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Clearing the Gilberts right now. Took out Apamama and Tarawa with no prob. Had daily recon flights over Makin for the past two weeks. Intel told me roughly 2500 troops stationed there. Took 25th ID and landed. I didnt bring anything else, thinking 15,000 troops will waste 2500 troops no sweat like before. I land and get hammered by 9500 troops!!! Fortunately, I had engineers and the 40th ID on Tarawa, so I brought them over in the next couple of turns, but it ended up taking me about 10 days to clear Makin. 2500 troops my arse!

Anyone else had problems with faulty intel? I guess that is the "realism" molded into the game?

Yes it is common. I guess it is called camoflage. It is a good practice send much more than you think you need and have more in reserve if you need them.

plus, the Japs were notoriously good at "hiding" from the enemy in underground bunkers and tunnels and such. FOW is in effect for your game , I presume?

Just like I want to see it.[;)]

If you always know what the enemy does... War would be easy. Look at history and see how many times battles opponents were misjudged.

Not only by camouflage but also by misleading. One of the nicest misleads was the straw trick from the Germans with the preparations of the Ardennes offensive. By covering the roads with straw by night they were able to prevent tank and vehicle tracks on the roads. The Allies had maximum air and intel superiority but still the attack came as a surprise.

Keep in mind too, non dedicated recon planes will not do nearly as well as recon planes when assigning them to the recon mission.

Precisely! I learned that the hard way, when I mistakenly thought that PBY's could give me good photo intel, and then nearly lost an RCT landing somewhere that shouldn't have been very heavily defended. Overtime for the bombardment line and nearby bomber groups!

1.) Recon flights can raise the DL(detection level) of a ground unit by 4 based on chance( percentage chance of pilots experience).

2.) A patrol or bomber recon flight can raise it by 2 by chance( percentage chance equal to pilot experience divided by 2)

3.) Bombing a ground unit will also give a DL increase of 1 using same formula as point #2

this info was taken from the manual on page 170 section 10.1.3

Keep in mind too, non dedicated recon planes will not do nearly as well as recon planes when assigning them to the recon mission.

In my allied scen 13 game we are at 12-12-42 and I have the mighty total of 1 recon group....

ORIGINAL: usersatch

Anyone else had problems with faulty intel? I guess that is the "realism" molded into the game?

Iwo Jima ? [:D]

http://history.acusd.edu/gen/WW2Timeline/LUTZ/iwo.html

We can see, at the end of the page, in the 'FINAL ANALYSIS OF THE BATTLE'

The U.S. had underestimated the Japanese strenght on the island by as much as 70 percent.

You need to use Fiji Film. Always good results.

But have to be careful because the recon plane units seem to pick out only one or two pilots to go on these missions. The must be danger junkies. And might crash with high fatigue. I normally base two Jap recon units in the same base and change them over ech turn.

It also helps to send in a speculative bombardment mission or two just to see what turns up.

I have been flying recon over Lunga for a week or two and getting a report of 14,000 troops. When I hit the place with some cruisers there was a report of 2,400 casualties!

This gave me a lot of information:

1) The casuality report is crocked
2) There are more than 14,000 guys at Lunga
3) There are no planes there, I did not see any destroyed
4) Bombardment does work better if you have good recon

I still don't know how much damage my ships really did but I learned quite a bit and did not sacrifice a USMC Division in the process.

Recon improves bombardments by 50%

The best recon when it comes to LCU strength is a series of massive ground attack air missions. If you hit the same LCU three turns in a row, that's all that is at the base, or no other unit at the base is more powerful than the unit hit (after being hit by hundreds of bombs for three turns).