Last Stand at San Diego (no Richard please)

Post descriptions of your brilliant victories and unfortunate defeats here.

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ADB123
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Last Stand at San Diego (no Richard please)

Post by ADB123 »

A nice Forum member asked me if I wanted to try my hand at an AE PBEM, despite my schedule which will mean many lapses in play. (He will use my game as a fill-in when he is waiting for his other PBEM. ) So I will be seeing first hand what a human opponent can do to me.

Hmmm... considering what the AI does to me, this could be very painful...

The first thing that I learned is that downloading an AE game file onto my Mac and transferring it via external drive to my laptop PC doesn't work for some reason. (I haven't gotten WitP AE working in PC mode on my Mac so far, and I'm not curious enough at this point to spend the time to figure out why.) So instead I went to a webmail location to grab the file, at which point I could open it.

We are trying a non-historical start, with Surprise on, PDU on, garbage Allied torpedoes, no "roll your own" R&D for the Japanese, Allied ship repair bonus on, no Computer control for anything, and all expansions, replacements, repairs and so on set to off. My opponent will do something of a historical start - I agreed not to hunt down his AOs on turn 1 and he agreed not to invade on the first turn places at the edges of the map like San Diego. [;)]

So I expect to get badly clobbered for the first couple of hundred turns.

Depending upon my opponent's moves, my initial plan is to keep my head down and assume that I can lose most anything other than the West Coast of the US, although I may also be able to save India if I move a number of units there quickly. I will try not to get sucked into throwing away good forces too early in places like the South Pacific and Northern Australia.

BTW - I did move my two US CV TFs on Turn 1, one to the north and one to the south. As I wrote to my opponent, the rest of my forces are waiting "in lamblike blissful ignorance of the oncoming slaughter."
ADB123
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Midget Subs on the Attack!

Post by ADB123 »

I got my opponent's Combat Reply and turn this evening and I was able to successfully download them and run them. (Not on my Mac.)

The December 7 attacks were pretty much standard, with a couple of surprising exceptions. The turn started with "something" being reported in Pearl Harbor, and then a midget sub made a successful attack on the West Virginia.

Okay, I saw the same thing in my last start against the AI.

Then there were more disturbances in the water of the Harbor, and another midget sub made a successful attack on the Arizona! [X(]

Wow! My opponent ought to go out and buy some Lottery tickets!

After that the rest of the chaos and destruction was almost anticlimatic.

Oh yeah, the PoW and Repulse were sunk - we had agreed to a reasonably historic start, so I didn't have them go off in the opposite direction.

Now I've got my work cut out for me. My first order of business will be to set up as much Naval Air Search as possible so that I can figure out what my opponent is planning. I'll also try to save as much as possible at Pearl, but if he sticks around another day I expect the Pacific Fleet to be limited to a few PTs.

I'm also not planning to make any massive moves of ships, troops or planes right off the bat. I'm planning to try to figure out my opponent's main axis of attack first - will he go after "everything", or will he focus on one main region?

Now where did I put all those fire extinguishers?...[&:]
ADB123
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Two Observations

Post by ADB123 »

First off, thank goodness for the Industry Management screen!!!! [&o] Otherwise I don't know how I would ever find all of the bases where I want to shut off repairs on the various industries.

Second - my opponent achieved much more than I expected at Pearl - upon close examination I found out that the Shipyard suffered 47 damage!!!!!!!! [X(][X(][X(]

Assuming that he doesn't go after the port again next turn it will still take me a month and a half to get the Shipyard back to full functionality. [:(][:(][:(]

Ouch!
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Arnhem44
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RE: Two Observations

Post by Arnhem44 »

Repairs for the port will be quicker than you expect so don't worry too much about that, it should be in the order of days not weeks. I've had PH airfield and services bombed into the red and port damage in the 50s and everything was back to 0 well before end Dec. 

Regarding PoW and Repulse, there was a time I thought like you too. Thing is they didn't put to sea till 10 Dec so letting them sink (which I did in one PBEM game, it'll be my last) isn't really historical, that and it's just a darned waste to let 2 heavies bite it just like that without using them to annoy your opponent first, no more freebies on your next go around! It's a game not a recreation of history, go nuts with the plausible what-ifs I say.
Smeulders
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RE: Two Observations

Post by Smeulders »

Best of luck
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ADB123
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RE: Two Observations

Post by ADB123 »

ORIGINAL: Arnhem

Repairs for the port will be quicker than you expect so don't worry too much about that, it should be in the order of days not weeks. I've had PH airfield and services bombed into the red and port damage in the 50s and everything was back to 0 well before end Dec. 

