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AFTER ACTION REPORTS FOR Apr 12, 42

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Night Air attack on Palembang , at 48,91

Weather in hex: Clear sky

Japanese aircraft
Ki-21-Ic Sally x 20


Japanese aircraft losses
Ki-21-Ic Sally: 1 destroyed, 6 damaged

In the end 2 Sallys were downed by FlAK tonight. Tomorrow, if they come again they'll find a few of my remaining Buffaloes in the air seeking what kills they can get and, most definitely, disrupting the bombers' bombing runs.



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Submarine attack near Eureka at 208,70

Japanese Ships
SS I-2

Allied Ships
xAP Maui, Torpedo hits 1


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Morning Air attack on 161st Infantry Regiment, at 136,48 (Onnekotan-jima)

Weather in hex: Light cloud

Raid spotted at 25 NM, estimated altitude 16,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 8 minutes

Japanese aircraft
G4M1 Betty x 22



No Japanese losses


Allied ground losses:
14 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 1 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 2 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled

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Morning Air attack on TF, near Davao at 79,91

Weather in hex: Thunderstorms

Raid spotted at 25 NM, estimated altitude 7,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 7 minutes

Japanese aircraft
B5M1 Mabel x 3



No Japanese losses

Allied Ships
xAK Edward Luckenbach, Bomb hits 1

Hmm, I think these Mabels are operating out of Jolo. I had thought they were from a CVE but I think Jolo looks to be their base. That's fine though, overnight I have flown in some 50 fighters to Davao so the merchant ships there should have a strong CAP tomorrow.... I am looking to unload two Base Forces and a few thousand tons of supplies. Once that's done I can work on extending my CAP and bomber coverage into Mindanao proper.

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Morning Air attack on 73rd Chinese Corps, at 81,58

Weather in hex: Clear sky

Raid spotted at 12 NM, estimated altitude 15,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 3 minutes

Japanese aircraft
Ki-27b Nate x 11
Ki-30 Ann x 17
Ki-36 Ida x 17
Ki-48-Ib Lily x 3
Ki-51 Sonia x 21



No Japanese losses


Allied ground losses:
43 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 3 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 3 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled

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Morning Air attack on Medan , at 46,76

Weather in hex: Overcast

Raid spotted at 43 NM, estimated altitude 18,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 12 minutes

Japanese aircraft
Ki-21-IIa Sally x 24
Ki-30 Ann x 25
Ki-43-Ib Oscar x 26



Japanese aircraft losses
Ki-21-IIa Sally: 1 damaged


Allied ground losses:
14 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 1 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 2 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled


Airbase hits 1
Runway hits 2

The CD gun unit at Medan can't move but everything else will be gone by tomorrow. Unloading at the northernmost base in Northern Sumatra is going well and I've flown a P-40E squadron in to provide CAP.

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Morning Air attack on 73rd Chinese Corps, at 81,58

Weather in hex: Clear sky

Raid spotted at 29 NM, estimated altitude 14,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 9 minutes

Japanese aircraft
Ki-27b Nate x 8
Ki-48-Ib Lily x 9



Japanese aircraft losses
Ki-27b Nate: 1 damaged


Allied ground losses:
7 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 1 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled

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Morning Air attack on 73rd Chinese Corps, at 81,58

Weather in hex: Clear sky

Raid spotted at 35 NM, estimated altitude 11,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 11 minutes

Japanese aircraft
Ki-27b Nate x 8



No Japanese losses

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Morning Air attack on 18th Chinese Corps, at 85,50 (Hankow)

Weather in hex: Light cloud

Raid spotted at 25 NM, estimated altitude 6,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 7 minutes

Japanese aircraft
Ki-48-Ib Lily x 11



No Japanese losses

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Morning Air attack on 102nd Infantry Regiment, at 81,58

Weather in hex: Clear sky

Raid spotted at 48 NM, estimated altitude 6,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 16 minutes


Allied aircraft
A-29A Hudson x 3


No Allied losses

Japanese ground losses:
6 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 1 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled

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Morning Air attack on Kwajalein Island , at 132,115

Weather in hex: Thunderstorms

Raid spotted at 30 NM, estimated altitude 12,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 6 minutes


Allied aircraft
A-20A Havoc x 12
A-29 Hudson x 5


Allied aircraft losses
A-20A Havoc: 6 damaged

Japanese Ships
SSX Ha-9, Bomb hits 1, and is sunk

Runway hits 6

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Afternoon Air attack on TF, near Tarakan at 68,91

My bombers operating out of Balikpapan had a reasonably good day. About half of them turned back when they failed to meet up with their escorts. Tomorrow I'll try again and just in case the bombers don't do well I'm sending two CL and 2 DD into Tarakan tomorrow morning. That should take care of the Japanese convoy.

Weather in hex: Partial cloud

Raid spotted at 18 NM, estimated altitude 9,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 5 minutes


Allied aircraft
Hudson III (LR) x 3
B-26 Marauder x 6


Allied aircraft losses
B-26 Marauder: 1 damaged

Japanese Ships
xAKL Bunzan Maru
xAK Aki Maru, Bomb hits 1
xAK Banshu Maru

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Afternoon Air attack on Singkawang , at 56,88

Weather in hex: Overcast

Raid spotted at 46 NM, estimated altitude 7,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 13 minutes

Here's the big news of the day... Mike tells me he had his fighters on sweep and secondarily on CAP. I don't trust secondary missions and his fighters didn't fly CAP at all. The end result is that my B-17s got a free run at his airbase and destroyed 45 Oscar Is and Zeroes as well as 16 Netties. I lost 2 B-17s to FlAK damage on the journey home.

My results were this good because I have a DL level of 9 vs Singkawang.

Japanese aircraft
no flights


Allied aircraft
B-17E Fortress x 30


Japanese aircraft losses
Ki-43-Ic Oscar: 5 destroyed on ground
G3M2 Nell: 4 destroyed on ground
A6M2 Zero: 3 destroyed on ground

Allied aircraft losses
B-17E Fortress: 5 damaged

Japanese ground losses:
18 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 2 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 1 disabled

Airbase hits 8
Airbase supply hits 5
Runway hits 79

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Afternoon Air attack on TF, near Tarakan at 68,91

Weather in hex: Partial cloud

Raid spotted at 49 NM, estimated altitude 17,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 19 minutes


Allied aircraft
A-24 Banshee x 6


No Allied losses

Japanese Ships
xAK Koyo Maru, Bomb hits 1, heavy fires

Japanese ground losses:
36 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Non Combat: 2 destroyed, 2 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Guns lost 2 (1 destroyed, 1 disabled)

Aircraft Attacking:
3 x A-24 Banshee releasing from 4000'
Naval Attack: 1 x 1000 lb SAP Bomb
3 x A-24 Banshee releasing from 2000'
Naval Attack: 1 x 1000 lb SAP Bomb

Heavy smoke from fires obscuring xAK Koyo Maru


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Afternoon Air attack on Singkawang , at 56,88

Weather in hex: Overcast

Raid spotted at 20 NM, estimated altitude 7,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 6 minutes

Japanese aircraft
no flights


Allied aircraft
B-17E Fortress x 12


Japanese aircraft losses
A6M2 Zero: 5 destroyed on ground
G3M2 Nell: 1 destroyed on ground
Ki-43-Ic Oscar: 3 destroyed on ground

Allied aircraft losses
B-17E Fortress: 3 damaged

Airbase hits 9
Airbase supply hits 4
Runway hits 32

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Afternoon Air attack on Singkawang , at 56,88

Weather in hex: Overcast

Raid spotted at 49 NM, estimated altitude 7,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 13 minutes

Japanese aircraft
no flights


Allied aircraft
B-17D Fortress x 6
B-17E Fortress x 4


Japanese aircraft losses
A6M2 Zero: 2 destroyed on ground
G3M2 Nell: 1 destroyed on ground
Ki-43-Ic Oscar: 2 destroyed on ground

Allied aircraft losses
B-17D Fortress: 2 damaged



Airbase hits 2
Runway hits 28

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Afternoon Air attack on TF, near Tarakan at 68,91

Weather in hex: Partial cloud

Raid spotted at 35 NM, estimated altitude 17,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 9 minutes


Allied aircraft
B-26 Marauder x 3


No Allied losses

Japanese Ships
xAKL Zuiho Maru, Bomb hits 2, heavy fires, heavy damage

Japanese ground losses:
24 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Non Combat: 5 destroyed, 7 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Guns lost 24 (8 destroyed, 16 disabled)
Vehicles lost 15 (7 destroyed, 8 disabled)

Mike normally CAPs these sorts of TFs very well which is why I normally don't hit them too much but I think the bad weather in the area today played havoc with his plans... It kept his fighters at Singkawang grounded - which allowed me to blow them up on the ground -, kept his TF uncapped and meant that even though my medium bombers and Banshees didn't link up with their escorts they didn't get punished for it. In short I got lucky today.

