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Pimpmust posted:How will the defence of Wake fair if that Jap CTF reaches it and you retreat with your last carrier there? If the carriers arrive, then the defenders of Wake can say goodbye to their air support - the long range bombers can take out the airfield, but their only coming in waves of 10-30 or so a day, if the CTF arrives, then we will see roughly 100 bombers at once. The defenders are not numerous - Wake is an atoll with some severe stacking limits - so any sustained attack will conquer the Island, bombing the hell out of their landing force has stopped this wave, so hopefully we can fortify our position before they think about trying again.
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| # ? Dec 9, 2009 20:36 |
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| # ? May 20, 2013 17:51 |
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Do you have a long term plan? Beat the Japs, obviously, but any specific strategy you plan to use? Perhaps with some kind of map with lots of important-looking arrows on it? God I love maps.
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| # ? Dec 10, 2009 02:11 |
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Have you tried warplan orange yet Grey Hunter? I've had my eye on it for a few years now.
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| # ? Dec 10, 2009 02:17 |
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I was hoping you'd turn the battle for the Philipines into a bitter defense, rather than the historical retreat. I don't blame you, it's the smart thing to do, but it's not the cool, manly thing to do. Also I'm a little confused. In the assault on Wake Island, did the Japanese suffer more causalties than the actual number of attackers? Does it not count non-combat squads in the assault numbers, or am I just reading it wrong?
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| # ? Dec 10, 2009 04:58 |
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Tiny Turtle posted:I was hoping you'd turn the battle for the Philipines into a bitter defense, rather than the historical retreat. I don't blame you, it's the smart thing to do, but it's not the cool, manly thing to do. Everything that's getting out of the Philippines is now out, I mainly wanted the ships out. at Wake, the sinking of those transports would have inflicted more casualties - but the fog of war would not show them. And yes, assaults only use the combat squads, defense uses everyone. Oberleutnant posted:Do you have a long term plan? Beat the Japs, obviously, but any specific strategy you plan to use? Perhaps with some kind of map with lots of important-looking arrows on it? The Plan will be coming, but for now I need to hold, once I know what I've lost, then I can plan on what to take back. 4outof5 posted:Have you tried warplan orange yet Grey Hunter? I've had my eye on it for a few years now. No, this is the only one of the series I've played.
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| # ? Dec 10, 2009 05:18 |
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This game looks absolutely massive. How long does it take to play a single turn? Do you just go through little individual events happening for half an hour or is it condensed enough that 1 turn doesn't take more than 15 minutes or so.
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| # ? Dec 10, 2009 05:51 |
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  Submarine SS Pollack attacks the Japanese carrier fleet. It gets a torpedo off which hits a destroyer, but fails to explode. The Pollack avoids the resulting hunt, taking a near miss from the enemy depth charges. While I would have liked to see a fish put into the side of an aircraft carrier, that “thunk” against the hull of a destroyer must have put the wind up the entire fleet. On a related matter, there does seem to be something wrong with our torpedoes though. In recent days we seem to be having over 50% of them being reported defective, and that’s just the ones that are hitting their targets.  Daylight arrives, and once more the Lexington’s fighters and bombers take to the air, this time they report sinking a Japanese cruiser. This is a great report for us, as it represents the power that our carriers have, and that we can, given the right situations, meet the Japanese head on in the air/sea war. The loss of a cruiser is also going to shame the Japs. They don’t take the loss of face well at all, and the sinking of one of their front line ships is going to hurt when the news gets reported back home.  Another wave of bombers flew in close after the first, hitting another cruiser twice with 1000lb bombs. While we can’t know the damage inflicted, its hoped that two heavy bombs will be enough to put this ship into drydock for a while, even better, she may succumb to flooding on her lengthy journey back to Japan. But for now, we have to assume she is still active in the region.  That afternoon, the USN fighters and bombers paid a visit to the cargo ships, hitting two of them, each ship received two hits. There was no sight of the Cruiser that was hit in the morning, so she has either sunk or moved out of the combat area for repairs. Either way, we have seemingly removed three cruisers from the area in two days. This is a result by anyone’s standards. The transports, now without support, are forced to withdraw from the area. The Japanese Carriers launch an attack on Johnston Island with their full strength, this is a frightening number of planes – shown is only the first wave, another wave of 24 Kates followed this one, and a third of 20 planes followed that.  