Canoerebel
Posts: 21100
Joined: 12/14/2002
From: Northwestern Georgia, USA
Status: offline
|
D-Day Big Tent was 11/14/43, almost three months ago. Since then, the Allied perimeter has expanded from Morotai to Bathurst Island and from Celebes to Horn Island. Death Star and most of the Herd have been at sea nearly the entire time. SYS damage is remarkably low, but fuel is beginning to run short and upgrades are due. More importantly, Fun House is just five or six weeks off. DS and the Herd need to get into port, attend to upgrades, refuel (a process that will take time at Normanton, a level four port that can only handle modest logistics each day and which only draws fuel in modest increments), and then get to the bases where they'll embark the Fun House troops.
There are still lots of tempting targets in the DEI - important bases weakly held or vacant dot hexes that can be built large. Time, logistical needs, fuel stores, and a dearth of available reserve troops to commit in new campaigns will stop the expansion. John is beginning to fill in his defensive perimeter and, I think, will soon turn to strike. He's probably had enough time now to figure out what he wants to do next.
Like the German army in France in the autumn of '44, Japan has been in retreat for three months and has taken a beating. But the navy is still dangerous. John has a large number of carriers. Eventually, he will turn on his attacker, as Germany did in the Ardennes, hopefully with an equally unfavorable outcome.
I don't believe John has committed a Japanese naval ship in battle in the DEI since the end of November. As the Allied navy has moved back and forth for more than two months, there has been no meaningful opposition...and that has been limited to subs and aircraft. The DEI is prime territory to commit combat TFs to tear into transports and Allied bases (as Miller did to me so effectively in our game seven years ago), but nothing of the sort has happened here. John all but conceded the northeast DEI, posting KB in the Solomon Sea region for most of this campaign.
This is the payoff on the long, so hard, costly effort to attrition the Kaigun. It's still dangerous, but John has been afraid to commit it during this most critical campaign.
During Big Tent, Third Ring, and Carousel, the largest combat ship I've lost has been a CLAA. I've also lost about a dozen destroyers. Three CLs and one CVE have been damaged. That's it. The loss to merchant shipping has been higher, but still modest. The toll in xAK and xAP is the most noticeable (not high, but not insignificant), but just a few high value ships (APA, AKA, AK, TK and AO).
Even though John has been loathe to commit the Kaigun, he's lost two BBs (Mutsu and Yamato) and CVL Zuiho. He's lost at least a dozen precious DDs and a lot of subs. Two CVs, three BBs, several CLs, and many subs have been seriously damaged.
There still remains some mopping up in the DEI prior to Fun House. The Celebes campaign (Makassar in particular) may require an assist from the navy. Gove has to be taken or abandoned. And there is a possibility of moving on Darwin for a key logistical reason that I'll explain sometime later, when the time is right (John has drawn down much of his garrison there so that it's no longer the citadel it once was).
So the next five or six weeks should be a bit quieter. If John wishes to seek a decisive naval battle, he'll have to come to me, since there won't be any further expansion in the DEI. If there isn't a decisive battle in that time frame, then he'll face the combined Death Star and Death Star Junior as Fun House unfolds. DS Jr. will add two CV, two CVL, and about eight CVE to DS. That force won't be impregnable, but it will be fearsome. It'll be topped off in fuel, upgraded, and all aircraft squadrons and pilots will be top-notch.
|
Printable Version
RE: The Good The Bad & The Indifferent - 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread