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aphid_licker
Jan 7, 2009


Why didn't they mount more guns on the Oscar? A Ho-103 is 23kgs, two more of those won't make the plane fall out of the sky. No room, not enough Ho-103s?

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Jobbo_Fett
Mar 7, 2014

Slava Ukrayini

Clapping Larry

aphid_licker posted:

Why didn't they mount more guns on the Oscar? A Ho-103 is 23kgs, two more of those won't make the plane fall out of the sky. No room, not enough Ho-103s?

Without seeing an internal graph of the wings, its a lot harder to shove a gun + ammo into a wing, displacing numerous other parts, in order to fit all of it in.

aphid_licker
Jan 7, 2009


Jobbo_Fett posted:

Without seeing an internal graph of the wings, its a lot harder to shove a gun + ammo into a wing, displacing numerous other parts, in order to fit all of it in.

I firmly assume that there's a very good reason that they didn't screw a bubble to the bottom of the wing Rüstsatz style, but does anyone know what it was?

Pharnakes
Aug 14, 2009



This is a promising start to the day.




One hit is enough against a laden tanker, her cargo will take care of the rest.





Are we actually effectively depth charging a submarine????




Wakaba manages to maintain a solid contact, so she runs out of depth charges instead :v:





We start the air phase with a sweep of Soerabaja.




Unsurprisingly the lone Warhawk has a bad time of it.





Sabang also is virtually uncontested. Why couldn’t it have been like this yesterday :qq:





And Rangoon too. Of course, today I’ve stood the bombers down :(




We are experimenting with a little bombing at Ambon as a way of testing how much supplies they have. No effective flak at 10k, but that’s probably because they just don’t have any heavy guns, rather than because they are out of supply.




He continues to fritter away the Dutch bombers at Bandjermasin, which I’m rather happy with. In a week or so when we are landing at Java they might be quite a threat with Ryujo no longer available.




Now that we have Langsa I should probably redirect the LRCAP here to further attrition the bombers.




Bollocks, it looks like when I evacuated the Oscars from CHiang Mai I forgot to tell the damaged ones left behind not to fly, so now they have repaired enough to go up and be shoot down by Hurricanes. Oh well, it was only a couple of Oscars.





It appears he has decided bombing Lae is safer than bombing Rangoon :v:




Ambon swings marginally back in our favour. This is going to take a long time.




Singapore is business as usual. Let’s see what the supplies are looking like here.










A very quiet turn.




Sometimes quiet has its uses. I doubt we will ever recover our 2:3 ratio though.




Some stuff definitely sank, who knows what.




If you were wondering what the KB was upto today, well burning lots of fuel while the pilots go emo in their bunks apparently. This is really rather disappointing as I can cancel the refueling again today, but tomorrow we have to turn for Georgetown no matter what.

I could really have used that extra day of bombing at Colombo :(








The supply situation at Singapore is improving already. One more day of bombardment though I think.




It turns out the shorter ranged army transports can’t reach Chiang Mai from Saigon, so we are going to have to establish a relay via Bangkok.

So far the loner legged Tinas (a stripped out transport variant of a Nell) have moved 27 AV worth up to Chiang Mai, and the engineers there have built level one forts.

There were two Oscars left, both airworthy, and they have been sent to join their main unit at Pisanuloke.




We set LRCAP for SIngkawang again.




Inaba and Harima are back from their abortive Darwin raid. Tempting as it is to point them straight back and tell them to do a good job this time, they might have torpedo bombers or something there by now.

Plus Ambon still has a few hills showing, and we need that place horizontal stat.





We’ve chased these stubborn little shits all the way up from Makassar. Surely they will surrender this time?





We move some Anns up to do a little recon by fire bombing of whatever this invasion of Thailand is.

Pharnakes fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Feb 17, 2021

Pharnakes
Aug 14, 2009

aphid_licker posted:

I firmly assume that there's a very good reason that they didn't screw a bubble to the bottom of the wing Rüstsatz style, but does anyone know what it was?

Gun pods like that were more of a German thing than a common feature in WW2. The British and Soviets used them occasionally, but no one to the extent the Germans did, who were generally obsessed with tinkering with their designs.


For the Japanese fighting a completely different war, the priorities were field reliability and ease of maintenance, followed by ease of manufacture. This lead to considerable design inertia, and you have to remember the Oscar was designed as an escort fighter for operations in China, where two 7.7s was at least adequate and anything to squeeze out an extra few miles of range would be worth doing.

The follow on from the Ki43, the Ki44 did indeed adopt MGs in the wings to increase firepower, but we won't see it for another few months.

tatankatonk
Nov 4, 2011

Pitching is the art of instilling fear.
is the game usually this fickle about your units straight up ignoring your inputs? seems like it would be completely maddening

aphid_licker
Jan 7, 2009


Pharnakes posted:

Gun pods like that were more of a German thing than a common feature in WW2. The British and Soviets used them occasionally, but no one to the extent the Germans did, who were generally obsessed with tinkering with their designs.

For the Japanese fighting a completely different war, the priorities were field reliability and ease of maintenance, followed by ease of manufacture. This lead to considerable design inertia, and you have to remember the Oscar was designed as an escort fighter for operations in China, where two 7.7s was at least adequate and anything to squeeze out an extra few miles of range would be worth doing.

The follow on from the Ki43, the Ki44 did indeed adopt MGs in the wings to increase firepower, but we won't see it for another few months.

Thank you!

Jobbo_Fett
Mar 7, 2014

Slava Ukrayini

Clapping Larry

aphid_licker posted:

I firmly assume that there's a very good reason that they didn't screw a bubble to the bottom of the wing Rüstsatz style, but does anyone know what it was?

The Oscar is very much a light fighter with emphasis on maneuverability. Adding underwing cannons messes with that, and I bet it just made more sense to go with the next iteration of fighter aircraft than stick with the Oscar

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

tatankatonk posted:

is the game usually this fickle about your units straight up ignoring your inputs? seems like it would be completely maddening

It's not so much that (a staple of wargames is that you issue orders and then have to deal with the friction of warfare meaning things sometimes don't go the way you wanted) but that WitP makes it incredibly difficult to find out why what you expected to happen didn't happen.

Maybe there weren't enough ops points. Maybe there was bad weather and the strikes didn't go. Maybe a bunch of launch rolls failed. Maybe there just aren't any targets left. Who knows? (Pharnakes might)

Pharnakes
Aug 14, 2009

tatankatonk posted:

is the game usually this fickle about your units straight up ignoring your inputs? seems like it would be completely maddening

Yes.

What is it Grey says? Wibble.




Alchenar posted:

It's not so much that (a staple of wargames is that you issue orders and then have to deal with the friction of warfare meaning things sometimes don't go the way you wanted) but that WitP makes it incredibly difficult to find out why what you expected to happen didn't happen.

Maybe there weren't enough ops points. Maybe there was bad weather and the strikes didn't go. Maybe a bunch of launch rolls failed. Maybe there just aren't any targets left. Who knows? (Pharnakes might)


I'm going to guess it was either bad weather (this is the monsoon after all), or something to do with the refuelling. It really should be launch rolls, I have made sure we have only the very best in leadership roles throughout the KB.


You know what the really ironic ting about all this is? The game does actually record the rolls, and sometimes in the little feed in the bottom left you will see things like *group* fails to find *target* due to bad weather> it just doesn't display this anywhere other than for one second on that message log (the message log that has scroll bars but can't be interacted with in anyway), and that message log isn't exported to a text file the way the other messages are. Oh and it's not like it alwasy shows it so you can't take a video of it or whatever.


Very strange people that designed this game.

Even stranger ones that play it :v:

farraday
Jan 10, 2007

Lower those eyebrows, young man. And the other one.

Pharnakes posted:


I'm going to guess it was either bad weather (this is the monsoon after all), or something to do with the refuelling. It really should be launch rolls, I have made sure we have only the very best in leadership roles throughout the KB.

You know what the really ironic ting about all this is? The game does actually record the rolls, and sometimes in the little feed in the bottom left you will see things like *group* fails to find *target* due to bad weather> it just doesn't display this anywhere other than for one second on that message log (the message log that has scroll bars but can't be interacted with in anyway), and that message log isn't exported to a text file the way the other messages are. Oh and it's not like it alwasy shows it so you can't take a video of it or whatever.

Very strange people that designed this game.

