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My old friend Cooper-Sliper is still fighting...after 3 hospitalizations...he fought for the whole Battle of India, over Tulagi and over Rekata Bay...and now he's back at Sadogashima...with the usual killer instinct [8D]

from October 18 to October 28, Rader has lost 2560 planes, against my 650...(included the great CVs defeat...)

How long can he stands these incredible losses? I mean...we know he has infinite numbers of planes...but what about the pilots? He's being fighting over allied controlled lands...so something like 1250 pilots lost

His pilots are probably of quite low quality now. Maybe they averaged 60 at the start of the campaign, then dropped to 50 after a few weeks, now it might be 40. Won't go much lower than that but it doesn't seem to matter. Like Stalin said, "Quantity has a Quality all it's own". I'm sure the Wehrmacht started to wonder why there was no bottom of the barrel of Soviet Tanks about October 1941. There is never going to be a day when he can't throw hundreds of aircraft against you. So if there is no practical limitation on pilots on both sides, and a practical limit of aircraft on only one side, who is at a disadvantage? I guess you will just have to be smarter. Either win the air war knowing this limitation or find a way to win other than the air.

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth

from October 18 to October 28, Rader has lost 2560 planes, against my 650...(included the great CVs defeat...)

How long can he stands these incredible losses? I mean...we know he has infinite numbers of planes...but what about the pilots? He's being fighting over allied controlled lands...so something like 1250 pilots lost

His pilots are probably of quite low quality now. Maybe they averaged 60 at the start of the campaign, then dropped to 50 after a few weeks, now it might be 40. Won't go much lower than that but it doesn't seem to matter. Like Stalin said, "Quantity has a Quality all it's own". I'm sure the Wehrmacht started to wonder why there was no bottom of the barrel of Soviet Tanks about October 1941. There is never going to be a day when he can't throw hundreds of aircraft against you. So if there is no practical limitation on pilots on both sides, and a practical limit of aircraft on only one side, who is at a disadvantage? I guess you will just have to be smarter. Either win the air war knowing this limitation or find a way to win other than the air.

But my pilots will then get better and better...which means that i will compensate the quality gap of my planes with the quality advantage of my pilots... which is a good thing imho!

The idea is that, once Sadogashima is secured and built up to level 7, i will be able to land another strong invasion force without the need of CVEs or CVs...[;)]

Takes about 3 months to train a pilot to air skill 70, so you have to inflict greater damage on his pilot pools than however many he can train in that time.

Seems like a tall order normally but the numbers involved in this game are BIG.

I have no real idea what Japans capability for training pilots is. I am led to believe that is considerably greater than the Allied ability to train pilots as they have more and bigger squadrons that can be used for on map training. However they lose a lot more pilots too, in their balsa wood planes. Still... if you eased back presumably in 3 months time he'd be back to fully trained pilots again so you just have to maintain the pressure and not give him that window.

ORIGINAL: GreyJoy

ORIGINAL: ny59giants

Which port are his damaged ships returning to??
If you can find out where, a night time port attack may need to be ordered.

At the moment we're still testing the night bombing effetcs Micheal...so i won't do these kind of attacks untill we have agreed on an HR that is liked by bith us us.

Anyway guys...i've made some calculations...

from October 18 to October 28, Rader has lost 2560 planes, against my 650...(included the great CVs defeat...)[X(]

How long can he stands these incredible losses? I mean...we know he has infinite numbers of planes...but what about the pilots? He's being fighting over allied controlled lands...so something like 1250 pilots lost [X(][X(][X(]

GreyJoy-

There is no doubt is pilot quality is low, but so long as he holds the territory he does, he will be able to produce aircraft that you won't even put a dent in.

Excellent to see Cooper-Slipper still ripping it up. Also, if you look close, you can see one 1LT Bong, R.I. has ten kills. That's well short of his 40 in real life, but hey, there's still plenty of time, eh?

Cheers,
CC

He lost many many ACs over his own bases which safed alot of pilots. However I doubt he can keep up training navy pilots. There are simply not enough squadrons for training to replace these loses.

Yes guys, i know i cannot look at the plane losses...but the more pilots he lose over my lands, the more my pilots get stronger. And we're just seeing what this mean...his Shidens, for example, which are far superior to anything i can put on line, are falling like dead bugs against my Top Gunners.
So this whole process is helping me a lot in negating him the quality edge he has taken with his last generation of fighters.

