How much damage did she actually suffer? Is the 288 day repair time (I suppose this includes travel time) because the damage is so extensive, or because repair facilities available are limited?

It never ceases to amaze me, how many 500 or 1,000 lb. bombs it takes to sink ships in this game. Would it be safe to say, 1 torpedo hit is worth 2 or 3 bomb hits?

She took 30 sys damage, all major, which is unfixable at Truk. The 288 days is the time for the return journey to Osaka and the repairs at the ship yard there.

I don't know if it's possible to have proper comparisons because so much influences the results. I read one account over at Matrix recently where player had Lexington hit with a single bomb from a dive bomber. Everything seemed ok but over the next couple of turns an uncrontrollable fire broke out Nd it sank before he got it to harbour. But roughly, yeah, I would agree with your assessment. You can't under estimate the damage several hundred pounds of explosive forming a hole below the waterline can cause..:D

19th/20th Nov

Well, regular service should be resumed now - I hope.

CCIP changed his strategy somewhat by night bombing Rabaul. Happily, his attempt sucked about as badly as mine. The main difference being he has started using Beaufighters to defend his bases after dark. I've stuck a squadron of zeroes on Night duty. Boy, are those guys going to love me.

CCIP also has a number of ships massing near Luganville, including cruisers and CVEs. My ability to keep track of whatever is going on is pretty low just now due to the amount of subs I've had to send back to Japan for repairs. Those I have available are moving towards their picket positions of PNG.

Preparation for the invasion is coming together. I will now operate two carrier groups. CarDiv 1 will have Zuikaku and Shokaku, CarDiv2 will consist of the other two fleet carriers and the last CVL. they will leave Truk in a day or two and rendezvous off Kaveing with the rest of the fleet. Once they are underway I'll send in the transports to pick up the troops. I think I'm going to limit this to one wave rather than the two I originally planned to keep things fast. Loading shouldn't take long.

CVE's as in plural? What ships do you estimate them to be? Also I thought you reported earlier he had only 1 CVE :hmmm:

Also, what are your other two fleet carriers that make up CarDiv2?

Edit:
<----- Yay promoted! Glad it was with your thread Egan :O:

Hiyo and Junyo (I think....I knew somebody was going to ask me that when I couldn't remember! :DL ) are my other two fleet carriers. They are smaller than the others and slower too. Junyo has received the fighters from Ryujo to aid our CAP during the forthcoming invasions.

As for CCIP's carrier strength, I don't know how many light or escort carriers he has. I still think the Big E is out there, and I am reasonably certain he has two or three escort carriers by now but I don't have any exact figures. certainly, the amount of fighters my intel suggests are present would point to at least two carriers of unknown size. I also don't know whether he gets one more fleet carrier within the games time frame. My problem is that the bulk of the Glen carrying subs are out of action now. I might get one or two back from Osaka before the end but I'll have to check the figures.



Congratulations on Promotion! :salute:

Ah alright. I generally don't consider Junyo/Hiyo Fleet CVs due to how slow they are, how is their airwing capacity compared to SHokaku/Zuikaku?

Thanks! :)

I think they carry a max of 53 frames which is, what, 20 or so less than the 'kakus. Top Speed is about 6 knots less as well.

No, coming from playing the Allies so much I generally wouldn't consider them Fleet carriers either but I guess that is pretty much what they are, although they are more or less on a par with the Japanese light carriers (which are actually faster but with an even small air group capacity.)

Japanese carriers remind me more of the Royal Navy ones that the American except without the wildly eccentric mix of aircraft the British seemed to like; smaller and slower and with much less capacity they are still able to do a job on the US ships pretty much all the way through the game if used sensibly, which, of course, many players do which is why you get the KB tending to exist as far as '44 in many games.

21st Nov

The two carrier divisions leave Truk tonight at dusk with orders to steam for Kaveing in the first instance before rendezvousing with the rest of the fleet. They are joined by two Surface groups and a stout ASW taskforce as well.

