Brothers at arms

[bigbaba]

hi flaggelant. how is your supply situation in india?

as japanese player, i invaded india in february 1942 and went pretts fast to bombay and captured the city so i had nearly all bases south of ahmadabad in my hand. i brought 300.000 supply and captured 380.000 more in bombay but after just one week, all this supply was gone! so i had give up the game because supply depots in india were totaly empty after just one week eat up 680.000 supply!

same situation in china. i pumped 40.000 supply every week from japan but all troops there were at 50% supply all the time.

just curious how your overal supply situation is.

[flaggelant]

hmmm sounds strange.. but i'm running rather low in supply on most fronts (except gilberts/wake/ midway) i brought about 50K supply with the initial assault and got some 30K in folow up, i dont HAVE 300.000 supply to transport anywhere, so i dont know how you come by those numbers? (i'm playing stock, dunno if you'r running a mod, with altered supply situations??)

with my fleet departing before finishing unloading only about 1/3 of the supply is unloaded (troops unload first), the supply situation isn't alarming by the numbers, but im not sure if its going to change fast after we start battling, instead of just running around a bit.

The only thing i could think of that might cause a mayor supply shortage is my industry not functioning properly (still havent finished all plane/engine upgrades, also because of supply situation i'd say). but i dont think its as bad as you're sketching (which would mean a total collapse of my war effort in, i guess, about 2 months ??)

havent used tracker in a while, but i havent seen any of the mayor industry sites running low in recourse/ oil, will run a check on this asap, because this is making me a bit nervous!?!

so the question would be is it a mod that makes this difference, or is my industry doing really bad..?

[flaggelant]

havent come around to check on the supply situation, but i reorganised some TF's to head for India just in case

In the meantime i found out what the TF's near johnston were doing, several task forces showed up some 2 to 3 days out of Wake,
it looks like an invasion force, but by the sightings there are no real escorts.

150 Bombers are gathered on all fields in strike range (Midway and Wotje both hold some small sq. whilst the main force will strike from wake itself)
i upgraded the Midway cap as well, since im expecting a strike from the B17's to dent my attack.

Wake is at airfield lvl3 (so no torpedoes, but itssomewhere around 37% to lvl 4) and has plenty of supplies.



On the Indian frontier the CV's have gathered to finally do some replenishment, and the allied cv's are retiring north. My invasion TF is 2 days out of Triv, so everything will be rolling as it was before very soon, with the exception that Trivandium rocketed into a lvl 4 airfield and now can support torpedo bombers, of which we will gladly make use [8D]

[flaggelant]

The situatin around Wake looks slightly different from what was assumed

our primary airstrikes go in in small packs, highly motivated and with high hopes,
after the first planes are launched however the small surface fleet detached from our transport force is attacked by airplanes! some strange form of luck makes the light cruiser come out of the attack unharmed, but 1 PG being struck with 2 torpedoes. The taskforce reaches within 60 miles of the landing force, time will tell if their luck will continue


it seems that there are 2 American CV's escorting the landing, packing a lot more force than initially anticipated,
many Japanese bombers are downed, as the light escorts are easily discarded...

for the loss of about 50 planes we manage to down 18 allied fighters..
now it will be coming down to the numbers, the AV was raised from 135 to 170, expected to hit 200 tomorow.
the allied fleet is uncovering a heavy escort, but only a low number of transports, very likely not enough to take an atoll with 200 AV stowed in every corner. Forts are only at 1 so i'm expecting some heavy damage from bombardment missions..

all incoming task forces are rerouted to the west, where mini KB will regroup with Shokaku, to engage IF the battle holds long enough.


The indian landing force moves to the shores uninterupted, with KB within some 200 miles going unspotted, finally KB manages to replenish fully!

Homan is being bombarded for several days now, the engeneer units are 60 miles out of the city, their arrival will sign in the start of the great attack on the Chinese lines.

Soerabaja also sees the arival of an engeneering unit, which will initiate the attack immidiatly



for now however all eyes go out to wake, where the allies seem to try their first real counter manouvre!

[flaggelant]

Wake turns into a disaster..

over 150 planes are lost during the operation, with only one hit reported on a transport, without their torpedoes the nells and betties are of no use when it comes to attacking anything.

The folowing landings, escorted by 2 bombardment missions show around 500 assault value landing, including a coastal gunnery reg. several eng reg and some infantry.
these easily whipe out the garrison, which only defends to the strength of around 50 AV after bombardment missions are done.
51 nav guard and 2 base forces will perish on wake, most other units have fragments on either midway or in the gilbert islands.

I´ve started gathering an army to counter on Wake,
withing 14 days a group of units up to 400 AV will arrive
around 200 AV is allready in the home islands (including a released eng reg.)
and another 600 AV + a HQ is redirected from southern China.

With around 1200 AV and a long bombing campaign we should be able to retake wake, however the allies will very likely be expecting this move, so a big battle will be developing here. the carriers of mini KB are on the move, but will very likely miss all action, if the allies are smart and retire now that wake is taken. The allied cv´s havent replenished at wake, so their plane lvl is still a bit lowered, which gives me an advanatage over them.



a further mayor point in my WITP career+ I´ve halted all airframe and engine production, with everything being in pool (except for emily´s which are the only plane staying in production) i think that a quick supply push towards India over the next 2 weeks wont harm the war effort but will be hard needed to keep my army moving.

In the Gilberts another transport group with heavy escorts makes way towards the west, its possible that these might attack the gilberts under the assumption that my bombers are in the north, attacking wake. most bombers however wont be flying against cap missions, so they are resting in the gilberts, a target practice would be good for morale here.
(even if they dont land, the TF comes within striking range for 2 / 3 days, so we will see if Tarawa at lvl 4 will compensate for wakes failure).

During the last day of the wake invasion 90 B-17 bomb Midway, however after the failed naval attack the zero's in Midway were expecting this attack, 12 B-17 wont return (of which 4 due to ops losses) for the loss of as many zero's (half lost on the ground). sounds like a good deal to me, at this rate the B-17's will be disrupted beyond flying within days.

[flaggelant]

The next couple of days turn into an anti-climax, as the japanese muster forces for a counter offensive in the pacific at wake
and are on the road in India, knocking on the door in both Madras and bangalore (both but lightly garrisoned, with some delaying tactics with units on the railroads in front of the cities)

The long wanted supplies finally arrive and all fighter squadrons in India are replenished.

Mini KB is en route to Shokaku, who is about to link up with Zuikaku, the entire group is about 2 days out of striking range, linking up tomorow will initiate the first airfield bombardments from marcus. a first flight was succesfull (45 zero's + 50 nell/betty) downing about 20 fighters. More aircraft will be sent to marcus to heat up the battle over wake.
a lot of planes are to be destroyed before mini KB will be safe to engage.

in Homan forts are reduced to 6, but disrubtion is in the 70's for most units (lsot 7 K troops for 3.5 K chinese, sounds pretty ok for a large fort), the battle now turns towards the flanks where both armies have several units to clobber eachother, a massed bombing raid south of Homan is to breach these lines.