Feltan
Posts: 406
Joined: 12/5/2006
From: Kansas
Status: offline
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The issue isn't the effectiveness of the artillery, nor even guns wearing out (which they would) -- rather, it is an issue of doctrine and logistics in general.
The Japanese military historically was not trained for mass fires. Like most countries (other than the U.S. and U.K.), the Japanese did not have the concept of a Fire Direction Center (FDC) that could concentrate the fires of multiple units on a single target. Each unit had a Forward Observer that used a common point of reference to direct fire (i.e., I see the church steeple, you see the church steeple, aim at 320 degrees 3 KM from said point). A single artillery unit normally supported a single ground maneuver unit. This is primarily the method used by the Japanese, Germans, Russians and most other countries during this period. A corallary to this was a planned fire scheme that was based on pre-sited coordinates. The aforementioned doctrine is effective and simple, it doesn't require detailed maps, it doesn't require radio communication (normally used land line) but precludes the effective quick massing of fire. Hence, the effect of multiple regiments of artillery in a Japanese attack would not be equal to the sum of the parts -- each added unit would only add a fraction of its strength to the attack. Perhaps a simple way to model this would be to restrict the number of artillery units to the number of land units, with no more than a regiment of artillery per infantry division in support.
The logistics is a bit more straight forward. Units normally did not stockpile enough ammo for multi-day bombardments. However -- they could and sometimes did. I agree witht he postings that state a heftier supply consumption is in order. It is. I don't have a handy reference to state what a normal Japanese basic load consisted of -- but I would venture to guess it was no more than several dozen rounds per tube. Enough for sustain fire for a few hours at most. More could be brought in, but we are talking a more substantial logistic effort than is portrayed in the game. For a dozen artillery regiments, we are talking a significant tonnage of shells for a multi-day sustained bombardment. The game currently doesn't do a good job of modelling this.
Lastly, one could safely assume within the context of the game -- if mulitple tons of supply were being shipped in to support a bombardment, that some small percentage of that tonnage would be replacement tubes for the guns. Such an item is major end item replacement, and is generally part of the supply chain. So, I don't see a special problem with that issue once the logistics is made more realistic.
Regards,
Feltan
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Founder of the "Bring back the 'For Jimmy' babe, and dump the fat chick on the rail" club.
Being a JFB means you never are short of PBEM opponents.
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Printable Version
Japanese Death Star Artillery - 
!!!) artillery units to Chengchow, a key base on the Chinese main line of resistance. Chengchow has/had forts and should have been relatively immune from "artillery death star carnage." The results of back to back bombardments by Miller - 2,399 casualties the first day and 2,088 the second. Two of my units essentially vaporized. What was a strongly fortified position that had held in a long-term seige is suddenly decimated. 
RE: Japanese Death Star Artillery - 
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