At Kavieng the landing force is ready to depart for Rabaul where they will start to load the invasion troops. Behind them are three more surface groups. All in all, this is pretty much every war ship I have. It's more than I need but I'm in the mood for a show of strength when I don't know here the bad guys are.

It should take the carriers about two days to transit south, and that should be all the landing force needs to load. If everything goes according to plan we should be moving out for real in about three or 4 days with a landing two days later.

In the meantime, marus and tankers will continue to move supplies around and I'll get a fast transport force set up to keep Milne in cheese.

Elsewhere, I-19 torpedoed and apparently sank a minesweeper near Torres island. Every little bit helps and I'm glad a sub is keeping the score up.

Bombers came to Rabaul in the night again and ran into some Zeroes who bumbled around in the darkness and didn't very little. Mind you, so did the bombers. Non score draw there. I forget the moonlight percentage. I mention this because I was reading someones house rules last night for night bombing where they are restricted to one bomber squadron on night shift per base and only on nights with a high moon percentage. I hadn't considered these house rules before and I kind of like them. No real need for them in this game of course (we aren't using any,) but I think I would use them in a full campaign.

Lol, well, it might be a bit soon for that. I think one of his Cats picked up the ship movement. Not hard when so much tonnage is at sea.

21st Nov

I also had to split the transports off from their escorts so they could dock at Rabaul. Need this to be quick.....

Troops are loading: three infantry regiments, an engineering regiment and an IJA base force. Set to 'Do not unload' so they don't spill everything back out whilst I'm trying to get them merged in with the escorts again.

Elsewhere the night bombing of Rabaul continues to no effect. You can probably guess what will happen now I have ships doing something useful....

I-123 got battered by destroyers near Rennel island. That's another boat that's going to have to head to Osaka - if she survives long enough to transit to Truk. In the spirit of retaliation one of my ASW aircraft apparently hit a US sub. I hope it bloody well hurt. :woot:

So...edgy times. I have this feeling that CCIP is waiting for me to make a move before he carries out some dastardly plan of his own. He could go for Tassaforonga or even Shortlands, remember, If this happens I might well release both the Betties (now almost at a decent operational level,) and one of the carrier divisions.

He has several stout task forces moving up towards Guadalcanal but it's difficult to tell if this is anything other than a resupply effort. One of the TFs is apparently made up of 6 carriers....probably not correct....If he doesn't know quite how many ships I have at sea just now, and gets too ambitious things could get tasty. He's also moving ships to Moresby which I think is also routine. In actual fact, it's the most ship movement by the allies I've seen in a few weeks and would suggest he thinks my carriers got battered at Rabaul.

The carriers are right on schedule, by the way, which is nice. As an aside on the subject of pilot quality, one of the new Zero pilots on the Hiyo is, ahem, rated as 5 for experience. I can't help thinking that one of us might be a better choice.

Join us tomorrow when, almost certainly, things will go tits up for the Japanese! :salute:

23rd Nov

Operation Autumn Rain is go.

The Milne Bay Invasion fleet is loaded and has orders to move out at dusk. Preceding her by a few hours will be the Bombardment group built around Yamato and who have been ordered to stand 8000 yards off the beach and pound the base with all guns. A second cruiser group will follow the landing force in and an ASW force will provide further security.

At Kavieng, the two carrier divisions plus another cruiser group will set sail and rendezvous south of New Britain with the rest of the fleet. That should be tomorrow. On top of all this the Betties have been split between Naval strikes (set to 12 hexes just in case anything gets too close,) and hitting the airfield at Milne. All subs are already in position.

To the southeast, at Guadalcanal, I'm keeping an eye on the four task forces CCIP is moving around. I think this is a resupply run he's pulling off rather than anything else. The great Solomon turkey shoot from last month has probably allowed him to move with relative impunity.

Anyways. Looking like D-day will be the 25th. If everything goes OK or, at the very least, not too badly, I'll think about the Morseby run as soon as I can.