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Afternoon Air attack on TF, near Tarakan at 68,91

Weather in hex: Partial cloud

Raid spotted at 21 NM, estimated altitude 10,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 5 minutes


Allied aircraft
B-26 Marauder x 3


No Allied losses

Japanese Ships
xAK Banshu Maru, Bomb hits 1, heavy fires

Japanese ground losses:
102 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Non Combat: 8 destroyed, 10 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Guns lost 28 (10 destroyed, 18 disabled)
Vehicles lost 7 (7 destroyed, 0 disabled)

Hmm, another engineer or base force by the looks of it.

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Submarine attack near Taihoku at 88,62

Japanese Ships
xAK Somedono Maru, Shell hits 7

Allied Ships
SS Swordfish, hits 2

xAK Somedono Maru is sighted by SS Swordfish
SS Swordfish attacking xAK Somedono Maru on the surface
Smith, C.C. decides to submerge SS Swordfish due to damage

This attack featured a total of FIVE dud torpedo hit messages. Hit! but No Explosion just kept flashing up time after time. Roll on working torpedoes.

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Ground combat at 86,42

Allied Bombardment attack

Attacking force 24850 troops, 110 guns, 0 vehicles, Assault Value = 963

Defending force 30814 troops, 254 guns, 32 vehicles, Assault Value = 1088


Allied ground losses:
6 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 1 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled


Assaulting units:
5th New Chinese Corps
15th Chinese Corps
43rd Chinese Corps
9th Chinese Corps
27th Chinese Corps
93rd Chinese Corps
8th New Chinese Corps
14th Group Army
15th Group Army

Defending units:
3rd Ind.Mixed Brigade
35th Division
11th Division


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Ground combat at 81,58

Allied Shock attack

Attacking force 8318 troops, 37 guns, 0 vehicles, Assault Value = 307

Defending force 1841 troops, 30 guns, 0 vehicles, Assault Value = 41

Allied adjusted assault: 204

Japanese adjusted defense: 81

Allied assault odds: 2 to 1

Combat modifiers
Defender: terrain(+), leaders(+), experience(-)
Attacker: shock(+), disruption(-)

Japanese ground losses:
409 casualties reported
Squads: 21 destroyed, 0 disabled
Non Combat: 27 destroyed, 2 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Guns lost 1 (1 destroyed, 0 disabled)
Units retreated 1


Allied ground losses:
131 casualties reported
Squads: 1 destroyed, 9 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 3 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 3 disabled

Well, that's this regiment pretty much wiped out. It'll take months to rebuild.

Defeated Japanese Units Retreating!

Assaulting units:
73rd Chinese Corps

Defending units:
102nd Infantry Regiment


Canton looks like it has 8 units there. I've ordered a bombardment attack tomorrow. I expect it to reveal Canton is far too heavily defended to be taken and will then dig in/pull back a little so I can divert troops to the Changsha region. I'm 2 days away from encircling Changsha so things will get very bloody up there very quickly....

In other news Japanese pressure in northern China has forced me to pull back along two axes. The IJA is mounting a determined drive towards Hankow with a view to relieving it. I think this might well come down to my taking the town to the south of Hankow a couple of days before the IJA relief column pushes my forces out of Hankow.... Of such small margins is victory sometimes made.

Either way it is going to be close, very close.

AFTER ACTION REPORTS FOR Apr 13, 42
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Night Air attack on Palembang , at 48,91


Weather in hex: Partial cloud

Japanese aircraft
Ki-21-Ic Sally x 17


Japanese aircraft losses
Ki-21-Ic Sally: 1 destroyed, 10 damaged

Night bombing hits nothing and is costing him about a 10% casualty rate. That's fine by me.

My night-time CAP didn't even fly though which is a bit disappointing. I was hoping for some easy training kills for that squadron.


Aircraft Attacking:
17 x Ki-21-Ic Sally bombing from 15000 feet
Airfield Attack: 4 x 250 kg GP Bomb

Raid detected at 40 NM, estimated altitude 21,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 13 minutes


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ASW attack near Tarakan at 67,91

Japanese Ships
DD Karii

Allied Ships
SS KXVIII

SS KXVIII launches 4 torpedoes at DD Karii
KXVIII bottoming out ....
Sub escapes detection


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Morning Air attack on Cagayan , at 79,89

Weather in hex: Heavy rain

Raid spotted at 44 NM, estimated altitude 20,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 14 minutes

Japanese aircraft
Ki-21-Ic Sally x 78



Allied aircraft
F4F-3 Wildcat x 2


No Japanese losses

No Allied losses


Allied ground losses:
4 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 1 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled


Airbase hits 7
Airbase supply hits 3
Runway hits 25

The F4Fs are leaking CAP from Davao where they and some 50 other fighters provided a strong CAP for elements of two US Base Forces and a ship carrying about 5,000 tons of supplies which are unloading. With a little luck the supplies will allow the Filipinnos at Cagayan to hold the IJA division off and buy time for more significant reinforcements to make for Davao and begin flooding the island with considerable numbers of troops.

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Morning Air attack on 73rd Chinese Corps, at 81,58

Weather in hex: Clear sky

Raid spotted at 25 NM, estimated altitude 11,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 7 minutes

Japanese aircraft
Ki-27b Nate x 9
Ki-30 Ann x 17
Ki-48-Ib Lily x 12



No Japanese losses


Allied ground losses:
42 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 6 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled


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Morning Air attack on Medan , at 46,76

Weather in hex: Severe storms

Raid spotted at 26 NM, estimated altitude 21,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 8 minutes

Japanese aircraft
Ki-43-Ic Oscar x 18


No Japanese losses

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Morning Air attack on Medan , at 46,76

Weather in hex: Severe storms

Raid spotted at 10 NM, estimated altitude 19,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 2 minutes

Japanese aircraft
Ki-21-IIa Sally x 24
Ki-30 Ann x 25
Ki-43-Ic Oscar x 12

Japanese aircraft losses
Ki-21-IIa Sally: 1 damaged



Runway hits 1

Also attacking Medan Coastal Gun Battalion ...
Also attacking Medan ...
Also attacking Medan Coastal Gun Battalion ...
Also attacking Medan ...
Also attacking Medan Coastal Gun Battalion ...
Also attacking Medan ...


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Morning Air attack on 4th Chinese Corps, at 77,59 (Canton)

Weather in hex: Light cloud

Raid spotted at 40 NM, estimated altitude 18,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 13 minutes

Japanese aircraft
Ki-27b Nate x 1
Ki-36 Ida x 8
Ki-51 Sonia x 18



No Japanese losses


Allied ground losses:
6 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 1 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled


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Morning Air attack on 4th Chinese Corps, at 77,59 (Canton)

Weather in hex: Light cloud

Raid spotted at 44 NM, estimated altitude 13,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 13 minutes

Japanese aircraft
Ki-27b Nate x 8

Japanese aircraft losses
Ki-27b Nate: 1 damaged

Mike REALLY doesn't want to lose Canton does he? Lots and lots of fighter and bomber sorties to lower the adjusted AV of my troops there. He needn't worry though, I don't have enough to force my way in and take the city. I might have enough to attrit him gradually though so I'll bring in a few more Corps and then try attritional attacks.

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Morning Air attack on 25th Chinese Corps, at 77,59 (Canton)

Weather in hex: Light cloud

Raid spotted at 49 NM, estimated altitude 17,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 22 minutes

Japanese aircraft
Ki-27b Nate x 1
Ki-36 Ida x 12



No Japanese losses


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Morning Air attack on 25th Chinese Corps, at 77,59 (Canton)

Weather in hex: Light cloud

Raid spotted at 40 NM, estimated altitude 19,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 13 minutes

Japanese aircraft
Ki-51 Sonia x 6



No Japanese losses

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Morning Air attack on 73rd Chinese Corps, at 81,58

Weather in hex: Clear sky

Raid spotted at 23 NM, estimated altitude 12,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 7 minutes

Japanese aircraft
Ki-27b Nate x 8


No Japanese losses


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Morning Air attack on 102nd Infantry Regiment, at 81,59

Weather in hex: Clear sky

Raid spotted at 48 NM, estimated altitude 10,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 16 minutes


Allied aircraft
A-29A Hudson x 3


No Allied losses

Japanese ground losses:
10 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 1 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled

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Morning Air attack on Kwajalein Island , at 132,115

Weather in hex: Light rain

Raid spotted at 29 NM, estimated altitude 13,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 6 minutes


Allied aircraft
A-20A Havoc x 12
A-29 Hudson x 6


Allied aircraft losses
A-20A Havoc: 7 damaged

Airbase hits 1
Runway hits 9

The FlAK here is still damned strong.