Regarding PoW and Repulse, there was a time I thought like you too. Thing is they didn't put to sea till 10 Dec so letting them sink (which I did in one PBEM game, it'll be my last) isn't really historical, that and it's just a darned waste to let 2 heavies bite it just like that without using them to annoy your opponent first, no more freebies on your next go around! It's a game not a recreation of history, go nuts with the plausible what-ifs I say.

I'm not speaking of the Port, which is in the red, along with the Airfields, I'm speaking of the Shipyard. The Shipyard will only repair one damage point a day, as long as I've got sufficient supplies in Pearl. So that will be 47 days and 47,000 supply points to get it back to full operation.

But what is worse is that this means that I can only put 53,000 tons of shipping into the Shipyards without overloading it. So repairs on the survivors will be slow.

BTW - I forgot about the date for the Repulse and PoW. Thanks for reminding me. Next time I do a game start I won't be so quick to let them go to their doom.

Thanks
Smeulders
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RE: Two Observations

Post by Smeulders »

Don't worry too much about that. It's annoying, but not really a disaster. Start planning the repairs as best as you can. One thing that I noticed is that ships with less damage also seem to repair more points per turn. Because of this, where there is limited capacity, start with the smaller ships first. Large ships can get pierside repairs first to get as much systems damage gone as possible, this way they're in better shape when entering the drydock and should get major damage away faster, meaning they use less yard time. You don't need really need the BB at the start, so if there is enough space to get your DD and Cruisers back online in a reasonable time-frame, then that is enough.
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Arnhem44
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RE: Two Observations

Post by Arnhem44 »

Ah my bad, it didn't register that it was the shipyard when I was reading your post, I find it odd that your opponent deliberately targeted your shipyard, I have to admit that's something I wouldn't have thought of.
ADB123
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RE: Two Observations

Post by ADB123 »

ORIGINAL: Arnhem

Ah my bad, it didn't register that it was the shipyard when I was reading your post, I find it odd that your opponent deliberately targeted your shipyard, I have to admit that's something I wouldn't have thought of.

It's actually quite a smart move on his part - it means that I have to spend lots of supply that I could otherwise use elsewhere, and it will take longer for me to repair the ships that were damaged. These factors together may also make it easier for him to stage an early invasion of the Hawaiian Islands if that is what he is planning.
Smeulders
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RE: Two Observations

Post by Smeulders »

I'm not too sure, the damage to the docks can be repaired, best case scenario is a delay off about 1 month in repairing ships. This isn't that much of an advantage when compared to shooting up more planes or sinking ships.
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ADB123
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RE: Two Observations

Post by ADB123 »

ORIGINAL: Smeulders

I'm not too sure, the damage to the docks can be repaired, best case scenario is a delay off about 1 month in repairing ships. This isn't that much of an advantage when compared to shooting up more planes or sinking ships.

Somehow my opponent was able to "get it all" - he sank and damaged a ton of ships, closed the air fields, severely damaged the port, and destroyed most of the aircraft.

And a delay in repairs could well mean a lot if an invasion comes along during that repair period.

In any event, we'll see what my opponent does with this opportunity.

Thanks for the comments.
Smeulders
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RE: Two Observations

Post by Smeulders »

In that case you should keep your forces well back the first couple of weeks, let the bad luck wear off.
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ADB123
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RE: Two Observations

Post by ADB123 »

ORIGINAL: Smeulders

In that case you should keep your forces well back the first couple of weeks, let the bad luck wear off.

That's for certain... I have no intention of risking forces on the High Seas until I get a good idea of what my opponent is planning.

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tuga555
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RE: Two Observations

Post by tuga555 »

Hi all.
I usualy put the ships in pierside mode until they can no longer repair and then send to the shipyard, it saves the shipyard space just for major damage, of course if you have some free shipyard space You can add ships, but i found out that shipyard space in the front lines are at premium.
Also if you clear all non major damage you can take them to the USA. Unless you are very unlucky they dont sink. I took 2 BB's from noumea to SF with 40 major float and they arrived ok.
The brave and the free fear no foe, go forth, mighty hosts of Midnight! Unto death or victory we go!
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ADB123
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RE: Two Observations

Post by ADB123 »

ORIGINAL: tuga555

Hi all.
I usualy put the ships in pierside mode until they can no longer repair and then send to the shipyard, it saves the shipyard space just for major damage, of course if you have some free shipyard space You can add ships, but i found out that shipyard space in the front lines are at premium.
Also if you clear all non major damage you can take them to the USA. Unless you are very unlucky they dont sink. I took 2 BB's from noumea to SF with 40 major float and they arrived ok.

