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October 8-9, 1942

As mentioned above, the battle for the Mogocha pocket is turning in my favor as the Japanese infantry arrives to relieve the hard pressed tank divisions. Supply is finally flowing well too.

In Sakhalin, the Japanese troops of Tanto force take Alexandrovsk as the Soviet garrison flees towards Okha. I am left wondering how to pursue this one. Given the submarine threat and still active Soviet torpedo bombers, my preference is to advance towards Okha by land - but will supply flow through the forest hexes between Alexandrovsk and Okha??

October 9 was also a good day in the air as Val dive-bombers once again hit some Soviet shipping at Vladivostok. Damage inflected seemed to be fairly minimal with a few hits on Soviet destroyers and a couple of small tankers sunk, but the battle did draw out a significant chunk of the Soviet fighters in the city who were bested by Japanese ace fighter pilots.

October 10, 1942

Not a great day for the Empire.

An attack by four Japanese divisions at Aligarh was foiled by the railing in of four new Allied infantry divisions as well as another infantry brigade. This was combined with a Andy's throwing the kitchen sink at me again in terms of waves of bombers attacking the Japanese forces right before their attack. The Allies did lose heavily in the air, with some 70 aircraft lost for 20 Japanese, but the attack suffered heavy losses and went nowhere. The Empire's position in India has suddenly become a lot more tenuous.

The first battle around Ulan Bator was also rather disappointing. Bad weather prevented any Japanese bombing strikes but some Soviet ones did slip through. It will likely have to be a grinding battle in this sector over the next few months at least.

October 11-12, 1942

Mogocha itself fell to the Empire but the Soviet pocket is just to the hex near the base. Japanese forces continue to advance elsewhere and another attack in the Ulan Bator sector did not break through but got better results this time.

The Second Battle of Ulan Bator (of many to come!) Soviet reinforcements are pouring in to hold the line so another Japanese attack is probably not in the cards here for some time to come.

Hows the Southern Soviet Union looking ?

ORIGINAL: Evoken

Hows the Southern Soviet Union looking ?

Essentially no different than is shown for the October 8-9 entry at the top of this page. Aside from the island of Sakhalin, I am concentrating my offensive actions in Mongolia and the Lake Baikal area for now.

ORIGINAL: DesertWolf101
Mogocha itself fell to the Empire but the Soviet pocket is just to the hex near the base. Japanese forces continue to advance elsewhere and another attack in the Ulan Bator sector did not break through but got better results this time.

It's not the pocket yet, supplies are able to come from the west. Also, given that Andy pulled his units west to Chita I guess that in the next turns he would try marching from the pocket instead of fighting. Marching NW looks promising, you need to spend quite some time to counter-march.
I'm not sure if you already started, it is not clear from the map )

I don't approve of Andy abandoning the northern bank of the river between Chita and Shilka, you can easily get your units there after capturing Borzya and cut off whatever left to the east, this time for good

ORIGINAL: GetAssista

ORIGINAL: DesertWolf101
Mogocha itself fell to the Empire but the Soviet pocket is just to the hex near the base. Japanese forces continue to advance elsewhere and another attack in the Ulan Bator sector did not break through but got better results this time.

It's not the pocket yet, supplies are able to come from the west. Also, given that Andy pulled his units west to Chita I guess that in the next turns he would try marching from the pocket instead of fighting. Marching NW looks promising, you need to spend quite some time to counter-march.
I'm not sure if you already started, it is not clear from the map )

Yes it's true I imagine some supply is still trickling in. I meant pocket in a less strict sense. I am indeed moving to completely encircle the Mogocha force, but it will likely take a while so I will leave behind a residual force to corral them while the bulk of the Japanese in the area march to the northwest.

October 13, 1942

A lot of action to cover today. There was some pretty bad, some good, some very good, and some excellent. Let's start with the pretty bad and move up the ladder.

