I’ve been absent from the AAR forum for quite some time now. However, despite my absence I kept playing regularly and almost one year ago I started my first serious game with the Empire of Japan. I was expecting some early disaster, but thanks to some luck and to some inexperience in PBEM of my opponent I managed to execute my initial strategy almost completely.
I’ve therefore decided to come back to the forum with this “late” AAR, starting from what I usually consider the war turning point: the arrival of the P-38! From now on I’ll verify whether my strategy to build the defensive ring was any good.
I don’t know my opponent alias on this forum and I don’t feel like using his real name, hence I won’t mention him with a name. I’d only like to say that he has proven a very, very nice PBEM pal to have. Always took care of informing me when he was going to be late (which I really appreciate
), steady at all times, even after some severe beatings  and almost always exchanging a few personal news, which makes – IMHO – the experience much nicer. I like to slowly get to know a fellow player ‘s life somewhere else around the world.One last thing on my “enemy”: he is a law enforcement officer and I have to say that I was really impressed by the amount of hours he puts in his work!
Here we go
We are playing the Dec 7th Campaign, patch 1.806, AB map 6.2.
Subs doctrines are off.
House rules
- Airfield stacking: max # of planes in each airfield = airfield size*50
- Allied 2E can only upgrade to 2E (no 4E). Relevant exception: CW 2E can upgrade to Lib VI (4E)
- Japan DB can only upgrade to DB (no LB)
- Allied ASW TF: max 8 ships
- No non-base hex landings
- Russian airfields cannot be used, unless Russia is activated (no air transfers from the West Coast)
- Before attacking Russia I have to 'declare war' = activate it one month in advance.
- Chinese Command Units (Allied and Japanese) cannot leave China if not reassigned to a new HQ (with PPs)
- Allied China Command HQ cannot be reassigned.
- Carriers stick to their original air squadrons. If no squadron is available (as with the CVE Long Island), then we are free to load any carrier capable plane. (VR squadrons can be replaced by combat squadrons, any type).
- Japanese FP planes on subs cannot be upgraded.
- B-17 require AS5+, B-24 AS6+
- No port or airfield night bombing with 4Es
Summary
It’s now November ’42 and the Japanese Empire has switched to defense, with the relevant exception of China.
My initial strategy has been based on my three years playing the Allies. I tried to do what would bother me the most if I was playing the Allies.
The three main principles I’ve been following are:
1) Starting at the border
2) Building a network of size 2 and 4 airfields
3) Spread out
1) Start at the border.
In my experience the Allies have no way, even if given time, to hold SRA, PI or most of Central Pacific, provided of course that the flow of troops and supplies from the US and India is severed. Hence I decided to leave the conquest of PI and SRA at the end of my expansion campaign. As a matter of facts I finished off PI just one month ago (October).
My initial goal was to conquer Central Pacific, New Guinea, New Caledonia, Fiji, Timor and Burma first. And then move backwards towards PI.
Isolating Australia means forcing the Allies to go for the Pacific atolls to reopen the way, which as an Allied player I dread, because: a) atoll landings are a nightmare, unpredictable, bloody and they require lots of transport ships (which Allies only start getting in big numbers later in ’43), b) the Allies cannot count on LBA, hence they have to fight with the F4F and a few Corsair’s (on CVEs), making the Japanese Air Force still dangerous till early ’43. Or maybe I’m just very, very bad at planning and executing atoll landings!
I also wanted to corner as many Allied ships as possible in the first weeks, including the Z force. For which reason I decided to go with a Singapore initial port attack rather than PH, on which I turned in the days following the outbreak of the war. After all the Prince of Wales and the Renown are way more effective at surface combat than any US treaty BB.
I managed to execute this encircling strategy “almost” completely
I was however too slow attacking Canton and my opponent managed to reinforce and fortify it to level 8 as I discovered when I landed my four divisions and support units. The landing disabled catastrophically most of my invasion force and I was forced to evacuate the troops and leave Canton to the Allies. During such unhappy experience I lost the CV Hiyo with all her elite Navy pilots to a sneaky sub attack!Later on a fast Allied raid also secured Baker which I had left garrisoned only with a small base force unit. However all the other Pacific islands from the Society Islands to Palmyra and Christmas Island are firmly in Japanese hands: supplied, fortified, expanded to AS4 (most of them) and quite heavily garrisoned.
Canton and Baker in Allied hands have proven a good and a bad thing. Bad because I have a narrow corridor between Johnston island and Baker to run the supply convoys to Palmyra and Christmas. Good because I managed to sink A LOT of ships carrying supplies, fuel, troops and airplanes to Canton.
On the SRA front I moved fast on Timor and Sumatra turning only later on Java and Borneo.
2) Airfields network.
Allied bombers cannot be stopped once the P-38 arrives. At long range Tony’s can shoot down enough 4Es to make life tough for the Allies, but within 9 hexes the Allies can annihilate any airfield they like.