I've got everything at pierside in Pearl at the moment, other than the ships that are burning. I suspect that my opponent will try another attack on the Shipyards and I don't want him to have more sitting duck targets than he already has. My problem will be afterwards, if he leaves anything floating. Surface ships are much more important in AE than they were in WitP, so I want to be able to repair my ships as fast as possible. This has turned into a great way to prevent that.
ADB123
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HDML vs Sub

Post by ADB123 »

I got the second turn this evening. It took me 2 days to do the previous turn; this turn only took me 2 hours.

When I watched the Combat Replay I was expecting a continuation of the slaughter of the first turn. Instead I got:

- My opponent mined Bataan, just like the AI does. I had guessed this, so I had sent out my 6 minesweepers from Manila and they did their job nicely. Next turn I'll send them out again to finish the job, and then I'll send them out as two ASW TFs.

- A couple of Dutch subs attempted attacks on the big and tough TFs at Kota Bharu. It wasn't pretty. One sub received 14 hits, the other 9. They are both now limping down towards Singapore.

- My opponent likes to send out concentrated bomber attacks. It's quite the change of pace from the scattering of attacks that the AI does. In one instance my opponent sent 69 Nells from Patani against Georgetown. Surprisingly enough they didn't add much to the existing damage at the base and more of the planes that had been damaged during the air attacks of the previous day actually became repaired.

- There was also a big air attack on Clark Field - 76 Zeros and 56 bombers. My P-40s accounted well for themselves, shooting down 12 Zeros for a loss of 14 P-40s, and shooting down a number of bombers too. The damage to Clark was minimal.

- My opponent also sent out a number of small air raids on various Chinese units in the open in China. I've got the two China-assigned AVG squadrons on their way into China, so those raids will become more costly soon.

- Some of my ships left Singapore, and one small surface combat TF consisting of two HDMLs ran into a Japanese sub halfway to Palembang. The first torpedo was a dud, the second brought the "obliterated" message to the screen. The other HDML attempted to hunt the sub but found nothing.

- For some reason my opponent did a bombardment attack on my forces at Kota Bharu this turn instead of a deliberate or shock attack. In all the games that I've played against the AI the AI has always launched an assault on the first opportunity, and it has always captured the base on the first try. So I'll happily take the time that my opponent's caution is giving me.

Finally - you may well be wondering, as was I at the end of the Combat Reply, where was the KB? Well, it seems to have gone into Stealth Mode and disappeared from sight, despite the presence of multiple air searches from multiple bases, along with a couple of PT TFs out searching, and a number of subs. There were no more attacks on Pearl or any of the other bases, and there were no attacks on my retreating TFs. Even the Japanese subs didn't find anything other than a PT TF. I'll take this breather and be very happy for it.

Afterwards I looked over the SigInt report and there was nothing out of the ordinary there, so I still don't know if my opponent is planning a "standard" Japanese expansion or something different. Maybe the next turn will tell me more.
ADB123
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Attack of the Penguin!

Post by ADB123 »

The night phase started out with more successful minesweeping at Bataan again, which then lead to a successful mass exodus of ships and subs from Manila Harbour. I grouped the subs into 4 large TFs – the S-boats heading to Darwin, the long-range subs heading to Brisbane, the next longest range subs heading to Colombo, and the rest heading to Soerabaja. If these ad hoc “wolf packs” run across something, so much the better, but my main objective is to get them distributed to the areas where I will eventually want them, and where they can be supported.

The rest of the night phase was fairly quiet. A Japanese sub off of Palembang did torpedo and sink a TK, and afterwards shot up and sink an AK, but there were no other surprise attacks by Japanese forces. In contrast the one Allied sub attacking at Aparri was hammered hard and is now limping back to Manila.

There was one “surprise” Allied night attack… sort of… A naval combat screen came up and there was an Allied AM attacking a small Japanese transport TF that consisted of two AKLs and an AK. At first I thought that this was the AM that I send down from Johnston Island towards Palmyra, but it turned out to be the Penguin on its escape run from Guam towards the northern coast of New Guinea. Both TFs manoeuvred a bit, and then they exchanged a little bit of gunfire. The Penguin drew first blood with a hit on an AKL, and then was hit in return by a shot from the other AKL. At that point the two commanders decided that enough-was-enough and they broke off contact with each other.

The day phase brought plenty of Japanese air attacks, but most of them were hampered by bad weather. This resulted in many broken attacks with the escorts going in alone first. So, for example, there was a sweep by 51 Zeros over Hong Kong.