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Afternoon Air attack on Palembang , at 48,91

Weather in hex: Severe storms

His Oscars were grounded by bad weather and damage to the airbase as Singkawang but Zeroes flying from Singapore did make their presence felt today.

Raid detected at 24 NM, estimated altitude 19,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 7 minutes

Japanese aircraft
A6M2 Zero x 26


Allied aircraft
H81-A3 x 8
Sea Hurricane Ib x 4
Martlet II x 6
P-40E Warhawk x 27
F4F-4 Wildcat x 16

Japanese aircraft losses
A6M2 Zero: 5 destroyed

Allied aircraft losses
P-40E Warhawk: 2 destroyed

Add in the ops losses on the way home and this should be roughly 2:1 in my favour.


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Afternoon Air attack on TF, near Tarakan at 67,91

Weather in hex: Moderate rain

For some reason my SC TF ( CLs and DDs ) doesn't seem to have made contact with these forces at all. I'm not sure what has happened. In any case this meant that instead of my fighters and bombers having milk runs vs ships which had been forced out to sea and away from their CAP by my SC TF they had to fight their way through strong CAP. Fortunately I had made some allowances for this and losses weren't too bad.

Raid spotted at 48 NM, estimated altitude 10,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 16 minutes

Japanese aircraft
A6M2 Zero x 20



Allied aircraft
Hurricane IIb Trop x 25
P-40E Warhawk x 4
Hudson III (LR) x 8
B-26 Marauder x 6

Japanese aircraft losses
A6M2 Zero: 4 destroyed

Allied aircraft losses
Hurricane IIb Trop: 2 destroyed
P-40E Warhawk: 1 destroyed
Hudson III (LR): 1 destroyed, 2 damaged
B-26 Marauder: 1 destroyed, 2 damaged

4 for 5 plus a few damaged planes. Not too bad at all.

Japanese Ships
xAK Sugiyama Maru
xAK Aki Maru, Bomb hits 1, on fire

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Afternoon Air attack on TF, near Tarakan at 67,91

Weather in hex: Moderate rain

Raid spotted at 27 NM, estimated altitude 14,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 10 minutes

Japanese aircraft
A6M2 Zero x 7



Allied aircraft
Hurricane IIb Trop x 7
P-40E Warhawk x 6
A-24 Banshee x 13

Japanese aircraft losses
A6M2 Zero: 3 destroyed

Allied aircraft losses
Hurricane IIb Trop: 1 destroyed
P-40E Warhawk: 1 destroyed

With the CAP weakened the Hurricane IIs and P-40Es manage to protect the Banshees from being engaged at all.

Japanese Ships
xAK Sugiyama Maru, Bomb hits 3, heavy fires, heavy damage
DD Karii
xAKL Unyo Maru, Bomb hits 1, heavy fires

Their 1000lb bombs prove highly effective and Sugiyama Maru and Unyo Maru look to be in real trouble.



Aircraft Attacking:
6 x A-24 Banshee releasing from 3000'
Naval Attack: 1 x 1000 lb SAP Bomb
4 x P-40E Warhawk sweeping at 29000 feet *
3 x A-24 Banshee releasing from 4000'
Naval Attack: 1 x 1000 lb SAP Bomb
5 x Hurricane IIb Trop sweeping at 36000 feet
4 x A-24 Banshee releasing from 2000'
Naval Attack: 1 x 1000 lb SAP Bomb

Note the issue I had previously highlighted re: sweeping vs escorting and the better results one gets in terms of co-ordination and also loss ratios.

Heavy smoke from fires obscuring xAK Sugiyama Maru

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Afternoon Air attack on TF, near Tarakan at 67,91

Weather in hex: Moderate rain

Raid spotted at 30 NM, estimated altitude 15,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 11 minutes

Japanese aircraft
A6M2 Zero x 1



Allied aircraft
P-40E Warhawk x 2
A-24 Banshee x 8


No Japanese losses

No Allied losses

Japanese Ships
xAK Aki Maru, Bomb hits 2, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAK Sugiyama Maru, Bomb hits 1, heavy fires, heavy damage

Heavy smoke from fires obscuring xAK Sugiyama Maru

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Afternoon Air attack on TF, near Palembang at 48,91

Weather in hex: Severe storms

The IJNAF made a significant effort over Palembang today. Unfortunately it appears the weather at Singkawang limited the number of Oscars which could sweep the area and so my fighters made pretty short work of the bombers which did show up.

Raid detected at 40 NM, estimated altitude 12,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 15 minutes

Japanese aircraft
G3M2 Nell x 19



Allied aircraft
H81-A3 x 7
Sea Hurricane Ib x 4
Martlet II x 5
Buffalo I x 1
Hurricane IIb Trop x 2
B-339D x 1
CW-21B Demon x 1
75A-7 Hawk x 1
Hurricane IIb Trop x 1
P-40E Warhawk x 1
P-39D Airacobra x 3
P-40E Warhawk x 16
F4F-4 Wildcat x 13


Japanese aircraft losses
G3M2 Nell: 9 destroyed

Some bombers aborted when no fighters showed up as escorts but of the 14 who ried to make attacks all 14 were shot down.

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Afternoon Air attack on TF, near Palembang at 48,91

Weather in hex: Severe storms

Raid detected at 22 NM, estimated altitude 12,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 7 minutes

Japanese aircraft
G4M1 Betty x 16



Allied aircraft
H81-A3 x 5
Sea Hurricane Ib x 4
Martlet II x 3
Buffalo I x 1
Hurricane IIb Trop x 2
B-339D x 1
CW-21B Demon x 1
75A-7 Hawk x 1
Hurricane IIb Trop x 1
P-40E Warhawk x 1
P-39D Airacobra x 3
P-40E Warhawk x 15
F4F-4 Wildcat x 13


Japanese aircraft losses
G4M1 Betty: 3 destroyed

Again, some elements of the raid aborted but the rest all got shot down. Over 30 Netties were downed by this point in the day. This is why he cannot prevent my naval movements around the DEI. Every time he increases his strike group range they sortie against Palembang or Balikpapan and run into a buzzsaw which downs 20 to 30 Netties in a day.

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Afternoon Air attack on TF, near Petropavlovsk at 143,49

Weather in hex: Heavy cloud

Raid spotted at 38 NM, estimated altitude 7,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 16 minutes

Japanese aircraft
A6M2 Zero x 13
B5N2 Kate x 7



No Japanese losses

Allied Ships
APD Little, Torpedo hits 2, and is sunk
APD Colhoun, Torpedo hits 1, and is sunk

Aircraft Attacking:
7 x B5N2 Kate launching torpedoes at 200 feet
Naval Attack: 1 x 18in Type 91 Torpedo

That's it. No more APD runs. When I get my next CV in a few weeks time I am sending it to this area to cover a proper resupply/reinforcement convoy.

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Afternoon Air attack on TF, near Palembang at 48,91

Weather in hex: Severe storms

Raid detected at 40 NM, estimated altitude 17,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 14 minutes

Japanese aircraft
G4M1 Betty x 29
Ki-43-Ic Oscar x 19



Allied aircraft
H81-A3 x 4
Sea Hurricane Ib x 4
Martlet II x 3
Buffalo I x 5
Hurricane IIb Trop x 2
B-339D x 4
CW-21B Demon x 3
75A-7 Hawk x 1
Hurricane IIb Trop x 4
P-40E Warhawk x 3
P-39D Airacobra x 3
P-40E Warhawk x 15
F4F-4 Wildcat x 13


Japanese aircraft losses
G4M1 Betty: 4 destroyed, 8 damaged
Ki-43-Ic Oscar: 1 destroyed

Actually about 6 Netties were downed - 4 by fighters and 2 by FlAK.

Allied aircraft losses
P-40E Warhawk: 1 destroyed

Allied Ships
HDML 1096, Torpedo hits 1, and is sunk
HDML 1062
HDML 1097
HDML 1063

My CA and CLs and DDs had suffered so much system damage sprinting through the storms last night that I moved them out of the area yesterday for repairs. This saved them from the attention of 23 Netties today... Quite a lucky break for me. I could have lost a CA and at least 2 CLs to those leakers.

