23rd Sep

Betties had been tasked with a long range night strike on the port at Townsville where a number of ships had been spotted by sub mounted Glens. My record of success with night flights in this game is short and inglorious and this was no exception. Out of the 50 odd Betties that crawled into the air, perhaps a dozen of them actually managed to find their way to the Australian coast where they were promptly terrified by an old man shining a hand held torch at them. We'll try again tonight.

The dive bombers at Buna never even got as far as taking off. Severe storms on that side of the Owen Stanley range meant the pilots spent the morning staring at the walls. I'm going to start picking out random pilots from various squads and having them shot, I think. To be honest, I don't remember having quite so much trouble with the weather scrubbing missions in previous games. I am beginning to wonder whether or not a change has been made in one of the beta patches.

A disappointing morning is hardly improved when a US sub sinks one of my destroyers near Shortlands. This is followed up by a Dive bomber raid which hits another DD. Although it doesn't sink it's going to have to go back to Osaka for repairs and is therefore out of the campaign.

To compound a fairly middling day, I finally receive word that the Enterprise is still afloat. Well, it's not really a major surprise, I suppose, but still....

24th Sep

Weather once again stopped play......I've retasked the Betties to try a night time raid on Moresby but suspect that an angry bat may be more effective.

And that's really all there is to report. It was a quiet turn again, I didn't even have to put up with much more than a couple of B-17 raids. Mainly there is a lull because I'm awaiting supplies before I get the carrier air units back up to something approaching operational strangth. I get Zuiho tomorrow (I think,) which will give me a nice addition to my offensive strength.

In terms of victory points, I have the charts somewhat in the last week or two. I had been down at about 600 points versus about 6000 for CCIP but I'm up at 2100 now (He's down slightly, but not much.) I think I must have sunk a few of those big ships for the totals to swing so much.

I don't really like playing the points game in WiTP, but sometimes it is a useful way of working out where you stand. CCIP went into the lead when he took Lunga but I'm slowly clawing my way back up. Moresby is the motherlode for me. If I take it I increase my points by 8000 and reduce his by 4000.

25th Sep

I-175, patrolling the stormy waters south of Guadalcanal engages a small flotilla of destroyers. She comes off worse, and damage forces her to the surface where the destroyers use her for gunnery practice. It's not long before she slips beneath the waves forever....

At about the same time, much further to the south, I-7 carries out a periscope attack on a destroyer that is foolish enough to sail into view. One torpedo of the 6 launched finds it's mark and the small ship soon begins to take on water. It isn't long before she has gone down. One for one. It gives you a rosey glow, but it favours CCIP in the long run.

CVL Zuiho has finally arrived and is already on her way towards Rabaul with Kongo and Haruna in tow. I now have 5 carriers of various sizes, about 6 battleships and over 20 cruisers at my disposal. I could do with a few more destroyers, though. More will be arriving in theatre within a week.

As I analyze my strategy for taking Moresby and Milne my eyes are drawn to the large number of ships CCIP seems to have at Townsville. They seem to include destroyers, battleships and cruisers. Is this a rapid reaction force he has prepared, in case I round the cape again? I think I should have a sniff at this and see whether he rises to the bait....

I love seeing the move/countermove and realizing what's going on and wondering how it's going to turn out.

I said it in CCIP's thread already, but I'm really enjoying this. Thanks for posting these.

Cheers, It's nice to know people are still reading it even though it contains all the tactical nous of a drunk rabbit playing Connect 4. I'd love to pretend that things are quiet just now because of operational secrecy but, to be honest, there is nothing happening.

This is going to change, though. My APs are finally completed (minus one or two, I think,) so I now have, for the first time in the game, amphibious capacity. Not a huge amount of capacity, mark you, but enough to get troops ashore quickly. Time to start moving everything forward.

26th Sep

Lots of bombers will hopefully hit the airfield at Milne Bay today. I'm mostly trying to get CCIP to use up supplies and annoy him a little bit whilst trying out different formation heights and escort altitudes. Knowing the way things are, all the pilots will have prebooked for a spa weekend or something and no one will actually fly.

That's basically it from my side today. A Glen spotted a CVE down near Noumea so CCIP still has some form of capacity. I expect he is hiding Enterprise somewhere too. That's Ok. Within 10 days I'll have 4 fleet carriers, two CVL and a CVE. This early in the war, I'm fairly confident in my fleets ability to dish it out.

