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ORIGINAL: Tom Hunter

We just traded passwords, looking at Blackwatch's deployments I am inclined to agree.

If he had the Zeros he should have it would not have stopped the initial invasion, or even have effected it. I don't think it would have had a huge impact on the sea battles we fought on our last turn either. But it would have helped the troop convoys a lot. Blackwatch is getting chewed up by Allied bombers every turn. If he had fighters he could either try to close down the airfields or try to CAP the convoys. I don't think he would be completely successful but I do believe he could reduce the effieiceny of the British blockade.

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But the real issue is with KB and Timor. Akagi is intact but has 10 Zeros. Blackwatch cannot fight carrier battles and his only chance of stopping me in Malaya requires KB to go there. That is why I sought battle in the Coral Sea. I did not need to win (though I was not happy with the trade I got) but I had to fight. The Americans needed to burn up KBs airgroups and damage them so that the British could control the South China Sea. I did manage that but just barely.

After Coral Sea was over the Japanese had two 72 plane CV and two 53 plane CVs intact, and Soyru with 14 sys. Maybe enough to fight in South China sea but not enough to decisively defeat the LBA in Malaya the way he smashed the LBA in Timor. But with 10 Zeros per CV he can't even come out to play.

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I was hoping to take Malaya and perhaps I could have. But a second big attrition battle using lots of Spitfires and Hurricane IIs was fine with me. Malaya would have bled the Japanese airforce so fast it would have made Timor look like a paper cut. That was my first objective and I am really certain I would have made that.

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The Malaya invasion started with 18th UK and 25th Indian and a para battlation (which vanished). Follow on waves included 7th armored, 4 artillery units and base forces for about 100 aircraft.

In Sumatra to come over as fast as possible was: 2nd UK Div. 3 Chindit Brigades, 6 more artillery units, 2 more Bridgades from India, 2 army or corps HQs, base forces for over 300 aircraft, 2 engineer brigades, some construction troops and an Indian Armored Bridgade. This stuff was still flooding into the country when we stopped the game, there was a small amount of additional stuff coming from India. For those counting that is 6 to 7 divisions worth of stuff plus plenty of artillery.

In the air I had about 180 fighters of various types ranging from Spitfires to Brewsters. Only one 15 plane group had P40Es the rest were short range fighters which was a serious handicap but not insurmountable. I had to plan the movement of base forces carefully to keep CAP over my troops and even more important over my BB TFs.

In addition to the fighters there were 150 or so bombers maybe 200. These were the key, because they would allow me to cut Malaya off from reinforcement.

Once Blackwatch began explaining how bad the Zero bug was I diverted an additional 70 fighters and 60 bombers that had reached Sabang Sept 19th but had not gone into action yet.

I also had an invasion coming to North Burma, including several rebuilt Chinese divisions at full strength. Who knows how it would have done but it was a good sized force with air supply so at the very least it would have pinned the Japanese in Burma in place. The Chinese were one of the reasons I could put so much stuff into Sumatra, evacuated units from Malaya helped too.

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So I was set up to punch pretty hard and follow through for a while. But the Zeros would have helped Blackwatch a lot and definitely made a difference in his ability to slow or even stop my advance.

An interesting question is: if Blackwatch had slowed my advance could he have stopped it or would he just end sending a larger army to defeat. We will never know, and I am not going to try and guess, but its an interesting question.