Even stranger ones that play it :v:

It is well that WITP is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it

Abongination
Aug 18, 2010

Life, it's the shit that happens while you're waiting for moments that never come.
Pillbug

farraday posted:

It is well that WITP is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it

Lol

Pharnakes
Aug 14, 2009



It looks like the KB has decided to withdraw anyway, and bumps into a merchant ship south of Ceylon. Maybe the Kongos will catch her.




I-171 has a brush with an escort near Fiji.




And we open the air phase with a sweep of Soerabaja.




I should probably lower the Betties’ altitude at Ambon.




The KB is still in range and the launch a full strike, but in the storm the results are pretty mediocre.

This is a real shame, I would have really liked to sink Athene and those APs at least.

An AKV is a dedicated plane transport that is capable of embarking and disembarking ready assembled planes, unlike other transports where they have to be crated. As such they are vital for the Allies with their short ranged aircraft.





The flakis back with a vengeance at Singapore, which is very weird. I’m [i[sure[/i] he can’t have brought in any significant quantity of supplies.




The Anns bomb near Chiang Mai, and report a burmse militia unit.

This is either a misclick from him or deliberately throwing away some lovely unit in an attempt to get under my skin.


If the later it was definitely successful given that there presence prompted me to try and bomb the airfield at Rangoon and lose 50 planes :v:

On the other hand I can now relax and get back to business, there’s already been enough troops airlifted to Chiang Mai that Burmese rifles pose no danger. We do need to clear the railway though before we can restart it as an active base.




He can now bomb us unpopposed at Chiang Mai, but it’s going to take more than that to run us out of supply before we chase the militia off the rail line.

In the mean time we have enough AAA here to impose an uncomfortable attrition on him for how little he is really achieving.




A second wave does a little better. He is bombing low and unfortunately we only have heavy AA here, and no 25mm guns.




We trade evenly over Rangoon.




Same old same old at Ambon.




And Singapore.




The Dutch do not surrender.








A quiet day really.




As it turns out we did not trade evenly at Rangoon :(




Maybe one day we will sink something.




The troop convoy has left Manila, four or five days to reach Balikpapan, then at least a week of unloading and reloading to launch the Java invasion.

Really I would have liked to be landing in Java a couple weeks ago, but welp.




Whilst I really had not intended the KB to retreat, I decide maybe it’s actually a good thing. If they move slowly today they will have just enough fuel to pause for one more day for a final strike on Colombo.








We are accumulating a whole pile of Naval Guard units at Tokyo. We will pack them up and send them to Manila and Rabaul for distribution.




Singapore is in supply! We will launch the first real attack tomorrow.





Leg two of the Saigon to Chiang Mai service opens up today.





There isn’t much point sweeping Rangoon if we are just going to lose the dogfights. Instead I decide to go all in one LRCAP of Chiang Mai.





We will come down lower at Ambon to test the flak, and I change the mission to direct support because the battleships have already messed the airfield up plentifully.





This is almost certainly an attempt to sneak supplies into Ambon, and the Betties are refusing to do anything about it so we will send a pair of Fubukis to investigate.




Speaking of Betties refusing to do anything, no attacks have been launched on Darwin yet. I had been putting this down to weather, because no sweeps had gone in either, but on checking just now i see the Zeros were set to training sweep :v:

Since it seems the Betties are getting hung up on naval attacks they aren’t launching I put them on airfield attack as their primary and fix the Zero issues.




This is the cripple you can see in the screenshot. She’s been stuck here since the “bombardment” of Darwin, maybe she’ll make it back eventually.

Zurai
Feb 13, 2012


Wait -- I haven't even voted in this game yet!

I am incredibly impressed that Umikaze is still above water a day later. She's just waiting for a wave to bump into her to capsize or just plain sink her.

aphid_licker
Jan 7, 2009


Go Umikaze! You can do it!

What's your estimate for the Colombo attacks? You said that it's a high-capacity shipyard, so damaged ships have pretty good odds, but all those fires+heavy damages we've seen reported must've sunk something

orangelex44
Oct 11, 2012

Definition of orange:

Any of a group of colors that are between red and yellow in hue. Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Old Occitan, from Arabic, from Persian, from Sanskrit.

Definition of lex:

Law. Latin.

aphid_licker posted:

Go Umikaze! You can do it!

