The B.S. Power of CD

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: wdolson
A large enough force crushed them the second time.

Actually this isn't true either. The Marines were winning the second time, but the commanding officer mistook the Japanese flags around the atoll as signs of their victory. The large flags were used so Japanese command staff aboard the ships could keep track of units ashore visually and the inexperienced commanding officer misread their meaning and surrendered the garrison. Com lines had been cut so he couldn't contact the different units on the island for status updates.

There was a very good chance the invasion had already been defeated and he blew it when he surrendered the victorious garrison. In total the Marines only lost 49 killed in the two landing attempts, while Japan had about 800 killed.

Jim

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: John 3rd

No String.  Not true whatsoever.

The 1st Landing of a full Infantry Division and Engineering Regiment (30,000+ troops) featured them with a Prep of 55 for the base.  They landed against a force only marginally stronger then WAKE ISLAND.  Yes--there is that FA Unit but that is about the ONLY difference.

Wake usually falls when  a pair of of strong SNLF or Naval Guard units hit it.  With the Forts at 2 instead of 1, I landed with a force 5-6 times that strength.  What CRAP!  Add to that then the second Landing of 2 small base forces and an Artillery Regiment then, finally this Brigade. 

I rarely get mad at the game anymore but this is insanity.  One little garrision with, as detailed above, less then a dozen good-sized guns have managed to kill 40,000 Japanese and sink about 20 AP/AK.  I cannot believe it.  If I say anything more, this will be appropriately censored by our good webmasters...

It could be your units landed without supply. You can have an entire Army go ashore against 10 squads and it will die if it attacks before supplies unload. That's why it is important to load less than 400 load points of troops on the ships that carry the troops, so the rest of the ship unloads supply with the units that go ashore the same phase they land in.

Atoll combat is unforgiving and if your first attack is an unsupplied attack, not much of the unit will be left non-disabled once your supply unloads later in the same day or the next day. You have to make sure supplies unload at the very same time your troops do.

Jim

[wdolson]

ORIGINAL: wdolson
Wake showed how poor Japan was at amphibious operations. They're successes were almost always against unprepared or non-existent defenders. Wake's defenders were prepared, but very small. A large enough force crushed them the second time.

Bill

ORIGINAL: Nikademus
I'd have to disagree with that. Wake showed what could happen when an ill prepared "2nd Team" force with inadequate resources and support tries to assault an alerted and well defended atoll. In terms of the Japanese' successes, the reason why they were against non existant or lightly defended areas was due to doctrine. The Japanese were arguably the most proficient at Amphibious "Operations" which by definition are operations designed to be conducted against lightly or undefended locales. Japan, like the UK were unenthusiastic regarding the viability of Amphibious "Assault" [The taking of moderate to heavily defended coastlines] and thus didn't develop a detailed doctrine to conduct it. Only the USMC felt it was viable and it eventually did become viable once the kinks were worked out and the tools were developed to support it. (primary advanced landing craft that could fight their way in with a decent chance of survival.)

With that distinction, ie operation vs assault, OK I concede the point. The Japanese were fairly efficient at putting troops ashore when there was little to no opposition. However, that can only be expected when the enemy is lax and unprepared. If the enemy has any time and resources to prepare, you are conducting an assault, and Japan was not prepared for that either with the equipment or the doctrine.

It took a while for the US to work out the bugs, but it was necessary. Shattered Sword talks about what would have likely happened if the Japanese had tried to land at Midway. The defenders were well prepared and had all likely routes ashore bore sighted. The Japanese landing force would likely have been shreadded before reaching the beach.

Bill

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: wdolson

With that distinction, ie operation vs assault, OK I concede the point. The Japanese were fairly efficient at putting troops ashore when there was little to no opposition. However, that can only be expected when the enemy is lax and unprepared. If the enemy has any time and resources to prepare, you are conducting an assault, and Japan was not prepared for that either with the equipment or the doctrine.

Not to beat a dead horse since your conceeding the point, [;)] but i just want to take a moment to restress because its so easy to take negative connotation from terms such as "lax and unprepared" i.e. "Oh that nation can only win when the opposition is negligable, hence they're nothing special". The whole gist of "Amphibious Operations" is indeed to land in an area where the enemy is not. That is 'the' most preferencial solution. The next best solution is ok, if the enemy is there, they should either be there in negligable or insufficient strength and/or be in an unprepared (i.e. unentrenched) situation. Anything outside of that description by it's very nature is then "Amphibious Assault" which is a whole different kettle of fish and one that most nations, primarily the UK as well as Japan (given the Galipoli experience in the former's case) felt was impractical.