Damage from these attacks however was fairly light. On the ground another 88 Japanese soldiers are thought to have been killed, wounded or captured. This seems to be the remainder of their attack. Our losses have been so light so as to not even be mentioned. It is not known whether this was the sum total of the troops landed, - a little over 900 men have been killed or captured in the last two days – or whether the Japanese transports loaded back all but a rearguard before they withdrew. Either way, Wake Island is safe for now.  Overnight, the Japanese land troops in Borneo at Miri. These ships must have been sailing since the first day of the attack, showing the Japanese forethought and planning in this war. The small garrison there is quickly driven back and the base captured. There is also another ineffectual bombing raid over Singapore, with three waves of bombers hitting one target. At Georgetown however, three ships are badly damaged in attacks. I have moved some planes back from other airbases, they should be ready to fly a CAP above Singapore soon. Then we will see how these bombers fair.  The SS Salmon puts a torpedo into a Japanese cargo ship, reporting massive explosions but not confirming the ship sunk.  The Captain of the Salmon returns at dawn to put three more torpedoes into the stricken ship. Two of these fail to explode despite confirmed hits. The Captain then withdraws. With so many Japanese warships around, it does not pay to hang around after the attack just to confirm a kill.  The P40's once more go up to confront the bombers, who this time have no fighter escort on their first attack run. Three bombers are shot down and the attack is disrupted.  Hong Kong harbour is still under near constant attack by torpedo bombers. Today they inflicted some heavy damage on the loading ships.   They are now being attacked by planes from three sides, and loading has become harder and harder as the port becomes more and more damaged. On the land front however, things were much worse, as the Japanese army assaulted the city. The attack came in force, and the defenders could not stop them, even for a day.   Many units surrendered quickly, and the task force loading in the harbour was just able to get out before Japanese troops entered the city, we may have only gotten one brigade out, but if they can make it to Luzon, then we should be able to move them on to somewhere where they can recover before we use them again. This is a blow, losing Britain’s second most important Asian port may have been inevitable, but it is still not something people want to read in their newspapers.   The loss of Hong Kong is reflected in the intelligence reports, this is a hit to our morale and a boost to the enemies, they now have a major port they can use to supply their operations in China, and we may well see an increase in fighting in this theatre.  Here we see those two cruisers that were sunk at Wake over the last couple of days. They were sister ships of the Tenryu class, and I do think that they look good there. This is our main action area at this moment. We have seen our only real successes so far here, but they are good ones – the sinking of two cruisers is not to be laughed at. Although I would like to see some battleships up there to make up for the attack three days ago. Let’s take a look at the most important ships in the fleet, and my current favourite daughter.  There are a few extra bits to a carrier, they are the number of aircraft the carrier can carry and the number it currently has. Below it is the number of sorties and torpedoes the ship carries. We've already used up half of the Lexington's torpedoes and a quarter of her sorties. Running low on torpedoes is not a good thing. If the Japanese carriers get her, she will not be able to put up much of a fight, so we order back to Pearl Harbour by what we hope is a safe route, north Via Midway. There she can meet up with the Enterprise. The Saratoga has also left San Diego for Pearl. In a week or so we can concentrate our carrier forces. At that point we can consider the best use for them.  At Soerabaja we now have the main fleet in one place. There is a little bit of damage from the high speed travelling to here, but that should be repaired within a few days without the need to place any of the ships into the small shipyard. We can now think on how best to use these ships. We will need to keep them out of range of the enemy ground based bombers, but if we can get them into range of an enemy fleet we can cause some serious damage. It is now a matter of weighing the risk against the gain, disrupting a landing would seriously slow down the Japanese, but how many ships is it worth risking to do so?  Here I'm moving planes from the east coast around. Most are going to Los Angeles and San Diego, but a number of fighter and bomber squadrons are going off to Cape Town to support the British forces. Once there, a travel time of about a month, they will be shipped to Australia or wherever else they are needed. But for now we must wait for them to cross the Atlantic, and hope they don’t run into any German U-Boats on the way there.  I also organise our first convoy of troops out of America, they may not be many in number, but they are a start. They will be forming up at Pearl Harbour, when they get there we will be able to begin planning an attack. As Pearl has the greatest concentration of ships suitable for the transport of troops, it is the ideal staging point, if not for the attack, then at least to concentrate the troops before moving them on to their final staging point.
