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Palawan - November 2, 1944

I forget exactly why I decided to delay on my landing at Puerto, but I did send my 2 CV TFs north of Palawan in anticipation of KB heading out (they'd been spotted near Luzon recently, IIRC). I was trying to prevent an 8-hex strike here while also remaining outside of 10-hex Jill-pedo range of Manila. I succeeded in the latter while failing in the former, but it didn't matter. KB's air wing is completely shot up for the umpteenth time this game.

The Judy release altitude here confuses me. Why did they drop from 10K instead of divebombing?

Palawan #2 - November 2, 1944

On the same day, the LBA strikes as expected. They don't make it through either.

As mentioned in my text here, I find this behavior strange. The purpose of the CV reaction is to facilitate CV battles by making sure the TFs are within range of each other, however I am 1 hex outside of Allied CV strike range here and my TFs did not react. If they had been 2 hexes closer, they would have reacted (as I've seen in the past when ending up 5-6 hexes from the enemy with the exact same TF settings, and even the same COs). So instead, I sit here and shoot down his planes but don't get to touch his flight decks.

I don't know whether his forces reacted or not. He never said anything about it.

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

Palawan - November 2, 1944

I forget exactly why I decided to delay on my landing at Puerto, but I did send my 2 CV TFs north of Palawan in anticipation of KB heading out (they'd been spotted near Luzon recently, IIRC). I was trying to prevent an 8-hex strike here while also remaining outside of 10-hex Jill-pedo range of Manila. I succeeded in the latter while failing in the former, but it didn't matter. KB's air wing is completely shot up for the umpteenth time this game.

The Judy release altitude here confuses me. Why did they drop from 10K instead of divebombing?

I was going to say that the original altitude for the strike (around 20K on radar) was too high for the DB band, but then I see some of the Judy's did release at 3000 feet. Must be new young pilots having their first time and experiencing premature release.

Well, keep in mind that they don't all have to be set to the same altitude, and the escorts will be 2K higher than others. Judy at 10K, Grace at 15K, escorts at 17K... estimated 20K is believable. Also, it's off by as much as 5K or so a lot.

Also, I find it amusing that whenever I update, he updates. Although I think he is probably farther along in his updates than me - as in he's current. I can't help but notice the title of his most recent post when it's the most recent on the subforum for AARs, and in this case I'll go ahead and mention it because he brought it up in email (presumably). "Skynet..." - I've been noticing DLs of 1/2, 1/5, 2/1, and so on at Adak Island. Unsure why there and not any of the other places I've put decent-sized stockpiles of ships/LCUs/planes in the past. Colombo had much more at it pre-Sumatra than Adak has at it now (Adak's stockpile began as a hedge against southern operations).

November 1, 1944 - November 15, 1944

I feel like "SY shuffles" has been the top item on my daily to-do in this game for a year.

SWPAC
This is what the historical designation was for everything from Luzon to Port Moresby, right?

Musashi ends up making Balikpapan, where we sink her with 51 more bomb hits on November 6. No more Yamatos to sink. Our CVs then head for Soerabaja to sink any more shipping that might still be floating around here, and will then go to Biak for some replenishing - major ground forces and shipping are flowing to Sorong for another invasion.

With the general IJ withdrawal from the airfields south of the Philippines, we're now landing more and more stuff on Timor. We conduct another invasion at Koepang, which is not as heavily garrisoned as Dili or Lautem - just one Division, the 18th. At Lautem, our forces now have the AV upper hand and we're just bomb/bombarding away to degrade enemy supplies and morale.

Additionally, we're getting SIGINT that more units are heading for Luzon - specifically, Laoag and San Fernando. This is as expected. I knew I couldn't move on Luzon quickly enough after Sumatra and Singapore, so plans are in the works to crack this nut later.

Op. Corral
The initial assault at Puerto, just 2 regiments of the Americal (not yet combined...) fails against even poor IJA opposition. This will turn this base into a stalemate, due to its proximity to Manila, however at the very least I have made it more difficult for him to use the base to try to restrict my movements at all between Singapore and Sorong. We'll worry about clearing it out later - there are some other minor units (like the other regiment of the Americal) prepped/prepping for the place.

SE Asia
Mop-up operations continuing in screenshot below. I've been trying to keep track, but haven't always been looking at the list of units in the combat reports... but by the time mop-up operations conclude, we will have killed outright at least 17 IJA Divisions plus 3 or more of the large Ind.Mixed Brigade units (which are basically 60% of a division) and many artillery/aviation units. A few HQs, including Burma Area Army which SIGINT has confirmed has been rebuilt at Tokyo. I hope he rebuilds all of the units - they won't have time at this point to train from their reconstituted experience to a decent level (2+ months to reach 100% prep from 0, then 1+ month to get to national average XP? or more?). Plus the burn of his supplies to take all those replacements... nothing would please me more.

