Feinder
Posts: 6589
Joined: 9/4/2002 From: Land o' Lakes, FL Status: offline
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Well, the thing about defending in the Solomons is that, they are more defensible. WitP does accurately portray the added security of interdefensible positions. The Solomons, in WitP just as in history, provide a multitude of potential bases/airfields that that, due to their proximity and mutual support, make capturing one and eventually all of them, more costly. If you take the whole of New Guinea, the Solomons, and up to Truk, it took the Allies about 2 years to secure the area. That's quite a bit of time, considering the percentage of real estate of the entire Pacific theater that, that area represents. If the "goal" is Saipan/Tianan/Guam = puts B-29s in range of Japan, and allows you to patrol NW and cut imports; then consider how much work you want the Allies to do in order to get there. If don't even bother with New Guinea or the Solomons or New Britian, the Allies can use Rabaul as a huge staging base, wipe out Truk (it doesn't have much for mutually supporting bases within range). And then they're one step from S/T/G. Each bit you go south, buys you a little more time. If you take only Rabaul, maybe New Britian, the Allies will pound you from the Solomons. If you take/build up New Britian (Gasmata etc), you can have some mutual support, to make their job harder. But obviously the crown is to own the Solomons *and* New Guinea. This buys you the most time, perhaps indefinate. If the Solomns/NG are heavily fortified, it's a tough nutt to crack. Just like the SRA, there are multitude of mutual supporting bases. Frankly, I think it's a little easier to go thru atolls (in game terms), because they're more spread out and easier to isolate (which is also true historically, altho nobody would say that atolls were easy historically). I guess you could ask the question - If Japan captures all NG/Sol, and builds it up and it then acts a deterrent to Allies, to the point where they never go that way, and instead chosing to go thru Centpac. Were the Solomons irrelevant? You might say so. You've got 3 divisions or so cooling their heals doing nothing. But you might also say that it allowed you a bit of control by forcing the Allies chose a different axis of attack (as maybe you can put it to good use). Whatever. Point is, I believe that historically, the Solomons -did- prove to defensible. The nature of the area lends to a mutually supporting network of airfields. It -did- provide a focus of Allied offense for nearly 2 years. The Japanese intent -was- to establish an outer perimeter that was suppose to buy time until a peace agreement could be reached after all. Unfortunately, that "buying time" was exactly what Japan couldn't afford. The two years it "bought' proved to be the attrition war that killed Japan, looking for a peace settlement that was never going to happen. -F-
< Message edited by Feinder -- 5/2/2007 6:44:40 AM >
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