Rising Sun over the Rockies - F.K. vs OSO - Wake captured by US

[FeurerKrieg]

The Judys and Jills on the carriers are all solid - 70-90 exp.

The LBA units are lower, in the 55-70 range, but there are a couple units that still are over 70. However, when Kasagi arrives in a couple days, those units will be cannibalized to fill out the air units on that CV, which come in half full of 55ish exp pilots. Filling them up with 70+ pilots if a must if they are to be worth a darn.

B7 & D7 Grace with high exp pilots - good scary, but in all likelyhood a one shot weapon given AA levels and enemy CAP in 1944. I may just wait until the enemy supply line get long and save my carrier forces for supply line raids. Those B-29 suck up a lot of supplies or so I've heard...

[FeurerKrieg]

September 20th, 1943
At Chungking we hit 3 SB-2c on the ground today.

A few enemy bombers hit Akyab ground forces.

In the Kuriles, a Ki-30 Ann divebomber hits the SS Cuttlefish.

And in the southeast Pacific, our Glen sub continues to follow the enemy convoy, which appears at this point to only be a supply convoy. No warships detected. This does mean that it might be a good time to coordinate our Glen subs with our our two pairs of Armed Merchant Cruisers and maybe we will find some easy picking between Pearl and the West Coast US.

[FeurerKrieg]

September 21st, 1943
A new version of the Thunderbolt attacks us at Mandalay. 18 P-47Ds flew a sweep and met 3 Tojos. One Tojo went down, but so did one Thunderbolt.

The spirits smiled on us today in China. Today our air units were ordered to rest, only because they have been flying several days with no breaks. When our recon flight went to Chungking, 24 P-40Ns were found on CAP! Now that we know they are there, we can send all of our fighers on a couple sweeps to clear the air. I'm sure we will lose some greenhorns again, but the pilots who survived will be the best of the lot.

[center]
New version of Thunderbolt - P-47D[/center]

[FeurerKrieg]

September 22nd, 1943
The action is slowly picking up again.

Today our massive sweep over Chungking meets 31 P-40N and 2 P-43A. We take down 22 of the P-40Ns and 1 of the P-43As. Our losses include: 7 Tojos, 1 Tony, 10 Oscar Ib, 4 Nick(a), 4 J1N1-S Irvings and 1 A6M3a. There are still some enemy fighters so tomorrow we'll try another big sweep.

[center]
Major sweep in China[/center]

At Wakkanai, the SS Tambor put two torpedoes into ML Tokiwa. Before its minelayer days, the ship was an Asama-class armored cruiser and was thus able to handle the impact of these two torps. The ship will sail to Sapporo for repairs.

Near Wake island, a Sally put a bomb into the SS Halibut. And near Timor, our planes spotted an enemy ship but when the attack strike headed to the location, they could not find the target.

At Paramushiro Jima, 48 B-24D Liberators attempted to hit our airfield. 18 George and 33 Tonys did their best to disrupt the raid and did pretty well, although 7 Tonys still were hit on the airfield. We took down 7 of the bombers in total.
[center]

When will we see escorts for these bombers?[/center]

[Alikchi2]

I hope the Pompano didn't sink (several posts back), I saw it in San Francisco today.

Things are looking relatively stable in the north, anyways. You can handle another air front.

[FeurerKrieg]

ORIGINAL: Alikchi

You can handle another air front.

You clearly have more faith in me than I do!

The air front in the north *maybe* I can handle since there are only 2 models of enemy fighters than can make it that far, and they'll be fighting at long range to boot.

Burma, though, is going to get difficult, as all these long range fighters will do just fine at 6 hexes. I may have to pull back from Meiktila once the Allies give me another whack with the Thunderbolts and Lightings.

[bigbaba]

what i find great is the good preformance of your tony and tojos even against the new generation of allied fighters like thubnderbolts, lightnings and spitfires. it may be caused by the higher quality of your brave pilots which always have a chance to survive and fight at another day, when they defend burma.