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| # ? Dec 10, 2009 17:32 |
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That was a really good day indeed. Not only are they losing cruisers at a quick pace, but their air losses (especially bombers) are pretty drat heavy. Hong Kong was lost from the start, that you got anything out of there is a boon. When can you replace those torpedoes with non-crappy ones?
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| # ? Dec 10, 2009 18:09 |
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How's the Pennsylvania doing? Any signs of improvement or is she destined for the briny deep?
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| # ? Dec 10, 2009 18:16 |
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Don't feel too bad about the Torpedo failures. Every nation who used them had problems of some sort. During Operation Weserubung a few British capital ships (including the Battleship HMS Warspite) were attacked repeatedly by uboats, but survived solely because the torps were duds. Karl Donitz went on to write: “I do not believe that ever in the history of war, men have been sent against the enemy with such a useless weapon”. I think the US had the worst of it though, there was a lot of politics going on with the Bureau of Ordnance who refused to accept any reports of faulty designs, and shifted the blame on the boat crews themselves. I think one of the heads of the US Navy eventually had to get a load of torpedos and drop them from cherry pickers onto concrete to demonstrate that they simply didn't work. As far as I can remember the problem was that the firing pins were so weak that they bent under the force of impact, without detonating the explosives. Oberleutnant fucked around with this message at Dec 10, 2009 around 18:53 |
| # ? Dec 10, 2009 18:42 |
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I want to congratulate you for starting on Dec. 7, which is both the birthday of my mother and my buddy Steve. Every year I wish them a happy sneak attack day.
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| # ? Dec 10, 2009 18:44 |
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It's nice seeing you sink some cruisers, but then I realize that this is the start of the war. You're going to have to sink a -lot- of stuff, and it'll take a -long- time. Best wishes!
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| # ? Dec 10, 2009 18:46 |
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Hey, Christmas came early this year! (IRL, the battle of Hong Kong happened around Christmas) Which regiment managed to escape Hong Kong btw?
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| # ? Dec 10, 2009 19:27 |
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So give it to me straight, doc. Are our boys coming home in time for Christmas? CV Enterprise is my favourite carrier and it helps that Discovery has been absolutely flooding with documentaries about it (Battle 360 & The Grey Ghost mostly). Looking forward to seeing it action. It drat well better do something badass.
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| # ? Dec 10, 2009 19:30 |
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It is worth pointing out that today (10/12) is the day where the actual sinking of the HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse by Japanese aircraft happened.  So in a way we've already gone astray from historic events with the PoW surviving the attack.
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| # ? Dec 10, 2009 19:42 |
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bobthethurd posted:This game looks absolutely massive. Normally a turn takes about 15-20 minutes to do, including watching a few of the combat replays. Its taking me over an hour at this point, as recording things slows it down considerably, and I have to watch more combat reports for screenshots. Hip-Hoptimus Rhyme posted:How's the Pennsylvania doing? Any signs of improvement or is she destined for the briny deep? The fire continues to rage uncontrolled, and the amount of the ship on fire continues to increase day by day. Oberleutnant posted:Torpedo woes. The American torps were the worse of the lot - not only was the magnetic fuse rubbish, but they also had faulty depth gauges, meaning they ran to deep and undershot the target far to much. I'm amazed we've done so well with the hits we have so far. Cooked Auto posted:It is worth pointing out that today (10/12) is the day where the actual sinking of the HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse by Japanese aircraft happened. The game actually starts with the PoW and Repulse getting attacked on the first turn. so I started with a non historic turn and left surprise on. That's the main historical bugbear I have with the game - If I'm going to lose the Pride of the British fleet, I'm going to do it on my own dam turns!