What's your estimate for the Colombo attacks? You said that it's a high-capacity shipyard, so damaged ships have pretty good odds, but all those fires+heavy damages we've seen reported must've sunk something

IIRC you can actually make a decent estimate based off of point gains (even if the log won't tell you explicitly)... and he hasn't gained a whole lot there either. More than zero, but it's almost certainly less than a dozen ships.

Pharnakes
Aug 14, 2009
Stuff has certainly been going down, but exactly what, your guess is as good as mine. All we can say is that it isn't much, and that is bad.

Grumio
Sep 20, 2001

in culina est
You have been shockingly unlucky in the last few weeks

aphid_licker
Jan 7, 2009


Aw that's a bummer.

Pharnakes
Aug 14, 2009



I-2 misses what is probably an ASW TF but escapes detection.




I-17 has reached her patol zone near Karachi, but is given a very rude welcome by Griffin.




The latest bombardment at Ambon goes rather well.





We continue to sweep at Soerabaja.





And we start sweeping at Darwin.




For some reason the Nells at Georgetown decide today is the day to sink PT-36, but they all miss.




Freed of whatever bullshit naval non attacks the bombers also fly at Darwin. One Scythe is left in the air but they do ok anyway.





The Sallies do their best at Singapore in preparation for the big push, but direct ground support from 15k feet isn’t easy. Especially with the flak still active.





Well, it looks like most of the combat squads have been evacuated, presumably by air. Shame, but the rest is still a nice jump in VP for us, and we take Singapore without excessive casualties.





Ambon is going to be a truly painful nut to crack.









Singapore aside, a very quiet day.




Four Fortresses at Darwin is a nice haul though.






We catch a few motor launches on the slips at Singapore at least.




We have taken Singapore completely intact, they were nice enough to complete repairs to the runway before surrendering. Colonel Nicholson would be proud.




The KB was still in range of Colombo, but despite perfect conditions they don’t feel like doing anything. :sad:




We get our first good pictures of Palembang. Holy poo poo, I hope thi is true with only 3k men, I had assumed by now Palembang would be fortified to hell and back, if it isn’t that is fantastic news.







That was a very long way to go to get depth charged :v:

At least now we have SIngapore she doesn’t have to go all the way back to Saigon.





Now we know that it’s Scythes at Darwin, let’s test the theory that the Oscars do better against them than Zeros do.




I take the spare tansports (and every other ship I can get my hands on) and rush them to Singapore. The race is now well and truly on for the last six weeks of the landing bonus. So far we have done a decent job of expanding whilst limiting our losses (Yamahsrio and Ryujo aside), but now we know where he is, we need to hit everywhere he isn’t whilst the going is still good.

If the reports about Palembang are ture (and I have sincere doubts) then we need to jump on that with both feet before he does something about it.




We have enough ships at Kuantan as is to load the 22 Air Flotilla, so they will be heading down to Singapore tonight to get the airfield going there.

aphid_licker
Jan 7, 2009


This game has really given me an appreciation for how something like sneakily evacuating half the garrison of Singapore would be possible. Like how much space is involved and how you have to actively decide to do an LRCAP, or a sweep, or send a submarine or whatever if you want to look at something and you can't be everywhere.

Foxfire_
Nov 8, 2010

Is the onesey-twosey CAP historical? Would people launch-in-force or not-at-all? (or is it supposed to represent a larger CAP where only a few planes are in position to intercept?)

SerthVarnee
Mar 13, 2011

It has been two zero days since last incident.
Big Super Slapstick Hunk
It is historical in so far as the CAP will always be spread out over a wide area over a long period of time, ensuring that any encounter, that isn't spotted and coordinated by radar control, will always involve a very limited part of the active CAP, which may be on it last 20% of fuel and tired from a long boring patrol before the encounter. Any large formation closing in on a target will only have to contend with 1-6 fighters on the way in, but risk having the whole swarm of defenders dog piling on them on their way back out. A dog pile is potentially deadly for the attacking bombers, but it is catastrophically bad for the defenders in case of a follow up attack from a new wave of attackers. Suddenly all of the CAP is at poo poo elevation, low on ammo, potentially low on fuel, tunnel visioned on the fleeing attackers, potentially damaged and certainly horrifically out of position.

