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byron13 -> RE: Naval attacks at Tjilitap (3/3/2005 9:26:30 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Tom Hunter
I felt I had to answer byron13, his statements are in quotes:
"Good luck with this one, Sveint - at least in India. High level forts are nice - if you have the time to build them and the engineers in the right place. I'm not sure how well they protect you from bombardment either. "
India gets a number of construction units in April 42. They have base forces as well. I have put a fair amount of effort into fort construction and they are coming along pretty well. The construction engineers in particular seem to work pretty fast. If India gets invaded there is a lot to be said for building up the forts in the key interior cities using these units.
"Light surface task forces? How many CAs, CLs, and DDs do the Brits have? How many bases must they cover and how many are in range of Betties at any point in time? You think a couple of CLs and DDs are going to stop a bombardment TF with 4 or 5 BBs and a bunch of Long Lances? "
The British have a powerful dangerous surface force with a good mix of everything. Its not as strong as the IJN but it packs a punch. Light forces set to retire do stop bombardment attacks. I have seen a force of 3 BBs get intercepted by 4 Japanese PCs off Rangoon and fail to do more than sink a PC and blow up one plane (out of over 40) on the airfield. Game mechanics make it very hard to bombard successfully if you fight a surface action and TFs set to surface don't fight gun battles very well either. Night battles tend to be fought at ranges that British torpedos can reach so the only advantage the Long Lance has is doing more damage if it hits.
Another important point is that if the BBs don't bombard effectively the aircraft on the target airfield will fly the next day.
"Mines? Laid by what minelayers? "
The Dutch mine layers should be sent to the Bay of Bengal starting Dec 8th 1941.
"Artillery? His CDs are limited, and I don't think your ground arty is going to do much against BBs. " Agreed
"Naval bombers? What naval bombers? The paltry loadout of the early war a/c isn't much of a threat to any ship and surely not BBs. Look what his Dauntlesses did with 1000 pounders. None can carry a torpedo beyond a few hexes. He'll bombard at night and be out of torpedo range by morning. This assumes that he's has no CVs providing support; with support forget it. The Brits have no fighter a/c that can provide escort unless the AVG happens to be in the right place. "
Beauforts can be hell on Japanese BBs and the British can have plenty of them from near the start of the campaign and they start getting more in April 42. By May 42 they can upgrade some of the Blenhiem squadrons to them as well. In a game I played recently 50 beauforts and a large number of other aircraft sunk 3 Japanese BBs off Java it was the torps from the Beauforts that did the job.
If a commander does not have engineers, base forces, aircraft or ships to fight the Japanese this is at least in part due to his own decisions. All the ingredients are there to slow and eventually stop the Japanese in India.
Many well-made points. However:
My experience has been, apparently unlike yours, that bombardment forces will engage in full-scale surface combat when meeting a blocking force. If your theory is to spread the the British light forces around to be destroyed piecemeal just to try and prevent bombardments for a couple of turns, so be it.
I guess my point wasn't made with regard to the Beauforts. They're fine platforms for launching torpedoes, but their range is too short to make them effective deterrents to bombardment. Even if the bombardment force engages a surface force during the night, I still think they are out of torpedo range by morning. One of my big frustrations is the Beaufort's short legs: I can't cover the gap between Oz and Timor with them effectively, I can't cover anything on the northern side of New Guinea from PM with them, and their ASW range is somewhere around three hexes. My experience is that you've got to be pretty lucky to have them in a position to use torps unless an invasion force is camped in a particular hex that you can reach. I'd rather have a group of longer-legged B-25s or -26s that can at least outrange Kates and Vals and put enough holes in a flight deck to cease flight ops.
As for the number of engineers available, I'm assuming we're talking about PzB's type of campaign. The Bengal and other engineers that arrive later should be too late to prevent a PzB type action. Remember, we're responding to threads discussing how to defend the east coast of India from a PzB action early in the war - not how to prevent bombardments TFs in 1944. I think most base forces start understrength in engineers for the Brits. With what little you have, you can't concentrate them if you are going to defend all of your coastal bases to the tip of India and, if I recall, you'll have to strip some away from somewhere else (probably the interior, which isn't a problem unless you're also trying to build a defensive belt there as well. If a player feels compelled to start an interior line of defense starting December 8, something really is wrong). Done overzelously, you may strip too many engineers from the Burma front, preventing the Commonwealth from successfully halting a Japanese land offensive.
As for the Dutch minesweepers, I've never taken them to India. My preference as it seems unrealistic, and their legs are so short as to make the trip a dangerous one. I guess Diamond Harbor is large enough either at the beginning or soon thereafter to resupply them, so this is probably a realistic (in game terms) option. Too bad you/we feel compelled to order a Dutch skipper to go and defend India on day 1 before he has had an opportunity to defend his own colonies. This is NOT the way I would want the game to play.
The bottom line, though, is that (unfortunately) the game permits the Japanese to blast India without penalty. The only logical response (and the immediately foregoing posts prove as much) is to prematurely pull units from Malaya, which would have been politically difficult - not to mention ahistorical. The British playbook was not to evacuate Singapore at the opening of hostilities, but to defend it. A player now may feel it necessary to divert an Australian division or two to India for insurance as soon as possible, which is politically questionable (though I admit I've done it - for the good of the British Commonwealth, you know). If you defend the east coast of India too strongly, you may be doing nothing more than making an all out offensive through Burma that much easier (though the Japanese will have a tougher go of it because it should take more time), including short-legged Anzio type amphibious ops to bypass the frontline. Rather than requiring the Allies to undertake the gymnastics that Wobs has been forced to do, including running Wildcats to India, a better solution may be to draw a line of death like in the U.S. and Indo-China; when crossed, the Brits get more of something.
Of course, the war is not over for Wobs. Far from it, he now has some real advantages. If he can keep it a knife fight at short range in the DEI that involves primarily LBA, PzB can no longer compete in the air because his pilot pools are shredded. The only thing he has is the ability to have air superiority in one or two places where there are not a lot of Allied bases - mostly in the Central Pacific. But Wobs should have air superiority wherever he can build mutually supporting bases (and maybe everywhere that KB isn't), and Java is as good as any place to start (though he really does need to secure the gap between Java and Oz!).
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