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| # ? Dec 10, 2009 20:03 |
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Looks like a good day of success, something to boost spirits back home (until they read about Hong-Kong anyways). Having put many hours into Silent Hunter III, I can confirm that early-war torpedoes are rubbish, especially the magnetic pistols, at least for the U-boats.
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| # ? Dec 10, 2009 20:21 |
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Well, the US troubles with their torpedos were much greater than most of the other nations. And certainly worse than those of Japan, who tested their torpedos thoroughly before the war, and so had them reliable enough to base their anti-naval strategy on. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_14_torpedo quote:On 24 December 1941, Commander Tyrell Dwight Jacobs in Sargo fired a total of eight torpedoes at two different ships, with no results, and had become very frustrated; when two additional merchantmen came in view, he took extra pains to get it right, pursuing for fifty-seven minutes[23] and making certain TDC bearings matched perfectly before firing two torpedoes at each ship, at an average of 1,000 yards (910 m), a very close range. All missed.[24] If the game follows history, you've got 21 months to go before you get decent torpedos.
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| # ? Dec 10, 2009 20:38 |
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I can see that a weapon that is relatively new has some problems especially if it hasn`t seen combat but how did these torpedoes ever got approval if there are problems that significant?
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| # ? Dec 10, 2009 21:11 |
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Wonderful thread so far. Tiniest of nitpicks: Philippines is spelled wrong in the banner. I read parts of the Civil War LPs and only just started the Crown of Glory one (I have a terrible habit of being late to parties) but this is really incredible and I'm very excited about it.
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| # ? Dec 10, 2009 21:17 |
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quote:I can see that a weapon that is relatively new has some problems especially if it hasn`t seen combat but how did these torpedoes ever got approval if there are problems that significant? Some of the problems weren't detected in the testing phase for various reasons. For example, I think the magnetic detonators were tested in an area with unusual magnetic field, or at least a magnetic field that was different to that of the actual operational area. So they were tweaked to work in the magnetic field of their testing facilities under the assumption that that would apply everywhere, and it didn't. As for the impact detonators - they could fire, but generally only if the eel hit at a shallow angle of attack. I don't know if that was how they were all tested, but it was the interim solution adopted by Captains for as long as it took for the problem to be ironed out. e: wiki says it better: quote:Blame for the inadequate weapon must be laid at the feet of the Bureau of Ordnance, which specified an unrealistically rigid magnetic exploder sensitivity setting and oversaw the feeble testing program. BuOrd hampered wartime investigation into Mark VI exploder problems by assigning the mechanism "secret" status, limiting knowledge of its inner workings to a few high-ranking officers, refusing to believe word of active duty sailors,[18] laying blame for failures on these very same men,[19] even deliberately mis-setting torpedoes to conceal defects.[20] Servicemen were forbidden to disassemble the exploder.[21] Additional responsibility must be assigned to the United States Congress, which cut critical funding to the Navy during the interwar years, and to NTS, which inadequately performed the very few tests made.[22] BuOrd failed to assign a second naval facility for testing, and failed to give Newport adequate direction. Oberleutnant fucked around with this message at Dec 10, 2009 around 21:26 |
| # ? Dec 10, 2009 21:24 |
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Woohoo, the mighty Dutch fleet assembled in my hometown Surabaya.  First time I've seen it mentioned anywhere in these forums
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| # ? Dec 10, 2009 21:27 |
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I like how the ancient (ex-)British V-class destroyers in ABDA are rated at 34 kts. Right. Maybe when they were launched back in World-War-frickin'-One and with a strong tailwind. You should totally charge the Indonesian landings with the ABDA force. Make headlines! I see Lex is still sporting Buffaloes. How can you get rid of those useless coffins and replace them with Wildcats? Is it just a matter of pulling enough F4Fs out of the replacement pool? Never fear, though, I'm sure her absurd 8" batteries will stand her in good stead if the Combined Fleet catches her!
