Mike Solli
Posts: 15792
Joined: 10/18/2000
From: the flight deck of the Zuikaku
Status: offline
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11 Feb 42
Sub War
Another good day. The Ro-68 caught the Australian xAP Neptuna a couple hexes south of Pt. Moresby and put 3 torpedoes and a few shells into her. Down she went along with the troops she was carrying.
5 Fleet
The airfield at Adak reached level 3 today. Still no planes there however but an Emily detachment is arriving as a reinforcement soon and will most likely head there. I may move the Emily detachment to the central Pacific and move a Mavis unit from the central Pacific to Adak.
It’s odd but I haven’t seen any Allied activity up here for a long time. I spotted an AVD near Cold Bay on 14 Jan 42 but that’s about it. Nothing at all since then. No ships, no recon, nothing. Another change to Ted’s strategy from our old games.
4 Fleet
Nothing new to report. In a few days, I get 5 or so Naval Guard units. I can finally begin to garrison some of the more important islands. I wish they had an engineer component as part of their structure.
SE Fleet
No planes flew today. Actually, no planes were lost by any means on either side today. Really weird.
Truk is very close to getting the port to level 7. After that happens, I’ll move out most of the engineers to other bases to begin the necessary build up. I want to create a network of supporting airfields so Ted won’t really know where my air strength is stationed. Right now, all I have is Rabaul, Lae and Gasmata and am finally beginning to work on Shortland Island.
China
Nothing new to report.
Malaya
Nothing new to report.
Burma
The 33 Division and an artillery regiment caught the fleeing former Rangoon garrison and beat them up some more. The 6:1 DA caused 2117(223) losses to the Burma Division and a base force while inflicting 213(1) Japanese casualties. There can’t be much left of those guys.
Philippines
Still air and ground bombardment each day. I’ve noticed that the damage being done each day is slowly increasing while the damage to my guns is decreasing. I do check my artillery units each day and set them to defend if their available strength goes below 90%. I don’t want any more destroyed by counter battery fire.
The 16 Division is cleaning up the Allied units on the islands south of the Philippines. Three more to go then it’ll go to the Philippines and I’ll begin the assaults.
SRA
The Java invasion is proceeding nicely. I hope to capture a couple dozen Dutch planes on the ground tomorrow with my air assault. Also, the 2x tank regiments and JAAF AF Bn will land tomorrow on the SW side of the island as well. At Semarang, the main invasion fleet arrived but no one landed yet. I had the TFs still set to “do not unload”. Figures. They’ll land tomorrow.
The Java invasion force (4 Division and 3x independent engineer regiments) are chasing the former Oosthaven garrison north. The 4 Division is doing all the attacking though. I’m saving the engineers for the actual DA on Palembang. I really want to get that place intact. The enemy garrison of Palembang is pretty small; just a couple thousand troops. I’m going to begin air bombardment of them to soften them up for the attack, which should happen in a week or so (hopefully). That’ll also give me some Intel on what is there.
Kendari finally fell to a 6:1 SA. Losses were 37(1) Japanese to 229(49) Dutch. The Dutch remnants ran down the road. I’m chasing them down with 2x SNLFs to kill them off.
I dropped off a load of mines at Perth and Darwin, just to be social. Actually, when the sub dropped the mines at Darwin, she spotted a CL TF in port. MKB has just replenished at Balikpapan and is headed down there to pay a visit and hopefully sink a few ships. It’ll get only 1 or 2 licks in due to the shortage of torpedoes on the carriers (18 each on Shoho and Zuiho and 6 on Hosho). The Shoho and Zuiho each carry 9 Kates and the Hosho carries only 6 Kates.
These are the first sub placed mines I’ve placed since the beginning of the war. By this time last game, I was just about out of sub mines. I’m being much more cautious with my mines this game. I’ll eventually place mines in important ports that Ted is likely to send subs to visit. My mines had pretty good luck against his subs last game and I hope to repeat that feat. I am also being very cautious using my other mines. So far, I have place some at Rabaul. I hope to be able to place a few at some ports at the front line. I’m thinking the central Pacific might be good. We’ll see…..
Other Stuff
Reinforcement: 42 IF Chutai (12x Ki-36), 1 Air Division – It’s based in Hokkaido and will train IJA naval search. Most of my training units are set at 5k feet and 0 range. This will be one of the rare units that will actually have its range set to >0. It’ll double as a real naval search unit. Currently, I don’t have any naval search in that region.
