Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: spence


Roosevelt could NEVER have sold "Europe First" to anyone if the United States actually had enemy troops on its soil. As it stands the Allied Player has this "Europe First" political decision as a given. With enemy troops on US soil the flow of reinforcements would have been 90% against Japan as would all the upgrades to modern aircraft (even the remaining 10% might be in dispute).

The United States reached some 90+% mobilization sometime in 1944 and then stopped converting industries to war production. The Japanese were at 100% on day 1. The idea that the US would be publishing recipes for grass in one of its major newspapers (such as the Tokyo Times) at any point prior to the fall of England and Russia to the Germans is absurd. So the idea that, armed with the foreknowledge that a bunch of US reinforcements will appear in a certain place and will be wiped out permanently by some sacrificial invasion of the US right after the declaration of war is beyond the pale.

quote:

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

quote:

ORIGINAL: Alfred

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna


...If Japan had landed in force in the PNW on sabotage missions and managed to "capture" what is the Portland hex in the game, even if only for a day... fine, I'll grant that the steel and other materials used to build those CVEs (and other ships) would have been diverted to other shipyards and the CVEs (and other ships) probably still would have been produced. But such an action would have had a lasting impact on the war, which is precisely what VPs are supposed to be an abstraction of. The psychological effect of a successful (even if only momentarily) hit-and-run mission by the Japanese in the war would have been immense. If the shipyards at Portland had been sabotaged, regardless of whether they'd been repaired, who knows what resources would have been devoted to protected CONUS deep into the war against any more end-run sabotage missions by Japan? Or the aircraft factories in Seattle? And the destruction of industrial assets is not an inconsequential matter, in any case - it would take months to retool or build additional factories to replace those lost, particularly aircraft factories...

You are greatly underplaying the dramatic real world economic disruption which would have occurred. There was no industrial slack elsewhere in the USA to simply allow relocation of this ship production easily with only a relatively small delay in production.

1. There was a reason why only 6 new automobiles were built during the war in the USA. The steel, aluminium, labour etc was needed for war production. Civilian demand for automobiles was still present. So what other suitable civilian or wartime production could be further curtailed to provide the resources to fully accommodate the loss of Portland.

2. Yes, even the USA economy was limited as to the number of suitable sites for construction of capital class ships. If there were so many virgin green sites available for plonking down these shipyards, why were they not built at the time? Why wait until well into 1943 and later to lay down these keels when these virgin sites apparently could have been built starting on 8 December 1941. Why build ships sequentially in a shipyard if they could all be built simultaneously; 1 capital ship per shipyard would have seen all Essex class carriers operational in April 1943, all Iowa class battleships operational in late 1943, all the Montana class battleships completed and operational in 1944. Then of course why wait for all the smaller fry such as the Fletchers, the landing ships, the Gato and Balao class subs to come in dribs, when with all this implied virgin green sites available for building shipyards they could have come in all at once the lead vessel of the class had been completed.

3. Labour is a critical input into the construction of ships. Forget for a moment the immense difficulties which surround constructing the construction facilities elsewhere, obtaining the necessary skilled labour would be a huge obstacles. Japan capturing Portland not only entails the destruction of the shipyards but also the loss of all the skilled workers employed in the shipyards. Unless someone is going to put forward the fantasy argument that any American territory which was captured had the entire population evacuated simultaneously as the territory was lost thereby maintaining full industrial production literally up to the last minute and making the skilled labour immediately available to work elsewhere.

Alfred

quote:

You are being a tad disingenuous, Kaiser's shipyards were not like the shipyards for building the capital ships. Other shipyards built ships, Kaiser assembled ships. When Kaiser couldn't get steel , he built the largest steel mill in the western US in 9 months during the war. When he told the Navy that he could build 50 CVE's, the Navy told him no; he went to Roosevelt and got the ok, so the resources and labor were there. His shipyards were built in 5 to 9 months, most built during the war. He built a city[ complete with schools, hospitals and a college-now Portland State] of 10,000 in months to house workers imported from across the country, utilized women and African -Americans for labor, he was not dependent upon local labor. Kaiser was a industrial genius, when the WPB during the war asked him to oversee the Brewster Aircraft facilities, with the same plant and workforce; they went from 12 planes a month to over a 120 a month.
IMHO A Ballpark figure for the disruption to production would be 9-12 months.

quote:

Considering the hysteria present in the US immediately following Pearl Harbor, I wonder if the VP reflections for a CONUS invasion are too low...

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bearcat2

quote:

ORIGINAL: Alfred

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna


...If Japan had landed in force in the PNW on sabotage missions and managed to "capture" what is the Portland hex in the game, even if only for a day... fine, I'll grant that the steel and other materials used to build those CVEs (and other ships) would have been diverted to other shipyards and the CVEs (and other ships) probably still would have been produced. But such an action would have had a lasting impact on the war, which is precisely what VPs are supposed to be an abstraction of. The psychological effect of a successful (even if only momentarily) hit-and-run mission by the Japanese in the war would have been immense. If the shipyards at Portland had been sabotaged, regardless of whether they'd been repaired, who knows what resources would have been devoted to protected CONUS deep into the war against any more end-run sabotage missions by Japan? Or the aircraft factories in Seattle? And the destruction of industrial assets is not an inconsequential matter, in any case - it would take months to retool or build additional factories to replace those lost, particularly aircraft factories...