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ASW attack near Manado at 75,99

Japanese Ships
SS I-168

Allied Ships
xAK Jalapalaka
xAK Barpeta
AM Whippoorwill



SS I-168 is sighted by escort
I-168 bottoming out ....
AM Whippoorwill fails to find sub, continues to search...
AM Whippoorwill fails to find sub, continues to search...
AM Whippoorwill fails to find sub, continues to search...
AM Whippoorwill fails to find sub, continues to search...
AM Whippoorwill fails to find sub, continues to search...
Escort abandons search for sub


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Sub attack near Tarakan at 67,91

Japanese Ships
xAKL Unyo Maru, heavy fires, heavy damage

Allied Ships
SS KXVIII

Captain of SS KXVIII elects not to launch torpedoes at this target
Sub escapes detection

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Ground combat at Onnekotan-jima (136,48)

Japanese Deliberate attack

Attacking force 20443 troops, 149 guns, 0 vehicles, Assault Value = 747

Defending force 6295 troops, 116 guns, 157 vehicles, Assault Value = 202

Japanese engineers reduce fortifications to 2

Japanese adjusted assault: 254

Allied adjusted defense: 529

Japanese assault odds: 1 to 2 (fort level 2)

Combat modifiers
Defender: terrain(+), forts(+), experience(-)
Attacker:

Japanese ground losses:
2096 casualties reported
Squads: 8 destroyed, 146 disabled
Non Combat: 8 destroyed, 94 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 2 disabled


Allied ground losses:
410 casualties reported
Squads: 3 destroyed, 41 disabled
Non Combat: 2 destroyed, 47 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 3 disabled
Vehicles lost 16 (2 destroyed, 14 disabled)

Hmm, definitely need to bring in more troops and a few thousand more tons of supplies if this place is to hold. Now, let's see if I can actually do this in the face of those enemy CVEs + Junyo.


Assaulting units:
Guards Mixed Brigade
48th Engineer Regiment
64th Naval Guard Unit
65th Naval Guard Unit
63rd Naval Guard Unit
62nd Naval Guard Unit
61st Infantry Group
67th Naval Guard Unit

Defending units:
161st Infantry Regiment
1st Marine Raider Battalion
201st(Sep) Infantry Regiment
1st/102nd Infantry Bn /1
111th USN Base Force /9
Bobcats USN Naval Construction Battalion
47th Construction Regiment
205th Field Artillery Battalion
42nd Construction Regiment
C Det USN Port Svc /1


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ground combat at Medan (46,76)

Japanese Bombardment attack

Attacking force 10711 troops, 84 guns, 0 vehicles, Assault Value = 539

Defending force 331 troops, 13 guns, 0 vehicles, Assault Value = 8

Assaulting units:
22nd Recon Regiment
4th Ind. Engineer Regiment
56th Engineer Regiment
15th Ind. Engineer Regiment
21st Infantry Regiment
56th Infantry Regiment
56th Recon Regiment
148th Infantry Regiment
23rd Ind. Engineer Regiment

I bugged out just in time. Tomorrow Medan will fall but my troops will be 92 miles up the road in a forested hex with the first elements of 3 British Bdes arriving as reinforcements.

Defending units:
Medan Coastal Gun Battalion


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ground combat at Canton (77,59)

Allied Bombardment attack

Attacking force 20590 troops, 119 guns, 0 vehicles, Assault Value = 672

Defending force 14011 troops, 135 guns, 0 vehicles, Assault Value = 410


Allied ground losses:
6 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 1 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled


Assaulting units:
4th Chinese Corps
25th Chinese Corps
49th Chinese Corps

Defending units:
66th Infantry Regiment
20th RGC Division
68th Ind.Infantry Battalion
1st Ind.Inf.Group
1st Sasebo SNLF Coy
Canton Special Base Force
47th JAAF AF Bn
1st JAAF AF Coy
2nd JAAF AF Coy

[n] Hmm, only the 66th Infantry Regiment and the SNLF Company are likely to be highly experienced. The AF forces and the RGC Division are likely to be pretty poorly experienced. Balancing that is the fact that he has almost certainly been building forts at Canton and benefits from a massive x 3 terrain modifier.

Still, it may be possible to attrit these poorly experienced troops somewhat while I wait for another 600 to 1,000 AV to arrive and give me a chance of actually achieving something worthwhile. He should be able to stop me by bringing in more troops but those have to come from his SRA reserve and thinning that out is a major strategic goal of mine so even not taking Canton serves my purposes. [/b]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ground combat at 86,42

Allied Bombardment attack

Attacking force 24872 troops, 110 guns, 0 vehicles, Assault Value = 964

Defending force 30858 troops, 254 guns, 32 vehicles, Assault Value = 1089


Allied ground losses:
8 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 1 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled


Assaulting units:
15th Chinese Corps
9th Chinese Corps
27th Chinese Corps
5th New Chinese Corps
43rd Chinese Corps
93rd Chinese Corps
8th New Chinese Corps
14th Group Army
15th Group Army

Defending units:
35th Division
3rd Ind.Mixed Brigade
11th Division


The picture below shows the front line trace in southern China. Significant movement has been possible because it was so lightly held by both sides that once a break occurred it wasn't possible to have the forces on hand to stop the exploitation phase.


In other news while I don't really usually bother with sigint, preferring to rely on my sense of my opponent's intentions, I have found it to be rather fascinating in the past month... I've seen LOTS of IJA forces being sent to Pelelieu, The Marianas and northern Borneo... They look like defensive dispositions to me.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of this. The only thing which kind of makes sense is that Mike has decided to kick me out of the Kuriles but apart from that he is resigned to the current front line trace in the Pacific.

To be fair to him with KB in its current dominant state he could hold his current line against seaborne invasion for at least the next year to 18 months unless I pulled something sneaky. Sadly for him operation "sneak a huge number of troops into Mindanao and retake the Phillipines and Malaysia" is already in full swing.

Submarine attack near Taihoku at 88,62

Japanese Ships
xAK Somedono Maru, Shell hits 7

Allied Ships
SS Swordfish, hits 2

xAK Somedono Maru is sighted by SS Swordfish
SS Swordfish attacking xAK Somedono Maru on the surface
Smith, C.C. decides to submerge SS Swordfish due to damage

This attack featured a total of FIVE dud torpedo hit messages. Hit! but No Explosion just kept flashing up time after time. Roll on working torpedoes.

I much fear this game is going to be over by the time the U.S. torpedoes get the bugs worked out. Interesting little artillery duel, though.[:D]

nemo, are you only posting favorable combat reports? [;)] well done...you seem to have a good grasp of the mechanics so far...

Harlock,

I doubt it... As the Japanese perimeter shrinks it will get easier and easier for them to defend. If Japan were constrained to just the Home Islands and Korea / the Kuriles ( to allow the movement of resouces from Manuchkuo to the Home Islands ) I think Japan could last a long time so long as they stopped building naval ships and just focussed on building ground weapons and airplanes ( which are relatively cheap ) IIRC you can build about 120 fighters a month for the cost of building a single DD for that period of time and 120 fighters will tend to do a lot more for your defensive war effort than a single DD.

Japan might no longer be able to win but I think that a determined defence from this early stage would result in the Allies being confined to a ground offensive in Korea and then starving the Home Islands out - which isn't really the ideal thing an Allied player is looking to do.


Kwik-E-Mart,
Nah, I wouldn't do that. I will say though that if I lose 3 or 4 ships and sink 3 or 4 of his in a day then as far as I'm concerned that's a victory for me so I may tend to gloss over some of my own ship losses - as they don't hurt me nearly as much as they hurt Mike. That may give some people the wrong impression I suppose.

In other news here's the aerial losses for yesterday. My guys had a good day, downing 37 Zeroes and 30 Netties in the DEI. That's a lot of dead naval aviators.

My losses were spread between the Dutch P-40Es, American P-40Es, British Hurricanes and USN F4F4s.... I always do my best to spread my losses between different arms of service/nationalities so that I can maximise my staying power and avoid crippling losses in a single airframe type /nationality.
Most of the Hurricanes and 5 P-40Es below died escorting the B-26s and Hudsons which hit his shipping at Tarakan while the remaining P-40Es and Martletts died in the skies over Palembang butchering the Zeroes and Netties there.

Fixed.

The Zero losses to ops [186] are incredible - more than the next two highest combined.
Do you have a feel for what is causing this? Long CAPs? Flying/landing in bad weather? Inexperienced pilots?[&:]
I know these guys belong to your opponent but you seem to notice a lot of details that influence trends so I thought I'd ask.

Well, from what I can see ops losses are caused by a number of things... I think it is best to consider bombers, fighters and other plane types ( recon, transports, flying boats ) separately.

Bombers: Ops losses are caused by long range, small airfields and airplane damage. Of those I think FlAK is the most important as an awful lot of IJAAF and IJNAF ops losses are occurring on days that major bombing raids happen. In these raids a lot of the bombers get hit by FlAK or hit by my fighters but not destroyed in the air over the target. These planes are then recorded as ops losses. Whenever he used to hit Palembang or other significant bases if I show down 10 bombers while they were over the target I could be assured another 3 or 4 would show up as ops losses that day. So, I think most of the bomber operational losses are actually due to planes being damaged over the target and crashing on the way home or when they reach their own airfield.