Triggerhappypilot
Nov 8, 2009

SVMS-01 UNION FLAG GREATEST MOBILE SUIT

ENACT = CHEAP EUROTRASH COPY




Foxfire_ posted:

Is the onesey-twosey CAP historical? Would people launch-in-force or not-at-all? (or is it supposed to represent a larger CAP where only a few planes are in position to intercept?)

CAP strategies varied but generally it's appropriate for carrier doctrine and most land doctrines, which have small flights up at a time with the rest of the aircraft either on other duties, readiness on the ground, or rearming.

Guper
Jan 21, 2019

aphid_licker posted:

This game has really given me an appreciation for how something like sneakily evacuating half the garrison of Singapore would be possible. Like how much space is involved and how you have to actively decide to do an LRCAP, or a sweep, or send a submarine or whatever if you want to look at something and you can't be everywhere.

Yeah I was curious about this. In actual WWII are there examples of early airlift operations like this? All I can recall from my history classes is the post-war Berlin Airlift (of supplies, admittedly not troops).

And in WiTP, is it possible to just hop-skotch around defending bases? Like have a strong initial force that you try to quickly or secretly spirit away once the enemy is bogged down/committed? I 'spose you risk losing a lot of valuable transport planes as well, so maybe it's only possible in a niche way where you have very good control over the air?

Pharnakes
Aug 14, 2009
It's not so much that you risk losing planes (because it's very hard for your opponent to see what you are doing and send planes to intercept) as its very hard to get enough planes to do that. And all the intermediate basses need to have adequate supplies and aviation support not to mention just airfields large enough to handle that kind of traffic.

I've never played against an opponent who uses air lift as much as Alikchi is doing, but he must be using half or more of his Catalina capacity to do all this. And that is directly reducing his search potential, letting us pull poo poo like the Ceylon raid, that, if it hadn't been for his deal with the devil ensuring those tow xAKLs blew the whistle would have been very nasty indeed for him.

Personally I regard projecting search and doing everything you can to inhibit your opponents to be second in priority only to sinking carriers. If you can't see you can't do poo poo.


As for IRL examples of airlift, in theatre the most famous one is the supply of China from India over the southern Himalayas, but both sides used every transport plane they could get their hands on all across the pacific. Although as you say usually for supplies rather than troops.

Tiger Crazy
Sep 25, 2006

If you couldn't find any weirdness, maybe we'll just have to make some!
The 1945 Burma campaign. Bill Slim used specific air transit ready battalions to reinforce areas and respond to threats.

Do you have any idea on where he is transporting these troops? I know Singapore doesn't have a lot since he probably didn't send in the 18th division. You are not far off the historical timeline for Singapore.

The historical invasion of Java starts on February 28. Though he seems he will fight a bit longer than the Dutch did in real life.

Tiger Crazy fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Feb 20, 2021

SIGSEGV
Nov 4, 2010


I'm betting he's shipping them to Palembang, because you dared hope he wouldn't have done that.

Also, because I have not actually played this game, because I had a strangely sane reaction to seeing Grey Hunter go through it, can anyone tell me about the rules for reforming units? I remember hearing things like "ship out one combat squad to AUS to avoid paying the political points costs" and "Ship out base force units to use them elsewhere and use fractions of free units to defend to skip more on political points" but I'm not sure how much is time and distance and dreams and how much is real.

Magni
Apr 29, 2009

Guper posted:

Yeah I was curious about this. In actual WWII are there examples of early airlift operations like this? All I can recall from my history classes is the post-war Berlin Airlift (of supplies, admittedly not troops).

And in WiTP, is it possible to just hop-skotch around defending bases? Like have a strong initial force that you try to quickly or secretly spirit away once the enemy is bogged down/committed? I 'spose you risk losing a lot of valuable transport planes as well, so maybe it's only possible in a niche way where you have very good control over the air?

Quite a few, though normally it was about bringing supplies in, rather than evacuate troops en masse. Off the top of my head there's Demyansk in winter '41-42 (the success of which in turn played a role in the Germans trying and failing a repeat with Stalingrad) and, theatre-appropriate, the Chindit raids and the Hump.

