Nomonhan Redux: Seydlitz (Japan) vs. MBatch729 (Allies)

[TOMLABEL]

Love the plane tops!!![&o][&o][&o]

Keep 'em coming!!!

Have you guys not discovered the spares yet?[&:] I use them and it really helps to differentiate stuff.

[seydlitz_slith]

ORIGINAL: offenseman

The Bettys and Nells you have training up in the HI could make a convoy headed for the Soviets very costly indeed...  I wonder if he might consider sending some CVs into far northern waters, hook them around Sakhalin and bugger your surface forces. 
Have you had a chance to get some aviation support to Okha or other bases in Sakhalin?

I have been able to get some aviation support into Southern Sakhalin island but I am having to build up the air strip. The AV support units are not great either....8 or 24 AV each.

[seydlitz_slith]

Turn 55 30 Jan 1942

I must consider that the Russian front is far from a done deal and I could actually lose a considerable number of troops there. Several things happened that make me wary.

First, my landing attempt at Nikolaevsk was repulsed (thankfully before any troops went ashore) despite the presence of 3 battleships and several cruisers. Even worse, the force is under continuing attack from Soviet bombers flying from his airfield in the middle of Sakhalin Island. I am now going to have to knock this airfield out before trying to land on the mainland again.

[seydlitz_slith]

Across the whole depth of the front I feel that I am stretched to the limit and despite significant forces, I have not been able to make headway like I had wanted. At Voroshilov, I realised that he significantly outnumbers me there. This means that at best, I am in for a very protracted bombardment war. The amount of artillery there for both sides is frankly obscene. The casualties from the bombardments are more severe than many large scale ground combats. Since many of my infantry units have extremely high disruption and fatigue (in the 80-90 range) I am going to gamble that he will not make anything other than a bombardment attack. Taking hits gamble, I am putting most of my disrupted infantry units (all but the two lowest experienced units) into reserve. According to the manual in section 8.2.1.1 (page 185 in the U.S. rulebook) units in reserve are not affected by bombardment attack. As such, these units will keep recovering strength, reduce disruption and fatigue while remaining in the hex but without taking more casualties during the massive artillery exchanges.

Again this turn I quite a few nates making strafing attacks. Next turn I will move them to 11000 foot ground attacks. Even though the actual air attack results are not showing that the attacks are being effective, they must be causing very heavy disruption. I say this because even though he has more troops and guns than I do, he is suffering far more squads destroyed during the bombardment phase.

Here is what the Voroshilov bombardments look like. The casualty numbers are staggering:


Ground combat at Voroshilov (112,45)

Japanese Bombardment attack

Attacking force 58270 troops, 849 guns, 596 vehicles, Assault Value = 2304

Defending force 94216 troops, 1893 guns, 1454 vehicles, Assault Value = 2558

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


Allied ground losses:
1653 casualties reported
Squads: 61 destroyed, 87 disabled
Non Combat: 324 destroyed, 167 disabled
Engineers: 9 destroyed, 10 disabled
Guns lost 212 (101 destroyed, 111 disabled)
Vehicles lost 480 (365 destroyed, 115 disabled)

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

Ground combat at Voroshilov (112,45)

Allied Bombardment attack

Attacking force 76187 troops, 1629 guns, 1099 vehicles, Assault Value = 2394

Defending force 112097 troops, 1223 guns, 1323 vehicles, Assault Value = 2303

Japanese ground losses:
1328 casualties reported
Squads: 13 destroyed, 18 disabled
Non Combat: 38 destroyed, 118 disabled
Engineers: 1 destroyed, 6 disabled
Guns lost 61 (8 destroyed, 53 disabled)
Vehicles lost 113 (32 destroyed, 81 disabled)

[seydlitz_slith]

Elsewhere, I reduced the chinese forts at Loyang to 1, but my units are disrupted and fatigued badly so I will rest for a couple of turns before continuing the assault.

In Malaya I took Kuala Lumpur easily.


Ground combat at Kuala Lumpur (49,79)

Japanese Deliberate attack

Attacking force 39161 troops, 361 guns, 155 vehicles, Assault Value = 1642

Defending force 5053 troops, 30 guns, 14 vehicles, Assault Value = 65

Japanese engineers reduce fortifications to 2

Japanese adjusted assault: 782

Allied adjusted defense: 13

Japanese assault odds: 60 to 1 (fort level 2)

Japanese forces CAPTURE Kuala Lumpur !!!

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

Japanese ground losses:
490 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 15 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 26 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 3 disabled
Vehicles lost 1 (0 destroyed, 1 disabled)
Units pursuing 2


Allied ground losses:
4547 casualties reported
Squads: 92 destroyed, 0 disabled
Non Combat: 197 destroyed, 41 disabled
Engineers: 27 destroyed, 0 disabled
Guns lost 14 (7 destroyed, 7 disabled)
Vehicles lost 19 (19 destroyed, 0 disabled)
Units retreated 6


Defeated Allied Units Retreating!


Here are the aircraft losses for the turn:

[seydlitz_slith]

Off Borneo, my cruiser task force caught up with his transport TF, which happened to be two AKLs. Somehow the AKLs evaded into the night and escaped the cruisers. However, I-165 did manage to intercept and emptied her deck gun ammo into one of the ships.