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| # ? Dec 11, 2009 00:46 |
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The Merry Marauder posted:I like how the ancient (ex-)British V-class destroyers in ABDA are rated at 34 kts. Right. Maybe when they were launched back in World-War-frickin'-One and with a strong tailwind. You should totally charge the Indonesian landings with the ABDA force. Make headlines! Sir, are you mocking a class of ship that includes a ship named the HMS/HMAS Vampire? If so, then I will have to ask you to step outside. Grey Hunter fucked around with this message at Dec 11, 2009 around 06:55 |
| # ? Dec 11, 2009 06:51 |
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Grey Hunter posted:Sir, are you mocking a class of ship that includes a ship named the HMS/HMAS Vampire? Well, she's certainly no HMS Daisy or HMS Chrysanthemum.... But I understand if your (HMS) Vanity requires you to call a(n) (HMAS) Vendetta. The Merry Marauder fucked around with this message at Dec 11, 2009 around 07:19 |
| # ? Dec 11, 2009 07:16 |
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Grey Hunter posted:Sir, are you mocking a class of ship that includes a ship named the HMS/HMAS Vampire? You know, ships tend to be wet and made out of rather shiny metals. What do wet and shiny things do in the daylight? They SPARKLE! Thats right, the HMS Vampire sparkles. Thusly, it cannot be a true vampire. 
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| # ? Dec 11, 2009 13:42 |
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The Merry Marauder posted:Well, she's certainly no HMS Daisy or HMS Chrysanthemum.... The problem is that the interwar British government was (HMS) Broke and, due to the reaction against war due to the 1914-18 conflict, there was no (HMS) Mandate for increased naval spending either in Britain or (HMAS) Australia.
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| # ? Dec 11, 2009 13:59 |
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Grey Hunter posted:Here I'm moving planes from the east coast around. Most are going to Los Angeles and San Diego, but a number of fighter and bomber squadrons are going off to Cape Town to support the British forces. Once there, a travel time of about a month, they will be shipped to Australia or wherever else they are needed. But for now we must wait for them to cross the Atlantic, and hope they don’t run into any German U-Boats on the way there. I meant to ask, what determines where you choose to send your planes? I'd assume you'd want to send them all to Pearl unless there was a good reason to do otherwise.
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| # ? Dec 11, 2009 16:18 |
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 Another attack on one of the ships fleeing Singapore, I-123 hits and sinks the Pinna. She the circles around and puts two more fish into the Tanker British Judge, also sending her to the bottom. This was to be expected, I suppose, as the Japanese know we have a number of ships in Singapore, they will have placed their subs in the area for just this occasion.  Kerching is now under attack, but the shore battery's here manage to put up a fight, hitting some of the offloading transports.  This is repeated later on and another four transports are left burning. But the Japanese are already ashore, and their attack captures the port and forces the defenders to retreat with heavy losses. We can take some consolation that they have some ships that will be out of action until they can be repaired.  Another task force arrives, this on at the southern island of Davo. Here two cruisers sink three freighters unopposed during the night, but there is no sign of any troop landings in the area.  Our Submarines get into action, slamming torpedoes into multiple Japanese transports. No confirmed sinking at this time, but hopefully one of the three ships hit has gone down.  The daily bombings begin again, and the P40's out of Clark's field try to stop them, but the escorting Zeros manage to down one of our planes, and our men are unable to stop the bombers or even slow them down. Successive waves do bag a few bombers, but there are more losses today, it seems that our men are beginning to get tired, and their equipment is failing under the constant use.   