The only way I found to keep some airfields open and loaded with Betty’s and Kate’s and DB’s, thereby forcing the Allies to provide heavy air cover to any amphibious TF, is to have many developed (2 or 4) airfields nearby. Using cross LRCAP and keeping a few FP in every airfield to force the Allies to do some real recon to know whether an airfield is actually used by attack planes or only by FP. This way I partially overcame the disadvantage the Japs have in this game of showing empty/occupied ports and airfields to the Allies before they make their move.
Hence I developed as many airfields as possible, in most cases stopping at size 4 (for Betty’s) or 2 (for 2E TBs and DBs) depending on the base natural size.
3) Spread out
As a long time Allied player I always faced retreating and concentrating opponents.
I believe that the idea is that once they think that they can no longer stop the enemy they retreat to a “safer” position.
Being the enemy I however greatly appreciated this, because: a) my units do not get disabled by repeated assaults against high forts, b) the supply consumption is seriously reduced, c) the new safer position – thanks to hordes of Seabees building up nearby airfields – is soon made as poor as the previous one.
At the same time I can (as Allies) simply bypass the concentrated bases, bomb their airfields to avoid nasty surprises and move on to less defended objectives.
My idea as Japan is to have lots of bases with a reasonable garrison (100-300 AP), supplies, AV support, fortifications and, therefore, the possibility to launch effective airstrike at any time against enemy convoys. My hope is that this will force my opponent to attack all these bases, disrupting his units and requiring a big logistic effort.
Assaulting a base with forts from 5 to 9, prepped and supplied units is never a guaranteed result, unless you’ve bombed that base for a long time, which of course requires … a long time, 4Es and BBs.
And here we come to my other priority: enemy BBs. The one thing the Allies don’t get in huge amounts are BBs. Even the treaty BBs are excellent ships to prep for invasions. Un-prepped landings, as we all know, are really to avoid. Japanese coastal guns are very, very effective if they are not disabled beforehand.
I did my best to sink as many BBs as possible in the first months of war.
I lost one (BB Kirishima) near PH during a night surface engagement (my opponent – who has a VERY aggressive game style - managed to find my carrier group at night!), the floating damage increased too much and I was too far from any friendly base.
Here’s what I sank so far: 6 US treaty BBs, 4 British BBs (Including the Prince of Wales) and the one British 1 BC.
The aggressive attitude of my opponent helped a lot in this endeavor. During the summer of ’42 he decided to try and recapture Palmyra and sent pretty much all he had available at the time. I had most of my carrier force ready at Kwajalein and once the H8K reported a big Allied formation I moved Zero’s and Betty’s to Palmyra and Christmas (both fully developed) and all my carriers - split into 2 KB - at full speed to intercept the incoming attack. Two surface TFs headed by the Yamato made sail for the Island too.
My opponent didn’t give up and managed to reach the shores despite the heavy losses during two days of relentless aerial attacks. Once he approached the Islands he found 2 TF with 5 BBs waiting for the survivors of the aerial onslaught. Needless to say that few ever made it back to PH.
So, as a result of the initial attacks and of the early counter-offensive, the BB Allied force has been somehow reduced. And a few more BBs have been damaged.
Capital ship losses so far
Japan
- BB Kirishima
- CV Hiyo
- CVE Chuyo
- CA Aoba
- 3 CL
Allies
- 7 CV
- 1 CVE
- 1 CVL
- 17 CA
- 24 CL
- 4 CLAA
The Air Theater
Overall losses have been 7.300 Allied plane vs. 5.300 Japanese planes
I took great care not to provide the enemy with any training ground nearby Australia. I left the small islands in the Banda Sea to the Allies, so that he could not train fighter planes.
In the Pacific there’s no training ground and Burma would be the only exception.
There my opponent decided to go for a strong defensive force of Hurricane’s and Spits. Initially I thought it a mistake. I would have converted most of them into Wirraway’s to use their better range for training over my bases in Burma. However I now believe that he might have done the right choice. Once I tried a raid over Chittagong with dozens of Betty’s escorted by over 20 elite Zero’s. It’s been a slaughter, the Spits cut through my escort as if it wasn’t there (only few survived) and decimated my Betty’s.
Clearly the Spit is a superior fighter on defense, despite all my fighter pilots with 80+ experience the Spits still kicked my butt. I’ve since put my Betty’s in bases without fighter escort, so that they will attack only unprotected ships. It won’t happen too often but I will avoid a useless massacre. At least in the British area.
During the last turn I had the first engagement with P-38, over Timor. They escorted a raid of 4Es aimed at my airfield.
I had two Daitai’s of (36) Tony and (9) A6M3 stationed at Lautern, plus the Navy pilots on the carriers at harbor, there to defend the supply convoys.
