The Good The Bad & The Indifferent

[Canoerebel]

If you can find a base not protected by CAP and strong AA, the results are vastly superior to nighttime raids. In the nighttime, many squadrons get "lost" and don't complete the missions, the bombing runs are usually in small groups of three or five, and the results are considerably dampened by darkness's effect on accuracy.

This raid was the biggest and most successful to date. I don't have recon on Shimizu, near Tokyo, so I'm not quite sure what the results are yet. I do know that, by the end of the turn, 100k+ fires were still burning, so resources, light industry and heavy industry should take decent hits.

[Canoerebel]

11/30/44

Shimizu: This shows Shimizu after the raid but before damage has been reported (I think). I'll edit the post and add a similar screenie of Shimizu next turn. Resources, Light Industry and Heavy Industry should show material damage.

[Canoerebel]

11/30/44

Death Star and the Herd: Big rendezvous to take place tomorrow.

[Canoerebel]

11/30/44

Fancy Pants: Allies take Nanchang, sealing the east side of the pocket. The Japanese no longer have a viable means of egress to the east. John's army will have to stay and fight or Dunkirk out of Hong Kong or Canton. Dealing with this pocket will take quite some time but most IJ units within it are battered now.

[Canoerebel]

12/1/44

Death Star: Rendezvoud with the merchant TF inbound from the DEI. The combined forces proceed north on the most significant mission. An armada of empties will proceed south to the DEI. There are a lot of points and they will be exposed for a few days.

Fancy Pants: 10th IJA Division finally retreats in northern Indochina, giving the Allies access to Hanoi and Haiphong. I should be able to wrap up this pocket before the end of the year.

[Grfin Zeppelin]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

11/30/44

Shimizu: This shows Shimizu after the raid but before damage has been reported (I think). I'll edit the post and add a similar screenie of Shimizu next turn. Resources, Light Industry and Heavy Industry should show material damage.

Thats Yokosuka not Shimzu. Shimizu is one hex left.

[MakeeLearn]

ORIGINAL: Gräfin Zeppelin

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

11/30/44

Shimizu: This shows Shimizu after the raid but before damage has been reported (I think). I'll edit the post and add a similar screenie of Shimizu next turn. Resources, Light Industry and Heavy Industry should show material damage.

Thats Yokosuka not Shimzu. Shimizu is one hex left.

_____________________________

Tourist [8|]

[Canoerebel]

I'm using the Mercator projection.

[wpurdom]

Was working my way through this AAR from the restart up to page 226 when I lost my place. Is there some way to go back to a post # or a page number other than leafing through?

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: wpurdom

Was working my way through this AAR from the restart up to page 226 when I lost my place. Is there some way to go back to a post # or a page number other than leafing through?

You can edit the address box for a specific page.

[Grfin Zeppelin]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

ORIGINAL: wpurdom

Was working my way through this AAR from the restart up to page 226 when I lost my place. Is there some way to go back to a post # or a page number other than leafing through?

You can edit the address box for a specific page.

Omg thank you so much.

[Canoerebel]

12/1/44

I don't have the turn file yet, so just a quick post about a side action of some interest.

SoPac:

Night Time Surface Combat, near Luganville at 120,150, Range 12,000 Yards

Japanese Ships
CA Myoko
CA Haguro
DD Hae
DD Hitonozi
DD Augumo

Allied Ships
LST-705, Shell hits 3, Torpedo hits 1, and is sunk

NavSearch had reported an enemy combat TF at Ndeni yesterday, so I disbanded all but one of my LSTs at Luganville into port. I left the one as I wanted to see, if John did raid, the makeup of his TF. This proved to be helpful information. To me (but not to John), the use of CAs down here while he committed four BBs without any cruisers up at Ningpo is curious.

A lot of Allied activity has been going on in SoPac of late - the conquest of Luganville, the conquest of Port Moresby, and a lot of shipping moving around, including a CVE TF that John caught wind of with my blessing. I week or more back, I noted a carrier TF on a SE heading departing the Marianas.

So I figured a raid might be coming. I moved away most of my good ships and increased NavSearch. I have some stuff well to the south of Luganville but nothing larger than a DD or an xAP.

This is a sideline action that to me means nothing one way or the other. There are but two things that John could do right now that would really mess up my ability to prosecute the war: take Ningpo or stop or seriously hamper Death Star and the Herd from bringing supply to Formosa and Coastal China. It would be hard for John to engage at either place. His earlier attempt at Ningpo was so expensive for him that it might have further dampened his ardor for taking a big swing.

But I've noticed over the past 36 hours the serious increase in activity on his AAR, not just by readers but also by him. I think he's up to something, so I've tried to really attend to security all over the place.

[DRF99]

But I've noticed over the past 36 hours the serious increase in activity on his AAR, not just by readers but also by him. I think he's up to something, so I've tried to really attend to security all over the place.

This should be a line item in the intelligence report.

[Lecivius]

ORIGINAL: DRF99

But I've noticed over the past 36 hours the serious increase in activity on his AAR, not just by readers but also by him. I think he's up to something, so I've tried to really attend to security all over the place.

This should be a line item in the intelligence report.

[:D]

[paullus99]

Interesting - that might represent a few of the last cruisers that John has afloat at this point.

John is probably itching for some kind of action - if I was in your shoes, I would be expecting him to do something, and given the rough treatment he received the last time he tried to hit you in China, I would actually expect he'll go after more vulnerable targets.

[Canoerebel]

I probably haven't given readers a good feel for what's going on right now - the enormity and complexity of the operation to bring in supply.

This is the largest and most complex operation since the invasion of Ningpo a month or more back. I had to disengage from the front lines along Coastal China, pick up empties from Luzon, escort the empties to the proximity of the DEI, rendezvous with the inbound TFs, make the switch of empties heading south and loaded ships coming back north with DS, take precautions to then get those empties to the DEI at some risk, and turn Death Star & The Herd around to steam north.

All the while, John was watching; he could work out plans for attacks to overwhelm Ningpo, batter Foochow or the Formosa bases, possibly strike Manila by air, seek to interdict Death Star, or even - if he was really on top of things - to orchestrate an attack on those empties once they detached from Death Star.

While he couldn't do all of those things, he could do some of them. To this point he's tried just one - the attack on Ningpo that was a fairly costly repulse to his BB TF.

Things are beginning to look very promising for the Allied effort. Most of the maximum exposure is in the past now. John tried a big attack and failed. He's running out of calendar to figure out something that might impede the seeming Allied juggernaut. If he fails, inside of a week, Allied merchantmen will be unloading one million supply - enough to handle air ops well into the new year - and a new army at Ningpo or Foochow.

The most important op since Ningpo? This op is probably more important than that one.

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

I probably haven't given readers a good feel for what's going on right now - the enormity and complexity of the operation to bring in supply.

I don't know about that, the picture with a zillion and one fleets did a pretty good job.[;)]

[paullus99]

I think this sums up this particular game:

"Amateurs study tactics. Professionals study logistics."


That is all....

[Canoerebel]

12/2/44

Death Star: Death Star turns and makes for Ningpo. There's still risk of an ambush but it will no longer be close to enemy airfields and distant from friendly ones.

[CaptBeefheart]

I once had the game go into what seemed like a continuous loop when I had a fleet of about 800 ships heading to Kyushu in the same hex. Good to know it's handling the above armada.

Paullus has a good point on logistics. Some people wait until they have all ducks in a row in terms of supplies, fuel and overwhelming force (I'm guilty of this), whereas CR manages bold strategic incursions on a relatively shoestring budget. As Patton said, "A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week."

Cheers,
CC