ORIGINAL: JocMeister
When did you start buildning up your forward airbases and how the hell did you get supplies going to them? Draw supplies and stockpile?
Depends where you mean.
Bases in India saw construction from day...I dunno how many days it is for aviation base forces to reach Tezpur by rail, but however many days that is from the start of the war. So, there's been a fairly constant effort there right from the beginning which gives us a fairly broad logistical base. Note that I have been going at it from the back forwards - we haven't touched Ledo, for example - so we have large stockpiles close to the drawing bases. Also, I've kept garrisons along the frontier as small as possible - there's a light-pack Indian Div at Kalemyo and a proper one at Imphal, but that's mostly it for the really supply-pressed places.
Bases in Burma (Shwebo, Katha, Myitkyina etc) saw some construction even while I held it - I was uncertain whether I would be able or inclined to hold upper Burma and eventually decided in favour of leaving, but believed I'd be better served in the long term by these bases being built up even if I had to release them to Japanese control in the short term. Deciding against staying in Burma may have been a mistkake, but you never know - and the Japanese have helpfully continued construction in many places. If I can capture bases in Burma in the first place I expect minimal supply problems - my concern is stalling outside a base or bases
Broadly speaking, supply problems in the Burma area only eventuate in friendly-controlled bases; out in the open, or in enemy bases, there are generally so many different points for units to draw supply from that they will have no problems. I intend to take extreme advantage of this fact when moving into Burma, if the Japanese let me.
As far as Australia, again the Tennant Creek effort started early - as soon as engineers arrived in Australia, which was...I can't remember when. January? I know I pulled some out of the Phillipines to get things started. I had a very definite conception that I would need it to be up and running from the start - if you look at f.e Charters Towers in NW Queensland, that's only in the last few weeks received any real engineering attention; the far northern bases - Cooktown, Coen and whatever the other one is - have had none; my only units north of Cairns are a base force and a tank batallion at Cooktown. Daly Waters and Katherine were built up by the Japanese, which I always thought was very nice of them and very consciously made an effort not to interfere with.
The limiting factor at TC was supply for a long time, because the infrastructure is actually much worse in practice - long, poor-quality road from Alice Springs and all. Australian ops are a lot more dependent on air supply, with a lot of bombers being used to support the air forces I have operating in the NW - Daly Waters is still very fragile supply-wise and isn't suitable as a bomber base except on rare occasions due to supply issues. Tennant Creek is still a major bomber base for operations against Darwin, but a number of aircraft have moved over to Normanton which has no supply issues (but is further away, reducing their effectiveness. Swings and roundabouts...). I think at the moment I have about 150 bombers flying supplies for 70 or so bombers at TC. A significant Japanese air effort directed against Daly would be extremely damaging - a bad day of bombing would probably wipe out supply stockpiles - but the thing is that with Darwin suppressed it's out of IJAAF bomber range and the IJNAF completely refuse to fly in daylight if they expect any opposition at all. I am managing to grow the airfield, albeit slowly.
Once I take Katherine - I think I may do this in about two weeks if it feels like a good idea - the dynamic will change, because Kat is within range of IJAAF bombers from Babar, just. At that point I am unsure what the continued suppression of Darwin accomplishes, so we may be able to go over to a more normal means of operation.
Basically, the thing with Australia is that I more or less did not throw away any aircraft that could lift supplies for any reason in the first six months of the war - which has allowed me to move a lot of air supply in this campaign - and the Japanese decision to move onto Fiji & New Caledonia, whatever else it may have done, did remove the need to commit significant engineering assets to build them up.
I mean, there are four places on the map where I have major engineering commitments - Adak, northern Australia, the Burmese frontier and to a certain extent Niue. No building up every little island in the Solomons here...also as a consequence of the use of bombers this way, the RAAF is terribly short of bomber-trained pilots - they've all been flying supplies - and my naval search coverage over the Pacific has been spotty as hell - with nearly all the amphibious Catalinas having been used as transports at some point or another. I am just now starting to correct the RAAF's problems, but it's going to be a couple of months. Of course, that's when they start to get some decent aircraft...
Use of supply stockpiling is
absolutely critical to both these buildups - probably more so to Australia, but still critical in Burma - and you would capital-N Not be able to do what I've done without use of that feature. What it meant was that there was for example no troop supply load on Tennant Creek - troops were all drawing their own supplies independently from Alice Springs (and still are even up by Daly Waters) - so everything gets put into construction, which then means you can draw more supplies, which then...etc. Bear in mind the opening of the campaign against Darwin was the first time aircraft had
ever based out of Tennant Creek - no putting carts before horses here.
Uh, what else...Alice Springs was enormously overstacked and underdefended in the lead-up to the opening of things in Australia, and one bad Japanese bomber raid would have made all this impossible. Of course, there's never been a recon aircraft over the place, so IJHQ never knew that.
Do you think you will be able to draw suppies to Mandalay or will you rely on airlifting?
I am confident troop supply in Burma will be acceptable; I would prefer not to take aircraft off China runs unless absolutely necessary. We're just about hanging on in China, since the Japanese have given up on bombing Changsha. My ability to supply aircraft forwards may be more limited until we're past Shwebo; the really major problem, and it's one that may be quite crippling if the Japanese decide to make a big stand, will be keeping units in supply while they're actually in Shwebo in advance of river crossings, because at that point we'll be in a friendly base and subject to units' inability to draw from extra-base sources there. We'll see...it's going to be at least 10 weeks before we get anything started here, anyway, as I just spent 500pp to buy out an infantry regiment for Umnak...wish I'd never built the airfield there.
So, uh, yeah. Start early and use bombers as transports. I'm not exactly a master strategist, so I have to make up for it by being a pen-pusher, I guess...
was kfsgo, managed to lock myself out of acct. oops.
