ORIGINAL: Leandros
Thank you, Buckrock - good to see you grabbed the point....[;)]...There shall be many more. This is a very different US leadership, you know...[:)]
I appreciate the way you are contributing to the quest! Please carry on!
Fred
Not a problem. I'm happy to contribute then where I can to your effort. Trying to "Save MacArthur" by only altering events from the outbreak
of the Pacific War (rather than before) is a worthwhile and intriguing project, particularly if the processes are historically plausible.
I'm not sure your explanation of no new orders for Ludington until after she later leaves Canton Island would work historically. Within two days
of her leaving Christmas Island, reports of Japanese attacks against other islands a few hundred miles from Canton Is were being received at
Pearl Harbor. There were probably good reasons why she was ordered historically to head for the relative protection of American Samoa instead.
It's worth a read if you haven't already of just what US intel (real and imagined) was being received by the relevent US commanders at this time
regarding the Japanese presence in the Western Pacific. The potential threats (including the West Coast Jap Carrier Scare on Dec 9th and 10th)
were considerable and Stark's decision to order all merchant ships to their nearest port and suspend shipping departures until the 12th was not
hard to justify, even possibly in the face of some "pre-war estimates of the enemy’s military capacity". And if you get the opportunity at some
point, it would be interesting to know what these pre-war estimates are that you are using.
One final question on your earlier scenario assumptions, should the 2nd Marine Brigade actually be "ready to go" as of the start of your AE game
if the project intention is to test what was possible historically? Unlike the 161st and 34th Regiments who were expected to embark within days,
the 2nd Marine Brigade had not been alerted for movement.
When the historical order came on Dec 14th to form the Brigade for the move to American Samoa, it was expected to take about 4 weeks (it
actually took 3) before the unit could be ready for embarkation. Are you going to hold the Marines for a few weeks at a West Coast port to
represent what appears to be a likely "forming up" delay or are they going to be embarked during the opening turns?
This was the only sig line I could think of.