Aussies v Aussies - Being clubbed like a baby seal (No Jrcar or Tony)

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aoffen
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RE: Aussies v Aussies - Being clubbed like a baby seal (No Jrcar or Tony)

Post by aoffen »

At this stage I am leaning in favour of a landing in Burma/Malaya. Mainly because of my limited CV assets at this point. This gives me a better chance of deploying LBA before KB can turn up. Like the idea of landing on Bathurst Is too.

So am thinking along the lines of this as a revised plan for the next 6 months :

Stage 1
Get the big convoy to Oz. Relocate some offensive assets and shipping to Perth

Stage 2
Move on Horn Island and Carnarvon while threatening (but holding back) on the overland route.

Stage 3
Take Pt Hedland and Para drop on Groote Eylandt. At the same time Shift troops to Ceylon
(Can see 4~5 inf div being available for this move with more if I send the USMC. Struggling to find the armour at the moment)

Stage 4
Land on Bathurst Island and take Broome, move assault shipping and CV's to Ceylon. Duke it out.

Stage 5
Seize Nicobar, Victoria Point and/or Georgetown

Concurrent with all this is continuing the offensive in Burma (6 Divs) and start one in China.

How does that all sound?
aoffen
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RE: Aussies v Aussies - Being clubbed like a baby seal (No Jrcar or Tony)

Post by aoffen »

Update on Burma and the Shakespearean conundrum
To drop or not to drop?

The op in Burma is going well, the China offensive not so well.

In Burma
We threw a light cav screen across the main rail line to stop reinforcements or escapees moving strategically. He moved a division in from Schwebo and kicked us out of the way but by that time we had 2 divisions across the rail line in the first jungle hex. We threw a column of recon and support troops that were trying to escape south back into Katha inflicting 900 casualties for 60. He seems to be scrambling to meet our attack, pulling back sugnificant troops from the Paoshan thrust to reinforce Burma. It will be slow going because of the terrain but capturing Katha looks possible depending on how many troops he can pump in there from Myitkyina. To many and the Chinese troops coming from Ledo can threaten, too little and Katha falls easily.

So the big question. We have 2 Chindit brigades ready to deploy from Dimapur and plenty of C-47's to drop them. Do we drop at Bhamo and try and cut his other coms line to the north - the dirt road from Lashio to Myitkyina.

The argument in favour of a drop - we can isolate the whole northern region, make supply an issue for him and threaten to destroy the whole northern force

The argument against - he has substantial strength moving from Paoshan to Ledo who are well positioned to crush the para screen. He will be forced to send those troops up that road and we lose 2 Chindit Brigades albeit if he does this he uses his reinforcements to keep the dirt road open and they aren't fighting us near Katha or counter attacking from Schwebo.

So....do I drop?

In China
Our seige of Kweiyang is painful and slow with our attacks only achieving 1-2 and 1-1. Forts are now at 1 but our troops are bleeding too. Meanwhile a relief force is moving up and they will brush aside our screen in the south. Its a race and I am not sure we will win it. Our move from Kweilin is running into stiff resistance with brigade strength units in each hex. He is threatening Changsha and our Northern push against Nanyang has been called off. Intel shows 36 units with at least 3 div equivalents and armour in the hex. Its a stand off as they threaten to drive on Sian if we move from our blocking position.

What to do?


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kfsgo
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RE: Aussies v Aussies - Being clubbed like a baby seal (No Jrcar or Tony)

Post by kfsgo »

ORIGINAL: aoffen

Darwin Issues

It's a bit late now, but you may want to try it again in future, so:

Contrary to popular belief, supply does flow from Alice Springs to Darwin. Not often - twice a week if you hold it and once a week if you don't and units in-hex are drawing their own supplies, but it does flow. En-route losses are high - ~70%. That is a big problem if you do hold it, since the base has a supply draw limit, but not such a big problem if you don't, since individual units will draw an appropriate extra amount to compensate.

So - in your situation (Darwin held by enemy), the problem is that your army will only move supplies up from Alice Springs once per week. If the intermediate bases had stockpiles they'd draw on those more often, but it's not strictly necessary, getting them to that point would take years and frankly it's probably more effort than it's worth. What you need to do is:

- Install a top-level HQ at Alice Springs and make sure it's as full of kit as you can make it;
- Send to Darwin three times as many troops as you'd need to evict the Japanese if you didn't have supply issues;
- Figure out which day supply movement occurs on; further movements will be on this day +7, +14 etc
- Set the whole force to 'bombard' the day before this occurs, so that when it does they draw a double supply load;
- Don't attack with the whole force, as they'll use up all their kit in two days and you'll be left hanging for the remaining five; rotate forces in and out of reserve so that you always have a supplied fraction of the force active, either on offense or defense;
- Repeat ad nauseam.