Against my better judgement, I decided to risk yet another attack in the Ulan Bator sector. The enemy forces were weakened by the two previous deliberate attacks and I figured a shock attack would do the trick before even more Soviet forces arrived. From the result and the replay, I think I was right that it would have likely worked, but unfortunately a fresh and full strength rifle division and motorized division arrived to decisively bolster the Soviet defense right as the attack took place. Losses were very heavy, but silver lining is the vast majority are disabled rather than destroyed squads. I also destroyed a Soviet tank battalion in the attack.

For the good news, there is the fact that I launched some bombing raids against the manpower at Vladivostok that seemed to get some good fires going. I have no experience with this type of mission before, so I don't know to what degree this level of fires is good or whether it is large enough to damage a significant amount of the local industry. I do hope that it does though and hopefully eats some supply stockpiles as well.

In terms of the very good news, my Val dive-bombers carried out some spectacular attacks in a number of morning and afternoon raids that heavily hit another four Soviet destroyers. By my count, I believe that practically all Soviet destroyers are sunk or at least crippled and the same could be said for Andy's Soviet shipping as well. He still has a lot of Soviet subs to play with, but it's good to get rid of the surface threat at least.

Finally, excellent news from India! The battered Japanese field army successfully withdrew from Aligarh across the river to Agra where Japanese reinforcements had arrived to cover them. I was worried the highly fatigued and disrupted 2nd Division would not make it but it seems to have recovered just enough to gain enough miles to cross with the rest of the army.

Andy's attack hit thin air but not for a lack of trying. He once again sent the kitchen sink at me in terms of his bomber force but I had anticipated this and put up a very dense fighter CAP.

ORIGINAL: DesertWolf101
I have no experience with this type of mission before, so I don't know to what degree this level of fires is good or whether it is large enough to damage a significant amount of the local industry.

Judging from the strategic bombing of Japan I'd say fires need to be in tens of thousands to have noticeable impact. You will see the impact soon if you keep flying recon over Vlad. I think with Japanese 2Es it is more efficient to target a particular industry, starting with HI. LI is much harder to hit.
Also if you think that Andy can be forgetful enough to not switch off repairs, any industry is fine )

The result for the day in the air is indicative of the excellent effort the Japanese aviators put forth to save their comrades on the ground.

ORIGINAL: GetAssista

ORIGINAL: DesertWolf101
I have no experience with this type of mission before, so I don't know to what degree this level of fires is good or whether it is large enough to damage a significant amount of the local industry.

Judging from the strategic bombing of Japan I'd say fires need to be in tens of thousands to have noticeable impact. You will see the impact soon if you keep flying recon over Vlad. I think with Japanese 2Es it is more efficient to target a particular industry, starting with HI. LI is much harder to hit.
Also if you think that Andy can be forgetful enough to not switch off repairs, any industry is fine )

Thanks for that info. I thought I would start with the manpower hits and then work my way to the direct targeting of industry. There is a tremendous amount of flak in Vladivostok, but I console myself with the thought that supply is being used up every time I see a Japanese bomber go down in flames.

Or bomb the resources if you think that he is/will be short there. There may be better/safer places to bomb those.

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe
Or bomb the resources if you think that he is/will be short there. There may be better/safer places to bomb those.

There's no point bombing Soviet resources (unless counting on repairs wasting supply). Res accumulated in the largest port that is Vlad since the game start, and it should be 1+ mln there at that time. More than enough to feed whatever LI and HI left in the eastern part for years

October 14-18, 1942

Andy and I have our own little Battle of the Atlantic Situation going on in the Arabian Sea. For the last few months Japanese submarines and raiders staging from and supported by air search and air torpedo attacks from Bombay have been attempting to interfere with Allied shipping to Karachi with some good success. I already bagged a few large tankers and numerous xAKs. I used the raiders effectively to smash a couple of convoys but that's gotten harder now so I am largely using them to destroy Andy's ASW task forces where I can in the area. I finally paid a price for this when the heavy cruiser Furutaka took a torpedo in a skirmish with a British destroyer and took heavy flooding. It is attempting to limp back to base and we shall see if she makes it.