Fighters: Again, ops losses are caused by long range, small airfields and damage. Routinely when Mike commits 40 Oscars to the skies over Palembang I shoot down 4 or 5 over Palembang but damage, perhaps, 30 of the remaining 35. As those Oscars struggle all the way to Singkawang or Singapore ( about 350 miles away ) it isn't surprising that a similar number as were confirmed as going down over the target are forced to ditch. I've taken great pains to make my stands and ambushes over bases at a great distance from his bases. My reason for this is that I wanted to get the maximum number of "cheap kills" possible. What I mean by this is that I wanted to get the benefit of damaged IJAAF and IJNAF planes becoming destroyed IJAAF and IJNAF planes. If defending a base some 300 miles from his base vs 100 miles from his base mean that insteaf of 1 ops loss on the way home he suffered 5 then my total "kills" for the day would go up from 6 kills ( and dead pilots - assuming I shot down 5 in the air over the target ) to 10 kills. That's a 66% improvement in my kills.


Others: Well, there's very little I can do to cause ops losses to his recon, transport etc planes except to try to keep him at arms length and invite him to use them at maximum range.

One other outlier: For some reason when I caught an entire Sentai of Oscars on the ground at Nanchang and killed them all 42 planes showed up as ops losses, as opposed to ground losses which I was expecting.


So, that's my read. I see his Zero, Oscar and Netty ops losses increasing on days that we've had a lot of aerial combat and a lot of damaged planes are trying to make it home. Apart from those days his ops losses in those plane types aren't really noticeable - a plane or two every couple of days -. On the days we've had major aerial combat over Palembang I might see 5 Zeroes and 5 Oscars showing up purely as ops losses. If you look at today 30 Zeroes were downed in the air while 7 were ops losses. I'm sure all 7 of those Zeroes came from the Daitai which swept Palembang and got brutalised by my CAP - hence those ops losses were directly attributable to damage from my CAP.

Thanks for the analysis - TLAR.

Re: the 42 Oscars, I wonder if they were just about to launch and had their engines running [operating] and therefore were "Op Losses"?

BBfanboy, I don't think the game goes into that level of detail ( thank goodness, it is already really straddling the line between just right and too detailed )....

Today, 14th April, was a quiet day.... I hit a ship bringing engineers into Brunei with B-26s operating out of Balikpapan. 6 flew and I got a good 500lber hit. Most of my pilots in those groups have 70 Naval bombing skill and even from 6,000 feet they achieve good results. Elsewhere nothing much went on except that the IJA took Medan. They will probably move north now but if they do they'll find themselves facing the 3 British Brigades which I've offloaded and which are just straggling into the base north of Medan. So far my move into Northern Sumatra has gone well with 50 fighters covering the ships and a small SC TF being formed to interdict IJN reinforcement convoys to Medan. I plan to post a "tripwire" sub there and once it spots an enemy convoy I'll run the CL-led TF down and kill the tankers.


SIG INT REPORT FOR Apr 14, 42
1/10th Garrison Unit is loaded on a Ansyu-C Cargo class xAK moving to Canton.

Well, that's more troops from the SRA reserve and more PP spent reinforcing China and fewer points and troops left to reinforce the DEI/Malaysia.


Lastly, Vals buzzed Davao but didn't launch any attacks. I am taking this to mean that KB has finally unmasked and is preparing to move against my forces in the Mindanao/Balikpapan/ Ambon triangle. That's ok though as I'm quite happy to push 100 fighters into the front in order to attrit KB again. I'm going to start bringing up the fighter reserves and deploying them to counter any deep penetration of my operational depth... I don't think a strategic penetration is on the cards though... Right now Mike is being rather tentative.

15th April:
There was very little fighting today at all. Both IJN and IJA forces instead concentrated on some moves against previous targets ( Medan, Mindanao ) while the US Navy continued its massive flow of manpower and logistics to the southern DEI - In the past week alone over 30,000 troops have entered the region with another 50,000 embarked and due to arrive over the next two weeks.

Djambi airfield is building up nicely and should be a Level 3 airfield by the end of the month ( which would be, just, sufficient, for my purpose...)


The real news of the day is that it looks like MIke is pulling back from Sian - I currently think he is pulling back from the direct route because he wants to try the indirect route via the northern pathways. Lots of rivers and the farther he attacks the better my supply routes get and the worse his do so that suits me fine. He'll make progress since my forces on the northern route have supply problems but I'll bleed him as he advances and can shuttle reinforcements in to hold a river line as I retreat no problem.

The bigger news is that Changsha is finally surrounded. The Chinese own the hex on the road to the east of Changsha. The IJA still owns the hexside heading directly east of Changsha - which seems a bit strange to me - but in order to prevent anything too weird I am launching a Corps-sized attack supported by my engineer regiments and am ordering 2/3rds of the Corps which closed the encirclement to head into the Changsha hex proper while another Corps ( 450 AV ) races east through Changsha to reach the encircling Corps. Since I think something squirrelly is going on here I'm maximising my chances of a good outcome by undertaking 3 independent courses of action, each of which should firmly trap the IJA and allow me to free troops to move further eastward from Changsha.


Question though: Palembang is 7 hexes from Singapore... I have a lot of USN fighters with a maximum range of 7 hexes. Will they fly:
a) escort and
b) sweep missions out to extended range?

Everything I know about the game says, yes.,.. Here's where things get complicated though.... I have a lot of RAF fighters which "could" go to 7 hexes with fuel tanks but that'd be extended range... So, is there some hidden penalty which makes planes less likely to fly an extended range escort mission if that extended range is due to carrying additional fuel tanks?

I don't remember it being mentioned anywhere but it is probably best to ask about these things .

The more fighters I can get to sweep from Palembang the fewer I'll have to "waste" escorting a strike from Djambi and the more dive-bombers I can load Djambi with for the actual strike missions.

On another note the whole concept of the air model in the game has been attracting my interest recently and I'd like to kick off a discussion about it in this thread... I don't want to do it in the main forum since then it would tend to go downhill very quickly, break up into factions and just degenerate into meaninglessness. With that said not everyone who could have good ideas for this happens to follow my AAR daily ( shocking, I know [:D] ) so if anyone reading this thinks someone would be able to contribute meaningfully and constructively then please feel free to invite them.

Basically I've been wondering how one would improve the air model. My basic premise is that the AE air model is already an excellent model. It produces results which are, to me, believable. Sometimes 3 unescorted Bettys get through 500 fighters and put two torpedoes into a carrier and sometimes other weirdnesses happen but most of the time it corresponds to the 95% of the bell curve and, hell, without the other 5% ( 2.5 top and 2.5 bottom ) it wouldn't be realistic either. I think The Elf and others need to be hugely congratulated on their work.

Now, with that said there are issues and some of them significantly impact the game. My idea is to try to not just identify the issues but by iterative design ( which I'll oversee cause it is my thread and someone has to make the calls on what goes in and doesn't ) also come up with increasingly "better" solutions to them.

I'll kick off with the 3 main problems I see with the air model and suggest my solutions to them. For purposes of this discussion I think we can convert any on-map fixes I've made for EA and assume they can be coded in as off-map fixes.

1. Allied production is fixed. In EA I've helped ameliorate this by creating major bases around Stanley Island which feature huge supply sinks ( which get bigger over the course of the war ) and which feature a number of airplane factories also which begin the game with 0 functioning and 100 disabled factories. The end result is that if the Allied player wants to boost P-40 series production then he needs to ship in the base monthly supply requirement ( say 100,000 tons per month ) + 100,000 tons of supplies in order to repair the aircraft factories. A round trip to Stanley from San Fran takes about 100 days ( including loading and unloading ) which means that you would need to permanently commit 300,000 tons of shipping just to meet the base supply needs and then another 100,000 tons on a one-off basis for the repairs you wanted.

Fail to commit the shipping and the supply sink deteriorates and the aircraft factories begin to get damaged. BY mixing factories from early, middle and late-war and across types ( bomber and fighter ) I can force players to keep feeding an island rather than just abandoning it because "it only builds bombers, I don't want more bombers" or "it only has planes from 42 in it. I only care about the most modern planes. I'll leave it to die and ship the supplies elsewhere." Long story short by forcing the Allied player to commit significant sealift to this task I can somewhat model the diversion of resources to other areas which would have allowed more fighter be made but at a cost to the Pacific. I can't do anything about warships and divisions which arrive in CONUSA but at least it provides a strategic choice. Lose 1/3rd of your cargo capacity in the Pacific in 1943 but have twice as many top-flight fighters and bombers to fight the enemy with. Can you make THAT trade-off work for you?

I suggest that some similar quid pro quo could be programmed in using PP whereby ships and divisions had a PP cost and if they were delayed or cancelled then one could use the PP so freed up in order to "purchase" increased production of a plane series. ( P40s, P47s ). This could represent the sort of bargaining which did go on between the ETO and PTO. "Give me more landing craft and I'll give you more planes" etc... It isn't perfect but I think it would be an improvement on the current system where the Japanese get a lot of freedom and the US very little.


