Quote:
Originally Posted by Ostfriese
Sounds as if the Battle for Hawaii is about to end, and while it has been a pain in the behind for you while it lasted it's a terrible disaster for your opponent in the end. He lost insane amounts of troops, ships, planes and supplies, and in the end has nothing to show for, because he couldn't capitalize on you not being able to fully utilize Pearl Harbor.
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Yep. I'm thinking we'll be done mopping it up in 3 days. The only major benefit he got from occupying Hawaii was depleting the US Army Air Corps fighter reserves and the Navy's SBD reserves, along with sinking a few high-value tenders. I'm still working on getting replacement aircraft to all those empty squadrons. Logistically, it was a pain in the ass, but I was still able to get fuel, troops, and supplies to the south Pacific and Australia, and we didn't have enough naval battles that not being able to use Pearl's shipyards ever became a major factor. Most of my submarine operations are based out of the Aleutians or Australia, so losing Pearl as a sub base didn't even hurt at all. Midway actually hurt more on that front.
His losses of 3 battleships hurt, although I think he lost those late enough in the war that their value was decreasing rapidly (he's not doing a lot of amphibious operations anymore). Losing probably 2 divisions worth of troops hurt him very badly, though. And I suspect this has a lot to do with his pilot attrition problem--the KB took significant losses in the early days of the war sweeping Pearl, and got so depleted during the evacuation that I actually tried to attack them with my carriers, I just missed by a day or two. And of course, time--he'd have taken Sumatra months ago if the troops went there instead, and Singapore never would have held out. He'd probably be on the offensive in Burma instead of on defense in Thailand, too--and that would probably be making a big difference in China.
In hindsight, the Naval Battle of Oahu looks like this war's Midway. It seems like our victory there convinced my opponent that the occupation of Oahu could not succeed, and if not for that he probably would have taken Oahu and then used those troops to take Sumatra and Singapore months ago.