Hey LST - Gnarly Roads

[Symon]

Brother Sammy is getting after the Gnarly Roads map mod and needs some instructions. You know a lot more about this than I do, so …

I find 2 RR crossings over the Yangzte in 1941 - at Nanking and Hankow – and 2 RR crossings over the Yellow - on the Nanking to Suchow route and at Chengchow (the Hankow to Chengchow route). They are in-game. Should they remain and, if not, why not?

Will whack the road crossings of the Yangzte between Chungking and Hankow. What about road bridges at Nanking and Hankow? And road bridges at Suchow/Chengchow RR crossings?

What about road bridges over the Hungshui or the Siang, Changki, and Kan?

Your thoughts would be appreciated.

We developed two new road types (AEaster Eggs) intermediate between ‘track’ and ‘secondary’ and between ‘secondary’ and ‘primary’. Sam is adding those and it’s a good opportunity to do the bridge/ferry thing if we had the right info.

Not going to do dot bases. Good idea, but will screw up all the locations files in all the existing scenarios.

[HansBolter]

Don't overlook the bridge on the river Kwai!











(Quickly ducks and bows out........)

[Symon]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter
Don't overlook the bridge on the river Kwai!
(Quickly ducks and bows out........)

LoL [:D] Yeah, but then William Holden blew it up (or Alec Guinness, if you prefer).[:D][:D] Think that stuff is great, but the game engine doesn't support that degree of graininess. Wish it did, butt ...

Ciao. JWE

[Skyros]

My understanding is that the first bridges over the Yangtze were built in the 50s.

[LargeSlowTarget]

Jangtze - no permanent bridges over lower and middle reaches until the Wuhan-Hankow road/rail bridge opened in 1957. The road/rail bridge at Nanking opened in 1968. I have read that the permanent bridge the farthest downstream before the building of the Wuhan-Hankow bridge was at Yibin (upstream of Chungking). I would remove the railroad crossings at Hankow and Nanking.

Yellow River is more difficult to assess. In our timeframe I have found three bridges - the famous "first bridge over the yellow river" at Lanzhou (road only), the three-mile long "screw pile" bridge on the Beijing-Hankow railway north of Chengchow and the bridge at Jinan (Tsinan in game) for the Beijing-Suchow-Pukow-Nanking-Shanghai railroad.

However, the last two bridges were damaged / partly destroyed during the Sino-Japanese War and the 1938 flood.

From bits of info found it appears that the Chengchow bridge was only repaired in 1944 during the ICHI-GO offensive - and partly destroyed again by an OSS commando raid a few days before the end of the war - so I would leave her out of the game.

The Jinan bridge was dynamited in 1937 but quickly repaired by the Japanese by 1938 and the following 1938 flood left her without much of a river to span - so this bridge does not figure in the game.

Then there was the flood of 1938. The East-West "Longhai Railroad" Suchow-Kaifeng-Chengchow-Loyang-Sian runs south of the Yellow river and did not cross it. The Japanese followed this railroad from Suchow in direction of Chengchow, where they could have turned south along the Beijing-Hankow railroad to capure Hankow and Wuchang.
To block this advance, the KMT decided to destroy the dikes of the Yellow River near Chengchow in 1938. Consequently, the Yellow river changed its course back to older riverbeds following a southern route (emptying into the Yellow Sea south of Shandong peninsular, not north of it like it does today and did before 1938) and as intended now crossed and blocked the Longhai Railroad between Kaifeng and Chengchow (and left Jinan bridge dry). I have found a book about US missionaries working in China in 1940 from which it transpires that the Longhai Railroad was impassable west of Kweiteh due to tracks having been destroyed by the flood. It appears that the flood created a wide swath of inhospitable "no man's land" covering 20.000 square miles of villages and cities destroyed, communication lines washed away and agricultural land covered under silt - with Japan in control of the north bank and China of the south bank.

So IMO the Beijing-Shanghai railroad should be cut by the southern route of the Yellow river (between 90,49 and 90,50).

Concerning road bridges - sorry, not much info at hand. There were impermanent pontoon bridges, difficult to model in-game. If in doubt, I'm in favor of downgrading - therefore, in my mod, I have eliminated all river crossings below Hankow and below Chengchow except some "ferries".

Still trying to locate info on the Gan river bridge at Nanchang. Tentatively I have cut her as well, assuming that either there was none or it was damaged when the Chinese retreated.

Edit:

Gulf of Martaban in Burma - no bridge north of Moulmein until 2006, road and Rangoon-Moulmein-Ye railroad used ferries.

[PaxMondo]

Wish Francois would join this discussion. I suspect he would be able to lend a lot of insight. Everything LST mentions above agrees with what I know, but I have more expertise (and sources) for Northern China and SE Asia. Whereas I beleive that Francios has a 1st person source for Central/Southern China.

[Symon]

Thanks LST. Exactly what I was looking for. Nicely done, cool stuff.

I'm running off a 1941 map (from West Point archives) that shows railroads crossing the Jangtze at Nanking and Hankow, but doesn't expressly note bridges. Presumably it is just showing the "route" and the actual river crossing was by ferry?

[LargeSlowTarget]

Yes, Jangtze river crossing at Nanking and Hankow was by ferry.

Take a look at this website which describes China Railroad history up to 1935. On the map you can the breaks at Hankow and Nanking. Quote: "The Nanking-Shanghai Railway is linked with the Tientsin-Pukow line by train ferry at Nanking."

Then there is the The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia which says "Hankow was also a major river port on the Yangtze, and during the high-water season it was accessible to oceangoing vessels of up to 10,000 tons. The middle and lower Yangtze had not been bridged in 1941 and Hankow was a major ferry point for traffic across the river. The main airfield was at Wuchang."