Huh? Who in their right mind would bother trying to put up an air defence over Hong Kong? There was also a sweep by another 35 Zeros over Chuhmein. Again, why would I stick anything way out there? Finally, there was a nicely coordinated naval air attack on Wenchow. Elsewhere, plenty of bombers hit Georgetown again, as well as Khoto Baru.

Cool... I can live with that, and hope that my opponent continues for a few more turns while my pilots rest up and planes repair at Manila, Singapore and in Java.

One very interesting air attack occured over Tavoy. I've been spreading out my planes in Malaya, the Philippines, and the DEI in order to get the best search coverage I can and also to move planes to where I eventually want them. So most of the Blenheim IFs were sitting in Tavoy waiting for the remainder to be repaired and join them. An Oscar sentai flew in and attacked. I expected the worst, but instead the IFs and Oscars were evenly matched and lost one plane apiece. I'll take those results any day!

In addition to the mutual surprise brought by the Penguin, The Lexington's air groups provided a real surprise to the incoming Japanese Wake invasion force. Despite lousy weather a squadron of divebombers attacked the invasion TF and hit one of the AMCs with four 1000 lb bombs. I'm hoping that this causes my opponent to pull back for now, although I don't intend to stick around and try to make the surprise more serious.

That's because I still don't have any idea where the KB is hiding! No sign of the TF showed up anywhere, despite increasing naval air patrols. My Pearl Harbor survivors continued along their way to the South safely, and none of my subs around the Hawaiian Islands spotted anything or were spotted by anything.

I'm guessing that my opponent has sailed off to the East in the hopes of intercepting some incoming TFs. That will be good if he has, because the only TFs that I have between West Coast and Hawaii are two quasi-wolfpacks of subs, one travelling from San Diego to Hawaii and the other from San Francisco to Hawaii. I'm in no hurry to try to move forces around until I know where the KB is located.

Otherwise, there wasn't a lot more excitement to this turn. The first Japanese unit reached Hong Kong and was satisfied to do an artillery bombardment. And to my surprise, the Japanese troops at Khota Baru did a deliberate attack but my units held, despite the fortifications going down to level 1.

So I'm continuing along with my current plans. Pearl is still a mess and I still have one DD burning furiously in the harbor. I guess that things will get fixed up sooner or later as long as the KB doesn't come back again for another strike.

I split out the surviving DMs from my fleeing TFs and ordered one each to go to Johston, Baker, Canton, Palmyra and Christmas Islands to drop off mines and then head back to Pearl. To a good extent these ships are acting as canaries-in-a-coal mine for me while I try to figure out my opponent's intentions.

For now I'm not sending the other ships back to Pearl. I wanted surface combat ships in the South Pacific so that I could interfere with any early invasion attempts, and I also wanted to get some support ships into harbor at Pago Pago, Suva and Auckland anyway; I just wasn't expecting to do it quite this early.
Smeulders
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RE: Attack of the Penguin!

Post by Smeulders »

Are you sending your subs straight to their new bases ? It might be better to let them roam around the PI and surroundings first, they're there now, makes for a good chance for an extended patrol. If you're sending them to their bases first and then let them return, you lose a couple of weeks worth of attacks.
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ADB123
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RE: Attack of the Penguin!

Post by ADB123 »

ORIGINAL: Smeulders

Are you sending your subs straight to their new bases ? It might be better to let them roam around the PI and surroundings first, they're there now, makes for a good chance for an extended patrol. If you're sending them to their bases first and then let them return, you lose a couple of weeks worth of attacks.

I've got the Dutch subs out on attack already, along with the US subs that were already out to sea. And I've set waypoints so that these big TFs will go through areas that have or soon will have the most Japanese action.

So it's a bit of a trade-off, but the Japanese TFs that are already off of Luzon and Malaya have tons of ASW anyway, so attacks are very difficult, as three of my subs have already discovered.
ADB123
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Scratch on AMc

Post by ADB123 »

This turn illustrated clearly the differences between playing against the AI and playing PBEM. Against the AI Japanese subs were a nuisance, but nothing significant. And my Allied subs did well, even with Bad Torpedoes. But against a human opponent things are very different.

My opponent has his subs on the Patrol setting and they are tracking my ships all over the map. They are also attacking effectively and my ASW is unable to stop them. Even the HDMLs with ASW ratings of 8 aren't getting off any successful ASW attacks. The ships losses are acceptable to me, but I am concerned about the way the Japanese subs now follow my TFs - it is a great addition to the SigInt for my opponent.

In contrast, most of my subs are not being successful in their attacks and usually are getting whacked by ASW instead. However, one of my Dutch subs did score my first "victory" this turn - a Japanese AMc escort off of Miri was obliterated by a torpedo. It's obviously going to be a long war under water.