2. At present there is NO use for bomber destroyer type planes in AE whereas in real life they were very useful indeed and Germany in particular made many fighters which were terrible vs other fighters but were excellent vs bombers. A code change I would like to see is that we, as COs, be able to select the primary target for each of our fighter squadrons with a simple toggle on/screen in the squadron screen.

This would toggle between fighter and bomber and possibly "let CO decide". If set to fighter this squadron would ALWAYS seek to engage enemy fighters first if any were present. If set to bomber this squadron would ALWAYS seek to engage enemy bombers first. If set to CO decide then a mix of the ratio of fighters to bombers, the mission and aggression would determine. E.g. when defending CVs most squadrons would be tasked to defeating the enemy bombers and only the minimum number necessary would peel off to engage enemy fighters. When defending some unit on the ground over Burma the COs might decide to assign enough fighters to keep the enemy escorts fully occupied and only commit a much smaller portion of their force to the "anti-bomber only" role.

The idea would be to avoid the sort of slaughter which occurs when Nicks and other bomber destroyers who in reality tried to get through to the bombers CHOOSE to, instead, dogfight with the nimble, escorting P-51s and P-47s. it isn't believable and it reduces the utility of a large number of otherwise useful planes.

At present I get really tired of seeing my planes always ALL tangle with ALL the escorts before even looking at the enemy bombers. It simply didn't happen this way in real life. Units were assigned the task of occupying the escorts while others were tasked with pouncing the bombers immediately.


3. Altitude in aerial combat.... Out of time right now but I'll get to this.



So, basically, what am I missing out which needs changing in air combat and how could you improve on what is already written there... Apologies for leaving it half done but some work needs doing ;-(

Obviously once any fighters on the anti-fighter role had finished off escorts they would dive on the enemy bombers and vice versa for fighters assigned the anti-bomber mission.

On points 1, 2, and 3 I largely agree. I'm curious to see how your ideas in #1 play out as well; knowing your preference in mod design I suspect that a number of the islands represent production "traps" of one sort or another .

I'd add my $0.02 as well.

4) Low efficacy of allied (and japanese) mediums in an anti-shipping role. Sure, poorly trained high altitude bombers can, and do, miss nimble targets like ships, but highly trained crews coming in to skip bomb a transport convoy should slaughter it (see the bismark sea). This leads to some weird gameplay phenomina and an over reliance on specialist torpedo squadrons for a generalist anti-shipping role. Letting trained crews skip bomb and giving them a significant accuracy bonus in that role would be useful (I know WITP had this mechanic, dunno if it carried over successfully into AE).

5) Excessive survivability and efficacy of allied heavies in a base suppression role. Changed to improve anti-bomber mechanics might help here, but another useful mechanic might be to model doctrine e.g. it'll cost you 10 pp every time you ground attack with heavies since that violates strategic bombing doctrine.

6) Low efficacy in general of allied mediums. Fix I think would be to improve their accuracy in low altitude strikes and up their survivability vis a vis fighter attack. Flack should still be a threat, and only upping accuracy at low altitude means they can't be used to smart-bomb defended bases this way, but they can, and should, hit lightly defended targets hard.

7) Balanced training ... historically the late war allied could turn out trained replacements. The Japanese could not. In the game, any player can keep churning out quality replacement pilots as long as they can stand the tedium of on-map training. Relatively easy fix here would be for units on training missions to burn fuel in significant qualtities which would make it progressively harder for a japanese player to train as their economy contracted.

At present I get really tired of seeing my planes always ALL tangle with ALL the escorts before even looking at the enemy bombers. It simply didn't happen this way in real life. Units were assigned the task of occupying the escorts while others were tasked with pouncing the bombers immediately.

IIRC the code already has programmed that a portion of the defending CAP is reserved for bombers only if a larger ratio than escorts. I am sure there is a random factor involved as well

Pat

Nemo

I like the idea of number one.
I would like the ability to mess around with some of the allied production (I am the allied commander).

Number 2 I don't have much knowledge on. But I do like the option of mess with fighters or bombers.

3. well since you haven't said anything I'll put in what I think. Not all planes did well at max alt. some performed better at lower or med. Each pilot would play to his planes strenghts. My thoughts are if a plane was better suited for med alt it would perfrom better at that alt than at max, depending on what opponent it is faceing.

Just my thoughts
docup

Nicks and other bomber destroyers who in reality tried to get through to the bombers CHOOSE to, instead, dogfight with the nimble, escorting P-51s and P-47s.

It's amusing to see a P-47 described as "nimble" but I can see your point. I think the ratio of CAP vs. escort fighters needs to be taken into consideration with a random modifier -- it's possible for a small group of outnumbered CAP fighters to evade the escort, e.g. if they come from "up-sun".

Point #1 sounds like a terrific idea. I've enjoyed playing around with Allied airframe production extensively when I played "Pacific War".

Nemo,

as ever so often, you catch me between two fires - on the one hand, I want to see this interesting discussion re. influencing the air war thrive, which it does not really right now - after all, some of these aspects may influence your mod. On the other hand, as usual I am short of time and have not thought all of these aspects through. Still, an attempted caveat, relating only to 1).

At first, when I read your idea it sounded well to me. Naturally. Great, I'm gonna get my choice of more planes, and paying in supply (which is probably in current scenarios not much of a concern for the Allied). Who does not want that to happen ?

Then, concerns started to grow. One of the main problems as Allied player is IMHO that especially at the beginning of the game the lure to just retreat, sit back and wait for overwhelming power to arrive is just too big to really resist. This, however, keeps you from doing the things you ought to do.

I fear the option you mention would tend to increase this danger, because you would be tempted to start dropping supplies ASAP and devote the assets you have to that purpose, then wait until the factories are repaired, reserves are built and then you are ready to strike - or not, because the assets used for supply shuffling to your factories should have been used to create a sound logistical basis for your advance route.

At the same time, during that phase you may be tricked into thinking that your air assets are to be more abundant, so maybe you will be more likely to get involved in fights that you should not. It takes a lot of discipline to sit back and let yourself be bombed, that need for discipline -which many of us, including myself, don't always muster- would increase.

Thus, your offer may lead the Allied player away from the real questions he ought to answer. Let the shortage of airframes help you to make you chose your fights wisely and prepare and conduct them properly. If you want to stop the evil empire from outproducing you, use your available assets to deny it the raw material needed and let it choke. It's possible, your own AAR shows it. As Allied player, don't cry for better tools for the job, just learn how to use the tools at your disposal adroitly (even though it's difficult, I for one cannot).

Once I have mastered that task, I'll be ready to use other options offered.

Note that none of these concerns is real. I'm just shaping my forum personality, in case an opponent should read all my posts . Just give me those factories, so I can ruin myself.

Just my thoughts

Hartwig

Nemo, Been silently reading for a time. Thought I'd jump in on your recent questions.

Regarding your three major questions
1. Allied fixed air production. Understand your concept. IMHO, Even if there were huge supply dumps required to attain or maintain various replacements, say it is 30 AK per 100K per month as a rough rule of thumb. Most allied players have upwards of 20M SP's by late summer 42. Even if it takes 60 large AK's and some escorts to execute, I'm not sure what material effect we have other than nuicence unless it is very, very large. It would be much easier to reduce the initial (potentially permanently) supply / fuel awards to the USA and allies elsewhere for global effect. Cutting by at least 50% could be achieved and not hurt the allies at all. Another option would be (if possible) to set delay dates for incremental supply awards. It also is feasible to reduce PP's or increase the delay of allied units. Then there also is the obligatory mandatory withdrawl that turns into a future upgrade airframe. Fact is allied production is fixed and historically modeled to reasonable detail. Lots of mods out there, but not really a solution.
2. Agree that IRL, a small number of interceptors could engage escorts and allow the remainder of the interceptors to get through without incident. My 2cents would be heavily weighted to the warning time, altitude, and intiative of the intercepting unit. Agree this should be part of the routine. Way too easy to guard the attack aircraft.
3. Altitude issue with air combat - agree problems exist. Heard several really inciteful solutions to this dilema. Cant credit the authors, but the one latched on to is: Limited O supply by airfield size. This would have 2 effects altitude soft ceiling by airfield size unless air HQ present and 3x supply available at base. Penalties for going over the cap are pilot fatigue graduated based on how far over the soft ceiling they fought (along with some random element...similar to overstacking atolls / islands) Seperately and much more difficult to implement is the argument of visibility of the air battlefield and how stratospheric operations in many weather cases were impossible. This would have the potential practical maximum CAP, sweep, and bomb altitude set (and unit potentiallty reassigned) during the mission. An even more complex version of this is multiple cloud layers / the impactg of failed radar intercept, etc. Let me just state the current model is much better than stock WITP.