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Submarine attack near Sandakan at 70,87

Japanese Ships
SS I-165

Allied Ships
xAKL Luzon, Shell hits 13, heavy fires, heavy damage



xAKL Luzon is sighted by SS I-165...
SS I-165 attacking xAKL Luzon on the surface...
SS I-165 low on gun ammo, Shibata V. breaks off surface engagement and submerges...

[offenseman]

How are you armaments numbers?  You seem to be losing a lot of tubes in those bombardments.

[seydlitz_slith]

ORIGINAL: offenseman

How are you armaments numbers?  You seem to be losing a lot of tubes in those bombardments.

Armaments are in good shape because I had greatly expanded the industry in this area at game start.

[MechFO]

ORIGINAL: seydlitz

ORIGINAL: offenseman

How are you armaments numbers?  You seem to be losing a lot of tubes in those bombardments.

Armaments are in good shape because I had greatly expanded the industry in this area at game start.

Keep an eye on your HI pool. Armaments gobble up a lot and at the beginning of every month you are going to take a big HI hit due to pilots training.

[Lifer]

I've been following this AAR for a while now and one thing has me wondering and I am sorry if this was answered but didn't find an explanation.  Knowing the weather would be a factor, why didn't you wait for a "Spring Offensive" in the North and consolidate the SRA before tackling Russia?

Greg

[seydlitz_slith]

ORIGINAL: MechFO

ORIGINAL: seydlitz

ORIGINAL: offenseman

How are you armaments numbers?  You seem to be losing a lot of tubes in those bombardments.

Armaments are in good shape because I had greatly expanded the industry in this area at game start.

Keep an eye on your HI pool. Armaments gobble up a lot and at the beginning of every month you are going to take a big HI hit due to pilots training.

Yes, I have noticed a big drop in my HI pool. At some point I will have to shut down either shipyards or armaments to some degree.

[seydlitz_slith]

ORIGINAL: Lifer

I've been following this AAR for a while now and one thing has me wondering and I am sorry if this was answered but didn't find an explanation.  Knowing the weather would be a factor, why didn't you wait for a "Spring Offensive" in the North and consolidate the SRA before tackling Russia?

Greg

My primary reasoning is that by going early the Russians would not have enough time to build high fort levels everywhere, get high prep points, or get higher experience through rest/train. Early we would be approximately equal. Waiting until April would mean that the added fort levels and prep points could well have made the Russians unbreakable. Besides, the troops in the SRA shouldn't be needed in Korea. Of course, I am revising my thought in this area. I may have to use some here to push things over the edge.

[jrcar]

Continue to read with interest, would never thought it possible...

The Soviets gets a number of reinforcements in March too, another reason to go hard early.

Cheers

Rob

[CaptBeefheart]

The plot thickens. What kind of guns did you run into in Nikolaevsk? I've never had an invasion force give up becasue of shore batteries, so I'm curious what it takes.

Keep up the good work and best of luck.

Cheers,
CC

[Smeulders]

ORIGINAL: jrcar

Continue to read with interest, would never thought it possible...

The Soviets gets a number of reinforcements in March too, another reason to go hard early.

Cheers

Rob

On the other hand, they lose quite a bit of power in June/July when multiple division get withdrawn and then the weather is better, early Japanese attacks should have been ended successfully so you bring in more reinforcements. All in all I think there is something to be said for a summer offensive.

[seydlitz_slith]

ORIGINAL: Commander Cody

The plot thickens. What kind of guns did you run into in Nikolaevsk? I've never had an invasion force give up becasue of shore batteries, so I'm curious what it takes.

Keep up the good work and best of luck.

Cheers,
CC

I believe that most of them were cruiser sized guns.

[crsutton]

Well, I certainly am enjoying this one.
 
I have worked up a slogan for you... "Seydiltz, he is doing it so we will never have to."  [:D]

[seydlitz_slith]

Turn 56 31 Jan 1942

This turn's posts will be very lengthy. I wanted to show you everything that is happening in the Russian theater so that you can understand how much activity is going on every turn even though I am picking only the highlights in most turn reports. You will see that this is a huge war in every sense.

Some of the posts will be snapshots of individual unit screens to illustrate not only the condition of the units but also the proper use of reserve to help units avoid further casualties. You can't issue a rest order if an enemy unit is in hex so reserve is the best that you can do. Unless the enemy attacks and overwhelms you, the units in reserve will not attack. More importantly, putting a unit in reserve keeps them from taking casualties from a bombardment attack. Properly used, you can rotate your units through reserve when you are fighting a large battle of attrition and slowly gain the upper hand.

During this turn, the air losses were not dramatic, being even lower than average. No hexes traded hands, and the only new attack was a parachute landing at Kuching which will take turns to decide.

Now, on to interesting matters.

[seydlitz_slith]

This is not how I wanted to start the turn.....

This was the VERY FIRST Combat replay of the turn.

[seydlitz_slith]

The sub escaped detection and made a clean getaway.

AFTER ACTION REPORTS FOR Jan 31, 42
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ASW attack near Okha at 128,36

Allied Ships
SS ShCh-129



ShCh-129 diving deep .......
Sub escapes detection...

Luckily the torpedo blister did it's job and the Ise was able to maintain her spot in formation and remains mission capable.
She was on the way to bombard Alexandrovsk along with Nagato and Hyuga, which they did later in the daylight part of the turn. The enemy has been flying bombers out of the airfield there and I need to do something about it.

Here is the damage to Ise.