Cuttlefish
Posts: 2454
Joined: 1/24/2007
From: Oregon, USA
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February 1944 – April 1944
The first third of 1944 is now in the books and the game has entered early May. Though the shadows are beginning to lengthen on the twilight of the Japanese Empire the game remains absorbing and a lot of fun. There is a huge difference, I find, between playing a late-war Japan that is in a state of collapse and a late-war Japan that is still fighting tooth and claw.
There is one thing every Japanese player knows going in to a campaign game: you are going to lose. You will lose the war, which is as it should be, and you will lose the game too. At least, if any Japanese player has claimed a victory on points over an Allied player I am unaware of it. So you have to enjoy the journey and take satisfaction in doing what you can to put up a good fight. To this point, at least, I think I’m making my opponent gnash his teeth often enough to make it fun.
The Pacific: there has been no change in positions here since the start of the year. I still hold Truk, the Carolines, and the Marianas except for Pagan; he has Pagan, Marcus, and Haha Jima as forward bases. Haha Jima has really been a mixed blessing for him. It provides good recon but in order to prevent Yamato from using it for target practice and to block the flow of supplies into Iwo and Chichi Jima he has to keep carrier forces in the area. This has cost him three CVEs so far, one sunk by LBA staging a surprise attack out of Iwo and two sunk by submarines.
Philippines/DEI: this area has been the focus of Allied efforts and of the war lately. Charbroiled’s forces have by now overrun Sumatra and all of Borneo, and landings have begun on Java. He has also, within the past week, begun an effort against Malaya by swinging around Singapore and landing at Mersing.
I worried about a move like that and have long prepared a response; evacuate the peninsula and retreat to Thailand. But my foe out-thought me. He must have anticipated that this would be my reaction and dropped paras on the rail line north. I will have to race to clear these and the reinforcements coming in by aircraft to successfully evacuate. I am going to leave enough force in Singapore to make him lay siege to the place, both to delay him and to deny him the facilities there, especially the shipyard, for a long as possible.
In the Philippines he has been slowly forcing his way into the archipelago north of Mindanao, creeping around strong points and targeting weakly held or unoccupied bases. I have been able to strike back a few times. Most notably, an air attack succeeded in crippling Pennsylvania and sinking (I think) Mississippi. Mississippi was last seen flooding magazines just before my first kamikaze attack of the war hit. The doomed Idas involved didn’t do much damage but they did increase the fire level to “heavy.”
This should exacerbate Charbroiled’s battleship shortage. He has the Iowa-class ships to play with, of course, but only a few of the older ones available, sharply limiting his bombardment ability.
China: my offensive in the south continues and has succeeded beyond my hopes. The siege at Changsa was long and bloody but ended in the destruction of 31 Chinese units and the loss of 120,000 troops. My forces have now also taken Kweilin and Wuchow and are advancing on Liuchow. This is not just a sideshow; once I break through to Nanning my troops are poised to enter Indochina. I have the political points available to enable them to cross the border and this is my ace in the hole against the move that I now fear most – a massive Allied leap across the South China Sea and into the region.
In my last game, against Erstad, I was at this point on the defensive in China and losing. But I think my policy of inflicting the maximum possible casualties on the Chinese has paid off. There is no way at this point, I think, that the Chinese army can be rebuilt. He will have all the units, of course, since they respawn, but they are doomed to remain at one-third strength.
Overall: within one or two months, probably, the whole DEI will be gone. The campaign for Luzon and points north is going to be protracted and brutal. The Pacific has been static since the failed invasion of Iwo. Looking over the map one important fact stands out: the Allies are nowhere close to B-29 range of mainland Japan and have no chance of being there anytime soon.
The main danger, as I see it right now, is in Indochina. If I can evacuate Malaya successfully the units there can join Fortress Thailand or help bolster the defenses along the South China Sea, and if my China campaign continues to succeed I can draw units from there as well. I would like to turn any Allied adventure there into a protracted struggle.
I expect at some point we will see some action in the Pacific, perhaps an attack against the main islands of the Marianas. I can do little at this point to reinforce those islands or interfere with such an attack, so if it happens it happens.
Air War: the air forces of Japan are strong right now. There has been little by way of attrition combat since I pulled my air forces out of Malaya. Charbroiled’s fighters do sweep Boac and a few other places in the Philippines fairly regularly, but I don’t have to engage them. I do so every now and then, when I judge his pilots are tired, just to keep things interesting. But the bulk of my air forces have been resting and training for months.
I have also finally figured out this whole kamikaze thing. I have a nice pool of pilots skilled in low naval attack, so when I wish to convert a unit to the Special Attack Corps I replace enough trained pilots with rookies to drop the overall experience level below 50. After conversion I can then either train the new pilots up to standard or replace them with skilled “volunteers.”
Charbroiled has got to force my planes back into combat, perhaps by starting a bombing campaign against my network of airfields on Luzon. I expect I might see this once he has enough bases built up in the southern part of the archipelago.
Sub War: I have finally put a dent in the ring of submarines around the Home Islands. The new D-class escorts, working in conjunction with some good ASW air groups, have claimed a number of kills. So have mines. I have mined a number of chokepoints through which his subs like to pass, such as Tsushima and Hakodate and the islands just south of Tokyo, and they have sunk a fair number of Allied subs. In response Allied subs are now keeping more distance and have clustered around places like Luzon.
My own subs have scored hits against a couple of CVs and sunk, as mentioned, a pair of CVEs. They also pick off the occasional unescorted merchie. But my own sub losses have been heavy, as by this point in the war any attack against a well-defended task force or convoy, successful or not, is almost a death sentence for the sub involved. Which is as it should be, historically.
Industry: obviously, there is no longer any oil or fuel coming out of the DEI. The last couple of convoys to make it out are still sitting, fully loaded, at ports in Japan. These will probably be used to refuel the remnants of my carrier force and the Combined Fleet when needed.
My HI reserve is down under 500,000 and slowly dropping. I have shut down almost everything now except for important airplane and engine factories. Most Army aircraft production is focused on the Frank, though I am still making some bombers and Tojos as well. Navy production is mostly the A6M5 and the George, with enough dive and torpedo bombers to give me some reserve. As I mentioned last time, I like to build a variety of planes instead of concentrating on just one or two models. Building only the very best planes is more effective from a game play point of view but it just feels wrong to me. What’s the point of playing an Axis power if you can’t squander some of your industrial might on unprofitable lines of development?
At the rate my HI is dropping I will run out probably around September ’44, at which point aircraft production will be on a subsistence basis. By then I hope to have enough airframes in reserve to carry me through the end of the war.
Ships sunk: here are the capital ship losses to this point (Allied totals are my best guess, of course).
Japan Allies
CV 8 4
CVL 4 2
CVE 4 10
BB 7 10
BC 0 1
CA 13 14
CL 12 10
CLAA 0 3
The current victory points screen:
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RE: The Battle of Umboi Island - 
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