The Thousand Mile War: Ardi (J) vs mind_messing (A)

[Ardi]

Air losses.

[Ardi]

ORIGINAL: tarkalak

Check the scenario notes, I don't think that you could withdraw ships for repair in this one. I think only Gualdalcanal has this option.

If you ship planes in a cargo ship they will come out damaged. This simulates putting them in crates and then reassemblying them at the target. You need an AKV, CVE or CV to ship them in ready form. You would have been better off rebasing them, they fly to their destination.

Both day and night search helps. Nights aren't pitch dark with all the stars and the Moon. Well, unless you go into a cave. So Night search does spot ships.

I had one Jake group fly night and the rest fly day. One of the groups was at Kiska. The Betties and the Mavises flew directed search at a low percentage. I was paying attention to not cover Adak, so that I don't loose a lot to CAP. Night search accumulates more pilot fatigue and morale loss, so I rotated the night group.

If you used the "Request Veteran" option you were fine. You have a huge pool of 80-90 XP pilots so there is no need to pull out rookies.

Congratulations. [:)]

Aye, you are right about withdrawing. I thought that all small scenarios have this possibility, my mistake.

About transporting - I kinda messed up there. Because of constant transportaition flights half of the Emilys were damaged/on maintenance and I decided to load them on ships since my last Ait support was also moving. For some reason I decided "Why not to take Bettys with them". This caused a lot of trouble with some ships not unloading those planes on Attu, and I effectively lost these squadrons for a week at least due to this mess. Should have returned AV to Paramushiro to provide repairs for remaining aircraft, rather than putting them on ships. Lesson learned.

Okay, will be experimenting with Night search in the future. Could come in handy.

The only problem with Veterans - they sometimes take their time to arrive. So I mainly just reinforce squadrons with them, without replacing existing pilots (which mostly are good enough, in this scenario at least)

[Ardi]

Thank you all for reading and commenting! Will try to do some analysis.

What I did right?
Submarine warfare. Putting captains with good Naval Skill and Agression, using subs on single hex patrol in Direct/Absolute settings with 1 hex reaction. Preferrably to avoid using in shallow waters, since most of the damage was done there, though as well as some important sinkings (Louisville and Branch).
Reinforcement of Attu. This was main target for the US, and if i didn't reinforce it and MM landed forces correctly, Attu would have been a goner even without US reinforcements. I managed to choose correct timing to move a brigade into there, avoiding main US forces.

What I did wrong?
Chasing after small fry knowing that there is superior force somewhere nearby. It has nearly costed me my whole merchant fleed and thus, transport capability, since there were no means to provide any cover to it.
No supply to Kiska. I didn't resupply it even once. Emily certainly helped, but I believe if I moved 2-3k supply there preemptively, island could hold longer, and if I won the Naval superiority, I could bombard Yanks to the oblivion and even hold the island.
Messed up transportation. As I noted above I messed up a lot with Bettys and Emilys (which also cancelled that thin supply stream on Kiska).

What I'm not sure about
Adak battle. As it happens both me and mind_messing planned to make it a battleground. I thought he will prefer to stay under CAP after the loss of Nassau to be protected from carrier strikes and I made efforts to wear down this defence and nullify this advantage. My idea actually worked since a lot of strike planes came through, there just wasn't a lot of targets for them. Luckily for me, my subs put half of Allied cruisers to the repair yard (and one to the bottom), it would be much more messed up if I met 6-7 cruisers, also accompanied by 3 battleships, even slow ones. Should I have left 3 CAs with carriers? And was it wise to send SAG into the fray in the first place, withought preemptive air strike? I got the upper hand this time, but this success was mainly due to the favourable situation created beforehand (and I didn't put such deep thoughts into it when I was making the decision to commit). Should think about such matter more thoughtfully next time.

Also mind_messing proposed to play this scenario, but with switching sides, which I found interesting. Now whtn we know capabilities of our forces well from the both sides, it will be quite like chess with fog of war. So stay tuned for next AAR!