beppi
Posts: 382
Joined: 3/11/2004 From: Austria Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58 quote:
ORIGINAL: beppi So GreyJoy get a plan to ship supply from cape town to Karachi, you will need it. 500k supply sound a lot but without some additional supply convoys Karachi will run out of supply. I think Rader learned well the lessons of the CR/Q-Ball India battle. I asked GJ weeks ago how much sealift he had at Aden, and I believe he answered about 75 hulls. These have to last until May 1943 unless he can suppliment them. Additionally, they are all he has to lift in five divisions of LOD reenforcements if he chooses to do that. Rader just has to atrit each cycle by a couple of ships to essentially take Aden out of the picture by the end of 1942. To get more supply and shipping to the Mideast GJ has to run the gauntlet. Rader took DG and Socotra, which Q-Ball did not. Even if GJ uses Mombassa he has to expose what would be quite substantial convoys to several days' exposure on the run from Mombasa to the Aden inbound wormhole. And again, those same ships have to risk the run down to Karachi, with surface TFs, subs, mines, and perhpas the KB/mini-KB popping in and out of the picture. A tough row to hoe. These realities are one reason I've urged GJ several times to ground, or nearly so, his air forces at Karachi. Running 4E raids is insanity when supply is your only lifeline to victory. He's risking what?, half-a-million POWs and the entire Indian, most of the British, and a lot of the Aussie land forces to run pinprick 4E raids which accomplish nothing strategically. Supply is king. Supply buys time. Time buys reenforcements. Reenforcements buy the win. The game is not that easy to learn and everyone makes mistakes. And it is even harder to correctly plan into the future. I agree that 4E burn a lot of supplies and stopping the attacks would buy some additional time. But nevertheless the supply in Karachi is a potential threat, so it is necessarily to get a plan to deal with that threat sometimes in the future. It is not possible to say when it might get a problem, but when it gets a problem the convoys have to be ready. To begin to react then when the supply is low is a reaction to the situation and will lead to sure loss of Karachi. It might result in the loss of even a 100 xAKs, but this loss it by no way comparable to a loss of Karachi. There should be a plan to begin the shipment of at least a half a million tons of supply to Aden right now. The supply can sit there, safe and protected and might be necessary sometimes in the future, or maybe not cause everything changes during the war. But it will deal no harm and opens options. For a potential counter invasion you need at least an other half a million so better ship a million tons of supply to Aden. To act good on a tactical level you need strategic situation which allows good tactical options. And close to 0 supply in Aden relying only on the little supply which arrives through convoys prior to mid 1943 does not provide any options.
< Message edited by beppi -- 6/14/2011 6:45:16 PM >
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