As long as i proceed over these lines, i think i can put a solid basis of air predomination once the P-51s and the new P-47Ns will become available

I would also say Rader has a firm grip on Japanese production,training and logistics. He is doing an amazing job there.

ORIGINAL: Gräfin Zeppelin

He lost many many ACs over his own bases which safed alot of pilots. However I doubt he can keep up training navy pilots. There are simply not enough squadrons for training to replace these loses.

Well, the very last 2500 planes lost by Japan were shot down over ocean waters or over Sadogashima (so allied hands)....i count at least 1000 pilots lost in one week....

GreyJoy's game has taught me something about the game as a whole that I hadn't realized before, though I had wondered.
 
If this game were modeled on real life, there would be several ways to bring Japan to its knees:  (1) Air War:  Destroy Japan's ability to defend itself, eventually allowing nearly uncontested attacks on the Home Islands; (2) War at Sea:  Destroy Japan's navy, thus allowing the Allies to close on Japan proper and impose a blockade; (3) Ground War: Destroy Japan's army so that it cannot defend itself; and (4) Economy:  Destroy Japan's economy, thus negating the other three.  Each of these is interrelated, of course, so that the Allies will be actually workign on all four, but as the game develops, a player will often begin to focus on one or two as he begins to experience some success.
 
In AE, the third option (Ground War) really isn't available.  Japan's army is too big.  The first isn't an option either, which comes as a surprise since the air war was such a decisvie Allied victory.  The Allies can win the air war in AE, but they can't destroy Japan's air force.  Oh, there might be one game in a hundred in which an elite Allied player might bring Japan to its knees, but those will be very few.  GJ has simply eaten - and continues to eat - Japan's airforce in this game, but the airforce is still there in huge numbers causing major problems.
 
That leaves combat ships and the economy as Japan's weak points.  Destroying an economy will take time, unless Japan self destructs, but the navy is another matter.  That is a finite resource that can be destroyed.

ORIGINAL: GreyJoy

ORIGINAL: ny59giants

Which port are his damaged ships returning to??
If you can find out where, a night time port attack may need to be ordered.

At the moment we're still testing the night bombing effetcs Micheal...so i won't do these kind of attacks untill we have agreed on an HR that is liked by bith us us.

Anyway guys...i've made some calculations...

from October 18 to October 28, Rader has lost 2560 planes, against my 650...(included the great CVs defeat...)[X(]

How long can he stands these incredible losses? I mean...we know he has infinite numbers of planes...but what about the pilots? He's being fighting over allied controlled lands...so something like 1250 pilots lost [X(][X(][X(]

My opinion:

You can very much afford losing 650 planes in a 10 day period. He cannot. He cannot replace 7,500 planes in a month without his airforce breaking. You're in a good position. Remember, GreyJoy, attrition takes time.

You're right where you want to be though. Keep the petal to the metal and let him burn out his pilot and airframe pools.

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel
In AE, the third option (Ground War) really isn't available.  Japan's army is too big. 

Well, in reality, this was a poor choice for the Allies as well. Considering how large the Japanese Army presence was in China-and the fact that the rest of the Allies faced only a small portion of this manpower-this would have been a bloody slog for the Allies. Not their strongest suit.

The first isn't an option either, which comes as a surprise since the air war was such a decisvie Allied victory.  The Allies can win the air war in AE, but they can't destroy Japan's air force. 

Not so sure about that. Given time and patience, the Allies can rule the air. The production model in AE makes this more challenging than IRL, but I believe it is possible, particularly in scenario 1 games. The key is to start the attrition of Japanese pilots and airframes early and often whilest rotating the Allied air groups at the front. This will allow ongoing damage to IJAAF or IJNAF, whilest rotating out damaged Allied air units.

An inexperienced Allied player whose back is up against the proverbial wall by a veteran IJ player (particularly in scenario 2) won't have the luxury of doing this early in the war.

Only now is GreyJoy in a position to seriously attrit the fighting capabilities of the IJ. If he continues at this pace, he will break the Japanese airforce by early-mid 1945. I think it could be speeded along by blowing up those Shinden, Ki-83 and Ki-100 factories NOW.

That leaves combat ships and the economy as Japan's weak points.  Destroying an economy will take time, unless Japan self destructs, but the navy is another matter.  That is a finite resource that can be destroyed.

Complete agreement on this point. Sink 'em all. NYGiants59's exhortations to bomb ports (GreyJoy-do it during daytime if you're concerned about night port bombing effects) where damaged ships are returning is wise.