Of course, the VPs for killing them are beginning to add up. Allied LCU losses are approaching 20K, but Japanese LCU losses have shot up from under 10K to almost 15K at this point. A little goal of mine is to get IJA LCU losses to 15K (current 14926) before mine reach 20K (current 19978). The key to this has been not doing any attacks I don't need to do, and not conducting any landings I don't need to conduct. It helps when you're not losing troops in the surf or on ships that get sunk prior to unloading.

November 16 - 30, 1944

Looking at the map and comparing to the last update, it appears that this period is pretty quiet. Mostly logistics and preparing for the next jump.

IJA is still not completely mopped up in Indochina. Four much-depleted pockets remain, and they won't be around much longer.

The IJA ArtilleryStar is outside Vinh still, although about 1/4 of the total units have moved further out to Haiphong. I decided that standing pat at Vinh for some time, in addition to allowing my Indochina bases to build up and for the IJA pockets to be cleared, was the best course of action. My units have been pushing nonstop for 3 months or more, all the way from Rangoon. Experience gains have been plentiful and I'm actually out of Chinese squads in my pools now, but it's time to get Morale back up into the 90s. Some units are in the 80s. I'm not too eager to push via land beyond the reach of my planes. Canton and Hong Kong are both level 9 AFs for him and easy to supply simply by landing supplies at Shanghai. Not a fight that I want to pick right now. I'll set my units at Vinh for R&R, and also to lull the IJA into a sense of complacency while I shuffle some shells elsewhere.

Singkawang still isn't ours, but it will be someday.

Paratroops are used to start capturing islands moving up from Timor towards Java, and little bases all around the Celebes.

The buildup at Sorong continues. We're beginning to shuttle units from Saumlaki, Babar, Taberfane, etc. northwards for future offensives. It's mostly supporting cast: engineers, CD units, AvSupp, HQa's, etc. Several months ago, I identified the spot I wanted to land at next. It should allow for a rapid conquest of the next bite-sized chunk of the Empire. I haven't seen any shipping try to slip through between Manado and Davao weeks now.

The Big Blue Fleet is still at Biak, where it is periodically spotted by search planes (presumably from Babeldaob and Peleliu, which have become frequent bombing targets now).

Back on November 29, and you can see in the strat map above that I haven't captured the base hit, but more bombers here in a single raid than casualties... [:'(]. A paratroops operation to bust the Japanese defenses around Padang and force them a bit farther back.

Next up: 2 to 1 ratio on aircraft losses. Almost there.

VP ratio on 12/1/1944 = 1.225:1

A wild update appears! In December we...

Sumatra
--Captured Djambi with a march overland.
--Successfully cut off all hexsides into Padang, trapping the 2 IJA Divisions there.

Timor
--Captured Koepang, recuperated units at Lautem in preparation for marching over to Dili to finish the job.

Celebes
--Landed at Kendari and Watampone. Some losses at Watampone due to surprise Graces from Balikpapan, but nothing too bad.
--Kendari captured, refugees flee to Kolaka. Will mop them up eventually.
--Captured all the bases between Makassar and Sidate/Manado
--Landed at Manado and Sidate, will eventually secure.

Indochina
--Only 1 pocket of IJA remains to be eliminated.

Other stuff
--Allied ship losses for the entire month totaled 4 subs, 2 DDs, 6 LCI, and a smattering of PT boats. A grand total of 77 VPs.
--By contrast, IJ ship losses (according to in-game interface) were 15 TK, 3 Ansyu PB's, 1 I-boat, 1 xAK, 6 xAKL, 3 small PB's, 5 SC, 4 MTB, and 11 E's.
--Bombing some more industry in China to hurt his supply.
--Gained 20 strat VPs from Hokkaido (and there was much rejoicing).
--Got lots of good SIGINT hits.
--Only got about an 1100:840 ratio in plane points, but got a 1200:160 ratio in LCU points.


What does the future hold?
Lots of logistics/hauling. I call it shuttling. Am using my big command table stick to push stacks of units forward to staging areas. Everything is kind of spread out from the hectic/shoestring operations in the Banda Sea and New Guinea, but now I'm consolidating it into one or two locations for some bigger pushes.

Looting Java.

For a while now (3+ months), I've been sending all of my ship, LCU, and aerial reinforcements to Pearl and then to a staging area for something entirely new... but it's still several months from being implemented.


