Operation SF Scenario

[Don Bowen]

If I recall my Lundstrom, the original Japanese plan was to use only Kaga and Shoho. Is that in line with what you have?

[Symon]

ORIGINAL: Don Bowen
If I recall my Lundstrom, the original Japanese plan was to use only Kaga and Shoho. Is that in line with what you have?

Hi Don. Not quite [8D]

The revised plan has some of the same features and operational assumptions as the Midway Op, including a very high degree of complexity. It too functions as a lure for the “remnants” of the US Fleet. So Nagumo’s Striking Force is in play. However, the objectives are spread out along a line of almost 2400 nautical miles. CarDiv 5 is out of action for a while. Shokaku needs major repairs, Zuikaku needs planes and aircrews after Coral Sea. However, one can’t be complaisant.

The obvious Japanese solution is to hit everything, linked together with exquisite timing [;)].

New Cal (NK) goes off first, with 1st Striking Fleet (CarDiv 1) providing area air support. Since Shoho was sunk at Coral Sea, Zuiho is with 1st Covering Fleet, providing direct air to the invasion units. This operational arm then moves directly against Port Moresby (MO), before redeploying to support the FI and SA phases, and ambush the US Fleet.

Samoa (SA) and Fiji (FI) jump off at the other end of the line, while NK/MO is wrapping up but still running. 2nd Striking Fleet (CarDiv 2) provides area air support and Ryujo is with 2nd Covering Fleet, providing direct air to the invasion units.

It’s a hammer and anvil. Smash and grab New Cal and MO to get everybody’s attention and pin the Australian based ships. Then set up the anvil on the SA/FI line, with 2nd Striking Fleet, while 1st Striking Fleet plays hammer. The unsuspecting American Fleet will sail into the open jaws of the tiger and be instantly annihilated [;)].

At least, that’s the plan. Beauty isn’t it?

[Don Bowen]

Beauty indeed John, and I'm really looking forward to it.

Went back to the books and re-read the plans. The Kaga/Shoho combination was for the original Solomons invasion, scheduled for around June 1st until the Midway operation had not been approved.

Memory, they say, is the second thing to go.

[Symon]

Had to do it this way because there’s just too many US carriers available. There’s Enterprise, Hornet and Yorktown kinda good to go at Pearl. Saratoga arrives June 6 (maybe). TF-37 with Wasp, North Carolina, Quincy, San Juan, etc.. arrives late June, early July (maybe).

That’s 5 fleet carriers vs 4 fleet and 2 light carriers with the possibility of a 5th (Zuikaku) getting in on the action at some time. All spread apart in both space and time. Seemed like a good way to balance things out.

[Don Bowen]

John, I think you are absolutely right.

Lundstrom emphasizes the problems with US intelligence detecting the berthing assignments for major Japanese fleet units at Truk just before Midway. The berthing assignments were for AFTER the battle of Midway, of course, but in late May, 1942 they confused US Intelligence. Central Pacific Intelligence read the Midway portents correctly but King's boys in Washington read them as indications of a major thrust into the South Pacific INSTEAD of Central Pacific.

If Midway has gone as planned for the Japanese, it would be Kaga, Agaki, Hiryu, Soryu, and supporting ships back in the South Pacific. With, as you say, maybe Zuikaku.

[Symon]

That’s what makes this one so much fun. In this scenario, Midway is scheduled as a mop-up after SF, so the portents and entrails will look very different. Assuming Joe Rochefort stirs the entrails right and sacrifices enough chickens, there’s an opportunity or two for Nimitz in this one.

If CinCPac has a good indication as to the Japanese operational axis maybe Nimitz can spring some traps his own self. Maybe re-redeploy a carrier TF or two into the Coral Sea area in anticipation; say Enterprise and Hornet? That would be 2 on 2 ½ and under the principles of calculated risk, this doesn’t sound too bad. If based Westerly, on OZ, it would tactically pin the IJ carriers to the western end of their op area (instead of the other way round as the Japanese plan assumes). Sort of a Coral Sea reprise.

And then still bust the hump getting Lady Lex ready. Soon as Sara shows up there’s another couple carrier TFs to do another 2 on 2 ½ at the other end of the op line. So the left Japanese jaw is engaged and pinned (and maybe hurt some) while the right jaw is engaged (and maybe hurt some) all by its own self. Unless some bad things happen.

Strangely enough, the timing seems to be a mirror image of the IJ O-Plan. Imagine that !! [:D] That is, if everything goes according to plan. But I hear that Adm Murphy is off the sick list and will be taking a personal interest in these operations.