Caconym
Feb 12, 2013

SIGSEGV posted:

I'm betting he's shipping them to Palembang, because you dared hope he wouldn't have done that.

Also, because I have not actually played this game, because I had a strangely sane reaction to seeing Grey Hunter go through it, can anyone tell me about the rules for reforming units? I remember hearing things like "ship out one combat squad to AUS to avoid paying the political points costs" and "Ship out base force units to use them elsewhere and use fractions of free units to defend to skip more on political points" but I'm not sure how much is time and distance and dreams and how much is real.

It's a mess, unsuprisingly.
Ground and air units that are completely destroyed can be bought back for a political point cost. They'll then spawn as empty containers consisting of a single disabled device in the national home base in anywhere from 30-60 days I think.
They then have to reinforce/rebuild by drawing devices from the pools the same way as any other damaged unit.
This rate of reinforcement happens based on base size, leader abilities, support squad presence, device availability in the pools, supplies present and probably some more rules, but it'll take months for a large unit like a division to fully rebuild.

Some units start as separate sub-units like batallions that can merge into parent brigades/regiments, for instance at game start the Australian Port Moresby Brigade doesn't exist, but the battalions it consists of do, spread around New Guinea.
If you can get all the sub-units together in the same place, under the same HQ and in the same movement mode (Strat/combat), the Port Moresby Brigade can be formed, but can then never be split back up into separate battalions again.

For division size, some divs also start/spawn as separate sub units(regiments/brigades), but most divisions (though not all) can also be split into 3 sub-units again later.
Not actually the original sub-units though, but new ones, all consisting of 1/3 of the devices in the parent, and named like "3rd Marine Div/A" "3rd Marine Div/B" and "3rd Marine Div/C"
I'm not sure what happens if for instance "3rd Marine Div/A" is then totally destroyed, if it must be bought back, or if the B and C sub-units can still merge back into the full division, but then missing the devices from the A, and has to pull those devices from the pools.

If a unit is split up by loading on different transports, eighter ships or planes, other sub-units called fragments are formed, like "3rd Marine Div/1".
If the parent "3rd Marine Div" is then destroyed "3rd Marine Div/1" will transform into the parent "3rd Marine Div" immediately, and can start rebuilding from the pools, no matter how small "3rd Marine Div/1" was, even if it was a single support squad.
Fragments will automatically merge with the parent as soon as they're in the same place again automatically assuming the parents mode, but incurring a new pack/unpack delay for the whole parent if they're not the same, and I don't think you can change their HQ independently.

So fragments can be cheesed to avoid paying the PP cost, the delay before reforming, and the teleportation of the unit back to home base, but in all cases lost devices must be pulled from the pools, and this will take a lot of time.
For the allies it can be quite damaging, as you don't get any extra devices in the pools, and pools are filled by a fixed "production rate" with an end date to signify when that device historically went out of production/use.
Because of complicated rules for upgrading devices/TOEs this might result in some units never managing to upgrade their devices and for instance being stuck with some early war artillery in 1945.

For the japanese side most devices are produced from thin air when they're used (but not all, just to gently caress with the player to simulate scarcity of hard-to-produce devices like radar sets) by using "production points" like armament points, manpower points, vehicle points, and heavy industry points.

pthighs
Jun 21, 2013

Pillbug
In game terms a big thing that limits the effectiveness of airlift is that there is a max device size that can be transported by air. So you can move people around fine, but bulldozers, tanks, radar sets, and big artillery need ships.

Pharnakes
Aug 14, 2009
This is another reason I wouldn't have done what Alikichi did- we got more guns at Singapore than we did combat squads. So all that heavy equipment that could have made for a really hard fight was destroyed easily as it had insufficient infantry support, and conversely wherever it is the infantry has gone they aren't going to be particularly combat effective because they have nothing but rifles and MGs, and allied units really lean on their tanks and artillery to be effective.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.
Though I've never evacuated Singapore by airlift specifically, I do dedicate a lot of my Catalinas to airlift in the first few months when I'm not going to be sending my carriers out in hostile waters anyway. Really the Catalina is so good as a multirole that you usually wish you had 10x as many.

Pharnakes
Aug 14, 2009
See as long as you know where the KB is, why would you not send your carriers out where they aren't?