BTW, thanks for the numerous AAR's. You are a seasoned wargamer with experience against multiple opponents and across many genres. More importantly, you have a solid grasp on many sophiticated military concepts that are well out of the reach of the average gamer. Finally, your profession and person lends itself well to the proposition of continuous improvement, meticulous execution, determined flexibility, and incremental challenge. What I like most is your willingness to share your ideologies, strategies, and tactics. I am not exagerating when I say it is a fool who would read your AAR's and not pay very close attention. Drive on, Admiral.

As an aside, IMHO, treatment by some inside this AAR of 1eyedjacks has been a bit rough. It is now clear that he shows inexperience, inflexibility, and is overmatched. It is also is clear to me that he is adapting...and learning, but it wont be enough this time around. His next opponent might find him armed with far more tools in his gaming arsenal.

Thanks again.

Argh, latin, sadly the extent of my classical education was to simply read the old Roman, Greek and some of the more intersting Sumerian myths etc so my translation of this is pretty poor. I make it "Fear Nemo ( or possibly nobody depending on whether you're going for the translation... I think you mean it as the nick though as that makes more sense ) bearing gifts". Is that right? My other translation is "Fear nobody and bring gifts" but that makes a bit less sense and isn't a bastardisation of the infamous "Fear Greeks bearing gifts" which I think is what you are alluding to.


As to the discussion:

1. Variable Allied production. No-one seems to disagree with this.

2. Allowing a toggle for "engage fighters" or "engage bombers" doesn't seem too controversial. There is some element of this already in the game but it doesn't seem to discern between bomber destroyed type planes and dogfighting specialist planes. To put it in Luftwaffe terms it makes it as likely for your Me-210 to engage escorting P-51s while the underarmed Bf-109s tackle the B-17s as for your nimble Bf-109s to engage the P-51s while the Me-210s go for the bombers. In real life a CO who mixed those two roles up would have been sent to the Russian front in a penal battalion.

3. Altitude - not fully explored yet.
I'm not convinced it is as large a problem as people make out. In the last turn I had Hurricanes and Dutch P-40Es escorting Hudsons against an IJN convoy near southern Borneo. They ran into Zeroes. The end result was 5 P-40Es and 2 Hurricanes downed in return for 13 Zeroes. And don't forget that those Zeroes were on CAP while my guys were ALL escorting, not sweeping, escorting. I did a few tricks with plane height etc to draw the Zeroes down and give my Hurris lots of diving attacks. It was hard on the P-40Es but they are pretty expendable. In any case while escorting vs Zeroes on CAP I got just under a 2:1 kill ratio in spite of the fact that all of my escorts were at heights below the Zeroes.

Also I'd point out that in terms of co-ordination I got 100% of the squadrons assigned to escort to escort and I had Hurricanes from two different RAF groups co-operating with Dutch P40Es from the Dutch Air Force escorting Australian bombers from yet another HQ. In total I got a co-ordinated strike with units from 4 different HQs. To be fair I tried to co-ordinate with F4F3s from a 5th HQ also but they only arrived late to the party so the co-ordination wasn't perfect. It is weird though but I just amn't seeing the co-ordination issues others are. I don't fly fatigued or with low morale though but even when using units from different HQs and nationalities I am getting good results.


Suggestions from the crowd [8D] :

a. Low efficacy of Allied mediums in the anti-shipping role.... Are you really seeing that? I've got to say that apart from nimble DDs and APDs any IJN merchant ship which gets within B-26 or Hudson range of my bases stands a fairly good chance of being sunk. Out of the last two convoys I attacked with about 20 bombers I got hits on 4 merchants and it looks like I sank at least 2 and caused the other 2 to put into harbour for significant repairs. I don't have much experience with skip-bombing though so can't say how effective that is. But my mediums at 6,000 feet are pretty lethal. To be fair I don't commit them until they have > 70 Skill in Naval Bombing. That meant that I didn't run any bombing missions for about 2 to 2 and a half months but once I've been running them I am getting a bomb hit for every 6 to 7 B-26s committed to action, which isn't bad and means a 25 plane raid ( 3 squadrons or so ) is getting about 4 bomb hits across 3 ships when they launch a proper raid. That's enough to force the enemy convoys away ( or to feature heavy CAP ).

Could anyone provide info re: skip-bombing with > 80 low naval attack experience crews? I think 80 Exp is the cut-off for getting good results so it'd be interesting to see what the results are there. I amn't far enough along in my game to know.

b. I think the point you make about PPs for violating doctrine is an innovative solution pat. The problem is that, in general, I would be against anything which constrains players from coming up with innovative solutions. So, while I think it is good I think that it would be a minefield to have a situation in which using forces in anything but "the right way" gets penalised. After all who would say what was right and what was wrong? It might be clear when it comes to B-17s attacking ground troops but what about the greyer and greyer areas? Also, it would be impossible for the game to actually recognise some of the non-doctrinal employments. E.g. Embarking ordinary infantry on a transport sub could be a perfectly logical thing to do if evacuating an island but what about reinforcing an island? It didn't happen in real life but that doesn't mean it mightn't make sense in-game? What about reinforcing troops who have a beachhead on an island you've already invaded? Again it didn't happen but it seems reasonable and non-gamey to me. Should we penalise that? I just think it would be too much of a minefield albeit a good idea in terms of creating some cost to actions.

c. Hmm, Allied mediums already pack more of a punch than IJAAF mediums. I'm not convinced that historically speaking they underperform in the base attack role... My guys have done a great job at Kwajalein and other places in closing them when I've concentrated them sufficiently. It has taken quite a few of them but from my reading that seems reasonable.


d. Training. Ok, here I agree. I forgot to say that my simple work-around was to create several large on-map "training squadrons" which were perma-restricted and had no significant upgrade paths. This meant that these squadrons were really only useful to train pilots. In the longer term my solution would be to create a system where you could assign pilots to a "specialisation" academy and train them up at a cost in supplies ( not fuel since supplies model aviation fuel for both sides ) per pilot assigned.

By setting some broad limits automatically as follows:
a. You would have a school for each skill and would assign your pilots from your replacement poool to these schools on a % basis. E.g 50% go to fighter finishing school, 30% to naval bombing finishing school, 5% to navsearch, 5% to recon, 10% to ground bombing.
b. The computer would then automatically assign the replacement pilots to these "specialisation academies" in the ratios you decided. If your ratio doesn't add up to 100% then the % left over just builds up in the replacement pool.
c. You would then assign the "Graduation Skill" for each academy and when pilots reach that skill in that academy they would "graduate" to the general pool.
E.g. for the fighter academy you could set your graduation skills as being 70% A2A skill and 60% general skill. Once the pilots reach that level they auto-graduate to the general pool.

d. For each squadron in service you could also set the skill or multiple skills which would be the minimum acceptable for a pilot to be drafted in E.g. You could set Netty groups to only accept pilots with naval torpedo skill > 70%. These squadrons would then, each turn or every several turns, check the general reserve for pilots which meet their minimum skill level and would then draft them into the squadron.

This would, IMO, be the simplest system which maintains the power of the current training model whilst cutting down on the ENDLESS clicking. I'm willing to do it but it isn't really stimulating.

People could still do on-map training the way they currently do for that extra boost but this would allow most players to just automate their training requirements ( 50% fighter pilots, 30% naval attack, 10% ground attack etc ), set the skill %s they wanted as a minimum for their pilots in each of the skills germane to each of those specialties and then automate the graduation of those pilots from training and their assignment to front-line squadrons.

By making training burn fuel it would realistically represent the cost of training to Japan ( and the Allies ) and would hamper Japan if Japan's supply situation was poor. It wouldn't however, penalise Japan if Japan was doing well. I'm concerned that some of the solutions I've read on the forum ( not this thread ) are thinly veiled attempts to penalise Japan no matter how well-managed it is and this goes against the game philosophy I would find agreeable.



medicff,
Agreed. I am, however, not at all convinced that the code is programmed to look at which intercepting fighters are nimble dogfighters and which would be best rated as "bomber destroyers" - e.g. Ki-45 etc and allocates them appropriately. Right now I think you are likely to see Ki-45s selected to tangle with the escorting Hurricanes while nimble single-engined Oscars get tasked to go after the bombers. Even the IJAAF didn't think that was the best way to go about things. When all they had was Oscars thats what they used but if heavily-armed twin-engined fighters were available they were tasked for the bombers whenever possible - based on what I've read.... and common sense.


Hartwig,
Of course there are temptations and traps. Giving something they want and think they need - but really don't - tends to lead them down the path of grabbing as much of what they want, but don't need, as possible to the exclusion of all other possibilities. As always one will need to examine the objective reality of the situation. Sometimes what you want, and have always thought you needed is not at all what is really required.

