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The enemy is invading my base. I get messages that my CD batterries are firing on amphibious troops and on transports but I don't get any quantitative information. all I know is that the enemy has landed and I have a problem. Has anyone ever repelled an invasion by their CD units? Didn't Wake manage an effective defense with its CD guns? Can DC units alone hold off an invasion fleet? I think it could.

Originally posted by Drex
The enemy is invading my base. I get messages that my CD batterries are firing on amphibious troops and on transports but I don't get any quantitative information. all I know is that the enemy has landed and I have a problem. Has anyone ever repelled an invasion by their CD units? Didn't Wake manage an effective defense with its CD guns? Can DC units alone hold off an invasion fleet? I think it could.

I am not sure about that.

Coastal Defense works best best when supporting a determined and adequate defense.

Yea, losses will be taken going ashore, but without significant resistance, the CD batteries will fall quickly.

...landing your own troops on a beach with a heavy CD-defense you'll find out that these guns can do a lot of damage to your transports and support ships, such as MSW's.

And these guns will be firing longer if your TF ia not returning fire, i.e. has CA or CL units included that can silence those coastal guns.

CD units are also good for dealing out some damage against bombardment groups and can rather heavily damage DD's and CL's with low armor ratings

Cheers,
Christof

True enough.

But the ability for CDs to be truly dominant is dependent on the terrain and number of landing areas. If the number of areas in a particular "hex" are limited. CD is that much more effective. If that is not the case, then a more comprehensive defense then just CDs will be required to repel a significant assault force.

What do you mean by 'landing aeras' : sides of the hex that can be reached by sea ?

In my current PBEM games, I landed (as USN) in Gili Gili and was bloodied by a CD unit, that damaged 2 AP and disabled (SYS and FLT > 50) another. There is only one path to land here. And I had heavy escort (12 CA/DD) firing counterbattery fire.

In an IJN game, my opponent landed in Rossel Island, that can be approached from everywhere by ship. My CD guns here didn't fire much despite no counterbattery (next day, my CV planes and Yamato solved the problem).

CD guns are useful against bombardment TF. They won't stop an invasion but will make it costly. If the landing is under enemy LBA range, any damaged transport is in real danger. You have two choices : let them try to come back alone, or try to cover them with your fleet, that so will remain longer in the aera and so be more exposed to enemy reaction.

Posted by Drex

Has anyone ever repelled an invasion by their CD units?

I don't think it's possible in UV (if by repelling, you mean stop the troops landing). The only way to stop troops landing is to sink the ships on the turn they arrive and no battery in UV has that hitting power (WitP is a different matter :p ).

The worst drubbing I ever got was when 16 out of 18 APs were damaged by CD fire at Shortland. Some sank over the next few turns. It came as a bit off a shock as the island had been plastered by air and sea for over a month.

Despite that, the bulk of my troops still calmly disembarked and captured the place. All the CDs did was made sure that I had to send another convoy to pick up the troops.

That our game Drex? I can't tell how much damage was done to the transports since your Nells and Bettys put a bunch of holes in the APs as well. I really didn't do a good job supporting the landing. Anyone know if the warships need to be in the same TF to return fire? I've got a SC TF with the transports but not much in the same TF as the transports (for now that is....)

It seems to me that only warships in the same TF than the transports will return fire.
Other forces may be used to bombard the target before the landing.

If I'm right the sequence is :
1) sweeping of mines by you MSW if you have any
2) arrival of your ships, and eventual mine hits
Not sure about the order of these two
3) naval bombardement (that may destroy some CS guns)
4) landing and CD guns firing on landing/troops

During most landings in WWII, DD were used as forward counterbattery ships, exactly in this role. But cruisers and BB off shore were also able to fire at batteries.

Originally posted by fcooke
That our game Drex? I can't tell how much damage was done to the transports since your Nells and Bettys put a bunch of holes in the APs as well. I really didn't do a good job supporting the landing. Anyone know if the warships need to be in the same TF to return fire? I've got a SC TF with the transports but not much in the same TF as the transports (for now that is....)

Yep, its our game Frank. I kept getting the message that my batteries were firing on your troops and then on your ship, then your ships were firing back but no display of casualties. Couldn't have done much since you captured Wunpuko(emphasis on the puke) anyway. At least I made you pay for it in torpedoed ships.

Drongo, same thing happened to me at The Shortlands except that I aborted the landing and lost one out of the two divs I attacked with. I had been bombing and shelling the place for over
a month, to no effect.

Posted by NAVMAN

Drongo, same thing happened to me at The Shortlands except that I aborted the landing and lost one out of the two divs I attacked with. I had been bombing and shelling the place for over

I was lucky as my convoy was almost all troops and little extra supply, so they all had unloaded after 2 turns. Any longer and the damage I was receiving would have put every transport on the bottom (damage of the surviving ships after 2 days was between 30% - 90%). I only had 6 DDs in the TF as escort and they were just incapable of stopping the CDs.

It was in a game against the AI and in those games, Shortland always gets overloaded with Japanese troops of all types (CDs included). I probably should have known better but once you weather the early AI storms, you get a bit lazy as the allies. Still surprised how ineffective the pre-invasion attacks were though.

Cheers

I think CD units may be a bit too effective in the game. Remember that the first invasion of Wake Island was the only amphibious assault of the Pacific War that was repulsed.