All my fighter pilots (with the exception of the Rufe’s) are 80+ exp.
It was a nice surprise to discover that – on defense – I can still fight back the P-38, and real well too. Of course I had quantity advantage, height advantage and a much higher exp (he had no way to train those pilots, hence they must have been 60-70 exp).
Watching the combat I noticed that most kills on the P-38 were obtained by the A6M3. I lost only 1 Tony in dogfight (the others were destroyed on the ground), but it did not manage to engage the P-38 effectively, while it’s always excellent vs. bombers.
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Day Air attack on Lautern , at 33,77
Japanese aircraft
A6M2-N Rufe x 8
A6M2 Zero x 26
A6M3 Zero x 22
Ki-61 KAIc Tony x 21
Allied aircraft
P-38G Lightning x 23
B-17E Fortress x 10
B-24D Liberator x 31
Japanese aircraft losses
A6M2-N Rufe: 4 destroyed
A6M2 Zero: 4 destroyed, 5 damaged
A6M3 Zero: 1 destroyed, 6 damaged
Ki-61 KAIc Tony: 7 destroyed, 7 damaged
J1N1-R Irving: 3 destroyed
Allied aircraft losses
P-38G Lightning: 17 destroyed
B-17E Fortress: 2 destroyed, 6 damaged
B-24D Liberator: 9 destroyed, 11 damaged
Japanese ground losses:
211 casualties reported
Guns lost 3
Airbase hits 4
Airbase supply hits 2
Runway hits 7
Aircraft Attacking:
4 x B-17E Fortress bombing at 8000 feet
7 x B-24D Liberator bombing at 7000 feet
3 x B-17E Fortress bombing at 8000 feet
2 x B-24D Liberator bombing at 7000 feet
2 x B-24D Liberator bombing at 7000 feet
1 x B-24D Liberator bombing at 7000 feet
1 x B-17E Fortress bombing at 8000 feet
2 x B-24D Liberator bombing at 7000 feet
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On the airframes production.
With regard to bombers I privileged the Sally, because of the Mitsubishi engine. I currently produce a bit more than 80/month, with a stock of approx. 200 planes.
I also produce 50+ Helen and some 200 are already in stock.
Hence I produce approx. 140 bombers/month. So far it’s proven enough, I expect I’ll have to increase the production as the war goes on.
Betty’s are of course the main TB and LR LB with a production recently increased to 150/month.
Val’ and Kate’s are both around 50/month with a stock also around 200.
Dinah’s are another big hit on the production, I’m increasing it to 60/month, because the current 40+ is not enough. I have a stock of 6 with over 300 planes already used.
Fighters: (144) A6M2/A6M3a per month (factories are upgrading now), with a stock of 300 A6M2.
(104) A6M3/month and the usual 200+ stock.
(200) Tony’s/month (only recently increased from 180). It’s my number one plane, the stock is still small (a few dozen) because I’ve just finished upgrading the trained squadrons. They are also heavily engaged in SRA and Burma.
(70) Tojo’s/month. I prefer the Tony, both for the longer range and for the more powerful guns, better vs. bombers. But the Tojo does well vs. enemy fighters, hence I keep a couple of Daitai’s.
On the engine side. I have big stocks (500-800) of all the engines and the production is still superior to the need.
Stockpile.
3.2M supplies
3.9M fuel
14.3k HI production (320k in stock)
2.7k Oil production (1.6M in stock)
18k resources production (1.4M in stock)
I have accelerated the arrival of the CV Taiho from day 1. I should get the new CV early Feb ’43, equipped with the new generation planes (although I’ll have no airframes to replace the lost planes).
Shinano was stopped as most AP/AK/TK. AR have been converted and accelerated. Now the following ports have all 4 AR each: Tokyo, Singapore, Kwajalein, Soerebaja, Osaka/Kobe.
I also accelerated all the CVE/CVL that I could get in ’42 and they are all available. I’ve stopped, on the other hand, all the CV/CVL/CVE scheduled to arrive after the second half of ’43. I don’t want to provide additional targets to the Allies!
The only two assets I’m still waiting for are the Musashi and the Taiho, they’ll be both available in 2-3 months.
ML and subs have also been accelerated. I scored LOTS of hits with the subs (sub doctrine is off). Now it’s no longer possible because Allied ASW capacity is too developed. I use the subs to lay mines and to scout.
I’m mining everything I can, but I try to limit the amount of mines. Nowhere I have more than 4k mines.
I dare say that for the first post, this has been long enough! [:D]
More posts will follow describing the current situation on the various areas: Burma, China, Timor, Aleutians, New Guinea, Central Pacific.
Needless to say that any comment/suggestion will be GREATLY appreciated [:)]
The Info screen today.
two MSW’s, probably headed North to Darwin, which I’ve been mining relentlessly with subs from Java.
