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castor troy -> RE: Ending an IJ wet dream - bluebook (J) vs castor troy (A) (4/18/2012 9:17:36 AM)
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The game and AAR are terminated. It's been a week now since I have received the last turn and there was no reply at all on my emails, my opponent vanished. I hope that my opponent hasn't been hit by a serious real life problem but due to the fact that these serious real life problems usually occur when something in the game goes bad at the same time I am leaning more towards the game situation not being pleasant anymore and therefore vanishing.
The game was still two weeks ahead of the AAR but I won't post the last combat reports anymore as this is just more a waste of time than all the PBEM has already been. Like I've mentioned before, one of the big disappointments of the last 7 years of gaming. Unfortunately it seems the AAR contributors are proven 100% right in their interpretation of my opponent.
To summarize what happened in these two last weeks between the end of the AAR and the game, the enemy was warping around his divisions in Southern Australia after the para spam opened up all raillines and at that point he probably was positive that the flawed strategy of taking the Melbourne/Sydney area would come true even after he lost all his invasion fleet for the Perth area. After the disaster around Perth I had my carriers retiring for r&r and at the same time I pushed nearly a dozen convoys with a total of 250 ships to Melbourne! [:D] These convoys brought several divisions, tank units, base force and two hundred USAAF fighters to Melbourne, which meant the thread title would become totally true, this ended the Japanese wet dream as there was just no chance to achieve anything in Southern Australia anymore other than once more taking all the empty bases, just like what he did everywhere else, taking empty ground.
Having my reinforcements in Melbourne, I ordered 300 av to move on the coast road to Sydney, bringing Sydney to 950 av, easily enough to hold off 2500 enemy av as we are speaking about an urban heavy hex and the two Australian divisions there had 100% preparation, were in excellent shape and had the best available leaders plus level 5 forts. Both Melbourne and Sydney had easily enough troops to stop what the IJA had in Southern Australia even without using my airforce. Needless to say that my convoys also carried roughly 400.000 supplies and 150.000 fuel, bringing the total supplies to over 600.000 in the area, enough to last forever. At the same time we were holding Perth with 1000 av, 100% prepped and level 5 forts, Darwin with 1200 av, 100% prepped (200.000 supplies) and Port Moresby with 1100 av, 100% prepped (200.000 supplies). None of these targets were in danger to be overrun by the Japanese, every target would have needed a major Japanese operation and taking them one by one would take him over a year without me doing anything. He still was bogged down at my strongholds on Java, Philipines and Sumatra, no real action in China where my troops are dug in, fully prepped and well supplied.
There was no hope for him to achieve air superiority over Southern Australia, there was another convoy coming in within ten days bringing another 8 USAAF fighter and a dozen bomber squadrons. Within three weeks when the game crashed I would have operated roughly 500 fighters plus 300 bombers in Southern Australia, Melbourne being a level 9 airfield, both Melbourne and Sydney having level 6 forts and ample supply. The biggest enemy airfields were Port Augusta and Brisbane, both only level 4. All my fighter pilots had 70 air skill and 1/3 of them already 70 def skill. The last turn he played he sent a Zero and and Oscar unit to sweep Melbourne and while only 80 fighters were airborne, the Zeroes lost 5:1 over my base (he forgot to order them on a strato sweep and the were doing horrible at 10000ft) with the Oscars coming in on their strato sweep they did considerable better but I was 100% confident that he would not have a chance to achieve air superiority with me having so many more fighters, let alone that I could field 130 B-17E and D plus two and a halve dozen Liberators, a hundred Mitchels/Marauders, Hudsons I/III, Vengeance, SBD, Banshees, three dozen torp biplanes and if necessary 100+ Wirraways [:D]. A sub also put a torp into a Kongo class BB in the days before the IJ commander vanished.
Commenting the whole strategic situation and what happened in the four months of war, the IJ was able to take all the empty ground on the map and that's it. We've lost 4 BB and 1 CL at PH, 1 CA at Darwin and roughly two dozen DD all around the map plus the merchants that tried to flee the SRA and that's it when it comes down to our ship losses. After the disaster around Perth and Melbourne, the enemy took the lead for points in shipping losses already, having lost something like 150 ships in total. 1 BB, halve a dozen CA, a couple of CL, two dozen DD, halve a dozen SS (mines around Melbourne [:D]) and over 70 transports were lost in the flawed Australian operation (not counting damaged ships) and if we would have continued, this would have seriously gone up as our strenght would have grown far more in just a couple of weeks than what the Japanese could increase their strenght. To top the flawed IJ strategy, he released my invasion reinforcements which gave me over 1000av in top units that would have reached Australia under the cover of all my US and British carriers. Within the next couple of weeks, there would have been three more US divs, two Aus, one British div, tank units, engineers, base forces and a dozen AA units reaching Australia, further increasing our strenght at Perth and Southern Australia. I think my opponent thought it would be enough to take all the empty map to isolate Australia but he totally failed doing so, not a single convoy going to Australia was caught as they were coming in from off map locations so the tactic of taking the whole SOPAC was wrong right from the start as this meant I would not even give him the chance to intercept my convoys on the long route from the US West Coast to Australia. With the presence of my carriers and KB never operating as a whole, he would not have had a chance to stop me bringing in my convoys and even with KB operating in full strenght, KB can't be anywhere and it is not that hard to avoid the enemy carriers as they were spotted frequently patrolling around Australia.
I was fully confident the enemy would get nowhere other than taking yet empty ground, this time in Australia and while taking all the empty ground, he paid an extreme price for it. But exactly the turn my convoys unloaded at Melbourne and IJ recon aircraft suddenly showing a huge Army plus hundreds of aircraft there, my opponent vanished. Go figure!
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