He also has what looks like a cruiser force near Guadalcanal. Perhaps a bombardment force?

Oh yes, one of his scout planes from Guadal bravely bombed and sank a poor little coastal minesweeper of mine that was pootering about the Slot. What a bully.

And finally, congratulations to Richard and Claire for the birth of little Ila, their first. Nae booze fur yooz the night. :yeah:

Well it's no wonder not a lot is happening, you've had a major clash, so you're both now pulling back, licking your wounds and evaluating the next step.

Things will pick up again soon I'm sure. The ebb and flow of war and all that.

Very true. I wish I knew more about his reinforcement schedules. I seem to remember the US get more big ships round about the turn of the year, and he certainly has at least a couple of CVEs to come.

27th Sep

Netties bombed the airfield at Milne bay in two separite raids. The first was escorted by 40 Zeroes, the second by none. Hmmmm. The strip itself was damaged and several aircraft were likewise hit. He seems to have Dauntless here again. Probably a detachment from Moresby. I've ordered to bombers to have another go tomorrow. I expect CCIP to reinforce with more fighters so I'm hoping my escort remains strong.

And that's all she wrote, folks! Happy New Year! Even though we're only in September......Unless of course another turn comes in.....so....

28th Sep

Some people might suggest that a Scotsman sitting around and updating his Pacific war AAR at less than an hour into the new year may, in some small but important way, be symptomatic of some deeper problem or issue. They may have a point. I hate new year, with a passion, and have done so since I was about 26. so, meh to that, lets get on with the war!

The Betties went back to Milne. As I predicted, CCIP had beefed up his CAP by quite a bit. I lost 4 Betties or so, to his two downed fighters. We did a little bit of damage to the air strip but I've stood the bombers down. No point in pushing it.

Zuiho has now joined up with KB1, which is now a pretty strong force. She needs a bit more fuel to top up all the ships but will be ready to go back to sea in a few days. She will accompany Yamato towards the Slot where I intend to bombard his troops at Lunga.

A large convoy is loading troops at Truk. it's time to get a move going. Once the troops and the ships arrive at Rabaul I'll unload, reconfigure for an Amphibious attack and get the other assets into place.

29th Sep

And suddenly, there seems to be a lot of shipping around.

http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/5761/42175319.jpg

From the big US bases at Luganville and Noumea several task forces have gotten underway. Glens have spotted what looks to be a CV/CVE force leaving Luganville. I assume they will join up with the other TFs that are making their way northwards possibly to resupply Guadal or possibly to bait me into moving my own carriers. That's fine with me: I hold the upper hand there and even if I lose a couple I have more to come.

At Port Moresby, CCIP has brought what look to be several minelayers into the area. Mining the approaches is a sensible move given he knows I'll be coming this way sooner or later. I am unsure how many mines he gets each month. I get none and I assume he gets very few. Enough to remind me to add a minesweeping TF to my invasion force.

My troopships are leaving Truk tomorrow. Milne Bay still remains my first priority so I can base Strike aircraft there and effectively close Moresby off to shipping. The one problem I forsee is scrounging up enough naval and air support for both the PNG bases. I've also moved some divebombers back to Lae just in case....

Ahh, the anticipation of action...

Are you operating KB1 CVs as one big tf, or divided to smaller TFs following each other?

At the moment I've got both the fleet carriers and both the light carriers operating together. In a week or so, when I get my next fleet carrier I'll reconfigure so that the CVs operate together and the two CVLs are grouped with the CVE as a support force. I may remove the strike aircraft from both the CVLs and replace them with more fighters - if I can scrounge that many A6M2s up, which may not be possible without stripping various land bases of their CAP units.

Eventually - should the game continue that long - KB1 (I really should have called it CarDiv1 or something to be a bit more historically accurate,) will be operating as a 4 CV force which will be pretty much unassailable except through a lucky strike. And she will be backed up with a decent light force too.

It's probably worth saying something about co-ordination penalties whilst I'm talking about carriers. As the game stands, there are some pretty stiff penalties for having too many carriers in a single TF. Actually, it's not even carriers but aircraft totals. For the Allies it can be pretty severe; early war they are penalised for carrier strikes involving more than 100 aircraft. Mid war this becomes 150 and late war 200. The big Japanese advantage is that it's a standard 200 throughout the war.

