apbarog
Posts: 3769
Joined: 5/23/2002
Status: offline
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Summary of the War
Two and a half years of the war played, in two and a half years of real time. OPilot has my highest recommendations as an opponent. His play is solid. I'm now learning that he has had a high degree of attention to detail to playing the Japanese economy. He's good for a turn a day, just about every day. For years. And we've seen that he's willing to play to the end. Playing well after losing most of his carriers in a big carrier battle. We both wanted to see the invasion of Japan, and we did so.
It's been a long war. I can't remember all the details, especially of the early war, but it's all documented here. The beginning was highlighted by the escape from the Philippines for ARD Dewey. Yea, I'm not a great wargamer, but I can sure drive an ARD across the Pacific! That was great fun. It was like watching a train wreck about to happen in slow motion, except that Dewey actually escaped.
Early on, we had a carrier battle in the either the Marshalls or the Gilberts. The sides were fairly evenly matched. The US got a big strike through to the enemy carriers, which had a weak CAP up. But the weather was bad. Bomb hits were spread amongst many carriers, and none were hit severely. Luck was with OPilot that the weather played a role.
In the Marshalls, Yamato and Musashi were sunk. I got to Guadalcanal first and held. At this point, I wanted a 2 area war: east and west of New Guinea. The plan was that KB could not be in both places at once. After clearing the Marshalls, I set my sites on Truk. But this was my secondary interest, with my big carriers being west of New Guinea, with the push through Horn Island and on to Darwin and Timor. Troops were on transports at Ponape to invade Truk, but enemy battleships were at Truk, and my secondary force of mostly CVLs/CVEs didn't have the punch to break through the CAP at Truk and hit the battleships. So I cancelled the Truk invasion. From that point on, the focus was solely an advance north from Australia through Timor and beyond.
Meanwhile, the Chinese were getting their butts kicked regularly. They did generally manage to hold lines in poor terrain. OPilot pushed on Sian and took it. He pushed further north to Lanchow but could not take it. The sole reason that Lanchow held was that the Burma Road had been opened and there was now enough supply in China for defensive operations.
And that was made possible with the invasion of Burma near and at Rangoon. It was a huge operation, using ordinary xAPs and xAKs, just hundreds of them. It took a long time to put in motion. I converted many xAKs to xAPs for the operation. I remember sending xAPs from the Pearl Harbor area to go to Aden for the operation. It took months to prepare. British, Indian, Australian and Commonwealth troops were involved. And most importantly, 2 big Chinese corps. They were the ones bought out in pieces and brought out of China at the very beginning of the war. They gathered in India, grew and rested. Taking Rangoon and that area of Burma had the primary goal of opening up the Burma Road, and in that, it was successful. It was not successful in cutting off the Japanese in northern Burma. I put too many units as a blocking force to the south, and not enough to race north and cut the enemy off. They escaped, eventually, by heading east and then southeast into Thailand. But Burma was cleared, and a land route was opened to China. This saved northern China, with just a week or two to spare. Up until this point, all of northern China was out of supply, every day.
I committed to go to Java from Timor. I did so, expecting KB to intervene. They were spotted loitering near Balikpapan for a number of days in a row. But they did not come south. Enemy battleships did, and there were some intense surface battles. The landings were protected. When my carriers were retiring east near Soerabaja, KB continued to hang around Balikpapan. I decided that it was time to strike. Up until then, I had avoided the big carrier battle. Time was on my side. More time equaled more US carriers available. I struck north and decimated KB in a 2 day battle. I don't know the exact number of big Japanese carriers sunk. I estimate 6. This was the turning point of the war.
OPilot had some "wins" in the game. My not being able to invade Truk was a win for him, even though he didn't know it at the time. I invaded Ambon with the 2nd Marine Division, which was my best division, and almost took Ambon, but terrain and forts slowed the progress, and OPilot committed KB to protecting Ambon and escorting in a fresh division for defense. (This was before the big carrier battle near Balikpapan.) I was not willing to commit my carriers for Ambon, so the Marines were stuck there. Too strong to be defeated, but too weak to win. It was stalemate for many months. That was a win for OPilot.
From Java, I pushed north through Balikpapan, with the plan being to take Jolo and Zamboanga, but bypass Mindanao. Jolo and Zamboanga turned out to be barely defended, and my divisions were available quickly. I committed 2 to Mindanao. I was able to clear all of Mindanao, could never clear Davao, all the way to the end of the war. I was never able to get the enemy out of supply at Davao. They had had a huge stockpile, according to my discussion with OPilot. That was a win for him.
The troops on Java went to Luzon, and that went very smoothly and quickly. I sensed an opportunity and pushed other troops to invade Formosa after taking Manila but before Luzon was cleared. That worked out very well. Formosa fell easily and that completely cut off the South China Sea.
The Americans and British invaded the Chinese coast near Formosa. The plan was to take Canton and Hong Kong, and get the Americans out of China as soon as possible. The roads were poor from the coast to Hong Kong, so travel took awhile, but the Brits did that job. Canton, however, could not be taken. A mostly Chinese force of over 200,000 could not come close to taking Canton with over 130,000 enemy troops trapped there. The Americans had pushed north, to the east of Canton, and linked up with the Chinese. The enemy had retreated back into Canton, and there they remained to the end of the war, bombed and hit by British cruisers every day. The Americans could have pushed east towards Shanghai, but the plan was to extract them and prepare to invade Japan. Other troops had island hopped from Formosa to the east to Okinawa. All of the US Army and Marine divisions, except for 2 newly arriving ones, went to Japan. Kyushu was conquered more easily than expected, a crossing was made to Hokkaido and finally a huge landing at Tottori was about to cut off all of the enemy near Hiroshima.
B-29s were used to bomb strategically, for the most part. Taking Formosa opened up much of Japan for strategic bombing. Taking Kyushu made it much easier, with fighters sweeping the way for the B-29s. I'll have to check how many B-29s were lost in the war. It was fewer than 10.
That's my start on the discussion. I talked to OPilot on the phone earlier, and will be calling him back to complete our talk. He's welcome to continue the discussion here. As I'd said, I've learned that his economy was running just fine, and that he would have been fine to at least the end of 1944, which surprised me. I thought I had cut off the bulk of his oil early enough to make a big difference, but he says that it did not. He must have done a masterful job running the Japanese economy, and I hope that he can discuss what he did and how he did it. I've seen the Japanese economy collapse, and that was what I was trying to help happen. That economic plan failed while my military plans succeeded.
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