Russ (aka Mogami) versus Tris (aka TJ)

[Tristanjohn]

Russ is the Japanese (serves him right, too) while I take the Allied side of the board (poetic justice?).

We're playing stock scenario 15, with sub doctrines off, Allied damage control on, unlimited upgrades off (that's good, as it only comes back to haunt the Japanese two-fold) and I'm not sure what else.

I guess Russ is going to stomp on Pearl Harbor with his jackboots, maybe hang around a few turns and stomp on it some more for good measure, who knows? then sail off with his main carrier TF and strike me mortal harm someplace else.

Russ noted on the boards that he's invented some kind of new super-up strategy for the Japanese to start the game, a sort of "encirclement" or "cauldron" strategy if I understand him correctly (I wonder what the Japanese phrase for Kesselschlachten is) in order, no doubt, to better encompass my Vernichtungsgedanke (and I wonder what the Japanese expression for that might be) along the way.

Whatever, ours to do or die, Semper Fi and all that.

[mogami]

HI, TJ both players can upgrade Human control of upgrades is on. Only at start Airgroup replacements and upgrades are off. They won't take replacements or upgrade unless you tell them to.
As for Pearl Harbor I don't think you can find an AAR where I remained there for a second strike. I look at this way. As far as the PH strike goes I know exactly what the commander I send is going to do. Attack and then bug out just like planned. The mission is too buy time not win the war in a single blow. KB has miles to go before it sleeps and it can't be keeping promises to other commands by hanging out near PH (submarine central)

Encirclements are what all attacks are really about. When Lee sent Pickett at Gettysburg he was hoping to achive an encirclement. You break the center of the line and then pour into the rear and change directions and encircle the flanks. Japan prewar was always claiming the Western powers had a strategy to encircle her kind of nutty to worry about that didn't they have globes in Japan pre war?)
So you don't have to view the problem as a need to counter encircle the Allies. For the most part a good chunk of them already are encirlced (almost)

[patrickl]

Looks like it is going to be the fight of the century! Guys, better grab the the best seat and enjoy the show. [:D] Look forward to your AAR!

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: Mogami

HI, TJ both players can upgrade Human control of upgrades is on. Only at start Airgroup replacements and upgrades are off. They won't take replacements or upgrade unless you tell them to.
As for Pearl Harbor I don't think you can find an AAR where I remained there for a second strike. I look at this way. As far as the PH strike goes I know exactly what the commander I send is going to do. Attack and then bug out just like planned. The mission is too buy time not win the war in a single blow. KB has miles to go before it sleeps and it can't be keeping promises to other commands by hanging out near PH (submarine central)

Encirclements are what all attacks are really about. When Lee sent Pickett at Gettysburg he was hoping to achive an encirclement. You break the center of the line and then pour into the rear and change directions and encircle the flanks. Japan prewar was always claiming the Western powers had a strategy to encircle her kind of nutty to worry about that didn't they have globes in Japan pre war?)
So you don't have to view the problem as a need to counter encircle the Allies. For the most part a good chunk of them already are encirlced (almost)

You think Lee was trying to "encircle" the Union on the third day?

No matter, I look forward to a pleasant game with you. Good fortune! [:)]

[mogami]

Hi, Yes I think Lee was trying to encircle a part of the Union Army. What do you think? That he thought by attacking just the center he would destroy it? No he hoped for a break that would produce an encirclement of a portion of the Union not in the center.
You can try for an encirclement by flank marches but where the enemy is in a solid line with no flanks (France WWI) encirclements are attempted via frontal attacks against a percieved weak point that would allow follow on troops to gain the enemy rear and from there complete an encirclement (Russia 1941 and after) France 1940 (on a grand scale. )

[Kereguelen]

ORIGINAL: Mogami

You can try for an encirclement by flank marches but where the enemy is in a solid line with no flanks (France WWI)

The original intention of the "Schlieffenplan" was an encirclement by outflanking the French army...! [It only did not work as planned and hit the French frontal at the Marne because Moltke (the younger) and Bethman-Hollweg (and maybe even the emperor) did not want to march through Holland (ostensibly thinking that Germany was making enough enemies by marching through Belgium) as it originally was planned by Alfred von Schlieffen; other reasons were that too many troops were diverted to the Alsace and East Prussia]

[Mike Solli]

Go for it, Mogami! I'm taking notes.

