Enough of the naysaying! Defeatism is a bad career choice in the Imperial Japanese Navy.

There is a non-trivial Jap force at Koepang. Even if the landing goes well it will take several days before the Allies are in a credible position to attack. Until then the carriers have to provide CAP. When they start to fatigue (and before the new airfield is operational, they will be at their weakest. So wear them down with LBA.

Get some support down to Kendari and Macassar and Amboina. Fly some Vals from Lautem if you can and attack the troops ashore. Rotate fresh fighters to Koepang. Sweep with zeroes. Send in some sacrificial Sallys (but save the Bettys till he is attritted). Send some transports north of Timor and make his carrier bombers use up their ordinance. Flood the are with subs. Get some heavy surface forces to Kendari or Balikpapan. Maybe even fly in some infantryIf the boys at Koepang can hold for a short while then his carriers will have to start rotating back for bombs and torpedoes.

Speaking of that...how far does he have to go for torpedoes?

When the CAP starts to drop over the landing beaches, THAT is when you send in the KB and heavy surface forces.

Interesting points of view all around.

Cuttlefish-do you have an idea about ship dispositions in Q-ball's transport fleet? Any SigInt (ha!) or sighting reports about LSDs, LSTs or APs? If therse are not present, this may influence how long he'll be in the very vulnerable position of unloading these TFs. Such duration may influence your decision about when to act.

I've always felt that the early IJN amphibious unload bonuses are an underrated huge benefit to the IJN. If Q-ball hasn't carefully calculated unloading time, he may have forgotten how bleedin' long the allied ships have to unload a sizeable combat force with supply on some God-forsaken rock.

Are there any dot bases in the area that you would be interested in building for airfield potential? While the allies do have an advantage in their Seabees, the Japanese are not entirely incapable of combat engineering feats, particularly if they're strategically selected. A counteroffensive to occupy other promising areas in the DEI (Kwangtung army / PPs?) ahead of future allied moves may be something to consider.

Lastly, since you now know where his CVs are-how about another Pearl Harbor or Sydney / Brisbane harbor strike? Your carriers are only a few days sail away and you know HIS attention is going to be on the successful deployment of his forces in and around Timor. Just thinkin'...

I don't think Q-ball has to go to far for torpedoes Cap...... Port headland can go to a 6 and with some AKE's and naval support that's covered. I don't think he ignored that possability when he started this Op. Looks like he's been planning this for a while ...complete with diversions. Great suggestions on the LBA. Had you started on the buildup of Bases in the DEI CF? If not Loemadjang, Soerobaja, Makasser, Kendari, Ambon, and Menado are your best bets atm for staging (altohough Makasser and Menado are at 3). What do you have for air HQ's in the area to beef up the airfield ratings? How much airpower can you throw to the area? His supply must be coming from Capetown for this area .... a long supply run behind Oz if not.

Do you mean every arc will be searched even if they come from multiple units? I.e., if I have 1 plane on each of 12 different cruisers, will they search 12 different random arcs or 12 random arcs, some of which might be the same?

Also, If i set a single plane to search (60), will it search 60% of the time? Will it take fatigue into consideration?

By the way Cuttlefish, I absolutely loved Voyages of the Hibiki - you should compile it into an alternative history novel, take out the overt WitP references, and I bet it would sell like hotcakes! I would definitely buy it! Now I'm glued to both this report and also Q-Balls's side. It is really exciting to hear it from both sides!!

Hey Cuttlefish,

One thing you can do is if you think he's not flying CAP over Koepang, the Japanese Air Transports can bring an awful lot of assault value into the base very quickly. On the other hand, if he's going to take it anyway, you probably want to use them to bring units OUT (at least fragments). Even if he takes it, you ought to be able to shut the airfield down for a while and start bombing any other bases he takes to slow down construction. Agree 100% with the Guadalcanal analogy, but you seem to have more advantages here than the RL Japanese did.

Good luck! It should be fun either way.

Andrew

No lack of advice here. Good Luck, Cuttlefish-san.

