Hairy Yankee Reports: Q-Ball (A) v Greyjoy (J)

[Q-Ball]

2-13-1944

Koepang, Part II:

Today, nothing happened much.

Yesterday, we pretty much cleared out the IJN surface forces from the area, suffering high losses in the process.

THE PLAN:

I thought about keeping my CVs aggressively postured, but decided that was a bad idea; our pilots were a bit tired from the day before, and no reason to face KB at a disadvantage. With 1 CVE sunk and 2 more damaged, I only had 2 CVE, 6 CV, and 6 CVL to face KB; not bad, but I don't want that fight until I can smash them. With 4-5 IJN CVE's sunk, we evened those odds for next time.

So, we pulled back for daylight, but I sent some surface TFs toward Koepang to intercept cripples.

NIGHT PHASE:

This was a big whiff. Some IJN shipping retreated toward Lautem rather than Koepang; nice move, I would have intercepted them at Koepang. They got away. I was hoping to get HARUNA, which I knew was out of ammo from all the fights the night before.

DAY PHASE:

Had we not withdrawn, there would have been a CV battle, and he would have had some LBA support. As it was, some the LBA sortied, and we shot down about 150 IJN planes for no shipping losses.

He's lost close to 1000 planes in the last few days, and we've lost maybe 250, but most of those are NAVY types I have plenty of.

NEXT STEPS:

I am not going to land in the teeth of KB; I have a tactical victory, and he may stop me at this particular spot.

However, while he was engaged here, we have taken 4 bases north of Ambon, and I already have engineers building airstrips. Ambon and Namlea are closed, and I will invade shortly. He can't be at both places at the same time.

My tactical handling has left alot to be desired here, but at least we planned it so matter what we could advance umolested SOMEWHERE.

[Q-Ball]

Quick update on the game.

The pace has slowed to an absolute crawl, and at this point it's more Greyjoy than me. He's been very very busy at work apparently. C'est la guerre.

We are up to about Feb 20,1944. Since the last series of battles around Timor, it's been pretty much Allies.

Air War:

We have been successfully sweeping his bases, while extending our air coverage. I've shot down something like 2000 planes in the last month; most in that large battle, but he's losing 50-100 on a normal day, until very recently.

Greyjoy has pretty much now abandoned all the airstrips south of Kendari. Koepang, the largest, is closed, and bombed every day via 4E. Ambon and Namlea are also closed.

Upcoming Moves:

I cancelled the invasion of Timor for now, but that whole diversion allowed us to establish new airbases all the way past Namlea.

We are landing a Marine Division shortly at Namlea, which will secure this base for me, and isolate Ambon for good.

We already have an airbase buidling within sweep range of Balikpapan, so he will shortly have to start defending the Oil.

That's the update until we get more action....

[PaxMondo]

OK, so if you can close the DEI oil B4 6/44, GJ is likely in trouble. My baseline for the IJ is that I can keep pulling oil from the DEI until 6/44. Anytime after that is frosting. Short of that, then my HI builds are going to suffer ... you've got B29's now. You should be able to close all the oil from your current positions ... or not?

[JocMeister]

Keep in mind that B29 are just as fragile as normal 4Es. And the B29-1 arrives at only 18 per month. So its night bombing or not at all if you are outside sweep range.

[paullus99]

Either bombing the oil to dust or cutting off all lines of communication to the DEI - either way, you've cut his lifeline....worth the losses.

[leehunt27@bloomberg.net]

hi Q-Ball, interesting AAR. I am just catching up on this one after seeing Greyjoy's. Does anyone know if by chance you can print out an entire AAR, screenshots and all, like a book and read comfortably rather than scrolling through each page on your PC? Is that possible? I see "printable version" but can you print the whole thing?

[Symon]

Posted something on GreyJoys thread that I should repeat here.

I quite agree with JocMeister. You gusy have played masterfully. Q-Ball is no tyro and you guys have traded (and absorbed) blows like the professionals.

Take the hits, but figure out what to do with what's left and go on. Can't begin to say how much I'm enjoying this game between the two of you. You both play the game like it was intended. I'm usually on the edge of my seat reading ya'lls AARs. Thought, planning, understanding of "calculated risk", execution within the plan, what you guys have done is frikkin epic.[&o][&o][&o]

My hat's off to the both of you. Ciao. JWE