War in the Pacific AAR Thread: ML (Japan) vs. Leo (Allies)

[Molon Labe]

Well, I gave you Youtube AAR thing a try. It was too time consuming. It seems doing AARs in forum was the way to go all along. So here we go again... my third WITP campaign (and hopefully the first complete one as the Japanese), picking up in February 1942.


Jochen Heiden's discord server: discord.gg/v4A9STzW7R
The thread for campaign #1 is here:
https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/sho...d.php?t=249520
Campaign #2 (incomplete due to opponent ragequit): [


And the video AARs for this campaign through 29 December 1941: [


Which obviously leaves a bit of a gap in January 1942. So, a quick summary of the road so far.


China

My focus has been on moving into the north central area, taking bases such as Sian and Lanchow. I think this is generally called "the Northern Strategy". Most of December 1941 was about cleaning up stray Chinese units that started behind our lines while consolidating our control over the coastline, including capturing Hong Kong. We are currently focused on defeating a 100,000-strong "stack" of troops that we recently pushed out of Nanyang. They are now camped along the forest hex on the road between Nanyang and Sian. We've outflanked them with a mostly-armored advance through the roads to the north and we expect supply shortages will start hitting them pretty hard. In the east, we're closing in on Wenchow after chasing some consolidated enemy armies west across the Xiang river. It isn't clear at this time that we have enough troops to actually take Wenchow.


Philippines

We've had a very successful campaign in Luzon. We principally landed at Vigan and moved mostly directly towards Clark. We were briefly delayed by a pocket of enemy troops and armor that took refuge in the mountains on our east flank that proved difficult to dislodge. We also landed about a division of troops south of Manila which eventually became the primary force taking Manila, which fell 13 January. Our force in the Philippines was reinforced by a division coming from Japan that I originally wanted to sent to Burma, but it became available around the same time as Hong Kong fell, so sending these two divisions I had hoped would end the Luzon campaign quickly. It was probably the right move... Clark was a hard nut to crack (it fell 30 January) and I wouldn't have been able to do it without those two divisions. At this time, all the US still controls is the Bataan penninsula and a few other scattered garrisons throughout the central and southern islands.


Malaya

We had a mostly successful campaign here, including pulling off the Mersing Gambit. Rapidly setting up airbases at Kota Bharu, Kuantan, and Kuching prevented any naval reinforcement of Singapore and Sumatra. We ended up fighting a major battle at Johore Bahru before moving onto Singapore. My opponent apparently neglected to build fortifications at Singapore, resulting in an anticlimactic seizing of Singapore itself in 17 January in the initial shock attack over the channel with minimal losses.

As recon showed Palembang was mostly undefended, after two days rest we immediately began an invasion of Sumatra, with Palembang invaded on 29 January and falling on 1 February. Resistance on land was token; air resistance limited to medium bombers, with a total loss of about 30 bombers with no result. There are at least 3 enemy submarines trying to stalk our forces, including light and escort carriers, but so far with no success. Landings on Java are being staged with transports currently arriving at Singapore as of 2 February and beginning to load.


A very likely hot spot for CV vs CV conflict as we are pushing southward aggressively. We've taken Luganville resulting is some pushback from the Americans, with a small force delivering support units being wiped out by American cruisers on 1 January. And on 27-28 January, there was a raid on Luganville by Force Z and a CVBG including Lexington and Enterprise.

Carrier Status
Carrier Division 2 (Hiryu, Soryu) was originally tasked to support the opening attacks on Manila, then mostly patrolled the Sulu Sea picking off enemy ships trying to evacuate the area. It then made a series of raids in the Dutch East Indies and Darwin. Currently, CARDIV2 has been recombined with the KB and is deployed in the Solomons theatre.


The main KB was deployed to Pearl for the opening attacks, and has stayed in the Solomons area ever since, including making raids on the northeastern Australian coast and Noumea. The raid on Noumea resulting in an S-boat scoring a MK10 hit on the Kaga around 8 January, causing a secondary ammunition explosion. Kaga is currently in Japan for repairs which are expected to take 3-4 months. The remaining 5 carriers of the KB are remaining in the Solomons area to support a planned invasion of New Caledonia and further raids on Australia.


Our light and escort carriers ("the mini KB") have mostly been operating in the eastern DEI, intercepting evacuating Allied shipping. They are currently deployed in support of the Palembang invasion. Shoho joined the fleet around 31 January and is currently still in Japan, resizing some training squadrons.