Another big difference versus the AI is in my opponent's disposition of Japanese forces. My opponent has now got a Surface Combat TF in the Philippines, along with a CVL TF. I'm starting to lose ships, and I will lose more. My only hope is that my opponent's forces will run out of ammo before they run out of targets. One good thing is that I've got my DDs in surface combat TFs too, so they do fight it out. The Brit DD Thanet fought it out with a Japanese CA/DD TF and actually scored a couple of hits before being sunk. And better yet, it caused the Japanese TF to fire a lot of ammo.

But the biggest difference is in the speed with which my opponent is moving in the PI and DEI, mainly because he knows that he has nothing to fear from the Allied LBA. That is one big disadvantage that the AE system provides to the Allied player in comparison to WitP - Japanese players no longer have to be concerned with Allied LBA for the first few months of the war.

Yes, I know, "train, train, and train some more". But that will only pay off several months from now. At this point the Japanese player can sail anywhere he wants in perfect safety.

Well, not quite "perfect" safety. I found out against the AI that the Allied LBA that can't hit anything when doing Naval Attacks will occasionally drop bombs on Japanese ships when the planes are flying "Search" missions. So as long as that "feature" isn't taken away in the future there is at least still "one small act of defiance" left for the Allied player when it comes to LBA early in the game.

Otherwise it was another fairly normal turn. The weather buggered up a lot of the Japanese air attacks again, but this time my opponent wasn't testing my air defenses and so he didn't lose many planes other than to Operational damage. He continued to focus his attacks on troops in Malaya and Chinese troops near the coast.

There was another, larger artillery attack on Hong Kong this turn, and Khota Baru finally fell to a Deliberate attack.

And I took a risk that bit me in the rear - I allowed a Chinese unit to cross a river to join seven other Chinese units in the siege of Ichang. I had set my troops to do a bombardment and was hoping that I remembered correctly that one unit joining many wouldn't trigger a "Shock" attack.

Oh well, I remembered wrongly.

The Mandatory shock attack on river crossing remains one of my least favorite design decisions in WitP/AE. There's nothing that I'm going to be able to do about it, except to deliberately avoid it in the future if at all possible, but I will never accept it as a "good" idea.

Another design decision that I disagree with popped up to bite me again this turn - understrength starting garrisons. I boosted the garrison at Sialkot over the "magic" requirement of 20 this turn by turning on replacements to the Base Force and Infantry units there, so that was no longer a problem. But "native revolts" popped up and cost me Victory Points at two more bases this turn - Srinagar and Mandalay. Srinagar was another "19/20" garrison issue that I corrected by turning on replacements for the units there. But Mandalay is at "10/20", which will take a long time to recover by replacements, particularly since Malaria is working again.

So I had to set a unit at Rangoon to "Strategic" mode and I'll have it take the railroad to Mandalay to push the garrison over 20. I also set all of the troops at Mandalay to Add Replacements because they will lose strength due to Malaria as time goes on.

I then went over a number of other bases in India and found more that were at the "19/20" level. I guess that the only reason that they weren't flagged for a "revolt" was that it appears that uprisings are a random sort of thing instead of a hard-set given. Never-the-less, I set the troops at those bases to gain Replacements too, just to make certain that I can minimize the irritation.

Sigh... I find this sort of "busywork" such a pain in this Game. But there is nothing I can do to influence anyone otherwise, so I have to live with it. (And no, I am not going to play around with the Editor.)

Finally, there still was no sign of the KB this turn. My opponent knows where my forces are, thanks to his subs, and I have no idea where the KB is, so I am continuing to "run away, fast" everywhere. I can't see any other choice at this time.

My troops are still trying to repair things at Pearl. The Airfields are now "sort of" open, although they are still damaged and the Air Support facilities are still in the red. And of course the Port won't repair until the Air facilities repair, so it will still be a while before Pearl is relatively back in business. Interestingly enough, the DD that had been burning at a 95 fire level last turn was down to a 65 fire level this turn. Will it actually survive?

Oh yes, the Wake invasion force is retiring, so my CV raid accomplished its mission. I was also able to successfully fly off the Marine Wildcats to my CV, so they will be deposited at a safer base once my CV is out of the danger zone.

Interestingly, my opponent has held up the Makin/Tarawa invasions. I sent a CA in to "case the joint" and there were no Japanese TFs to be found anywhere. Maybe my opponent assumed that I would use my CVs to interfere with the invasions in that area instead of up at Wake, and so delayed the invasions.
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