I also wanted to stress the point because it highlights one of the greatest weakness in the GG Pacwar/UV/WitP structure. Whereas any kind of amphibious operation (on a medium to large scale) is considered by most historians to be the most complicated military operation of all, in the game system, they are a piece of cake. Even if the enemy is not there or there in negligable strength such as during the invasion of the Philippines, or the US invasion of Lunga, or Torch for that matter, the actual mechanics of putting a large military force ashore is very very complicated and easily prone to SNAFU. Thats why in RL you didn't see them being done left and right throughout the war and also why the bottleneck of Landing Craft was so important. In the game though....you can start the May42 scenerio as Allies, take a long gander at that beautifully empty and long exposed left flank of the SRA near Burma and within a few turns, load up a substantial sized LCU or LCU's in a few AK's and poof......you have an "Amphibious Operation" or in limited terms, even an "Amphibious Assault"

I keep hoping a future product will, without burdening the players too much come up with a much more comphrehenisve (i.e. limiting) method of simulating these types of ops. It would really enhance realism.

It took a while for the US to work out the bugs, but it was necessary. Shattered Sword talks about what would have likely happened if the Japanese had tried to land at Midway. The defenders were well prepared and had all likely routes ashore bore sighted. The Japanese landing force would likely have been shreadded before reaching the beach.

Bill

Its always necessary to work out the bugs. Thats why i'm not quick to skewer the Japanese for those operations that either go wrong or had things go wrong so that even when they succeed eventually they get labeled as boobs. [:D] In the case of Midway, i'd lump that in the same catagory as Wake only worse. Like the entire op as a whole, the Japanese went in on the false assumption that their enemy was both unprepared and would be suprised, hence they sailed with a landing force that, like their naval force in it's current dispositions didn't have the force levels to succeed. The Japanese thought they were essentially going to "occupy" an ill defended atoll. In reality the island was cramed with men and guns on alert waiting for them. Bad planning from the top again.

[Feinder]

Don't get your hopes up with BBs in your escort-invasion TF tho.  I landed aginst Ersads CD Regiment (IJ) with prior naval and arial bombarment, with BBs and CLs in the TF, and I still lost about 12 trapsorts and 6 small escorts.  CD unit -are- mean.  I'm not whining.  I think they are accurately represented.  It's a bloody affair to attack an atoll with CD units, and they cut both ways.

(* regarding the USMC CD btns at start - yes, I know they have an organic defense strength (I am a primarily allied player after all).  But ~generally~ a USMC Def Btn ~alone~ will not stop an invasion.  Hurt it, yes.  But many of them at start have only an av of about 20, and reinforced are about 40.  If he posts the combat report of the base-adjsuted avs, that will likely explain a lot.  But I doubt that a def btn alone would do much vs. a bde that is (should be) fully prepped for invasion.

[Big B]

ORIGINAL: Feinder

... If he posts the combat report of the base-adjsuted avs, that will likely explain a lot.  But I doubt that a def btn alone would do much vs. a bde that is (should be) fully prepped for invasion.

Oh I don't think the Df Bn did much, it was the 36x Long 155's that did the damage here.

[Ken Estes]

[/quote]
John, any idea what unit it is? The marine CD battalions don't normally contain that much firepower. What level are the forts?
[/quote]

Not sure about that: Wake Is was defended only by a partial defense battalion.