Guam is now under attack, as a night time naval bombardment begins, troop landings soon follow this. This is the attack that Sigintel warned us about, but we were unable to do anything about. Having failed with their invasion attempt of Wake, the Jap's return to bombing it with their land based Bettys. The wildcats defending the island are getting good at this, and take down two of the attackers. They do manage to get some hits in on the runway, and damage here is starting to mount up. It is more a worry that the runway will fail before we run out of planes to launch from it. The fleet trying to move away from Hong Kong is pounded mercilessly, two ships are sunk and others damaged. On the mainland the assault on Chegchow begins, and one thousand Japanese and the same number of Chinese are killed in the brutal fighting. This may be the start of an offensive in the region, now that they have Hong Kong, they can better supply their forces in the south and west of China.  Looking at the list, I am not sure why Intelligence are listing 50 enemy planes destroyed on the ground, as we have not done any such damage that I know of, our only attacks have been on shipping. Everything else has been defensive operations.  Gentlemen, I have bad news. Today I have to report that the Pennsylvania sank despite the best efforts of our men at Pearl. The fires have been raging for three days now, and they finally caused some of the ships stored ammunition to explode, no one was hurt, as the area had been cleared beforehand. This means the attack four days ago cost us three of our battleships. None of the other ships are now in any danger of sinking, but will be in dry dock for a long time to come. The Great White fleet is therefore almost completely out of action.  Sigint tells us nothing useful; mainly information about ships moving to areas we already know are under attack.  Losses are to be expected, it seems that all three ships torpedoed by the Submarines went down, hopefully with their cargoes still on-board. Every Jap dead in the water is one less we need to shoot later along the line, and every ton of supplies sunk is a tonne that won’t help them.  The enemy have taken three bases, one of which is a port. They also have troops in two more bases and I'm not sure we can hold them for long. This means that the entire north of Luzon is effectively in enemy hands.  Looking at the Pilots, they are in good spirits and still well rested. We have not lost that many planes, but the ones that have been damaged are going to take some time to repair. If we can maintain a good presence in the air, then we can slow the Jap's down somewhat. But if we continue to lose planes to maintenance and damage, then we will be overwhelmed, as the enemy seem to have an unending number of planes of all types. Actually they do, to try and make the AI more competitive. As reinforcements for planes can only come once a week, it is still however possible to wear them down through attrition, and the Japanese start with their best pilots, so every one of them lost hurts.  The landings on the north of Borneo and Malaya have hit us in undefended area’s. There are also reports of even more transports coming in across the sea from Japan and Korea. The main worry is that they can now use these airfields to move their bomber campaign further south and into range of Java. My main worry now is the lack of fighters, we have access to numerous Dutch bombers, but Java as a whole has only one squadron of out of date fighters. This means we will not have the CAP that we are relying on in the Philippines.  Waiting for squadrons to arrive is going to be a long haul. Twelve days for the first, but three weeks before any real strength arrives. These are only the planes that we have a chance to get to the area in time. There are American fighter squadrons arriving before then, but they will take longer to ship across the ocean to Australia and then up to Java. But when they arrive and are reorganised, I will begin to ship them to Fiji, and then on to wherever they are needed.
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| # ? Dec 11, 2009 16:44 |
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It's going to take almost 2 years for the 134th RAF to arrive? Are they transported by a caravel? I suppose it could be taking into consideration when they're freed up from fighting the Luftwaffe, but it's drat gutsy to plan 2 years ahead in World War 2.
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| # ? Dec 11, 2009 17:17 |
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I imagine it's based on projected Spitfire production and training schedules - as new Spitfire squadrons come on-line, the Hurricanes are shipped out to the Pacific theatre. Presumably there is some variability in the actual arrival date.
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| # ? Dec 11, 2009 17:25 |
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Ilanin posted:I imagine it's based on projected Spitfire production and training schedules - as new Spitfire squadrons come on-line, the Hurricanes are shipped out to the Pacific theatre. yeah, I have about 30 days of variability on for both sides. Although I may come to regret that.
