16 March 1944 - Japan Surrenders
As you could probably tell, I'd gotten a bit behind on mission reports, but there isn't too much to say about the last couple weeks of the war. What was left of the KB was sheltering in Cam Rahn Bay, not really able to go anywhere with my carriers in the Sulu Sea, and with my troops continuing to move into southern Luzon. My opponent felt so paralyzed that it was pointless to continue. As part of the surrender agreement, my opponent gave me his password...
My submarine campaign was far more effective than I ever realized. If the KB went back to Japan, it would have a hard time finding someplace to fully refuel. The Japanese economy was crashing. Fuel shortages were preventing the Heavy Industry plants from running. The lack of Heavy Industry points was causing random shutdowns of military production across the country... airplane factories, vehicle factories, shipyards. Supply (which is used for just about everything other than refueling ships...maintaining land units, rearming ships, airplane fuel, etc.) was fine in Japan but was very short in China, and from Singapore all the way up to Bangkok. It was so bad he stood down 5 squadrons in Malaya to save supply to rail to Bangkok.
On the more tactical side, he had a fighter shortage that kept him from replenishing the Zeroes on the KB. Cam Rahn Bay was out of fuel, and there was a replenishment group being emptied into the port to try to sustain the ships there. At Takao, Taiwan, the base was completely empty of fuel and the ASW ships were being kept in service by draining merchant ships that were sitting in port with nowhere to go. Those ASW ships were getting picked off one by one by Avengers flying out of Legaspi, anyway.
His pilot corps was a mess. A lot of frontline squadrons had complete rookies in the cockpit, or had off-trained pilots (bomber/ASW trained pilots in fighters, for example). His top-scoring ace had 23 kills and was still alive, flying Georges out of Takao.
Oddly enough, among Allied pilots, no one ever topped New Zealander J.R. MacKenzie with 37 kills. He hasn't seen action since Singapore fell. The US Navy's top ace was with VF-3 at 14 kills. Real life USN pilots in game included O'Hare with just 3 kills (survived the war). The USAAC's top ace had 24 kills--Boyington only managed 6 (and also survived). USMC's top was 12. Overall pilots killed were about 3000 to 5000 in our favor.
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We're already getting to work on switching sides for another campaign. Interest in the campaign seemed to wane a bit here, so I might not start a thread on that. I'm considering starting a gaming channel on YT to post the reports instead. Although I must say it was a huge help having my reports here where I could search them if I needed to check something. So maybe that's worth doing regardless, or at least keeping some sort of searchable journal.