Each of the organizations tended to be unique -- "one of a kind,' as a battalion's history stated. Weapons and personnel reflected a unit's destination and duties, much as a child's erector set took the shape dictated by the person assembling the parts, or such was the view of James H. Powers, a veteran of the 8th Defense Battalion. The selection and assignment of men and equipment proved a dynamic process, as units moved about, split into detachments, underwent redesignation, and traded old equipment for new. Much of the weapons and material came from the stocks of the U.S. Army, which had similarly equipped coast and antiaircraft artillery units. The first 155mm guns dated from World War I, but the Army quickly made modern types available, along with new 90mm antiaircraft guns that replaced the 3-inch weapons initially used by the defense battalions. In addition, the Army provided both primitive sound-ranging equipment and three types of Signal Corps radar -- the early-model SCR268 and SCR270 and the more advanced SCR268, which provided automatic target tracking and gun-laying.
By October 1941, the tables of organization for the new defense battalions had certain features in common, each calling for a headquarters battery, a sound-locator and searchlight battery, a 5-inch seacoast artillery group, a 3-inch antiaircraft group, and a machine-gun group. The specific allocation of personnel and equipment within each battalion depended, however, on where the battalion deployed and the changes "prescribed by the Commandant from time to time." In brief, the defense battalions adhered to certain standard configurations, with individual variations due to time and circumstance. The average battalion strength during the war was 1,372 officers and men, including Navy medical personnel. Like manpower, the equipment used by the defense battalions also varied, although the armament of the typical wartime unit consisted of eight 155mm guns, twelve 90mm guns, nineteen 40mm guns, twenty-eight 20mm guns, and thirty-five .50-caliber heavy machine guns, supplemented in some instances by eight M3 light tanks.

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USMC/US ... index.html

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: Ken Estes


John, any idea what unit it is? The marine CD battalions don't normally contain that much firepower. What level are the forts?

Already discussed above - 7th USMC CD, but the firepower as mentioned comes from the artillery regiment.

[herwin]

When I was the chief (systems) engineer for a USMC command and control system for amphibious operations, I learned the amount of staff work for a landing against a defended shore was staggering--several times greater than the staff work for a comparable set-piece battle. It all had to be done and done right for the operation to have any chance of success. Once ashore, tempo had to be maintained to keep the enemy reacting and not counterattacking. Supply was not an issue--there was no depth to the battlefield--but training, preparation, and initiative were key.

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: herwin

When I was the chief (systems) engineer for a USMC command and control system for amphibious operations, I learned the amount of staff work for a landing against a defended shore was staggering--several times greater than the staff work for a comparable set-piece battle. It all had to be done and done right for the operation to have any chance of success. Once ashore, tempo had to be maintained to keep the enemy reacting and not counterattacking. Supply was not an issue--there was no depth to the battlefield--but training, preparation, and initiative were key.

Are you saying that supply was not a DIFFICULT issue to address, or that you really didn't need to supply the troops aside from perhaps their basic combat load?

[spence]

There are a lot complaints about the pace of the game. And yet we give an amphibious bonus to the Japanese during the opening months to keep their SNAFU losses to a minimum without requiring them to prep to 100 for their landings. Perhaps a better plan would be to give the Japanese Player a "special phase" on turn one to set the objective to 100 for "X" units and then let the SNAFUs of hurriedly cobbled together operations take their toll while the bonus would only apply to ops where the units were prepped to 100. But that's recoding and will never happen I suppose.

[2ndACR]

I really see nothing wrong with anything. Badly planned and executed invasion (sorry) got slaughtered. Atolls are the hardest targets to take. We all know this. Basically he got shot to pieces by 42 155mm guns. I have just had Rabaul (with no added troops) stop the first attack by a IJA division. I doubt they will hold much longer, but held they did. Much to the frustration of my opponent I bet. They had already stopped a slew of SNLF's and Naval Guards in their tracks.
 
Granted, he did some bombardments (until rudely interrupted by Enterprise) and then supported the division with KB. Sometimes the dice rolls just go against you. I have had it happen to me as Japan, I just chock it up to "war is hell" and anything that can go wrong will go wrong in war. I have been there for real and know it to be true.

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

ORIGINAL: herwin

When I was the chief (systems) engineer for a USMC command and control system for amphibious operations, I learned the amount of staff work for a landing against a defended shore was staggering--several times greater than the staff work for a comparable set-piece battle. It all had to be done and done right for the operation to have any chance of success. Once ashore, tempo had to be maintained to keep the enemy reacting and not counterattacking. Supply was not an issue--there was no depth to the battlefield--but training, preparation, and initiative were key.

Are you saying that supply was not a DIFFICULT issue to address, or that you really didn't need to supply the troops aside from perhaps their basic combat load?

For amphibious operations, the distance that supply had to be transported across country was much less, the sheer amount of supply was smaller, and the motor lift required to keep a division supplied was very much smaller. The campaigns were also typically shorter and more intense. On the other hand, the amount of operational planning, the interservice coordination, and the care involved in loading/unloading the sealift were much more extensive. More planning; less stuff.