* * *

On 6 January, USS Saratoga was hit by two torpedoes fired by I-9 west of Hawaii. The damage didn't appear critical but I think we probably put her away for at least 2 months.


Attrition



We're doing well as far as managing losses goes. The Allies haven't really been pushing back very hard so far, so we are mostly picking off weaker areas without paying very much for them. In the above chart, I find it remarkable that the Zero is only #4 in losses--I expect it to be #1 because unlike the Allies, my fighter losses aren't spread out over many airframe types, the Zero carries the majority of the load. The AVG in particular has been beaten down to a shadow of its former self trying to defend Rangoon from Oscar sweeps. MAJ Boyington has already been killed.


For ships, the attrition is nearly all in my favor. Based on Tracker data, here are the numbers:


Japan
CL: 1 (Jintsu)
DD: 1
PB: 6
SS: 1
SSX:5
DMS: 2
AK: 14
AKL: 4


Allies
BB: 2 (Tennessee, Arizona)
CA: 2
CL: 3
DD:12
PG: 3
PC: 3
PT/MTB: 27
ML/HDML: 24
SS: 21
CM/CMc: 3
AM: 17
AMc: 12
AS: 1
AV: 1
AVD: 2
AVP: 7
AGP: 4
AG: 3
AO: 3
YP: 1
AP: 22
AK: 35
AKL: 49

[Molon Labe]

2 February 1942

China
We fought a significant land battle on the road between Sian and Nanyang, getting the better of a stack of about 30k troops with mostly armored units of our own. I expect we'll break the enemy tomorrow. Once that happens, the amount of supply reaching the main stack outside Sinyang should plummet, and we should get our breakthrough.


DEI
We have paratroopers at Tarakan trying to take the base. We shelled the base with battleships and hit them with bombers as well in support of the para's attack this turn. We didn't take the base but didn't take a lot of casualties either.

We're also repairing a captured base at Koepang and building a base at Babar to use to attack Darwin. There may still be a significant fleet based there that's been intimitated from leaving the base between attacks by CARDIV2 and the Nells operating from captured airbases.


Sumatra
We detected a likely sub-laid minefield at Palembang and cleared with with destroyer-minesweepers. We hold contact on just one enemy sub now; the CVLBG is pulling back as most of the ships they were covering are already back in Singapore. I hope to have base forces delivered in 2 days.


Burma
The Hurricane made its combat debut today, holding off a sweep of Tojos and an attack by Oscar escorted Sallies targeting their port. We shot down just 1 Hurricane while losing a Tojo, 2 Oscars, and 4 Sallies. According to recon, there are several transports and cruisers in port at Rangoon; we have subs waiting for them outside the harbor and Betties based in Bangkok ready to torpedo them if they head out to sea, and over the past several weeks we've been working over the fighters at Rangoon to try to clear the way for port strikes. So far enemy fighter casualties have been high but we've had little success delivering bombs on target.

I'm staging to take Port Blair, an island and potential airbase outside Rangoon. Once I take that, delivery of supplies and troops to Rangoon will be nearly impossible for the Allies, accomplishing a major strategic objective.


Solomons/Coral Sea area
IJN Mutsu was torpedoed today, but fortunately took only light damage and is remaining on station protecting a troop convoy near Port Moresby. This convoy, along with another departing Truk, is intended for New Caledonia. The successful enemy sub attack was probably made possible by my decision 2 turns ago to pause loading at Port Moreseby due to a sighting of 4 unidentified ships at Horn Island, which could have been light cruisers escaping from Darwin and were a threat to the troop convoy. The Mutsu along with several other combattants were brought in to counter the threat, and the subs were waiting.

At Luganville, a few SOC-1s attacked an amphibious task force delivering construction engineers. I want a size 2 airbase on Luganville to support the New Caledonia invasion. I don't know if the Seaguls came from Efate or from American cruisers, but Efate seems more likely as I should have sufficient maritime surveillance to detect cruisers that close to Luganville. The KB and a heavy surface task force are standing by in the area, outside anticipated PBY search areas, waiting to see if the Americans attempt another raid on Luganville.

Off the coast of Brisbane, one of our subs picked off a minesweeper.
I have two midget-sub equipped subs and one floatplane-carrying sub on the way to Sydney. The floatplane will hopefully tell me when there are ships in harbor so I time the attack properly.


Reinforcements
40th Ku T-1 arrives at Chiba. Val squadron; they'll be assigned to pilot training for now.