I think you're right. there were some repulses at Bataan but they were just Japanese raids. Anyone think of any major invasions in the Pacific that were pushed back? In Europe I can think of Dieppe but that hardly is what were taking about. Tarawa was a close call.

Drex/Mike,
Believe you are correct in the over effectiveness of th CD units. I have been wondering about this for some time as these units
seem immune to being neutralized by bombing/shelling. From what I can recall, most losses to transports at invasion sites were
due to air attack and not shore batteries. The losses to troops I can understand to some extent, as this may represent losses to landing craft and troops wading ashore, etc. However, the losses
to APs and AKs seem excessive vis-a-vis the historical record.

That reminds me of my invasion of munda last time.

My Invasion-TF was shelled to pieces from CD-Guns (recon shows CD-Battery with 17 gunss or so)

After 3-4 turns of unloading, most of the AP´s had 40-60% damage...not one of them sunk, but having 8 AP´s in such condition after an invasion, my inspiration to do the next one is pretty low..

Despite lots of air attacks and hundreds dead on the island, those guns are nearly immune to air attack.

Bombardement-TF´s don´t help much, too:mad:

Originally posted by Drex
I think you're right. there were some repulses at Bataan but they were just Japanese raids. Anyone think of any major invasions in the Pacific that were pushed back? In Europe I can think of Dieppe but that hardly is what were taking about. Tarawa was a close call.

The Japanese landed a SNLF at Milne Bay in New Guinea and were contained by Australian defenders for about ten days before withdrawing. It was the first time in the Pacific war a Japanese amphibious invading force had been turned back after it had established a beachhead. Australian artillery and mortar fire played a large part in turning the fortunes of battle in the Allies’ favour but I have no idea if there were any proper coastal defense batteries present.

What about the first abortive attempt at Wake Island I just read about?

Would appreciate if someone with some academic (ie. not hearsay) knowledge on the subject can inform me how true the following is:

Taken from Page 28, The Pacific Campaign, Dan van der Vat (if you are going to have a dutch name you should at least hope for a better translation of it )

In the early hours of the 11th the [IJN] invasion force approached [Wake] in a heavy swell, firing a short barrage which did little damage. The American coastal defense Batterry A hit Kajioka's flagship, the light cruiser Yubari, and drove her off badly damaged. Battery L sank the destroyer Hayate and hit three other ships in quick succession. Battery B caused three other destroyers to retire. The four suviving wildcat fighters damaged another cruiser and sank the destroyer Kisaragi, as well as driving off another air attack with several losses to the Japanese (and two to themselves).

Now, firstly a bunch of batteries that had a total of 6 X 5 inch guns, and 12 AA/multipurpose guns between them, doing that much damage to an invasion fleet (especially the part about naliing a light cruiser and sinking the destroyer) is more damage than I've ever seen in UV. Also, the fact the invaders were driven off by a combination of 4 wildcats (sank a destroyer and damaged a cruiser????? My wildcats seem a bit limited compared to that!) and the CD, well if that is true then maybe some tweaking needs to be done to the engine!

Originally posted by Luskan

Would appreciate if someone with some academic (ie. not hearsay) knowledge on the subject can inform me how true the following is:

[snip]

Also, the fact the invaders were driven off by a combination of 4 wildcats (sank a destroyer and damaged a cruiser????? My wildcats seem a bit limited compared to that!) and the CD, well if that is true then maybe some tweaking needs to be done to the engine!

I don't know whether I qualify for academic knowledge, but I own a few dozen books on the Pacific War. What I've read on this topic matches Dan van der Vat's description. I suspect the common source of all newer secondary works is the official "History of US Naval Operations in WW2" by S.E. Morison. Vol. III (published in 1948) includes a chapter on Wake Island.

Re the coastal artillery- according to Morison this was the only case in the Pacific War that coast defense guns did beat off an amphibious landing. I would think that the regular Marines of this coast defense unit knew their stuff...

Re the Wildcat effectiveness, Morison writes that the four Wildcats were strafing and dropping 100-pound bombs from an 'extemporized release' (p.234) in sort of a shuttle attack, i.e. attacking, returning to rearm and taking off again. The Wildcats destroyed a torpedo battery on Tenryu, hit the radio shack of Tatsuta and started a fire on a transport. Morison suggests that destroyer Kisaragi blew up after a Wildcat managed to hit the depth charges, of which the destroyer had been carrying an extra load. Sounds like a lucky hit.

You may have a look at HyperWar: World War II on the World Wide Web at http://metalab.unc.edu/hyperwar/
for (amongst much other stuff) a history of the USMC, including a detailed chapter on Wake Is.

Hope this helps.

The defence of Wake reads like the script of a corny Hollywood movie. The amazing thing is it is all true.

Those few Wildcats put up an amazing defence...and the shore batteries.

In Europe, a Soviet landing in Black Sea was repulsed by Germans on 4th February 1943.

Otherwise in UV period and aera (so excluding Tarawa), Allied troops always landed in places where there was no CD. They took jungle spots that they turn into bases rather than taking the main Japanese bases (Lunga was not operationnal when taken).

Regarding CD guns, they should hit maybe less and be easier to silence trough counterfire but do more damage. Most of the CD guns in UV are of medium caliber, so more the types covering landing beaches in bunkers than the huge guns (battleships like) I imagine as coastal batteries.