Ciao. JWE

[Symon]

Couple friends are out visiting from Malaysia with their wives and are asking about this Labor Day thing. Now they are not muslim, but pork and beef just doesn’t float their boat, if ya know what I mean. So I went totally eclectic.

Hors d’oeuvres are So American empenadas with an Asian filling. Then Hunan style orange chicken on Basmati rice, with grilled broccoli and peaches. For some salsa, we got Greek tatziki, with seeded cucumber, seeded tomato, green onion and daikon radish, in a traditional tatziki sauce, but with rice wine vinegar; and yeah, only greek style yogurt.

Desert is an Afghan style Gajar Ka Halwa with very black Turkish coffee, medium sweet.

Ciao. JWE

[Don Bowen]

Some really good Chilean wine and a puruse of Lundstorm's The First South Pacific Campaign.

He makes the point that both the US and Japan had three separate planning groups and each group "planned" similarly to it's counterpart.

US Pacific Fleet and Combined Fleet were both concentrated on the Central Pacific.
Pacific Fleet recognized the importance of the Hawaiian Islands and were prepared to commit major resources to defend it.
Combined Fleet recognized the importance of the Hawaiian Islands to the US and calculated that a thrust into Hawaiian waters would precipitate the major fleet action that was so desired.

Japanese Naval Staff and the US CNO recognized the importance of the South Pacific and particularly the sea routes between the US and Australia.
The Japanese wanted to cut those sea routes to knock Australia out of the war and prevent an allied counter attack from there.
The US needed to protect access to Australia and intended to generate a counter attack back up the New Guinea/Philippines route.

Both the US and Japanese armies basically had their heads up their asses.
The US was obsessed with a cross channel invasion of Europe in 1942 and were willing to starve the Pacific to accomplish it.
The Japanese were obsessed with Russia and reserved it's major strength for future combat in Mongolia and Siberia.

The Japanese general staff caved to Yamamoto's resignation threat and commit to the disastrous Midway operation.
The US used message intercepts to prepare for the Japanese thrust and got a bit lucky in so completely defeating it.

There after the South Pacific came to the forefront until Japan was fully on the defensive.

Both armies continued to watch their ileocecal valves function until 1944.

[oldman45]

You made me look up ileocecal valve, wish I hadn't know. It's amazing what you can learn on this website. [;)]

John, that looked like one hell of a menu. Got me hungry reading it.

[Symon]

ORIGINAL: Don Bowen
Some really good Chilean wine and a puruse of Lundstorm's The First South Pacific Campaign.

Only way to go my friend.

Both armies continued to watch their ileocecal valves function until 1944.

Ain't that just the truth.

@Oldman45, I didn't look up ileocecal valve function because, knowing Don, I figured it was going to be something wet, blurpy, and stinky. I'm pretty old myself and the last thing I need is some other body part to worry about [:D]

I was re-reading, in Matloff & Snells, "Strategic Planning, 1941-42", some of the colloquy between Marshall, King, Arnold, Mac, Nimitz, Curtin, Churchill, and the San Diego Zoo, about the Jan-May 1942 time frame and the allocations finally made to the Pacific. My Gosh, how quickly actual events displace the best [sic] made plans. It looks as if things are going to be a bit thinner in the OZ/South/SWPac area than they are in the Guadalcanal Scen.

41st ID was in place in OZ, and was 'fairly' well trained. 32nd ID arrived in April/May, but didn't have a clue, and they were still swapping out their War-I weapons and had never even seen half the stuff they were 'equipped' with. And lots of the reinforcement plans would have to go by the boards. For example, 37th ID (-) was on ships for Fiji at the end of May, but whoops ... Just gonna have to trust me on this one [:D]

This one is hard. Japan had a bit more available than the planned 9 Bns, while Allied forces on the ground at the objectives were nowhere near sufficient (except perhaps New Cal) in the narrow window of opportunity. Reinforcement comes both from the US and Japan. Reinforcement schedules are in line with actuals, but dates and availability locations will vary.

Ciao. JWE [8D]

[Symon]

Woof !! The more we do on this, the more we find to look at.

Since this is grainy and the devices are all nation-specific, we added the Brit ACO, Aus LWAW Mk-I and Mk-II, and Can SCR-602 (Brit LW) air warning radars for use in SWPac along with the US SCR-270. Testing showed that some tweaking of data parameters was necessary. Had already done radar tweaks for NavAir AA combat in the Nav context, but hadn't looked at LandAir AA combat in the Air context before and found that the model wasn't quite the same . So, back to making charts, graphs and modulo tables. At least the results will be beneficial for land radar device data in the regular scenarios [8D].