Do that and you'll push through them in the end. "Simple", but time-consuming and not easy; you probably don't have three times whatever you sent available, there are probably more useful things they could be doing, and if you're going in without knowing how the times work out it could take you up to two weeks just to figure that out, which gives the Japanese plenty of time to reinforce/land 10 divisions in Sydney Harbour/whatever, so if you can at all go by sea (or skip Darwin entirely) that's preferable. If you really, absolutely gotta do it overland, though...
bbbf
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RE: Aussies v Aussies - Being clubbed like a baby seal (No Jrcar or Tony)

Post by bbbf »

Drop the Chindits, if you think it will disrupt his efforts, its worth the losses - even if he crushes them, he has to spend time and supplies to do it. Maintain a cadre and they will rebuild quick enough.

It's what the paras are for and you will get plenty of them over time. They are a wasted asset, if you just leave them for the 'perfect' moment or use them as infantry.
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Nemo121
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RE: Aussies v Aussies - Being clubbed like a baby seal (No Jrcar or Tony)

Post by Nemo121 »

At this stage you need to either commit to Burma or not. So, I'd suggest dropping at Bhamo after pounding it with every bomber you have for a day. That way the paras will actually have a chance of taking it. Worst case scenario they don't take it but cut the supplies going north and allow you capture IJA bases in northern Burma... which lets you suck IJA divisions into the fight and out of his reserve.

You need to be sure to keep the pressure on in China no matter what to keep the reserve thinned out also.
John Dillworth: "I had GreyJoy check my spelling and he said it was fine."
Well, that's that settled then.
aoffen
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RE: Aussies v Aussies - Being clubbed like a baby seal (No Jrcar or Tony)

Post by aoffen »

Status Update
Just though I would let people know (not sure anyone is actually interested but you never know) that this game is still alive. We have had a few hiatus's over the last 12 months but have now reached Feb 45. I will post a screenshot when I get home tonight but in summary.....

Things have gone better for the Allies than I expected. After a failed landing in the Andaman Islands in Sept 1943 and heavy naval losses (our darkest hour), things started to turn around. We eventually seized the northern end of Sumatra and rolled down to Palembang by early 44. From there, combining with the overland drive from Burma, we took Malaya and Java and effectively captured or destroyed most of the Japanese oil supply by early 44. Things then started to accelerate. Saigon soon fell and in June '44 we made a big jump, landing on Formosa. This triggered some big naval and air battles around the Philippines which we got the better of and for the first time we began to seriously attrit the IJN. Formosa fell quite quickly so we started a B-29 night bombing campaign from the northern tip of Formosa (HR only allows manpower bombing by night) and then jumped to the mainland and began the liberation of China. While our land forces set out on the liberation of Chungking (achieved in Jan 45) we leapt ahead again and landed on Moppo (SE tip of Korea) on Christmas Day 1944. As of 10 Feb we control the south coast of Korea, all of Formosa, Okinawa, the Chinese coast from Shanghai to Hongkong and inland to Changsha with a narrow corridor to Chungking. Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe and Nagoya have been ravaged by firebombing. The Japanese are short of supply and out of fuel but still have a very credible Air Force and army. The navy is almost gone with the exception ironically of his CV force. He probably still has 6 fleet CV's. Preparations are underway now for the invasion of the home islands, although we need a substantial air offensive first to attrit his air power. My biggest weakness is my fighter pools. I am still short of all modern fighters and awash in older generation models. Bomber pools are much healthier. My CV's now act as a mobile fighter base protecting troop convoys from his LBA and I can attest the Allied Death Star effect is real and deadly - not much gets thru 800 Corsairs, Hellcats and Seafires on CAP. The weather is crap in Feb so hopefully after consolidation for a few weeks now I can start the air offensive in March with at least some airframes in the pools and decent weather and we will see how we go.

Can provide more detail if people are interested.
Cheers
Andrew
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CaptBeefheart
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RE: Aussies v Aussies - Being clubbed like a baby seal (No Jrcar or Tony)

Post by CaptBeefheart »

Color me interested. That's some interesting late game action that I'm sure many would be happy to see more details on.

Sounds like a great comeback.