You are greatly underplaying the dramatic real world economic disruption which would have occurred. There was no industrial slack elsewhere in the USA to simply allow relocation of this ship production easily with only a relatively small delay in production.

1. There was a reason why only 6 new automobiles were built during the war in the USA. The steel, aluminium, labour etc was needed for war production. Civilian demand for automobiles was still present. So what other suitable civilian or wartime production could be further curtailed to provide the resources to fully accommodate the loss of Portland.

2. Yes, even the USA economy was limited as to the number of suitable sites for construction of capital class ships. If there were so many virgin green sites available for plonking down these shipyards, why were they not built at the time? Why wait until well into 1943 and later to lay down these keels when these virgin sites apparently could have been built starting on 8 December 1941. Why build ships sequentially in a shipyard if they could all be built simultaneously; 1 capital ship per shipyard would have seen all Essex class carriers operational in April 1943, all Iowa class battleships operational in late 1943, all the Montana class battleships completed and operational in 1944. Then of course why wait for all the smaller fry such as the Fletchers, the landing ships, the Gato and Balao class subs to come in dribs, when with all this implied virgin green sites available for building shipyards they could have come in all at once the lead vessel of the class had been completed.

3. Labour is a critical input into the construction of ships. Forget for a moment the immense difficulties which surround constructing the construction facilities elsewhere, obtaining the necessary skilled labour would be a huge obstacles. Japan capturing Portland not only entails the destruction of the shipyards but also the loss of all the skilled workers employed in the shipyards. Unless someone is going to put forward the fantasy argument that any American territory which was captured had the entire population evacuated simultaneously as the territory was lost thereby maintaining full industrial production literally up to the last minute and making the skilled labour immediately available to work elsewhere.

Alfred

You are being a tad disingenuous, Kaiser's shipyards were not like the shipyards for building the capital ships. Other shipyards built ships, Kaiser assembled ships. When Kaiser couldn't get steel , he built the largest steel mill in the western US in 9 months during the war. When he told the Navy that he could build 50 CVE's, the Navy told him no; he went to Roosevelt and got the ok, so the resources and labor were there. His shipyards were built in 5 to 9 months, most built during the war. He built a city[ complete with schools, hospitals and a college-now Portland State] of 10,000 in months to house workers imported from across the country, utilized women and African -Americans for labor, he was not dependent upon local labor. Kaiser was a industrial genius, when the WPB during the war asked him to oversee the Brewster Aircraft facilities, with the same plant and workforce; they went from 12 planes a month to over a 120 a month.
IMHO A Ballpark figure for the disruption to production would be 9-12 months.


IMHO a fantasy is moving a 100 miles up the Columbia River to invade Portland

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ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

Wow.

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ORIGINAL: Bearcat2

?? Dishonest ?? That was not my intent; as used in the context of the paragraph, I was trying to say that his comparison of shipyards was not "apples to apples", or "apples to oranges" it is something in between.

I humbly apologize if I gave the impression that I was accusing anyone of being dishonest.

quote:

ORIGINAL: spence


Roosevelt could NEVER have sold "Europe First" to anyone if the United States actually had enemy troops on its soil. As it stands the Allied Player has this "Europe First" political decision as a given. With enemy troops on US soil the flow of reinforcements would have been 90% against Japan as would all the upgrades to modern aircraft (even the remaining 10% might be in dispute).

The United States reached some 90+% mobilization sometime in 1944 and then stopped converting industries to war production. The Japanese were at 100% on day 1. The idea that the US would be publishing recipes for grass in one of its major newspapers (such as the Tokyo Times) at any point prior to the fall of England and Russia to the Germans is absurd. So the idea that, armed with the foreknowledge that a bunch of US reinforcements will appear in a certain place and will be wiped out permanently by some sacrificial invasion of the US right after the declaration of war is beyond the pale.

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ORIGINAL: AcePylut

And if Japan had done a smash and grab in Jan '42, the US production would have ramped up even more than before.

quote:

ORIGINAL: AcePylut

As far as defending the WC against Japanese invasion if an invasion happened... well I think that if the invasion does happen, tons and tons of permanently restricted, static "Militia" units should be created... to represent the "old cowboy with a hunting rifle" that would defend his home, that Japan was "so scared of" when the idea of a WC invasion was floated around the IJN/IJA.

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ORIGINAL: AcePylut

Also, again, as far as defending the WC against the Japanese, or Germans for that matter, we did that anyway.

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ORIGINAL: AcePylut

My grandfather spent most of 1942 tearing up golf courses and installing AA units.... in Chicago, Illinois. (later he got shipped and fought in Germany). Needless to say, my grandfather (much like myself) did not have any patience for stupidity (he refers to Roosevelt as the "king idiot surrounded by a cabal of idiots"... and calls Poland the "pariah of nations, that will sell themselves to whoever gives them a better deal").... railed time and time again about the idiocy of "digging up golf courses to defend against aircraft that don't exist, and would never be able to reach Chicago by flying over the north pole. Yet another example of the clueless idiots in Washington"...