[FeurerKrieg]

You are spot on bigbaba - there is no way I could maintain this level of performance if I were doing these same air battles over enemy territory - pilot attrition would just be too high. Defending though, and seeing so many rescued pilots makes a big difference.

Just had a big battle on Oct 2nd, though with lots of P-47Ds and P-38Js, and they are tougher nuts to crack that is for sure. Because of these high durability Allied fighters, I really need my new up-gunned Tonys NOW! Oh well.. just have to hang on until January when they arrive.

[FeurerKrieg]

September 23rd, 1943
An active day in the war!

In the Pacific -

Near Pearl the ill-fated I-19 was first hit by a A-29 Hudson and then later in the day hit again by a PB2Y Coronado. The ship will likely sink soon. However, the enemy SS Cuttlefish was reported sunk and the SS Corvina was hit near Wake by a Ki-21 Sally.

At Timor, 11 Bettys and 9 Helens sink the AK Bonketoe.

[center]
Another blockade runner goes under[/center]

On the northern end of the Pacific, an enemy cargo ship hit a Type 88 mine left at Umnak by I-123.

38 PB4Y Liberators attempted to hit the airfield at OJ, but or solid cap shot down 13 of the bombers and disrupted the rest so most of the bombs landed out in the ocean.

[center]
Enemy bombers test the defenses[/center]


China/Burma -
In China, our fighters flew sweep again and finished off the enemy fighters, destroying 10 P-40N and 1 P-43A. We lost 5 rookie Oscars and 1 Nick.

Over in Burma, the enemy flew a some sweeps with their new fighters. At Mandalay, 19 P-47D encountered 6 Jacks and 5 A6M3a Zeros. Our Jacks were on the bad end of the fight and they lost 4, while only bringing down 1 enemy Thunderbolt.

At Magwe, we fared better. First a sweep of 29 P-38J Lightnings (the new ones) met 2 Tojos and 13 Tonys. One Tony went down, but they took 4 of the high tech enemy fighters down with them. Following the sweep, 23 Blen IV and 33 Wellington IIIs came in. More Tonys and Tojos were on hand and 9 of the Blens and 6 Wellingtons went down in flames.

[center]
Doing well against new fighters[/center]

Akyab was also hit by a small bomber attack.

The forecast in Burma is back to thunderstorms, so our pilots will get some rest tomorrow.

Overall air losses for the day are 26 Japanese to 50 Allied.

[FeurerKrieg]

September 24th, 1943
A little more quiet today. Enemy fighters decided the bad weather wasn't going to slow them down!

At Magwe, enemy P-47C and P-38Js flew sweep. They met some Tojos and Tonys, and we lost 1 Tojo and 3 Tojos to 1 P-47C and 3 P-38Js. So far I'm happy with our performance against the P-38J. Gives me some hope that we might be able to make it until the new Tonys come out.

[center]
More fighting in Burma[/center]

At Chungking our bombers started up again with escorts. One P-40N was on CAP and was shot down easily. Another P-40 and a SB-2c were destroyed on the ground.

[center]
School is in session![/center]

[FeurerKrieg]

Sorry for the lack of posts guys! I can't believe ten days have gone by just like that!

The war goes on, we're up to Oct 25th now, so I'm a full month behind. Hopefully I'll get a flurry of posts up soon, as most of the days have been fairly quiet.

[thegreatwent]

Well for one I'm still checking these AARS. Some I have been reading for some time and would like to know how it turned out[:)]

[FeurerKrieg]

There are some fun, but minor, happenings in late October. Guess I need to get going on these posts so I can get there. [:)]

September 25th, 1943
The I-19, after being hit by a couple airplanes, was tracked down by some destroyers and sunk northwest of Hawaii.

[center]
A valuable Glen sub is sunk[/center]

At Chungking, our bombers destroyed 1 P-40N and 1 SB-2c on the ground.

In Burma, a wave of bombers hit Magwe. In the afternoon, 25 P-38Gs flew over and met 2 Tojo and 7 Tony fighters. One

Tony and one P-38 went down in the skirmish.