There's a ton of valuable stuff to sink in the Marshall or at Truk, or getting in a heavy Doolittle can be hilarious and really quite devastating.

Pharnakes
Aug 14, 2009



We all know what happens when a submarine meets a DMS. Fortunately the magnetic torpedo attraction field interfered with the detonator.




Somehow she manages to spot the entire convoy though?




Our Subchasers patrolling in the Makassar straits do their usual sterling work.





O24 swipes a large freighter in the convoy returning to Balikpapan from Ambon.





This is why you fire more than two torpedoes :ironicat:




In a final pisstake the KB chooses now to launch a sweep of Colombo at extreme range.




They are back at Lae, but I ain’t biting. Not when there’s loving Skyrockets around.




The sweep of Soerabaja goes well.




Despite sharing the hex with this xAKL the destroyers wouldn’t engage in either the night or day phase, but at least it seems to prompt the Betties to fly.

Hopefully the port is so wrecked they didn't manage to unload a significant amount of supplies anyway.




Supplies or no supplies, progress is excruciatingly slow.








That must be about the quietest turn yet.




We come out ahead in the air, no thanks to those suicidal pilots in the KB.




And we score an actual combat sinking of a ship! Worth two points even.




Umikaze continues to totter on the brink of disaster but is making progress.




Zyunyo Maru on the other hand is not.









These DDs on their way to Singapore will detour to visit some reported PT boats.




The tenders at Kendari are out of ammo. This means the Nagatos going in to Ambon tonight are the last fire support we can give for a while, so we will have to try an attack. I don’t feel great about that but it has to be done.





Our first dedicated ASW squadron is trained up and ready to go. This is Taiyo’s squadron, but at the moment I am going to send them to Makassar to fly patrol from there. There is no point risking Taiyo herself after all when we have a perfectly good island to fly from.

Pharnakes
Aug 14, 2009



RO-63 is forced down by a USN Destroyer just outside Sydney. Looks like there is quite a lot of stuff here though, could this be Enterprise reactivating after repairs?




Mutsu gets the final party started. Please get good rolls and target the troops.




Well the rolls aren’t particularly fantastic, but they definitely targeted the troops.




The troops who took Cebu are landing at Singkawang to reinforce the attack. Kuma hit a mine but isn’t showing heavy damage so that’s good.




I-121 is collecting the Perth tax.




With all this extra revenue you should be able to afford more torpedoes though!





:confused:





Six torpedoes and you missed a DMS? Trusty you suck.




Four Scythes are over Darwin, but neither side is claiming a kill from it yet. I hope most of them at least ran out of ammo or fuel.





The Nell’s continue to miss PT boats, unsurprisingly.




Only one Scythe left, and the strike hits decently.





At Sabang he has brought in more fighters, and the outnumbered Zeros fare poorly.




A much larger second wave evens the score.




A pair of Hudsons try to bomb our convoys in the Java sea.




In the afternoon the Nells try with torpedoes, but that doesn’t work for them either.




For some reason they direct ground bomb at Singapore.




A PM attack on the destroyers misses also.





Welp, how is this going to go?





Really not too bad at all despite the nominal 4:1. Ground combat is weird man.




Ironic day to try and start a counter attack at Singkawang.








Not such a great day in the air by the looks.




Are our Zeros broken again?




Don’t know why I bother to keep posting these really.





The troops for Java are almost at Balikpapan.







The Midway invasion has been very lightly spotted, so we will edge them even further west. The carriers remain unspotted, and he isn’t going to get any kind of intelligible report from this anyway.




I stand down the smaller Zero unit at Singkawang to recover.





Tomorrow the KB will be just off Sabang, so we will pummel the runway and port.





Everyone is ashore at Singkawang, so tomorrow we will try and attack.




The Kuantan airplanes move up to Singapore and establish a CAP.

aphid_licker
Jan 7, 2009


KB getting a lil light on fuel there.

Grammarchist
Jan 28, 2013

aphid_licker posted:

KB getting a lil light on fuel there.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

20 hexes, tight but they'll make it. Will need to use ops points to rebalance though.

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steinrokkan
Apr 2, 2011



Soiled Meat

aphid_licker posted:

KB getting a lil light on fuel there.

Just strap some planes onto the flight decks and have them run their propellers in the required direction.

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