Usually, these penalties manifest in the failure of the different squadrons to fly in big formations, leading to small, piecemeal strikes that are easily picked off. When brought together with other factors like poor weather, pilot experience etc, these penalties can lead to pretty miserable showings. As far as I know, the effects are random each time a mission is tasked and I have wondered whether CCIPs poor showing in the carrier battle was due to co-ordination penalties. Certainly, a US player should not be able to field three CVs together in the same force in 42 without some problems.

Now, as ever with this game, all the above are subject to so many modifiers, mechanics, and general arcane strangeness that it is facile to think about it too much and if anything has been brought home to me from several years of reading the forums over at Matrix, it's that sometimes even the most experienced players sometimes don't understand why planes don't fly.

Coordination penalties was exactly the reason why I asked. In my Guadalcanal campaign as Allies against the AI I'm operating my three CVs each in their own TF, with the TFs staying close to one another. The AI has been extremely passive and hasn't sortied his CVs yet so I don't know if this is a good idea in carrier battles, but at least his Betty strikes against Lunga have been dealt with efficiently and his shipping in the slot mauled badly.

One downside in this approach is that it takes an awful lot of supporting DDs and CAs to protect all CVs efficiently. Then again this seems to be worth it since his subs have so far been in the receiving end.

Yes, the lack of escorts is the real killer, especially early in the early war. When I play as Allies I seldom use more than two CVs per TF. Late war I have been known to up that to 4 simply because its easier to keep track of everything.

In this game I don't have so many quams. Even though the total aircraft in a 4 CV group will be over 200, it shouldn't be by much because two of those carriers will have a smaller capacity. Only Shokaku and Zuikaku have a capacity similar to the early period USN flat tops, and are both smaller than the later Essex class which, iirc, carry about 92 aircraft. In general the bigger Japanese carriers are somewhere between the us flatties and the British ( which are nightmares of competing priorities and seem to be principally tasked with shooting themselves in the foot.) I can't say anything about late war Japanese carriers as my only experience is in sinking them :DL

I have wondered whether the Kido Butai in the full campaign gets a special dispensation as it carries far, far more than 200 aircraft in total and never seems to have any problems.

But, in general, having several one or two CV taffies operating together is the best way to go. To be honest, I would think the number of allied players who use less than 2 CV per group to be very small. As you point out, there aren't enough ships to go around. I think three tfs of three is fine. Having said that I don't fully understand why three CVs in different groups, under three different taffie commanders, operating out of the same hex or nearby are not subject to the same level of penalty as three in the same group. There are penalties, I think, but not as pronounced.

30th Sep

KB1 puts to sea along with the Yamato TF. Their route towards Guadalcanal is less direct, going by Kavieng to the north before turning and heading south again. I am hoping that the shipping he had heading north will be caught at anchor....time will tell. I think it will take three days or so for my TFs to get into posistion.

Interestingly, there is activity along the coast of Australia. Glens can't get close enough to tell me exactly what it is that they are seeing but if recent movement is anything to go by I expect it to be Minelayers and patrol boats.

I had a moment of strangeness with my subs today. I had three boats at Rabaul which, when checked, appeared to have mines on board. I changed their missions to minelaying and ordered them to head to Tulagi and Lunga where upon I was told that they wouldn't load mines as they were already carrying them. All well and good except, when checking them, they no longer appear to be carrying any......hmmm....I'll keep there orders standing and see what transpires. I have enough subs that I can do without them on regular patrol for a bit.

I also had a massive arrival of infantry units at Truk today - something like half a dozen infantry regiments, three arty brigades and a couple of engineering units. Nice. I've ordered a couple of them to prepare for Noumea just to screw with his intel. Hah!

1st Oct

I received some more destroyers at Truk. Always handy. I had been scratching my head over the last couple of day, trying to come up with viable escorts for several TFs I want to put together. These new ships should help nicely.

Otherwise things were quite sleepy again. The IJA and IJN first XIs held a charity football match at Rabaul which almost couldn't be stopped when inter service rivalry got a bit much. And that's about it...