[Symon]

Right Ho then. Boy oh boy, Chemkid is gonna be pissed if this finds its way into the regular extended map.

Think I'll keep the Chengchow bridge. Japan repaired it for ICHI-GO, after all. But lots of players do their own ICHI-GO in 1942, and presumably it could have been repaired earlier. Keeping it only to represent the option, don't ya know. I'll have Sam drop the rest. Ooohh this is gonna be fun.

Thanks. JWE

[fcharton]

Hi,

For the larger rivers (Yangzi, Yellow River...) a good rule of thumb would be : wherever there is a railway crossing, there is a bridge, wherever else, forget it.
In the north, you have to keep two things in mind :

- most of the river have very variable flow, in draught season, most of them are easy to cross, not the case when flooded.
- the Yellow River changed course after the dams were broken, so probably no bridge on the lower course.

Another point you might want to take into account is that China had a fairly developped system of waterways, which partly compensated the lack of roads when moving supplies around.

That's pretty much all I know, but I can read chinese, so if you have sources, or links, I can help you with it (or help find reference on the chinese web).
John, you have my email, I'm just a bit busy these days, so don't expect anything quick.

Francois

[LargeSlowTarget]

Just found the info in another "witness in China" type of book (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9720 ... y_In_China) that the Nanchang railroad bridge over the Gan river was in fact blown by the Chinese in March 1939 (and they dismantled a great part of the railroad east of Nanchang as well) when they lost the town.

[DanSez]

... and we are saying the Japanese were incapable of rebuilding a railroad bridge.

ok.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: DanSez

... and we are saying the Japanese were incapable of rebuilding a railroad bridge.

ok.

I think they are saying what was the actual state IRL as opposed to the best understanding currently in the scenarios.

The issue of building roads/bridges is quite different and has been discussed. The game mechanics don't specifically embrace it, but some people have/are exploring ways to do it. Different issue from the Gnarly Roads effort.

[DanSez]

Just observing.

Seems the discussion about granularity of the game comes up and I wonder if the fate of one bridge that did existed at one time or another is staying within the general model.

Is it possible to give the Japanese player the option to rebuild a bridge or improve a road?
I don't think so outside going into the editor and making the changed which is beyond the scope of normal game play.

[DanSez]

And I understand it is just for the Gnarly Roads mod - which I was interested in following and supporting in the beginning: ie -making China more of a quagmire to conquer.
That would be a good thing.

But cutting the "magic supply trail" which from what I gather (as I have not been able to do it yet) is temperamental and requires a lot of management to train the supply AI to follow. It seems the Good Goal of making China a "tar baby" to suck up troops and supplies is being expanded to force the Japanese player to a strategy that history has already judged as doomed.

In that case I would not be interested in adopting Gharly Roads in any games I would agree to play and wonder what JFB would.

Note -- I am still "in training" and a concerned student of the game.
So I concede I "may not know what I am talking about" at this point - I just wish to bring up something for discussion.

[LargeSlowTarget]

The goal is to provide conditions as "historically correct" as possible in which to follow whatever strategy you want. There were no railroad bridges over the Jangtze - the game has two. Stretches of railroads and bridges destroyed prior to Dec 7th 41 are still available. That means the game provides a transportation capacity which did not exist IRL - in the game, troops and stuff can move faster and more efficient than it was possible IRL. The "magic supply trail" overland from Singapore to Fusan is IMO unrealistic und a gamey exploit.

Yes, Japan had the ability to repair bridges, even to build new bridges - not on the same scale the Allies had, of course. Unfortunately the limitations of the game engine forces some choices. There is no build-in option to repair damaged sections of track and damaged bridges or to construct new one roads, railroads and bridges. To put them in or leave them out is the designer's choice. Symon has opted to remove the non-existing bridges over the Jangtze but to keep the damaged bridge over the Yellow River. I think this is a good compromise.

If you want to push things farther, there are "work-arounds" for the lack of repair/building abilities through modding options - requiring either a pwhexdat file swap by both players at a certain date (with magic construction ability not requiring ENG units nor supplies) or a "supply cap increase by base construction" approach which requires both ENG units and supplies as well as a house rule.


edited for spelling, as usual...

[Symon]

LST explained it quite well. But the rivers don't become impassable. Where the bridges cross, the roads and railroads are simply replaced with something else, like a tertiary road (or track) to simulate a ferry or a pontoon/temp motor bridge. Supply still flows, but way slower at those locations. Strategic movement is somewhat constrained, but less than one might think (prior planning prevents .... [8D]).

Give it a test drive when it's done. It might not be as bad as one thinks. If it is, one can always switch back. There's no harm, no foul in swapping out pwhexe files. Even the new road types will default nicely to their prior incarnations.

Ciao. JWE

[DanSez]

Thanks to both for the replies:
I am not trying to rain on the parade and generally support the efforts to improve the game.
There are other, much more egregious violators of gamey-ness in my view than trying to choke off a few hundred thousand tons of supplies leaking across China -- but I have neither the history of the game nor depth of experience in game play yet to fight those battles.

Good luck with the mod and would suggest this as a interesting game development:

Leave One Path across China where the supply "might" leak. Make this path known and it will become a reason for the Allies to interdict/invade/break the link. This could substitute in a game mechanic the unreasonable (and unrepresented historical) desire of President Roosevelt to make China a major player.

Give the Allies a reason to cut into Southeast China.

(and I am highly anticipating the new 42 DaBabes scenario -- please keep the game alive)

[edited for clarity]

[witpqs]

Dan, FYI the 'magic supply trail' from Singapore to Fusan that LST referred to is not as much about supply as it is about oil and maybe to a lesser extent resources.

[Skyros]

Here is a nice graphic showing the different paths the Yellow River has taken. Can't wait for this to come out, keep up the good work.