At Wewak the airfield was expanded. (AF size 3)

[FeurerKrieg]

September 26th, 1943
Enemy P-38Js, P-47C and P-47Ds sweep Mandalay, but our planes do not offer any fight.

All quiet elsewhere.

[FeurerKrieg]

September 27th, 1943
Some unescorted bombers run into a dozen of our Jacks over Magwe. The quad 20mm guns of the navy fighters take down 6 Vengeance dive bombers and 5 B-25G/H Mitchells.

[center]
Jacks claim some kills at Magwe[/center]

At Chungking, 1 P-40N defends against 200 of our fighters and is shot down easily.

[FeurerKrieg]

September 28th, 1943
22 P-38J Lightnings fly over Magwe, meeting 2 Tojos. One Tojo is lost in the dust up.

At Chungking, 1 SB-2c is destroyed on the ground by our bombers.

[FeurerKrieg]

September 29th, 1943
At Magwe, more minor fights. First, 19 P-47C Thunderbolts engage 2 Tojo and 7 Tonys. 1 Thunderbolt goes down to zero losses for our guys.

In the afternoon, 14 of the new P-47D Thunderbolts flew in. They met 1 Tojo and 8 Tonys. Our crack pilots take down 4 of the new airplanes while only losing 1 Tony.

[center]
Good pilots triumph over modern machines (for today)[/center]

An ad-hoc operation is starting up now. Our 4 AMC raiders are being sent deep into enemy territory between Hawaii and California. The Hokoku Maru and Aikoku Maru will attempt to infiltrate north of Midway in the Midway/Aluetians gap. In the south, the Ukishima Maru and Akagi Maru will sail far south and east and skirt around the Line island, coming up from the south into the same region east of Hawaii. 3 Glen subs are also sailing to arrive in the hunting grounds about the same time.

The Glens will do the spotting so that our AMC presence isn't given away by Alf and Jake floatplanes. Likely we will try one attack from each group and then an attempt to run before enemy carriers show up.

The mission is fourfold -
1) Sink enemy supply/support shipping.
2) Cause enemy to devote greater surface escort to routine shipping in friendly waters
3) Force enemy carriers to sail, thus becoming worn down and less than 100% ready to fight.
4) Gauge enemy reaction to possibly implement a more well planned version of this type of operation in the future.

It will take some time to get into place, probably about 2-3 weeks as the ships are sailing at cruise speed to preserve their large fuels stocks.

[FeurerKrieg]

September 30th, 1943
No major action today. A few ops losses for both sides is about it.

September is over and our northern defenses are largely in place. A crack division from China is about to land at Paramushiro Jima, which has just recently received 5 more IJN Base Force units, giving the base a large amount of coastal defense guns. Two crack brigades from China are en route to Shanghai to go to Ketoi Jima and Entorofu. Another brigade will later be sent to the one west of Ketoi, and then that area will be pretty secure. The countdown begins now to make it to November, if we get there, then I would expect there will be no Allied invasion up north until March 1944 at the earliest due to the winter weather. And by then, I'll have my up gunned Tonys to throw into the fight.

[Durbik]

I'll follow the AMC operations carefully, had no luck with these in my games - maybe I'll find some tips. Great AAR!

[FeurerKrieg]

ORIGINAL: Durbik

I'll follow the AMC operations carefully, had no luck with these in my games - maybe I'll find some tips. Great AAR!

Last night I put together a spreadsheet detailing the exploits of my raiders (not that there have been many) and their crew experience numbers on a monthly basis. It is rather interesting to see how much one or two battles can really push up the ships experience ratings.

I'll posted it eventually, but I don't want to give away any of the upcoming action until we get there. It is coming though, so keep posted!

And for anyone else playing CHS - make sure you turn off the upgrade for your 4 PG class AMCs and 2 ML class AMCs - if you don't they will switch to APs with guns, which of course just don't act the right way in surface combat, given that APs generally try to run away. The two minelayer drop a lot of mines and have great range. One of mine upgraded before I remember to turn those off. But all 4 of the PG classed ones are staying just as they are.