[font="Arial"]Be audacious and cunning in your plans, firm and persevering in their execution, and determined to find a glorious end.[/font]
- Clausewitz: Principles of War, 1812

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10/1/1942 – 10/3/1942

Lots of discussion and lots to think about. Thanks to everyone for all of the comments and advice. And thanks as well for watching me become suspicious about what Q-Ball was up to and not saying a word. I know that isn't always easy to do.

Koepang, to my disappointment, fell to the first assault on 3 October. Not to my surprise, though; he landed a LOT of troops. The surviving troops are hiking through the jungle towards Dili, probably a hopeless trek. Fortunately I had the Dash Forward Sentai at Manado and they evacuated elements of important units before the battle. I guess I might have to rename the transport group the Dash Backward Sentai.

Q-Ball’s forces also occupied most of Flores and a couple of other small bases in the area. His total opposition here was one naval guard unit.

My forces have been mostly quiet. On 2 October a Betty attack was launched at Koepang from Ambon, targeting British battleships there. The escorting Zeros brushed aside the Wildcats on CAP but to my surprise the Bettys dropped bombs instead of launching torpedoes. Investigating later I found that the aviation HQ was set in error – they were drawing 15 torpedoes, which wasn’t nearly enough to equip all of the planes. Aargh! It’s one thing to be beaten by the cunning plan of an excellent opponent, but another to make stupid mistakes like that.

Kido Butai, after stopping to refuel, is now around Babeldoab. Several SCTFs are also converging on the area. Ground troops and aviation support are being hurried to the bases surrounding the area as fast as I can load them and I am moving every air group that isn’t essential for defense elsewhere towards the region as well.

After reading what everyone has posted and doing much pondering on my own, here are a few early conclusions:

- Whether or not I try to take back the bases is moot unless I can regain control of the sea and air in the region. This then is the first order of business. I will give it a try, because I think I have a couple of advantages. First is the fact that the IJN is almost completely intact and might still be able to win the day at this point. My supply lines are shorter and one thing I am sure of about this op for the Allies is that it has to be consuming a whole lot of fuel. Second is the fact that so far, with the exception of Burma, he hasn’t really been able to do much against my LBA. And at Burma there are lots of large Allied airfields in an arc around my forward bases. Here that situation is reversed.

- I can bring in three or four divisions in a counter-attack, more if I’m willing to pull some units out of China or Manchukuo. I have almost 10,000 political points in the bank. If I can isolate his troops I should be able to mop up his invading forces one base at a time. This, of course, is only likely to happen if his carriers are soundly defeated and his surface forces put to rout. If these conditions aren’t achieved then I will use the divisions to reinforce key points and as a reserve.

- An alternate strategy, risky but maybe worth thinking about, would be to invade Port Hedland and Exmouth. That would really give him fits. It may be a fantasy but if conditions are right and it worked it would completely stall his advance in the DEI for a long while. Even without invasions his supply line is still a worthy target.

- Another alternate strategy, containment, isn’t really an option at the moment. If I lose the air and sea battles around Timor it becomes the fallback position, but it isn’t a good position. It’s a way to lose slowly, or maybe even not so slowly.

- I can’t take my eye off the rest of the map, either. His attack at Wake may have been a diversion but I don’t doubt that he would have invaded if things had gone better. At least, I don’t think he put troops on those ships just so I’d see casualties when I sank them. Fortunately things seem stable in Burma right now and the Pacific is about as well defended as I can make it without the carriers present.

Any big air and sea clashes are still several turns off. He’s expecting to get hit and must be counting on holding his gains even if he loses, which is why he landed in division strength even at small, undefended bases. His plan has been a good one but he is gambling a lot on success. If he wins the war is shortened by a year or more. If he loses it may be a while before he can attack me again.

Whatever happens, this is going to be fun.

Common, please dont panic and dont rush into bold attack on a mount with sabre in hand against tank.

Gatther your force, build Makassar, Kendari and some other into strong bases, move there all your long legged Zeroes and 200-300 army bombers. Move  3th Air army Hq and some AirHQ from Solomons zone, because looks like he choose DEI as his main thrust area in 1943 at least. Use you BB's-CA for fast hit and run attacks, move around 15 subs into this are to make any supplying of Timor bloody hell for him !