Children think they need chocolate, as much chocolate as possible on Christmas Day. By lunchtime they often end up vomitting they've eaten so much. What they craved and felt they needed was rejected as poison by their stomach which was wiser than their mind. Unfortunately your stomachs don't play AE, your minds do. Will they have the discipline to do what needs to be done to gain the advantage that is offered or will you engage in a self-defeating glutony? On the other hand, in some situations you've got to use it or lose it. So, with a good plan the converse might just work out also. EA will, as ever, be about choices.... Some good, some bad but none immutable and few always one thing or the other. As always the person who best melds military strategy with economic strategy will win - for certain values of winning.

Either way you'll get the factories - although in a manner organised to create additional problems and force either profligacy or the careful selection of phases of increased production at the expense of other phases of fallowness.



topeverest,
Interesting contributions. I am envisioning multiple bases, each with significant supply requirements phased over time such that a base which required 100,000 tons of supply per month to break even in 1942 might require 200,000 in 1943. Multiply that by 5 and suddenly by 1944 if you want boosted production you've got a requirement of 1.5 million tons of supplies delivered per month - in a journey which takes several months and thus requires a multiple of 1.5 million tons of shipping committed. Can the Allies really afford to lose 3 million tons of AK shipping from their total without significant impact on amphibious invasions in 1944? I think not. Maybe some will find a way though and if they do they deserve the fruits they'll reap. The issue is less the supplies. I don't think that's the bottleneck at all really. The issue is assault shipping and spare shipping to ship supplies and troops to the Pacific. If you have 500 fewer 6,000 ton AKs available for your Pacific endeavours in 1944 are you going to find your ability to supply future offensives/transport base forces etc hugely limited? I think so. I think that you'll have to commit more APs to shipping support troops and that lessens the tempo of your advance.

Perhaps you can compensate for this with the 200 extra fighters and 200 extra bombers per month? Perhaps not, but it is an interesting choice for you to make. Also, if you get the calculations wrong you could get no benefit for a huge cost and punishing errors severely also appeals to me. I don't think we should let poor play go unpunished. I think that if someone doesn't think through something in EA then they should fail and fail miserably.... but if they do think it through and balance their own military strategy with their economic strategy and win the game within the game that the economy is then they should get a significant benefit from it and should also feel a sense of achievement. You only get that achievement if what you beat is damned tricky. So that's my goal really. I'm tweaking it at the moment but right now I think there are sufficient blind alleys etc that someone who doesn't plan 18 months ahead is going to find that the nirvana of responsive Allied production will be lost to them or only gained at such ruinous cost to their amphibious invasion fleet capacity that they wish they'd never heard of it. OR, perhaps, someone will utterly outsmart me, point out a flaw in my thinking and beat the game within the game --- in which case they deserve their gains... and I'll patch it


O2 supply eh? I hadn't thought of that. I'm not sure how realistic an issue it would have been in real life. Isn't that, after all, a job for aviation support squads? I have gone through phases with the air battle. Initially I thought height was king, then I experimented a bit and realised I could negate height advantages after the first couple of passes through positioning 2nd echelon planes at higher altitude ready to dive down on the Zeroes who just dived on my sacrifices and then, lastly, I realised that even if I ceded the total height advantage I could gain victory through phasing of heights even when all heights were below the maximum Japanese height. In short what matters is the differential between your lowest flight and highest, not the absolute difference. It took me a couple of weeks of air combat to realise that but it is true. Yesterday's combat in which I downed double the number of Zeroes ( well, 13 vs 7 ) despite my planes being on escort missions and all being at lower height than the Zeroes was, I think, a good example of that.

It is a bit weird that my game is going so differently than most Allied games but I would suggest two reasons for this:
1. I've ruthlessly allowed the IJAAF and IJNAF aerial supremacy until my pilots were fully trained. Squadrons with 60+ A2A skill are only barely airworthy IMO. My USAAF etc squadrons are now ONLY accepting graduates with >70 A2A skill.

2. Using relative height differentials within my own fighter groups to create advantageous positioning for most of my fighter groups even if ALL groups are below the height of the IJAAF or IJNAF groups has, I think, allowed me to gain an advantage which others aren't using. It seem most people are trying to counter Oscars flying at 36,000 feet by flying everyone they have as high as possible albeit still under 36,000 feet. This is actually probably the worst thing they could do as they then tend to fly all at the same altitude and give the Oscars etc the same advantage over them all while ensuring none of the Allied airgroups have any advantage over the Zeroes.

I do think there are some code issues which my solution might exploit - namely that the IJAAF unit in such a situation tends to dive on one Allied group en masse and usually tends to go for the lowest group as they are the ones they have most advantage over. It is a case where the code seeks the greatest advantage and then exploits it ( which is good ) but that very reliability can be used to gain the Allies an advantage in round 2. It isn't 100% but it is close enough that when I run into the IJAAF and IJNAF I am getting 1.5:1 to 2:1 exchange ratios most of the time now even though quite a few of the planes I'm putting up are markedly inferior. With that said I do have aces flying P-39s who have shot down several Zeroes and Oscars.


So, more recently I think the height issue is a problem BUT there are workarounds and a proper code solution would have to go pretty deep to solve some of the legacy code issues which creep in in terms of target selection etc.

Caveat: I don't see the inside of the code but I can see how it plays out and extrapolate from that. I'm sure the code works slightly differently than my extrapolation but my extrapolation is good enough to get exchange rates in A2A combat which others aren't seeing so I'd say it must be pretty close to the truth or else I wouldn't be getting those exchange rates.


As to the AAR etc. Well, I'm glad you enjoy the AAR. I write it to spark interesting discussions as that's what I enjoy/find relaxing so I'm glad you find it interesting.

As to 1EyedJacks... Well, while I'm uncomfortable with the whole idea of holding oneself up as being a good player etc, especially when it is simply the basics being applied without preconception... and something anyone could do. I will say that it is easy for anyone to look "bad" when they find their OODA loop overstretched. Once that happens one begins making more and more mistakes. Does that mean one is a bad player? No, even the best generals etc will make mistakes once their OODA loop is overstressed. I think that has happened with Mike. With that said I think he is gaining experience and has a plan. I think that he will learn from the game and bring those tools to other games. Just as we all have to do whether we win or lose. I've certainly made several serious errors in this game and have learnt from them. So, hopefully, I'll be better in the next game and won't make as many mistakes in that game. It is a continual process we should all be doing. None of us are so good we can't get better.

In other news:

1. I sank an IJN DD and xAK near southern Borneo with a CL-led raiding TF.

2. I'm running another 6,000 tons of supplies into Davao to help Mindanao hold.

3. Manado is rapidly building up. It has 600 AV, 1000+ support squads, 500 aviation support, a level 4 airfield, level 2 port ( going to level 3 ) etc. The Elaud base just east is building to level 1 airfield and once it hits that I'll use it to hop fast AKs into Davao for reinforcement/supply purposes.

4. My huge USN/RN upgrade work is about 2 weeks from finishing in Soerabaja. Once that is done I'll hve dozens of modernised DDs, CAs, CLs etc with which to invade Malaysia.

5. The encirclement of Changsha is complete. 5,000 IJA AV are trapped. Another IJA division is making for Canton and more SRA troops are making for China according to my SIGINT. By the time I hit Malaysia his strategic reserve may be rather bare. That's the plan in any case.

6. I have a CL-led TF in northern Sumatra and have spotted him unloading a tank regiment there. So, the CL-led TF will go in tomorrow to butcher that TF.

7. Djambi is building up nicely and by month's end it should be ready to stage a proper raid. I'm looking at mounting some 350 bombers from my secret jungle base, some 150 fighters from Djambi and another 200 or so bombers/dive-bombers from Palembang. By the end of the day I would expect Singapore harbour to be littered with sunk ships, including most of the rapid reaction force which could intervene in Malaysia.


Apart from that I have a division's worth of troops in CONUSA which I'm deciding where to send while Mike is raiding the Aleutians with his CVEs/CVLs seeking reinforcement convoys. I'm using this gap, which I've been expecting, to run 2 x xAKLs into the Kuriles to drop 3000+ tons of supplies off at my troops on Onnekotan Jima. That should let them hold out for another month by which time I'll have fighters and other forces available to push through proper relief efforts.

We've had a few air battles and basically they've gone about 2:1 in my favour over the last few days. I've also managed to use medium bombers to hit a few more xAKs around Borneo and generally create trouble for him there. Enough trouble that he shouldn't be wondering what the other 600+ bombers are doing sitting on the ground anyways.


I haven't seen KB in about 3 weeks. I think they are around Formosa but can't be sure. They could also be 15 hexes off the coast of San Fran for all I know... Mike is hiding them better now which is good. It creates uncertainty for me and if I was the sort of person to actually think the enemy's plans would trump mine I'd be pretty worried right now. As it is my view is that whenever they spring up I'll lose some ships but, strategically, they are unlikely to do anything vital... So long as they don't achieve anything strategically important I can swallow some ship losses.