[mogami]

Hi, I think the orginal plan acknowledged the need to make an attack and break through some portion of the French line. Then the over sized German right would do the encirclement. However as you say troops were diverted and other factors lead to a gap between the two German armies involved and into this gap the French counter attacked. The Germans then had to scrap the plan because now they were danger of having a portion of their army encircled.

[mogami]

HI, OK before I start giving orders on turn 1 I first decide what I am going to do. I mean what approach to SRA and other areas I am going to take.
The first thing after the war starts Japan has to do is move the forces into the battle area.
I use the PH strike and the attacks on Clark and Singapore to clear the way for my troop transports. We want to get them where they are going before the enemy has time to muster forces in their front.
I try to provide CAP and surface escorts. In fact several landings are ready to proceed but must wait on airfields to be captured and groups moved into place.
I don't want to dally this time around as I have found myself prone to delay in past games. This time follow up forces were withheld from the intial plunge so there should be no delay. Don't look for any great new plan in the sense of a new order of attack but instead in a new method of attack. I'm not going to bother with reducing every Allied held hex right from the start but instead capture locations that aid in securing the next objective. follow on units will mop up.

[Tristanjohn]

That's interesting. We'll see how that works with the game system.

I don't think a prudent Japanese player need worry too much about time, but I wouldn't dawdle into June to get my SRA business in order, either. I'm not going to strip any theater to reinforce another, but rather methodically secure what I consider to be the most valuable bases in the rear and then build up my potential patiently from there. You shouldn't experience any time problems with me.

If and when I go about "taking" a base you hold it will be with enough of something to keep it forever. Or at least that would be my intention--plans have been known to go astray.

I predict an easy opening for you.

The word you use "encircle" I'm uncomfortable with, not your reading of one commander's plans or another.

As for Lee at Gettysburg, he must have known at some gut level that he'd shot his bolt on 2 July. But then again he was subject to victory disease, too, and had pulled off more than one seemingly impossible coup before that, so who knows what his gut told him. We do know what Longstreet told him, though, so that's an indication that at least someone over on that side of the line saw and realized the actual battlefield positions for what they were.

In a nutshell, Lee didn't have the numbers to "encircle" anyone. At that juncture of the battle the Union had a good two corps sitting (literally sitting) in reserve. In fact I think a bit more than that all told. And Lee's men were basically at the end of their tethers.

Instead of using the term encircle, Russ, you might want instead to explore and study the thoughts of modern mobile warfare as expressed by Guderian and Rommel, who tried to practice (Rommel was actually able to fully practice in the desert) what the author Matthew Cooper called the "armored idea." (The German Army 1943-45 ISBN 1-56865-390-5). It's a great read--Cooper is a decent writer in his own right, plus he has a knack for presenting large concepts into packages of more manageable proportions.) Basically, this went back to the original thinking of Fuller and Hart after WWI and, to be brief, wished to assemble a mobile force of combined arms capable to penetrate fast and deeply to an enemy's HQ and communication and logistics centers, take those out, thus paralyze the enemy in terms of command control, and then either move on to another target, if possible, or hold for awhile until slower-moving units were able to consolidate these gains--to include mopping up the bewildered enemy stragglers along the way.

In Russia, Guderian was mainly shackled in his attempts to fight mobile warfare along these lines by superior command that simply didn't understand the concept, and so his efforts usually led to nothing better than the classic cauldron battles of an earlier era. These results seemed spectacular enough on the surface in the summer of 1941, but they didn't lead to ultimate victory. Perhaps the Germans might have tasted victory had the "armored idea" been appreciated at the higher levels of command. We'll never know now.