I didn't make my point very well.  I was trying to be relatively brief, but the subject is very complicated.  Bottom line:  Japan's navy is its Achilles Heel and the DEI is vital.  In the real war, the Allies used subs to choke off Japan from the DEI.  I don't think that's possible in AE, so the Allies have to go into the DEI in force.

Give him a few more days to attrite his short-term fighter stocks some more, then throw a nice big 4E day raid at a juicy factory target, port attack, and/or airbase attack.  If you pick from the hexes he is using to sweep Sadogashima, it has to reduce his available CAP some.  Make it a huge raid to soak up CAP passes, too.
 
You might even catch him with some of his units stood down to replenish airframes and get pilot's morale up reducing CAP more.  Do it suddenly so that he is still sweeping/bombing Sado, but pick a day when not much is going into Sadogashima from a naval/air transport point of view so it minimizes your damage from raids. 
 
Might be worth a shot.  If it works, you can insert these sorts of raids in randomly.
 
Mike

Yes CR, you're right about the DEI and the economy being the very key to any allied victory...
 
however we know that for me that wasn't really an option...Rader was waiting for me there after the Solomons and imagine what kind of resistance i had to face there...
 
This game is clearly different...we left open the connection between Japan and the DEi in order to smash the backdoor and take a seat right in front of the Emperor's terrace.
 
However Chickenboy...if you have followed this game for some time you know that i've been attriting Japanese pilots reserves since 1942...
 
Many many times (over Karachi, Over Ndeni, Over Tulagi, over Rekata...) we all (and i mean me and the other readers/contributors of this AAR) have sentenced that we had broken the backbone of japanese Air Force...
 
Boy how mistaken were we...
 
Japan Air force is still strong and, despite having lost probably nearly 15,000 pilots during the war (against my 1200), he's nowehere close to fill his squadrons with rookies... They may not be like our Top Gunners, but they know how to handle a fighter or how to drop a bomb as we've seen recently...
 
However i agree: i'm in a perfect position to attrit his air force to a degree that we haven't seen yet so far... and i'm aeger to keep on hitting him in this matter...
 
...he cannot simply fall back now and wait for me...simply because he has nowhere else to fall back to [:)]

ORIGINAL: Panther Bait

Give him a few more days to attrite his short-term fighter stocks some more, then throw a nice big 4E day raid at a juicy factory target, port attack, and/or airbase attack.  If you pick from the hexes he is using to sweep Sadogashima, it has to reduce his available CAP some.  Make it a huge raid to soak up CAP passes, too.

You might even catch him with some of his units stood down to replenish airframes and get pilot's morale up reducing CAP more.  Do it suddenly so that he is still sweeping/bombing Sado, but pick a day when not much is going into Sadogashima from a naval/air transport point of view so it minimizes your damage from raids. 

Might be worth a shot.  If it works, you can insert these sorts of raids in randomly.

Mike

Nice shot mate!

Will do it as soon as i see a window...love the idea [8D]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel
I don't think that's possible in AE, so the Allies have to go into the DEI in force.

Disagreeing with you is fun! [;)]

I disagree. The Allies don't have to go into the DEI in force to win in this game. GreyJoy is on the right track-everything previous has been leading up to this scenario. He will win this game (eventually), without the slog back through the DEI, Burma, Thailand, China or Papua / New Guinea.

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

It was an innocent question about Pearl.

It wasn't my intent to set off a string of bash the Japanese opponent replies.

While I agree completely and a similar episode with an experienced Japanese opponent as a UV newbie is the reason I have refrained from PBEM play in this game, I already have too much of a reputation as a Japanese player basher for me to allow this spate of bashing to fall on my shoulders.

All I did was ask an innocent question about how PBEMers deal with a protracted Pearl strike. [8D]

The japanese player needs all the help he can get and I am happy to be on the receiving end for a week at PH. I can't speak for scenario 2 though.

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel
I don't think that's possible in AE, so the Allies have to go into the DEI in force.

Disagreeing with you is fun! [;)]

I disagree. The Allies don't have to go into the DEI in force to win in this game. GreyJoy is on the right track-everything previous has been leading up to this scenario. He will win this game (eventually), without the slog back through the DEI, Burma, Thailand, China or Papua / New Guinea.

Well, to win this game i need to succesfully land in Japan and create land front...at the moment it's like if the Normandy D-Day has failed and half million allied troops are stuck on Utah, Omaha etc etc...