I came up with an expression that works really well, in a practical sense, and folds in very nicely with the specific range algorithm that Elf and Michael did for the game. As both Elf and Michael have said in the past, combat algorithms are hex based (within 40nm circle). "Things" with ranges beyond that don't really go beyond that, they just have more detect chances: so if the "thing" has an 80nm range, it gets 2 chances at the apple; if "thing" has a 120nm range, it gets 3, and so on. But recursive checks have mathematical issues all their own, which tend to give more weight to long range detection. It's math. It happens. Trust me.

So ... a decent work around, to avoid the simple recursive stuff, is to divide the stated, standard, usually max, and rarely achieved, "Range" parameter, with a value that depends on the "hex" value of the range parameter. Can't say just what it is at the moment, but can say it is a <Sqrt> function. It's obviously external to the recursive, but math suggests "better" results.

Ciao. JWE

[Symon]

Know people are waiting for this. But I'm kind of out of pocket on a special project, so I'm passing this off to the staff [8D]

It will happen, but you will get updates and notifications from either Mike Osterhaut or Matt Norton. They are my go-to guys in the SW and NE US (and Matt is good with the TX group). They speak for me.

Ciao. JWE

[Ol_Dog]

Thanks for keeping us in the loop

[Symon]

Digging through Palazzo and AWM54, item 721/2/11 and 703/5/52, etc .. looking for the physical makeup of various Australian echelons, particularly with respect to certain support organizations, such as AT and AAA. The Brit standard is pretty clear, and it seems that the AIF followed the standard with MG and AT units. But I am coming to the conclusion that the AA units were not folded into the Artillery Brigade command structure, but were rather held at Corps level.

Palazzo notes that a ‘standard’ Dec ’42 unit, was authorized a Lt AA Regt, but says nothing about its possible predecessors and where they may have been echeloned.

My personal take is that they weren’t “technically” subsumed in the divisional structure; a lot of AA out there, but not necessarily under divisional command. Exigencies of service might well cause them to be divisionally regimented, in the interests of efficiency. But one does not wish 48 Bofors divided up into an equivalent scale unit, if the actual AA unit, with the same 48 Bofors, is available.

I would love it if someone had some hard info on this.

Ciao. JWE

[Natali]

I made changes to Johns OOB. Many Australin units upgrade and Australia only has 1 command HQ and it is restricted. I added training camp bases and put a command HQ in each one. They have a range of 1 and are restricted and are static and can’t move. Australian units that are need to upgrade their TOE have to go to one of the training camps, or be in range of the main command HQ in Sydney I think. The infantry evolvs ok until it goes to the jungle TOE and then it has to go to the jungle school while getting reorganized.

Bases are Atherton close to Cairns and Lowanna south of Brisbane because they were jungle schools. Armor goes to Puckapunyal that John already put in. There is Katherine for NT and Wembly for WA and Adelaide for SA and Bonegilla for Victoria.

[Natali]

Australian LCUs start at slot 5001. Organized so that LH Rgts have their upgrades in the next slot so people can see.
NZ LCUs start at slot 5401.There are 2 upgrade paths for Territorial Forces, and they are done.
Almost finished, except for folding in John’s Japanese and Ships.

Sam

[kkoovvoo]

Looking forward for this!

[Natali]

HQs and Base Forces have been radically redone for the Scenario.

The US Air HQ and Support structure is as follows:

There were 7 Base Sections, which were administrative organizations, and qualify as Air HQs, but without much additional infrastructure. These were Base-1 at Darwin, Base-2 at Townsville, Base 3 at Brisbane, Base-4 at Melbourne, Base-5 at Adelaide, Base-6 at Perth, and Base-7 at Sydney, with the last (Base-7) established 19 April, 1942.

5th Air Force Service Command had 3 active Air Depot Groups during the period of interest; 4th, 12th, and 15th, all based in the Townsville area and each having 2 Repair Squadrons, a Supply Squadron and an Ordnance Coy. For game purposes, these are relocated to Townsville, Charter Towers and Brisbane, as the equivalent of base forces. These are the units which have a significant amount of Aviation Support. They are static and cannot move. This is where depleted and fatigued airgroups go to in order to rest, reform, repair and replace.

There were a number of Air Service Groups, equivalent to the ground support element of a Bombardment or Pursuit (Fighter) Group. These contain the maintenance and ordnance companies that the game calls aviation support.

Because of game constraints, the Service Groups are folded into Squadron support units. Squadrons do not get much of aviation support, so they have very short legs and will have to go back to higher to get well.

This does not work with the usual AE game concepts. It is different; very different.

Sam

[Mac Linehan]

John and the Team -

Good work, Gents!

Mac

[oldman45]

This scenario may be the one that gets me into PBEM. Looking forward to seeing it complete.