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Old 05-16-23, 11:55 PM   #841
Molon Labe
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6 March 1944
Turkey shoot over Legaspi--is this is last of the counterattack?


I'm going to back off from some reporting all the "regular" bombing raids I've been doing for the last couple game months, I'm falling behind of the reports and I don't think they're adding much.


Philippines
The enemy continues to try to interdict my landings at Legaspi. Wave 1 was 18 Judies and 9 Frances escorted by 5 Georges and 18 Franks, going up against a CAP of 37 Hellcats and 8 Corsairs. 10 Judies and 8 Frances made it through to make attacks, but none hit. Losses were 16 Franks, 4 Georges, 1 Frances, and 6 Judies (plus one more Judy to flak). No US losses. I can only assume results like this mean he's completely depleted his pool of competent pilots. Georges and Franks are not ****ty aircraft. Additional waves throughout the day saw a few US losses--5 Hellcats total, but another 8 Georges, 26 Judies, 2 Betties and 2 Jills. All that for failed attacks on my surface covering forces. The last attack was a wave of 24 Kate kamikazes. Our CAP was completely spent by this point, but none of the Kates managed to hit home. None were "officially" killed by flak, but I can only assume the reason they missed was because they got shot up too badly to steer.

I absolutely battered the hell out of the airbase at San Fernando with 33 B-24s, thinking that it had to be were most of the enemy bombers were coming from for these Legaspi raids. But it was empty. Must be Clark and Manila after all.

Japan attempted to repel our troops at Legaspi with a paratroop raid, but we wiped them out rather easily. We've already got about 20,000 troops ashore.



Burma and Thailand
An enemy raid of 22 Tonies and 22 Sallies hit Prachuap Khiri Khan. Our meager 4 - P-47 CAP shot down 2 Tonies. Our ground forces took 20 casualties.

4 Tonies got airborne to meet an air raid of ours vs Singapore we had Spitfires escorting Wellintongs. 3 Tonies and 1 Spitfire were lost. 3 more Tonies got splashed by P-47s and P-51s sweeping.


South China Sea
HMS Tantalus hit a small tanker (1120 tons) with a torpedo hear Hong Kong. Doubtful it could survive.
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Old 05-17-23, 12:19 AM   #842
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7 March 1944

South China Sea
USS Muskalunge hit a PB off the Vietnam coast, but the ship was not mortally damaged. So USS Thresher followed that up, hitting it twice for a confirmed kill (2780 tons).

USS Seadragon attacked a 2900 ton tanker on the surface, sinking it with gunfire and 2 Mk14 hits.


Burma and Thailand
A heavy surface task force including Musashi, Kongo, and Haruna shelled our forces at Prachuap Khiri Khan for 239 casualties. That was all their ground forces needed to prevail. We took another 744 casualties in the land battle while dishing out only 211. This doesn't quite reconnect Bangkok to the Malaya rail line because we control the hexside the railroad enters Bangkok at. But if they ever push our army out of Bangkok, it'll reconnect.

One more Tony was removed over Bangkok by fighter sweeps.


Philippines
The surface covering force near Legaspi found another three midget subs and sank them.

P-38 sweep of Manila shot down 2 Tojos with 1 P-38 lost.
12 Avengers recently transferred to Legaspi attacked enemy shipping off San Fernando. No enemy CAP intervening. The Avengers sank a PB and two small tankers without losses.

B-24 raids on Clark destroyed at least 8 aircraft on the ground.

Beaufighters went after a cluster of landing barges near Manila. 6 Tojos were left on CAP after the P-38s' poor sweep performance. Forturnately there were no air-to-air losses. One Beau was lost to flak. They managed to sink 8 landing barges.

We've killed the last enemy holdouts on Iloilo.


China
We've captured Pengpu, which cuts off enemy rail lines from Nanking to the northeasternmost parts of China. I've essentially isolated everything from Nanking south from the broader supply system. They can still resupply this area with cargo ships docking in Shanghai, though. In time I should be able to interdict those ships.
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Old 06-06-23, 03:36 PM   #843
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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.