We're up to VP ratio = 1.257:1 on the eve of 1945. Didn't conquer any big-points bases this month.

A delicate situation here.

I decided that in order to actually win here without committing more forces, I needed to kill the refinery at PBang. It's down in the low-100s, which will suffice. I would've liked to have used it for fuel, though. I'll just have to keep running my CS TFs from Cape Town instead.

A snapshot.

Sidate was disappointing. Initial landing of a USA independent regiment was not enough against a small SNLF and AF unit only. Pathetic. This is definitely a pattern though, so these guys are really only good for garrison duty to me or as adjunct forces with larger invasions.

Talaud and Manado will fall eventually. My hope was that Sidate would fall also, but even if not I will be able to move forces from Manado to Sidate. Since I own the base to the west, I don't have to worry about retreats into the jungle.

CR, if you're reading, this is where paratroops come in very handy.

I'm reading.

This map kind of speaks for itself. I have some lofty long term goals here, but can afford to be patient. I love the pace of LCU operations. Things develop so slowly that if you're not careful, you can get trapped or suffer a body blow. I enjoy trying to take advantage of this. It's like a Morton's Fork/Xanatos Gambit for my opponents.

My navy is operating elsewhere. Supplies are flowing just fine from Singapore into Indochina and then up the coast. I have a few command HQs floating around in the theater as well.

Vinh, Hue, and Udon Thani are all AF9's.

I just meant that as you're conducting your offensives, keep in mind that you might be able to control retreat paths if you're creative. This can seriously speed up an operation by eliminating painful mopping up.

Yeah, that's good advice. It's awfully frustrating (and counterproductive) to try and round up stray bedraggled units retiring into jungles.

Summary of January 1 through 10, 1945

Celebes
Talaud and Manado are captured on January 4.

Balikpapan's AF is shut down by B-29s on the 9th due to sporadic annoyances from Graces, harassing my shipping unloading at Watampone (near Makassar).

Mindanao
I stopped with operation names as right now I'm just plodding forwards. Landings occurred at Cotabato on January 8 and the meager IJA defenders retreat the next day.

Heavy IJN surface forces have been present at Manila for at least a week. Once I landed at Cotabato, they ventured down to Cebu. We planted a few bombs on Kirishima's deck.

Almost 1000 IJ planes are shot down or destroyed during this time period for the loss of about 290 Allied planes. From memory, this is all pretty much around Mindanao. Cagayan, which is a level 9 AF, is the primary target for night bombing. Lots of planes blown up there. Over 700 planes are on CAP over the cluster of TFs outside Cotabato (with more at Cotabato itself), which shoot down pretty much everything. The only exception are a few Lilys that miss, and a large group of Jills that fly all the way down to Manado and put a torpedo into BC Repulse (minor/minimal damage).

Asia
Final pocket of IJA "POWs" destroyed outside Jue on January 4.

Other stuff
A small gaggle of support ships are sunk in Etorofu harbor, in the Kuriles. 3 ACM, 2 AMc, 1 AKE, and 1 AD.

The Okha-carrying Betty has shown up and has thus far only been used in night strikes at 3000 feet. They've all missed. I think I've counted 80+ so far.

Lots of shuttling units around in the Banda Sea area, sending them forward to Watampone or up to Sorong for future offensives. Japanese aerial presence south of the Philippines has atrophied to the extent that I basically have freedom of movement.

I'm not anxious to attack that artillery blob outside of Vinh. Too many casualties suffered in Burma. I'm content to wait him out and nibble around the edges for advantages elsewhere. Maybe I cut him off some day.

As I recall, the months of January and then February went kind of quickly - nothing huge going on for the Allies. So I'll transition now from summaries to some snapshots of theaters over time. We'll lead off with Indochina/China.

Hainan Island has nice Allied Multipliers (*3), so I'll take them for base-building VP purposes. Now that his army is in the open, I'm going to attempt to bomb and then attack. Unfortunately, this never really ends up working (I only catch a unit here and there), but that's OK - he is ceding ground for reasons I can't see (or perhaps for no reason). Yes, I would have eventually completed an end-run around his flank, but he retreated rather prematurely from the hexes outside of Vinh IMO.

We're only 5 hexes from gaining territory in China.

Java and the Celebes

I prevaricated a lot here, but decided to simply use what's nearby and take the islands. Without IJ air forces, this is easy - I can use anything at all. Am mostly using a handful of LCI/AP/AK types with a gaggle of xAP/xAKL types. It's slow, but otherwise the units would be sitting idle or simply shuttling forward to invasions where I'd need more APAs than I have available to use them. Hence, harvesting some low-hanging fruit.