[Molon Labe]

3 February 1942
Pretty uneventful. The one thing that did matter today was the Dutch bombed their own oil fields in Palembang with their remaining medium bombers, probably flying from Batavia. With just 5 hits they disabled 25 points worth of oil production. I'll have Oscars flying long-range CAP from Singapore tomorrow.

[Molon Labe]

4 February 1942

China
Major land battle outside Nanyang, we took significant casualties but it was mostly squad disablements, while Chinese casualties included a lot of squads destroyed. They're breaking.


Dutch East Indies
We had a long-range CAP out of Singapore trying to protect Palembang from the Dutch scorched-earth bombing raids. We only shot down 1 and the enemy managed to get another Oil hit. But better than the 5 hits we took yesterday. I'm moving in fighters to Palembang itself to protect this better; aviation support is being airlifted from Singkawang in addition to the incoming base forces (we're packing up from Kuching to rebase everything there to Palembang).

The Java invasion is planned to have two prongs, and the task force for the eastern group is nearly done loading at Singapore. We're probably something like 7-10 days from launching that operation.

We've captured Tarakan with an over-the-river shock attack. There were paratroops there trying to take the base but the conventional army caught up with them.


Coral Sea/Solomons/New Caledonia
A pair of bogeys showed up at Horn Island again, but this time I had surface assets nearby, so I rushed them. Was just 2 AKLs, both sunk.

The Port Moresby-to-New Caledonia task force finished loading and is ordered to rendezvous with another invasion force heading south from Truk. I expect them to land together at the north end of New Caledonia in 5 days.


Home Islands
The enemy has built up Adak Island to port size 2, which may be a sign of a fledgling forward sub base being built. Up to this point, there has been no US submarine activity near the home islands, but it looks like that's going to change. Hopefully I've got at least another month so that I'll have suitable deep-water depth charges on my subchasers and enough floatplanes and ASW-trained pilots to support them.

[Molon Labe]

5 February 1942

Santa Cruz Islands



4 bogeys popped up close enough to the KB that I'm surprised we didn't launch an airstrike. My best guess is that the Nagumo has better classification information than I do and doesn't think they're worth revealing the KB for. Fair enough. I'm backing the KB off slightly while moving the already-spotted heavy surface force in.


Burma
We had a fairly large air battle over Rangoon as a sweep of 21 Oscars was met by 10 Hurricanes, 4 Buffalos, and 3 P-40s. We lost 3 Oscars while shooting down 3 Hurricanes, 2 Buffalos, and 1 P-40.


Dutch East Indies
I accidentally forgot to turn off a Nell squadron's ground attack orders after we captured Tarakan, so they attacked a target of their own choosing: Surabaya. We got away with it... We had 19 escorting Zeroes to deal with their CAP of 6 Buffalos and 4 Demons. 3 of each type of enemy fighter went down with no IJN losses. The Nells did pretty good damage on the ground too.

Surprisingly, there were no raids on Palembang this turn.


China
The armored force just outside Sian attacked the Chinese army units there again. Once again, we failed to break through, but casualties were extremely disproportionate favoring us.


Reinforcements
LSD Akitsu Maru arrives at Osaka/Kyoto
12th Naval Construction Battalion arrives at Osaka/Kyoto

[Molon Labe]

6 February 1942
HMAS Australia, USS Marblehead sunk by IJN Kirishima and Hiei

Burma
Rangoon sweeps result in 1 Oscar and 2 Buffalos going down. The enemy is also bombing an armored column of mine just south of Moulmein, I'll CAP them next turn.


New Britain/Papua New Guinea
The enemy has responded to me pulling a division out of Port Moresby by ordering his former garrison back in. Due to operations on the north end of PNG taking longer than expected, my replacement garrison hasn't arrived yet and is still at least 2 days out. I've pulled a recon squadron out of PM just in case the enemy gets there first. I"ll be having Betties bomb them to try to slow them down, with Anns working their way here from Truk to free up the Betties.


Santa Cruz Islands
I was successful intercepting the bogeys overnight without needing to use the BK. The task force was the CA Australia, CL Marblehead, and a DD. Our task force included the battleships Kirishima and Hiei and we completely overpowered them, scoring BB main battery hits on all of them in the course of 2 engagements. We had 3 DD hit by their DD, resulting in fires and one damaged badly enough that I've ordered it back to Truk for repairs.


Recon flying from Luganville to Nomea reports the base has only about 5000-6000 defenders, plus

13 fighters, 17 bombers, 2 DD, 1 AP, and a sub spotted offshore. I probably don't need both divisions.