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| # ? Dec 11, 2009 17:43 |
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Rest in Peace Pennsylvania  You have become our Arizona Memorial
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| # ? Dec 11, 2009 17:46 |
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Ilanin posted:I imagine it's based on projected Spitfire production and training schedules - as new Spitfire squadrons come on-line, the Hurricanes are shipped out to the Pacific theatre. As aggressively awful as the Buffaloes currently in theater are, the Gladiators in the Med are worse - those Hurris are presumably needed to cling to Malta like a desert limpet. It is fairly entertaining that the planners can evidently predict the fall of Italy, and promise a model of Spitfire no one's thought of yet. I'm curious to hear how the game handles withdrawals. You're getting three of the armored-deck British carriers in early '42, but they were running supplies to Malta in summer '42. Does the game let you keep them, tell you their withdrawal date, or just sort of disappear them at a certain point?
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| # ? Dec 11, 2009 20:07 |
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The Merry Marauder posted:As aggressively awful as the Buffaloes currently in theater are, the Gladiators in the Med are worse - those Hurris are presumably needed to cling to Malta like a desert limpet. Well, RAF Fighter Command could detail some of the 75 squadrons of Spitfires it maintains in Britain to face off against about a third as many German fighters in Northern France to somewhere they'd be of some use, but modding in sensible British fighter aircraft deployment would presumably count as cheating.
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| # ? Dec 11, 2009 20:32 |
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The Merry Marauder posted:As aggressively awful as the Buffaloes currently in theater are, the Gladiators in the Med are worse - those Hurris are presumably needed to cling to Malta like a desert limpet. Please. Malta's safe. Buzz Beurling is still there and he is kicking rear end.
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| # ? Dec 11, 2009 22:42 |
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bunnyofdoom posted:Please. Malta's safe. Buzz Beurling is still there and he is kicking rear end.  pride, eh?(he's not yet, actually) edit: though shall be kicking much rear end when he does get there. drat, I'd never seen his numbers in that context before. The Merry Marauder fucked around with this message at Dec 11, 2009 around 23:08 |
| # ? Dec 11, 2009 22:59 |
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The crew of the Pennsylvania fought valiantly, but in the end had no chance to save the ship
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| # ? Dec 12, 2009 00:44 |
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 Last night we suffered a disaster!  While moving from San Diego to Pearl, a Japanese sub, I-20 slips through the apparently sleeping destroyer screen and puts a torpedo into the side of the Saratoga! The sub is them able to easily evade the escort screen and slip away back into the night. Damage to the Saratoga is currently unknown, but will be available later in the day. Whatever it is, he fact that a sub was able to hit one of the three most important ships in our fleet, one of my three god dam beautiful daughters! Is a disgrace, I’m even thinking about replacing the commanders on the escort subs, this will defiantly happen if the Saratoga sinks – I’ll have those men court marshalled and keel hauled! Over George Town, another wave of Japanese bombers come in and cause havoc amongst the ships loading troops there.  The increasing heavy losses in manpower and shipping mean we may have the abandon the evacuation to protect our shipping. The men left behind will have to defend the area as best they can, they do not have the supplies for an overland march back to Singapore, and we will not abandon a key base that easily.  The smaller Japanese Carrier fleet returns, this time bombing Rabul. Another Japanese fleet is seen approaching the base there. This was an invasion force, and New Britain was invaded a few hours later. The attack made little headway in the first day, but the defenders were unable to repulse the enemy completely.  There may be the start of an offensive here, as bombers strike at Tavoy in south Burma. We will have to watch the area with care. There are still no free troops in India to send into Burma, but I’m told we should have some in the next few days, hopefully there is time to send them south before this offensive begins properly.  