Akos Gergely
Posts: 733
Joined: 4/8/2004
From: Hungary, Bp.
Status: offline
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Hello Dear all!
I thought you might be interested in the Allied side developments of the action for the alternate WNT mod as well. I have to point out first that this is my first full map PBEM ever, I've mostly played partial map scenarios in PBEM before.
On the other hand this scenario was too tempting not to give it a try. So here is the allied side, any positive critics, suggestions are welcome.
Unfortunately time is a limitation for me, so I'll try to do weekly updates.
We are at Dec 13 now, so we are almost over with the first week.
You have to know that the naval force allocations are a bit different from the historical campaign.
I have Lexington class battlecruiser ( ) in Pearl together with USS Yorktown as well as the usual bunch of BBs. As a surplus I have North Carolina (this time with 8x16" guns) and Salem (sister to historical Wichita) and Mississippi.
To the south I have Saratoga as a carrier with a battlecruiser sister, and of course Enterprise in her usual position southwest of Pearl. Lexington is on a refit in SF (fitted out with 5"/38s and cut down superstructure etc.) together with New Mexico (small damage patchup). In Bremerton I have the 4th Colorado class BB, USS Washington BB-47 under refit (15 sys damage). West of SF I have task force with Hornet (this time sister to Wasp) and South Dakota (as historical but with Mark 7 50 caliberlenght guns).
Near Java I have the battlecruiser De Zeven Provincien with a few DDs. South of SIngapore there is Jellicoe and Howe with their escorts. These two are currently my most valuable gunships as bot has AA in excess of 1000 and both of them are experienced. Not to mention that they are fast and well armed with 8 and 9 15" guns respectively.
South of Colombo I have Illustrious and Beatty (sister to Jellicoe). This group is moving to Sorabaja.
I have some CAs and CLs scattered around in DEI and Philippines plus Warspite and three cruisers and Hermes in Trincomalee.
Now on the first day I got the PH strike as usual, it was with 4 carriers only (we had an abort and since the strike was relatively light, my opponent offered to strike only with 2/3 of power now). I've lost West Virginia to 4 torps but from the other ships only 3 BBs (Nevada, Arizona, Maryland) suffered moderate damage and unfortunately Yorktown received 4 bombs and a fish so she is out for a while. Fortunately Constitution did not receive damage. In the PI Juan bombed Manila and my subs, resulting in 8 damaged boats. The rest is going north close to Japan to interdict the shipping lanes.
Otherwise the first days were pretty historical, with al ot of merchant shipping falling to Japanese air and subs!
Startegy: as I have a lot more fighting power left I'll try to give Juan a run for his money even in the early month. In 1942 alone I get 4 Essex class CVs and all modern BBs up to and including New Jersey plus I have a lot more British power. So I'm moving my US Navy ships to the South Pacific/Solomons region where I'll have 4 CVs supported by 2 fast BBs, 3-4 older slow BBs plus two huge BCs and a bunch of CAs and CLs soon (after Lexington is repaired and Louisiana arrives). It's quite a substantial force. I plan to support them out of Sydney where I can do their 1942/1 refits as well.
In the DEI I'll hold on to Java, so all British naval forces diverted there, except Warspite and Hermes plus a few cruisers that will guard the Indian ocean should Juan intrude there.
Dec-7-13 1941
In the PI I evacuated everything I could with disastrous consequences as Juan's CVLs were roaming around and mopping a lot of shipping, including USS Phoenix. Then I made an attack on his landing forces around Palawan with Wichita and an Omaha class CL in the lead. Unfortunately instead of transports I ran into two of his CAs, Ibuki and Iwaki. In a long, hard fight both my cruisers got shredded by numerous 8" hits and both were sunk in the end. They put up a valiant fight and landed a lot of hist but I was unlucky - most of my 8" hits that had the chance to penetrate at all were at medium range where they glanced of the deck armor of the enemy CAs.
Before this encounter my old British DDs managed to sunk by torps one of the DDs of this enemy TF, ironically they did more damage then my relatively modern CA.
USS Houston was coming after my ships to back them up but arrived too late so I diverted her to disrupt the landings at Miri/Brunei. I got lucky and dispatched 4 xAKs. On the way back though his CVLs again hit - Houston managed to fight off a few Kates but the Vals scored hard on her. One day later she went down in the second strike.
We had an encounter near Balikpapan as well where he struck with a Kongo and two CAs and my Omaha class CL and four stacker DDs did not stand a chance. I dispatched in pursuit my Force Z with Jellicoe and Howe plus the dutch BC force (this time with dutch CLs). I could not catch the invaders but I got quite a few Kate strikes. Too bad for Juan, Howe has the highest AA rating from all of my ships and I could down at least 3, probably 4 Kates.
In the Pacific I could track KB for al ong time thanks to positioning my Catalinas everywhere. Strangely enough it seems Juan split his heavy escorts off KB that are heading back to Japan. The rest of KB was in pursuit after Enterprise to the south. Now the Saratoga and Big E TFs will soon meet in the Solomons.
Hornet TF, a tanker force from SF, and a big surface force under Adm Shafroth with Tennessee, Oklahoma and Constitution and escorts plus a tanker TF are in trail of them. I'm also dispatching S class subs to Dutch Harbor to operate from there, obviously with AS support and supplies/fuel in trail.
< Message edited by csatahajos -- 11/6/2009 8:16:48 PM >
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