Cheers,
CC
Beer, because barley makes lousy bread.
aoffen
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RE: Aussies v Aussies - Being clubbed like a baby seal (No Jrcar or Tony)

Post by aoffen »

Ok Some shots of the game status.
Firstly China.
The first photo is just a screen shot of the current map. Some comments follow on the next post which will be an annotated map


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aoffen
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RE: Aussies v Aussies - Being clubbed like a baby seal (No Jrcar or Tony)

Post by aoffen »

After landing at Amoy we thrust West, North and East. The Westerly thrust was relative weak (about 2 divisions+) and aimed at Hong Kong. Most of the combat power headed North with the objective of relieving Chungking and East to Shanghai. There was some hard fighting at the crossroads 2 hexes north of Amoy and at Chuhsien and Hangchow but we finally captured Shanghai about 2 days ago and all objectives have now been achieved. During this campaign I figure we have destroyed about 7~8 IJA divisions and have another 3 besieged at Hangchow taking roughly 10 IJA divisions out of his OOB. Friendly losses have been relatively light with 2 divisions and about 3 Brigades banged up and in need of significant rest and rebuild. Chinese forces are now flowing out and taking supplies and replacements.





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aoffen
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RE: Aussies v Aussies - Being clubbed like a baby seal (No Jrcar or Tony)

Post by aoffen »

The situation in Korea looks like this with an annotated map following

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aoffen
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RE: Aussies v Aussies - Being clubbed like a baby seal (No Jrcar or Tony)

Post by aoffen »

We landed at Moppo with 8 Divisions on Christmas Day 1944. 2 Divisions struck north for Seoul (Keijo) but were stopped by a counterattack at Gunzan and got roughly handled for their efforts. Out airpower forced him to withdraw back into the city after that battle leaving us with Gunzan, but not enough oomph for further forward movement. Most of the force drove east towards Fusan. We were held up for about 10 days by a strong defence of the mountain range at Masan but after we broke that down Fusan fell quickly. Fusan and Moppo are both now level 8 or 9 ports as are Shanghai and Amoy. Moppo is a level 9 airfield and Gunzan, Masan and Fusan are level 7 on the way to 8 or 9. Once the airfield infrastructure and base forces are all in place, the the air offensive will kick off in earnest. Hopefully that coincides with better Spring weather in early March. Operation Olympic is being planned and the forces are moving into place and preparing. I think I will have enough amphibious lift to land 12 divisions plus armour, arty and engineers. I will also have about 2 div equivalents of paratroops. Combine that with my Aircombat deathstar (16 CV's, 12 CVL's & 40CVE's) and about 15 BB's in bombardment support......its going to be a big show.

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aoffen
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RE: Aussies v Aussies - Being clubbed like a baby seal (No Jrcar or Tony)

Post by aoffen »

I forgot to mention, while the China campaign progressed we took Okinawa out prior to surging to Korea. Not sure it was entirely necessary but it makes me feel safer its not available as a Japanese base.
aoffen
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RE: Aussies v Aussies - Being clubbed like a baby seal (No Jrcar or Tony)

Post by aoffen »

The other key aspect has been the night bomber offensive on the Japanese industrial base. After Formosa was secured I set the bomber fleet up to operate out of Taihoku on the north eastern tip of Formosa. I discovered early on that daylight bombing is impossible without unacceptable losses so serious night manpower bombing got underway in about August 44 and has been going on for close to 6 months now. The B-29's have been firebombing first Osaka then Nagoya then Tokyo and some B-24's have been hitting Nagasaki in a minor way. It is a game of patience and sustained effort, but the Japanese are basically incapable of seriously disrupting night raids so the main enemy is weather and maintenance. Based on recon and Rob's comments, over time the effect is devastating and demoralising. I just picked Tokyo as an example but you can see what the effect ultimately is. With little oil to run HI and his LI being burnt up, supplies are becoming a critical issue. In China I have been seeing IJA supply penalties on virtually every fight over the past 3 months. Having said that a week or so back he threw over over 500 aircraft at my fleet in one day so he still has bite. Luckily for me they all zeroed in on my CV force and were shot to shreds by my CAP with no damage to ships. A hex back and undetected were significant numbers of ships that had separated from the CV force and had no CAP, so a minor disaster was narrowly averted. My CV's are so strong my fleet can go anywhere I want it to, but need to be in full strength and I still have to be very careful as any misstep and his airpower is all over me.

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CaptBeefheart
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RE: Aussies v Aussies - Being clubbed like a baby seal (No Jrcar or Tony)

Post by CaptBeefheart »

Well done. Bases in southern Korea by January 1945 means you'll be able to really hit Japan hard.

Cheers,
CC
Beer, because barley makes lousy bread.
Wuffer
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RE: Aussies v Aussies - Being clubbed like a baby seal (No Jrcar or Tony)

Post by Wuffer »

Thx for the detailled update!
A formidable change, to say the least,
It's allways very interesting to look at the outcome, especially in this case. Just re-read Rob and Tony's AAR, fascinating how quick you could advance after your landing in Sabang and destroying their economic basis. Guess both sides will handle a lot of things now differently if there were a restart...
Maybe we could motivate Rob to add something after all is done and the daily struggle is forgotten. Kudos to both parties!
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