Over Clark Field the largest CAP seen yet goes up to engage the enemy's attack, while taking some losses, they manage to destroy five enemy craft for the loss of two of their own. The next wave they faced was roughly the same size with six enemy shot down for three losses. The third saw two kills for three losses. The pilots being overwhelmed after having to cope with wave after wave of Japanese bombers and fighters coming in, preventing them from reloading, refueling and resting. When the afternoon comes, the CAP is half the size it was in the morning, and loses one plane without doing any damage to the enemy. As I said yesterday, attrition is what will hurt us most here, if all our planes are down for repair, then they may not get up again, the runway will be reduced to rubble and the planes will be blown up in their hangers. The war in China is defiantly heating up. There are numerous attacks all over the country inflicting heavy losses on both sides.  Where the Chinese army has not formed up properly, it takes heavy losses, proving that we need to concentrate these forces for them to have any effect. Hopefully we can start to replace some of the less efficient generals soon, but for now, we just need to get enough men into one area that they can hold back the Japanese through sheer weight of numbers.  Guam is taken, the troops there had no chance of holding, being outnumbered nearly ten to one. They surrendered to a man rather than wasting their lives in battle. We can only hope that the Japanese treat them with respect.  Today has seen some of the heaviest air combat of the war so far, with over thirty planes lost on both sides. The number of our ships lost is now above 40, and we can only confirm five enemy ships sunk. We know that this should be much higher, but the Japanese refuse to confirm their losses, so we can only rely on our own reports. Pilots can get overexcited, so a lot of extra hits and sinking’s have to be ruled out, rather than inflating the total.  The main interest from Sigintel is that we can expect and attack on both Davao and Mauban. Although these are both in the Philippines and Davao already has an enemy fleet parked outside of it this is nothing new to us. Neither is the idea of further attacks on any part of the Philippians. We got lucky here Gentlemen. The torpedo that struck the Saratoga did little real damage to the ship, although she is still taking on water, we think that she should be able to reach San Diego with little trouble.  This could have been another major disaster. When she sets out once more, we must increase the number of escorts to protect this valuable ship. I also use my clout to free up two squadrons of dive bombers from defending the west coast. These planes are going to Pearl where they will be more useful than sitting defending the coast. If the enemy get that far, were all in trouble. At Pearl, I can then send these squadrons out to other areas to help defend against invasion, or, in the future, to support our own invasions. The game uses something called political points. These are used to free up forces from defensive units and change generals and captains. We get a set number a turn, but can lose them by not withdrawing troops by certain dates.  The Prince of Wales is ready to make her run from Singapore, let’s hope that they can get out of bomber range. She may still take on water when she reaches the open sea, but the crews of the Dockyards assure me they think she is good to go, and I can’t afford to risk her sitting in a harbour that is being bombed every day.  We are also now ready to make our first real aggressive move. To try and counter the enemy landings in Borneo, I have ordered a number of cruisers with a destroyer escort to go north to try intercept the transports, or failing that, hit them when they are landing troops. This force is big enough to cause some trouble, but still small enough to be expendable. If we can catch a transport force unguarded, then we can sink them and slow down the enemies advance. This will also look good to all the folks back home, and give them some good news over their morning papers.  In Australia, I order several of the units guarding Sidney transferred to my command and moved up to Port Moresby. The lack of fighters is still going to hurt, but hopefully I can get some more in before the battle proper begins. In a few days I plan to see about shifting a lot more of the Australians to Moresby. As I mentioned before, the Port is key, as it will give the Japanese a staging point in range of Ground based bombers. If Port Moresby falls, the invasion of Australia will not be far behind. While avoiding direct combat, I have ordered units to move forward and try and cut the enemies supply lines. This will slow their advance somewhat, as they will have to move troops back to reopen the roads and railway lines to supply their troops.  I also see what seems to be an unguarded base, and order all available units to advance. This will be a war of opportunity for a good time yet. But any victories we can take will be taken gladly.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2009 12:51 |
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| # ? May 20, 2013 17:51 |
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They hit the Saratoga? drat dirty japs! Gameplay-wise, is there really no way to confirm kills? That's hardcore. I'd really hate it cause I'm not into that much realism, but it's awesome some company made a game that actually thought of stuff like that.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2009 13:06 |
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