[Feinder]

There are a lot complaints about the pace of the game. And yet we give an amphibious bonus to the Japanese during the opening months to keep their SNAFU losses to a minimum without requiring them to prep to 100 for their landings. Perhaps a better plan would be to give the Japanese Player a "special phase" on turn one to set the objective to 100 for "X" units and then let the SNAFUs of hurriedly cobbled together operations take their toll while the bonus would only apply to ops where the units were prepped to 100. But that's recoding and will never happen I suppose.

Actually, it would seem that one might be able to say "ambib bonus vs. the first hostile invasion (opposed or not)", once used, no more bonus (so it would be a flag of some sort). Now, it's probably -not- that easy. But I'd be curious to see if you could go that way.

It would help to limit the blitzkrieg all over the place because you couldn't drop 6 divisions in PI, then pick 'em un and drop 'em on Suva next month.

-F-

[msieving1]

ORIGINAL: ctangus

Against an atoll you certainly want to unload all your troops in one day. Multiple shock attacks without resting can gut your combat units. It's not quite as important against a non-atoll base, but it still helps.

I did some testing on this recently, since I'm currently on the offensive in 3 games. The testing probably could have been more thorough, but here's what I've concluded so far:

1. Troops, if they're in the lowest-numbered task force, will unload 1000 load points in the first day. For example a typical Marine division requires @24,000 AP load points or 35,000 LST load points. To ensure it unloads fully in a day you'll need to load it on 24+ APs or 35+ LSTs.

2. Troops, if they're in an additional (higher-numbered) task force unloading at the same time, mostly obey the same rules, but not always. I didn't do enough testing to isolate why, but TF #2 (or #3) doesn't always completely unload. It seems to unload 80-90% of its troops. To be safe add an extra 25% margin. So for the Marine Div example above you'd want to load it onto 30 APs or 44 LSTs.

3. Supplies unload at 200 points/phase or 400 points/day. However on an initial invasion supplies don't seem to unload during the first phase. On D-Day you get only 200 supply points per AK dedicated solely to supply transport.

Let's take that Marine Division again for example. At rest it might have a supply requirement of 1200. Combat doubles requirements so it will need 2400 supply for combat. To give it 2400 supply in one day of unloading you need 12 AKs solely dedicated to carrying supply.

I hope this makes some sense. It might seem like a lot of shipping - heck might be overkill - but I've had several successes & no failures applying these rules of thumb.

By way of comparison with real life, Operation GALVANIC (the invasion of Tarawa and Makin) involved the 2nd Marine Division, and the 165th Regimental Combat Team of the Army's 27th Division. The invasion force for Tarawa (2nd Marine Division) consisted of 12 APAs, 1 AP, 3 AKAs, 3 LSTs, and 1 LSD. The Makin invasion force (165th RCT) was 4 APAs, 1 AKA, 3 LSTs, and 1 LSD. The LSTs carried the amphibious tractors for the assault, and the LSDs carried medium tanks. Each APA carried a reinforced battalion with ammunition for 5 days and rations for 10 days (for the 165th RCT, that averaged about 1300 lbs per man). The AKAs carried heavy equipment and supplies for about 30 days.

[wdolson]

I've been thinking about what Nik and others have said about the pace of amphibious operations.  I had a bit of an idea.

This would be a WitP II thing probably.  It would require a major rewrite...

What if each side had an amphibious operations planning staff and they got points like political points they could apply to planning operations.  If you try to pull off an amphibious operation that isn't fully planned, you will be incurring a bunch of penalties.  Once an operation is to 100% planned, it has a shelf life of say 6 months.  After that, the plan will degrade and the penalties will incur again.

At the beginning of the war, the Japanese start with all the operations that pulled off historically before Midway planned to 100%.  This could replace the amphibious bonus.  During the war, the Allied amphibious staff could grow which could be reflected in more points available.  Initially, the Allies would not have the capability to plan more than one operation at a time, but later in the war, they could be planning multiple operations at once.

The number of points required for planning the operation could be tied to the size of the base being attacked.  An operation against an undeveloped dot would not cost much, but against a level 9/9 base would be extremely expensive.

The game tries to manage to do this with the prep points for individual units.  In reality it shouldn't take that long for a unit to prep for a given target.  In the real world, units were often held in reserve during multiple operations and only commited to the areas where resistance was toughest.  I know the US had floating reserves at both Iwo Jima and Okinawa.  Those units were not prepped for a particular target, they were prepared to go ashore at any one of a couple of locations if they were needed.