----------
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.
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Old 06-07-23, 11:06 AM   #844
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Congratulations on your win, and thanks for all the reports. I really enjoyed them whenever they came.

Should you start another campaign I'd gladly follow another series of reports.
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Old 06-12-23, 01:13 PM   #845
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ostfriese View Post
Congratulations on your win, and thanks for all the reports. I really enjoyed them whenever they came.

Should you start another campaign I'd gladly follow another series of reports.
Thanks!


The next campaign is about to get underway. I've completed my opening orders and my opponent is now working on his. I expect the first two turns to be especially slow due to the volume of decisions that need to be made.


As a quick preview, for the opening I'm going to be treating the Asiatic Fleet submarines as equal in importance to the battleships at Pearl Harbor. I'll also be looking to accelerate my conquest of Malaya as much as possible, although how that happens may depend on how conservative my opponent is. I'm taking some extra risk in increasing the number of landing sites to either cut off a general retreat to Singapore, or force him to make that retreat so quickly that I can besiege Singapore right from the beginning. I'd like to be wrapped up in Malaya before the end of December and have Palembang in hand by about the same time.
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Old 06-29-23, 08:13 AM   #846
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The new campaign is underway. I've started a YT channel (playlist here) to do the AARs. It may take some time to get "good" at it, as I'm clearly still trying to get the suck to come off.


We're about a week in. I'm dominating him in the air, but progress on land is slow, and I'm taking a lot of unnecessary losses at sea. "Stopping the bleeding" has been the theme of a lot of the more recent videos.
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Old 06-30-23, 05:40 AM   #847
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Congratulations for completing this long time task! I did not comment, did not know what to say, but red quite some of it all. Such long-time games can be rewarding, and coming back to them time and again is like meeting an old friend (no matter whether the opponent is human or AI). One connects to it, gets immersed.
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Old 06-30-23, 02:21 PM   #848
Molon Labe
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Skybird View Post
Congratulations for completing this long time task! I did not comment, did not know what to say, but red quite some of it all. Such long-time games can be rewarding, and coming back to them time and again is like meeting an old friend (no matter whether the opponent is human or AI). One connects to it, gets immersed.

I can relate to that, being someone that read WITP AARs long before I bought the game. Thank you.
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Old 07-05-23, 12:19 PM   #849
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Molon Labe View Post
The new campaign is underway. I've started a YT channel (playlist here) to do the AARs. It may take some time to get "good" at it, as I'm clearly still trying to get the suck to come off.


We're about a week in. I'm dominating him in the air, but progress on land is slow, and I'm taking a lot of unnecessary losses at sea. "Stopping the bleeding" has been the theme of a lot of the more recent videos.

I'm already watching
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Old 07-06-23, 04:08 AM   #850
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So, I basically binge-watched what you have put up on youtube so far. Interesting way of showing things, shows way more about how the game works.

One thing I noticed: You wondered about the capability of Japanese light cruisers in one of the videos. In short: they were awful, mostly old and seriously underarmed and underprotected.
Most Japanese light cruisers at the start of the war were 5,500-ton standard displacement ships (very light even for light cruisers) and designed to be destroyer leaders. They were armed with 5.5in guns and had only a small number torpedo tubes, which means that they were much lighter armed than the destroyers they led into battle. They also had only a very limited armor (less than 5% of their total weight).

To be precise: the Japanese light cruisers at the start of the war

Tenryu Class (Tenryu, Tatsuta), completed 1919
5,500 tons
Four 5.5in guns (in single mounts), two triple torpedo launchers (21in, so they could not fire the 24in Type 93 aka "Long Lance")

Kuma Class (Kuma, Tama, Kiso, Oi, Kitakami), completed 1920 -1921
Nagara Class (Nagara, Isuzu, Natori, Yura, Kinu, Abukama), complefted 1922 - 1923 (Abukama 1925)
Sendai Class (Sendai, Jintsu, Naka), completed 1924-1925

These were all 5,500 ton ships, originally armed with seven 5.5in guns (all in single mounts, in most cases reduced at some point during the war to make room for more AA guns) and four twin torpedo launchers (21in for the Kuma class, 24 in for Nagara class and Sendai class). The 24in launchers were too short for the Long Lance, though.

