War in the Pacific AAR Thread - ML vs JFranzen

[Molon Labe]

6 March 1944
Turkey shoot over Legaspi--is this is last of the counterattack?


I'm going to back off from some reporting all the "regular" bombing raids I've been doing for the last couple game months, I'm falling behind of the reports and I don't think they're adding much.


Philippines
The enemy continues to try to interdict my landings at Legaspi. Wave 1 was 18 Judies and 9 Frances escorted by 5 Georges and 18 Franks, going up against a CAP of 37 Hellcats and 8 Corsairs. 10 Judies and 8 Frances made it through to make attacks, but none hit. Losses were 16 Franks, 4 Georges, 1 Frances, and 6 Judies (plus one more Judy to flak). No US losses. I can only assume results like this mean he's completely depleted his pool of competent pilots. Georges and Franks are not ****ty aircraft. Additional waves throughout the day saw a few US losses--5 Hellcats total, but another 8 Georges, 26 Judies, 2 Betties and 2 Jills. All that for failed attacks on my surface covering forces. The last attack was a wave of 24 Kate kamikazes. Our CAP was completely spent by this point, but none of the Kates managed to hit home. None were "officially" killed by flak, but I can only assume the reason they missed was because they got shot up too badly to steer.

I absolutely battered the hell out of the airbase at San Fernando with 33 B-24s, thinking that it had to be were most of the enemy bombers were coming from for these Legaspi raids. But it was empty. Must be Clark and Manila after all.

Japan attempted to repel our troops at Legaspi with a paratroop raid, but we wiped them out rather easily. We've already got about 20,000 troops ashore.



Burma and Thailand
An enemy raid of 22 Tonies and 22 Sallies hit Prachuap Khiri Khan. Our meager 4 - P-47 CAP shot down 2 Tonies. Our ground forces took 20 casualties.

4 Tonies got airborne to meet an air raid of ours vs Singapore we had Spitfires escorting Wellintongs. 3 Tonies and 1 Spitfire were lost. 3 more Tonies got splashed by P-47s and P-51s sweeping.


South China Sea
HMS Tantalus hit a small tanker (1120 tons) with a torpedo hear Hong Kong. Doubtful it could survive.

[Molon Labe]

7 March 1944

South China Sea
USS Muskalunge hit a PB off the Vietnam coast, but the ship was not mortally damaged. So USS Thresher followed that up, hitting it twice for a confirmed kill (2780 tons).

USS Seadragon attacked a 2900 ton tanker on the surface, sinking it with gunfire and 2 Mk14 hits.


Burma and Thailand
A heavy surface task force including Musashi, Kongo, and Haruna shelled our forces at Prachuap Khiri Khan for 239 casualties. That was all their ground forces needed to prevail. We took another 744 casualties in the land battle while dishing out only 211. This doesn't quite reconnect Bangkok to the Malaya rail line because we control the hexside the railroad enters Bangkok at. But if they ever push our army out of Bangkok, it'll reconnect.

One more Tony was removed over Bangkok by fighter sweeps.


Philippines
The surface covering force near Legaspi found another three midget subs and sank them.

P-38 sweep of Manila shot down 2 Tojos with 1 P-38 lost.
12 Avengers recently transferred to Legaspi attacked enemy shipping off San Fernando. No enemy CAP intervening. The Avengers sank a PB and two small tankers without losses.

B-24 raids on Clark destroyed at least 8 aircraft on the ground.

Beaufighters went after a cluster of landing barges near Manila. 6 Tojos were left on CAP after the P-38s' poor sweep performance. Forturnately there were no air-to-air losses. One Beau was lost to flak. They managed to sink 8 landing barges.

We've killed the last enemy holdouts on Iloilo.


China
We've captured Pengpu, which cuts off enemy rail lines from Nanking to the northeasternmost parts of China. I've essentially isolated everything from Nanking south from the broader supply system. They can still resupply this area with cargo ships docking in Shanghai, though. In time I should be able to interdict those ships.

[Molon Labe]

16 March 1944 - Japan Surrenders

As you could probably tell, I'd gotten a bit behind on mission reports, but there isn't too much to say about the last couple weeks of the war. What was left of the KB was sheltering in Cam Rahn Bay, not really able to go anywhere with my carriers in the Sulu Sea, and with my troops continuing to move into southern Luzon. My opponent felt so paralyzed that it was pointless to continue. As part of the surrender agreement, my opponent gave me his password...


My submarine campaign was far more effective than I ever realized. If the KB went back to Japan, it would have a hard time finding someplace to fully refuel. The Japanese economy was crashing. Fuel shortages were preventing the Heavy Industry plants from running. The lack of Heavy Industry points was causing random shutdowns of military production across the country... airplane factories, vehicle factories, shipyards. Supply (which is used for just about everything other than refueling ships...maintaining land units, rearming ships, airplane fuel, etc.) was fine in Japan but was very short in China, and from Singapore all the way up to Bangkok. It was so bad he stood down 5 squadrons in Malaya to save supply to rail to Bangkok.

On the more tactical side, he had a fighter shortage that kept him from replenishing the Zeroes on the KB. Cam Rahn Bay was out of fuel, and there was a replenishment group being emptied into the port to try to sustain the ships there. At Takao, Taiwan, the base was completely empty of fuel and the ASW ships were being kept in service by draining merchant ships that were sitting in port with nowhere to go. Those ASW ships were getting picked off one by one by Avengers flying out of Legaspi, anyway.

His pilot corps was a mess. A lot of frontline squadrons had complete rookies in the cockpit, or had off-trained pilots (bomber/ASW trained pilots in fighters, for example). His top-scoring ace had 23 kills and was still alive, flying Georges out of Takao.

Oddly enough, among Allied pilots, no one ever topped New Zealander J.R. MacKenzie with 37 kills. He hasn't seen action since Singapore fell. The US Navy's top ace was with VF-3 at 14 kills. Real life USN pilots in game included O'Hare with just 3 kills (survived the war). The USAAC's top ace had 24 kills--Boyington only managed 6 (and also survived). USMC's top was 12. Overall pilots killed were about 3000 to 5000 in our favor.


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We're already getting to work on switching sides for another campaign. Interest in the campaign seemed to wane a bit here, so I might not start a thread on that. I'm considering starting a gaming channel on YT to post the reports instead. Although I must say it was a huge help having my reports here where I could search them if I needed to check something. So maybe that's worth doing regardless, or at least keeping some sort of searchable journal.

[Ostfriese]

Congratulations on your win, and thanks for all the reports. I really enjoyed them whenever they came.

Should you start another campaign I'd gladly follow another series of reports.