Matrix Games Forums

A sad tail of woe this. Plan to invade Tinian an Saipan which I knew would be heavily defended and as it turns out Saipan appears to have has the close to 600AV, Tinian half that. Recon nor Intel did not report the full strength of Saipan.

Mistakes

• As this is the first really contested amphiboius invasion I failed to assign enough AV to Saipan.
• I sent all invasion LCU to Ponape and assembled the amphibious TF there BUT somehow I sent them towards their destinations before I had loaded them only realising so when they were halfway so sent them back with orders to disbanned. OOPs
• To save time I assambled more Ampib TF (I had enough ships) but all I had in terms of warships were some MSW/SC/DE so I planned to transfer the warships form original TF to cover the invasion. I forgot to do this. Another OOPS.
• Although I'd been running bombardment TF to both island I do not think I'd been doing it long enough consequently CDs were still intact. Airial bombard did not appear to do much. The intact CDs pasted my invasion TFs.
• I did try and compensate my lack of TF protection by using bombardment TFs but this does not appear to work.

Now a question, should a bombardment TF protect an anphibious TF as it appears they don't?

Lack of recon leaves one with lots of unpleasant surprises.  Even with recon you must deal with FOW.

That being said always figure what you need to assault your target and then add more.  Infantry is good, but add a combat eng rgt to help reduce the fort levels.  Armor does wonders at tearing up defenses too.

Naval and air bombardments can soften things up and reduce supply levels. 

Use LCIs, LSTs, APs, etc for rapid unloading for amphib assaults.

A bombardment TF will look to do just that and not protect your shipping.

Read my AAR and see how I took the Marianas first by CVTF raid to get a peek at what was there and then hitting Guam followed by Tinian.  Once these were secured and operational the tough nut of Saipan was put under constant naval and air bombardments and finally the amphib assault. 

Put big warships in your amphibious TF's. They fire back at the CD units and draw fire from the vulnerable transports. Even having some DD's and CL's will help.

If you've got enough, use the LST's, LCI's, etc, in the first wave. They unload everything the first turn. Have plenty of AKA's and APA's that can also unload quickly, and provide supply over the beach for the men on shore.

Combat engineers, tanks, raider units, all are essential in dealing with a heavily defended island. Preferably they need to land with the infantry in the same wave as well.

Air support and naval bombardment, and continuous air recon is vital as well.

I failed to mention in my prior post that bringing everything, including the kitchen sink helps.