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ORIGINAL: AcePylut

So we were defending the US, all of it, against threats, both real and imagined. And if Portland's shipyard was "destroyed", it would be rebuilt. Quickly.

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ORIGINAL: AcePylut

At best I think the Japanese could hope for small delays in the ships coming "online".... but for all those ships to magically go "poof"? I don't buy it.

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ORIGINAL: AcePylut

I disagree. In UV, if you take Nomeua, that’s it game over. In reality, the US would have staged their forces a little more to the south and you get a few days delay before they would be “in-theater”.

Same goes for Portland in WITP. If you take it as the Japs in this game, that’s it, none of those ships get built, ever. In reality, they’d be built elsewhere, or built after a "factory rebuild delay" once the Japs get pushed out. Same goes for all the other factories on the West Coast.

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ORIGINAL: HansBolter

"clever" is far, far too generous.

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ORIGINAL: HansBolter

"clever" is far, far too generous.

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ORIGINAL: Lowpe


Hopefully, tactics like this will cause a slowdown in the tempo of the game.

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ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

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ORIGINAL: Lowpe


Hopefully, tactics like this will cause a slowdown in the tempo of the game.

+1

If you have to defend, more closely to the historical reality, that would be very true. Wait until we have an AAR with the allies landing Nagoya and destroying all those engine/AC/ships.
That will close the lid on a lot of Jan42 novelties ...

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ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

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ORIGINAL: HansBolter

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ORIGINAL: AcePylut

Silly that taking out Portland for one day, in Jan '42, somehow "kills" all the CVE's and tankers for the rest of the war.

As if the US couldn't build these ships elsewhere, as if they were planned to be built on Jan 1 '42. Like we'd be building liberty ships at 1x per hour (or whatever) in the Gulf coast.

Or "omg, Portland got invaded in Jan 1942, I guess that means we can't build a B17s in, idk, Omaha, or anywhere else. Them damn sneaky Japs ruining our unbuilt airplane factories!!!"

It's just a silly design decision. I'd say at best, give all those ships and planes a 1 month delay and have them come in on the East Coast.



Going for the West Coast on a "raid and destroy" mission is akin to loading up all the troops and making a beeline for Nomuea in the first week of game of UV.

Thank you. It refreshing to get a corroborating opinion on juts how much of a weasel tactic this is.

This isn't a historical simulation. It's a game, and game designs that are based on history require abstractions.

Funny how you don't see many people calling "Sir Robin" a "weasel tactic", or Fortress Palembang a "weasel tactic", isn't it? The Allies would never have done either of those in the real world, yet there's barely anything but crickets on the forum when these things occur.



If Japan had landed in force in the PNW on sabotage missions and managed to "capture" what is the Portland hex in the game, even if only for a day... fine, I'll grant that the steel and other materials used to build those CVEs (and other ships) would have been diverted to other shipyards and the CVEs (and other ships) probably still would have been produced. But such an action would have had a lasting impact on the war, which is precisely what VPs are supposed to be an abstraction of. The psychological effect of a successful (even if only momentarily) hit-and-run mission by the Japanese in the war would have been immense. If the shipyards at Portland had been sabotaged, regardless of whether they'd been repaired, who knows what resources would have been devoted to protected CONUS deep into the war against any more end-run sabotage missions by Japan? Or the aircraft factories in Seattle? And the destruction of industrial assets is not an inconsequential matter, in any case - it would take months to retool or build additional factories to replace those lost, particularly aircraft factories.

On a related note, funny how neglecting any/much rear area security tactics (such as pickets and coastal defense patrols) is never seen as a "weasel tactic", eh? But when the Japanese player exploits such weaknesses, it is of course unfair advantages just baked into the game, or some such.

Such entitlement.

quote:

ORIGINAL: HansBolter


One side starts with a developed industrial complex and a huge concentrated army while the other starts with its pants down.

quote:

ORIGINAL: HansBolter


Except that the fantasy you envision is very unlikely. One side starts with a developed industrial complex and a huge concentrated army while the other starts with its pants down.

The Allies don't have a death star capable of steaming unmolested into the heart of the empire to deliver this fantasy invasion you envision.

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ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

quote:

ORIGINAL: HansBolter


Except that the fantasy you envision is very unlikely. One side starts with a developed industrial complex and a huge concentrated army while the other starts with its pants down.

The Allies don't have a death star capable of steaming unmolested into the heart of the empire to deliver this fantasy invasion you envision.

Hans, the Allies don't need a DS. In my Lokasenna game I got US Army troops ashore on Honshu in the early months with no carrier support. You need to play an AI Japan game. The HI are pretty open in the first six months. Fighter production is low, Kate production is zero. There are not a lot of 2E units available unless the front lines are stripped and the perimeter-build sacrificed. IF the Allies want to, they can indeed send suicide forces onto the HI and fusk up aircraft production. It's possible. After doing it, or trying to do it, I don't think it's worth it, but that's what makes the game great. You can decide to try.