Just a short update on movement of stuff to the Home Islands. If you recall, I need to move, at a minimum, 240k fuel, 100k oil and 1041k resources to the Home Islands from outside Japan. Here’s the current tally:
81,200 fuel
4,200 oil
474,045 resources
It looks like I’ll exceed the resource requirement but I won’t make either the oil or fuel requirement. To be honest, I don’t expect to make the liquid requirement until I take Palembang. I expect to take Palembang this month.
I expect to take Singapore this month as well. With Palembang and Singapore secured, the flow of fuel and oil will begin in earnest. Most of my fast TKs (15+ kts) are at Cam Ranh Bay waiting for those two events to happen.
In about 2 weeks, I have 3x fleet subs and the Nisshin arriving as reinforcements, all within a few days’ time. That will free up 130+ naval ship points. I’ll be able to accelerate two more CVs. Banzai! Right now I have 3x CVs and 5x DDs accelerated.
Last game I used my midget subs a lot early in the war. I haven’t done that this game. I’m still searching for Ted’s SLOC from the US to Australia. I did notice that Noumea increased its airfield and port a day or two ago. I suspect that will become a major port for him. I may send some midget subs there to check the place out. I’m going to try something different this game. Instead of just sending them in to be lost without doing anything, I’m going to send the midget TF (mother sub + midget) to 1 hex outside the port and then create new TFs with just the midgets to sail them into the port and sit there. We’ll see if that works.
Concerning Ted’s SLOC, tomorrow I’m going to send Glen carrying subs to every level 2+ port in the Pacific to check them out. Right now I have them patrolling between what I thought were likely ports and the US West Coast (close to the ports) with absolutely no success. It’s getting frustrating. The only places I have any success are off Hawaii and off San Francisco. Right now I don’t have any subs on the West Coast because they are headed back to port to replenish. I allocated only 2 subs to that mission. I had meant to replace them before they headed back to port but damage to several subs prevented me from having any available to send out in time. The West Coast is so darn far from Kwajalein that it takes forever to get the subs there. It takes 2 subs allocated full time for every one stationed there, and that’s assuming they don’t get damaged.
The other issue with subs is that when one gets damaged it usually ends up heading back to the Home Islands for complete repairs. The AS does not have the capability to repair any major damage, which sucks. Only the AR will repair major damage, and only if the total is less than 6. That is usually the case if a sub gets hit by a DC and doesn’t sink. I still only have 2x ARs, one at Rabaul and the other at Balikpapan (or maybe Davao, can’t remember). I can’t convert any more until Jun 42 and it takes forever to do the conversion (6 or 12 months, can’t remember off hand). I plan on converting 6 more (Husimi class), but won’t see them until 1943. Until then, I live with 2, as all Japanese players must.
The Nisshin brings up another decision I must make. There are 4x CS ships the Japanese player has (Chitose, Chiyoda, Mizuho and Nisshin) that can either remain as a CS or be converted into a CVL. The CS is a wonderful, if slow, ship that can provide ASW and Naval Search support to (M)KB. Each has ~24 capacity. If converted to a CVL, its capacity is increased to 30. So, you can have ~100 floatplanes or 120 carrier fighter/strike aircraft. With the premature demise of the Hiryu, I’ll most likely convert all 4 to CVLs. That’ll give me an additional 84 Zeros and 36 Kates. Together, they make a nice little MKB that can support KB or perform little raids in areas where I know the Allied carriers aren’t. If I do that, I’ll keep Tone, Chikuma and a CL with them for 11 floatplanes for naval search. That’s not a lot but it would have to do. Another option is to convert 3 and keep 1 CS to sail with them. That would give me a TF of 63 Zeros, 27 Kates, 12 naval search floatplanes and 12 ASW floatplanes. That might be a better alternative. Then I could keep Tone and Chikuma with KB and attach Tenryu, Tatsuta and a CL to them, mainly for AA support. (By the way, the Tenryu and Tatsuta just completed their first upgrades a few days ago.) With the current MKB of 56 Zeros and 24 Kates, that would be a nice little raiding force. 119 Zeros and 51 Kates – Not bad.
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RE: Once Again into the Breech - Mike (J) vs. tc464 (A) - 
I captured the following: 
I had understood that uppgrade was faster. You have opinions on how usefull the CS can be in the ASW role i suggested?
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