Shall we run a sweep on what time his Wirraways show up and sink every damn troop ship with lucky hits? :D

OK. Turn sent. Now is when I remember I haven't set any of the other groups to follow the landing force.....

How effective do you anticipate Yamatos 5'' and 18'' guns to be at supressing the enemy?

Well, judging from what she achieved on the three or four attacks I've used her in so far, I think she should do OK. I'm not expecting much in the way of front line infantry here, and I'm mainly after a neutralization of the airfield and any attack aircraft prior to the landings. of course, you know how the game works: it's quite possible they start their bombardment three days after I've already taken the base.

Mostly, I consider this a trial run for Moresby. In that invasion I definitely will need more than one wave of landings, and there is going to have to be a substantial gap between then and when the troop ships pull all the way back to Rabaul to reload.

24th Nov

So, there I was, watching the combat replay and minding my own business when the shore bombardment started. "Oh," I thought. "That's weird - I wonder how they got there so quick, and why didn't Yamato fire?"

A moment later I realised that HMAS Canberra isn't actually one of my ships....A stout cruiser force....is this the beginning of an invasion? I don't know. Things are too advanced elsewhere at the moment for me to do anything much about it. In a day or two, maybe...maybe...I can get some ships down there are see what's what. But not just yet.

B-17s on naval strike came after my invasion fleet but got into my CAP and didn't do very much. CCIP certainly knows something is up but I'm not sure he knows exactly what. Looks like tomorrow will be D-Day right enough.

He also has a lot of shipping - including a pair of cruisers - at Moresby. Don't know what he's doing as it looks like a right mix of ships. Unless he pulls them out right now he could have a fun old time getting them to safety. I'm considering releasing some cruisers of my own to mix it up if it looks like they're coming after me. Strike aircraft from the carriers flew over Moresby and spotted a troop ship but, aside from the intel, they didn't do very much.

Elsewhere A US sub sank a maru north of Rabaul. For some reason, this convoy was un-escorted. I can't explain why not as I'm usually very careful to make sure escorts aren't reassigned when a convoy is active.

Conclusions: It's going OK, but still too early to tell. We could be in for a bloody few days, though, if that cruiser force heads north.

25th Nov

Big day. First up, Yamato...

Although there are aircraft still based here, none were destroyed but none flew. Not too bad, certainly must have shaken them up.

The troops went ashore a little later, as the first rays of dawn broke through the low cloud. Right now, I have about 350 AV on the beach, which should be enough. That's two proper infantry regiments, and SNLF unit plus engineers. They have a few troops still to unload and some equipment. They suffered very little disruption, although the 38th/229th Inf Rgt lost about 200 hundred troops in what has been described as a landing accident. Probably landing barges colliding or something. They will conduct recon by fire today, to see what's what, and launch proper attacks tomorrow.

Elsewhere, as the troops were coming ashore, the carriers ran strikes against Moresby to keep his head down. I'm afraid this was less successful, as the difference in quality between my early campaign pilots and now is becoming brutally apparent.

http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/7058/losses.jpg

A high number of Zeroes lost in these diversionary missions. Can't be helped, I suppose. Increasingly, I'm begining to think I've screwd up my pilot management somewhere. It could simply be I've lost too many pilots to replace them all with more quality and, somewhere along the line, there has been an overall drop in skills, but I don't think so. It's been a while since I last looked at this side of the game properly and I think a real refresher course in how it works is in order. It was never my favourite part of WiTP and I think it's biting back.

CCIP launched several strikes aimed at hitting my fleet but none were successful. My worry is that he'll get in there whilst I'm waiting for the supply cargo to make it onto the sand. I estimate it will be another two days before everything is clear.

In order to counter any US ships moving up, I'm moving the carriers to a new position southwest of Moresby which should allow them to interdict anything arriving from either Oz or the Solomons. Yamato will return to Rabaul, reload, and return as a floating deathstar-without-portfolio.

http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/1686/sitrepo.jpg