Oi and Kitakama were converted to torpedo cruisers in 1941, with Oi carrying ten quad launchers early in the war, later reduced to six quad launchers in 1942.
Abukama, Jintsu and Naka were refitted with two quad launchers capable of firing the Long Lance in May 1941.

Yubari
2,900 ton standard displacement (later increased to about 3,500)
Six 5.5in guns (two twin, two single), two twin torpedo launchers (24in, short)
A small, experimental ship.

None of these ships was anywhere near being a match for an Allied light cruiser, not even their contemporaries (British Emerald or E-class cruiser, American Omaha class cruisers or Dutch Java class cruisers), let alone the treaty cruisers.


Katori Class (Katori, Kashima, Kashii), completed 1940 - 1941
6,000 tons
Four 5.5in guns, two twin torpedo launchers
These ships were designed and built as training ships and despite being "modern" were very lightly armed and slow (18 knots).


All in all: in the one battle against the CL Java you might have been numerically superior, but you were considerably outgunned.

The CMs (mine laying cruiser) are mine layers the size of a (very) light cruiser, about 4,000 tons, and they have an even worse armament.
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Old 07-11-23, 01:43 PM   #851
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So, losing Enterprise and (probably) Lexington barely two weeks into the war, and this by having them out of fuel deep in (more or less) enemy territory is a major blunder.

I support your decision to not allow a Mulligan on the Dec 18th turn, not after your opponent wrought havoc with that force for days (including sinking Mutsu and Yamashiro) rather than watching out for his own logistics.
I understand why this victory feels a bit stale, but at the end of the day your opponent provoked it and fell into his own trap.
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Old 07-12-23, 11:37 PM   #852
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Originally Posted by Ostfriese View Post
So, losing Enterprise and (probably) Lexington barely two weeks into the war, and this by having them out of fuel deep in (more or less) enemy territory is a major blunder.

I support your decision to not allow a Mulligan on the Dec 18th turn, not after your opponent wrought havoc with that force for days (including sinking Mutsu and Yamashiro) rather than watching out for his own logistics.
I understand why this victory feels a bit stale, but at the end of the day your opponent provoked it and fell into his own trap.

Well, we ended up doing those two turns over anyway. It looked like he had the space to get away, but the turn I just ran shows that it's very likely they didn't go nearly as far away as I thought they would. We might have them sandwiched between CARDIV 1 and 2 right now.
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Old 07-13-23, 10:17 AM   #853
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I just watched the video about the revives turn 17. I must say you are very generous with your opponent. Threatening you with what the younger ones would call a “rage quit” is somewhat childish, and yet you were generous.

Well then, have a good hunt
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Old 07-14-23, 11:30 AM   #854
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Originally Posted by Ostfriese View Post
I just watched the video about the revives turn 17. I must say you are very generous with your opponent. Threatening you with what the younger ones would call a “rage quit” is somewhat childish, and yet you were generous.

Well then, have a good hunt

I have to admit, I was really tempted to call his bluff and if he did ragequit on me, oh well, I'll just get to start over with a new opponent and a clean slate. I'd get to fix some of my embarrassing mistakes so far! It absolutely blows my mind that he passed on my offer to fix 12/17 and then ended up demanding we go back to 12/17 after we completed 12/18. And the fix ended up being as simple as a task force speed adjustment. There's no reason he couldn't have tried that before we moved on.
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Old 07-17-23, 10:24 AM   #855
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Aren‘t you worried about your opponent watching your videos as well?

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