I don't think Lee had this in mind exactly, it was a different time, but the effect he caused on Union troops in the field was similar--shock, then demorilization. So, at Gettysburg I believe the most he hoped for on 3 July was to storm the Union center and create enough chaos and carnage there to persuade the troops to panic and begin a retreat in disorder all along the line, and then perhaps the opportunity might have presented itself for the Confederates to take advantage of this . . . but really, looking back on the situation as it actually was there was no hope for it. the Union was too strong, its position too daunting, its leadership too resolved . . . and the Confederates too tired. On the 4th Lee's army marched away a defeated force, dragging its heels, and had the Army of the Potomac been handled more boldly (the fresh troops to pursue vigorously were available) it's quite possible the Confederate withdrawal might have been turned into a rout of sorts. But we'll never know that for sure, either.

I presume you've read The Gettysburg Campaign by Coddington. If not, that's a wonderful experience and loaded with good clues as to who was thinking what.

Anyway, Russ, I understand what you want to get at when you say "encircle," I just don't think that's the best term to use. Maybe "tactical envelopment" would work better, or something like that. And in our game it will hardly matter, for as I've noted I'm not about to create giant pockets of troops for you to encircle and kill as you please. Malaya eventually dies, and most everything already there dies, too. The SRA is full of assets which won't make it out. I can't do much about that, either. And I think events move too slowly in China (or ought to) for these kinds of debacles to show themselves. (I did almost catch Chez at Chungking, though, and would have had I not warned him of his predicament, and understood the land-combat rules better. But then neither did he fully understand the rules, so call that an exception.)

Basically I see a nice, easy and smooth-sailing game before us. Boring and predictable. But of course that depends more on you than me.

[Tristanjohn]

[font="Times New Roman"]Japanese planes bombed the U.S. Naval installation at Pearl Harbor yesterday morning. Details at this time are brief, but accounts from the scene tell of death, destruction and chaos everywhere. At least one battleship, the Arizona, is said to have been sunk in this sneak attack, and scores of other ships were seriously damaged according to military sources.[/font]

[Tristanjohn]

[font="Times New Roman"]8 December 1941

President Roosevelt, in a speech before Congress, asked yesterday that a state of war be declared on Japan in the aftermath of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.[/font]

[Tristanjohn]

[font="Times New Roman"]8 December 1941[/font]

[Tristanjohn]

[font="Times New Roman"]8 December 1941[/font]

[Tristanjohn]

[font="Times New Roman"]Following President Roosevelt's stirring speech before Congress yesterday, the country has responded with an outpouring of patriotic sentiment. People everywhere seem galvanized to the war effort now before them, with hatred for the treachery shown by the Japanese simmering not far below the surface.[/font]

[Tristanjohn]

[font="Times New Roman"]The first pictures of the destruction wrought at Pearl Harbor are just beginning to filter into newsrooms across the country. It is not a pretty sight.[/font]

[Tristanjohn]

[font="Times New Roman"]8-9 December 1941

Following the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, it has been learned that forces of the Empire of Japan have attacked the Philippine Islands, Thailand and Manado on Celebes Island. Two Japanese submarines have been reported sunk in the Mallaca Strait.[/font]

[Tristanjohn]

[font="Times New Roman"]The port town of Songkhia in Thailand was stormed by Japanese naval forces. Biritsh military units in the area have put up a brave fight, but sources said the enemy is very strong, and a withdrawal to Malaya to the south is soon expected.[/font]

[Tristanjohn]

[font="Times New Roman"]The British Naval Attache's office in Colombo said yesterday that destroyer HMS Stronghold was lost on 9 December in action with an enemy submarine in the Strait of Mallaca. The following day another Japanese submarine, identified as I-158, was detected and sunk about 100 miles east of the same location.[/font]

[Tristanjohn]

[font="Times New Roman"]Military officials at Pearl Harbor said yesterday that Wake Island has fallen to the Japanese. The invasion apparently took place shortly after Sunday's sneak attack. There is no further word regarding casualties to the Marine garrison there.

Two days later, United States Navy aircraft carriers under the command of Admiral William Halsey struck back at that Japanese invasion force.[/font]