The logisitcal planning for the operation is the real bottle neck and the prep point system is too inflexible and doesn't work that well to slow operations down to a realistic pace.  It also doesn't allow for operations like the Japanese did in the early months of the war, so the system has to be ginned with the amphibious bonus.

Bill

[John 3rd]

Hi Guys. 

I stopped posting onto this because I have been so furious.  Total result of the Pago-Pago Operation:  one Inf Brigade from China destroyed, 1 Engineering Regiment destroyed, 2 Artillery Regiments destroyed, 2 small Construction Battalions destroyed, 75% of the 56th Infantry Division destroyed.  I evaced the remainder so it can rebuild for about a year or so.  To this add a total of 2 PG, 3 MSW, 9 AK, and about 12 AP SUNK.

Those are the specifics.
John

[trollelite]

Believe you or not, if you take allies side then there is no such things. CD could sometimes be very ugly, too, but never THAT ugly.

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: wdolson
The game tries to manage to do this with the prep points for individual units.  In reality it shouldn't take that long for a unit to prep for a given target.  In the real world, units were often held in reserve during multiple operations and only commited to the areas where resistance was toughest.  I know the US had floating reserves at both Iwo Jima and Okinawa.  Those units were not prepped for a particular target, they were prepared to go ashore at any one of a couple of locations if they were needed.

The logisitcal planning for the operation is the real bottle neck and the prep point system is too inflexible and doesn't work that well to slow operations down to a realistic pace.  It also doesn't allow for operations like the Japanese did in the early months of the war, so the system has to be ginned with the amphibious bonus.

Bill

This is true. the prep point solution was an early stopgap measure to help slow the pace of operations which, like in PacWar could be planned "on the fly" with no advance planning other than resource gathering. (i.e. LCU's...transports....escorts etc)

I have felt for a long time that the only real practical solution to this long standing problem is to somehow less abstractly represent true landing craft. Every history book i've read points to these vessels as the biggest "bottleneck" of them all. It was lack of them that prevented the British from seriously contemplating any major amphibious operations in the Indian Ocean all the way up to 45. It was constraints on the availability of these types that most influenced the Allied schedule of major ops in the Atlantic and Med (as well as their frequency), and influenced pace in the Pacific as well.

How to do is the question. It's impractical to represent them in the specific like a warship. (the game is already cluttered enough with vessels including a healthy smattering of late war LST/LSI type ships giving one an idea of how overwhelming representing more would be) Maybe in the form of a pool system instead. Kind of like preperation points. You have a "pool" of landing craft that can be tapped or built up and depending on the target size and size of the invasion force, you pull from the pool when you wish to conduct an amphibious operation or assault. If not enough craft in the pool...you can't assault.

Operations below a certain size and/or type would be exempt from the pool, such as some of the early Japanese landing parties transported to empty or nearly undefended bases in the vast reaches of the Pacific that could be acomplished without much if any specialized craft. For start of war ops, the pool for the Japanese side could be given a "bonus" in terms of assets avail to allow them to conduct the amphib ops needed to acomplish the first and second operational plans. A deviation to a place such as Pearl Harbor would require a tap so expensive as to prelude other ops due to lack of assets.

This of course is a WitP II type thing and would need to be fleshed out, but ultimately i think you have to more specifically represent the landing craft if one is ever to even come close to simulating the diff. of amphib ops.

[wdolson]

Early war operations were carried out without landing craft and ships.  The Japanese didn't have any kind of amphibious vehicle and landed thier troops in whle boats.  Early landing craft were available to the US for the Guadalcanal operation, but I think a lot of troops still came ashore in other craft.

All successful early war landings were virtually unopposed.  The few times the Japanese ran into any real resistance, they were clobbered.

I think the problem you want to address can be solved with a new ship type, the APA.  The difference between APs and APAs would be the types of boats they carry.  APs would unload slower at invasion beaches and troops would land more disrupted than APAs.  Some APs that were afloat at the beginning of the war can upgrade to APAs when the landing craft begame available in the real world.

This would make landings with APs very risky and would serve as a bottleneck for operations as you describe without huge modifications.  It might be a largish change for WITP, but it could be done.  It could be done with a new type of device for ships, which would be landing craft.

Bill