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   I peel a few ships off to form a hunting party, and it works.   The air war in India continues on.  Its a steady stream of kills.  We run into our first proper defensive unit – a Division of Indians. I was expecting this, we've had it to easy until now.   Things are still going well, we're just waiting on convoys at the moment – I need more men in India, but they are the Javan lot.  The Corfu was a good kill!
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Aug 11, 2016 05:56
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Did you lose Cox's Bazar, Grey? It looks like one of the British units slipped through and took it.
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Aug 11, 2016 06:01
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Those were both good kills. Corfu was over 14,000 GRT, and Shirala nearly 8,000. Plus, the original Shirala (1901) was torpedoed and sunk, so the Shirala (1925) joining it in Davy Jones' Locker after being torpedoed and sunk seems appropriate.
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Aug 11, 2016 06:15
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David Corbett posted:Those were both good kills. Corfu was over 14,000 GRT, and Shirala nearly 8,000. Plus, the original Shirala (1901) was torpedoed and sunk, so the Shirala (1925) joining it in Davy Jones' Locker after being torpedoed and sunk seems appropriate. Was it just impossible to capture ships? I never hear about any captured transports from WWII unless they were claimed at port when war was declared. I'm not talking about in WITP mechanics but in real life.
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Aug 11, 2016 16:02
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The risk-to-reward and ease of scuttling are the two main barriers to that. Anything with armament will scuttle before they're captured, better that than provide the enemy with materiel. A captured civilian ship has to be boarded - which is bad fun even if the ship is empty - crewed and then escorted from the battle site. There's a large risk of being found by the escorts of the convoy they were part of or whatever response is dispatched to the frantic radio call that went out when they saw they were being boarded. I don't think I've heard of a direct boarding action in the modern era.
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Aug 11, 2016 16:18
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Well the Italians sure did their best to compensate for it... Is it true they didn't alert their merchant marine?
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Aug 11, 2016 16:34
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RZApublican posted:Did you lose Cox's Bazar, Grey? It looks like one of the British units slipped through and took it. quote:They shift tactics, and it proves to be effective. They also land troops at Cox's Bazzar – which is currently undefended as I moved the garrison out to hunt down stragglers. They can march back in though.
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Aug 11, 2016 16:45
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  I hope one of these crashes on the way home....  Keep on killing Hurricanes!  The Indians try and push us back, but apparently there is a wide disparity in their leadership.   Closing in on Hankow, we take the time to smash their reserves.  Something happened in China – this is the first stage of the next big battle, its taken a while for these troops to get into position, but Hankow will begin soon – and its likely to be a blood bath!
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Aug 11, 2016 17:20
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Ah, must have missed that.
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Aug 11, 2016 17:41
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Yessss, go forth and die pixelmen!
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Aug 11, 2016 18:34
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goatface posted:
Various pirates - mostly operating off Africa - do board cargo ships, to sail away with and ransom, when they can get away with it, so it does still happen. A proliferation of additional warships and PMCs offering security for ships sailing through those areas has been cutting that down though. But assuming you're talking about nation states, the modern era has been pretty sparse. Probably the most notable ones being the British boarding U-110 and the US boarding U-505, mainly to acquire Enigma machines. There have been a few more recent incidents though, like US Special Forces boarding a tanker seized by Libyan rebels.
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Aug 11, 2016 19:22
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RA Rx posted:Well the Italians sure did their best to compensate for it... Not sure what the number was, I want to say 50-60% of their total merchant marine was captured soon after they declared war. (I could be off by a lot) "The normal route of Italian supply to Tripoli in Libya, went west round Sicily and then close to the coast to the port, about 970 kilometres (600 mi), to avoid interference from British aircraft, ships and submarines based at Malta. On land, supplies had to be carried huge distances by road or in small consignments by coaster. The distance from Tripoli to Benghazi was about 1,050 kilometres (650 mi) and to El Alamein was 2,300 kilometres (1,400 mi). A third of the Italian merchant marine was interned after Italy declared war and by September 1942, half of the remainder had been sunk, although much of this was replaced by new building, salvage and transfers of German ships. From June 1940 to May 1943, 16 percent of shipments were sunk.[11]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Desert_Campaign Over-estimated, but still!
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Aug 11, 2016 19:36
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Thanks Jobbo! Wow, thats just staggering. I thought it was one quarter. RA Rx fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Aug 11, 2016 |
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Aug 11, 2016 19:44
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RA Rx posted:Thanks Jobbo! Well, according to that wiki article it was 8 percent more than that, so not too far off. Losing another 33% in less than barely over 2 years is quite the feat!
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Aug 11, 2016 21:05
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Did benghazi not have a port they could ship supplies to? Surely there was somewhere they could offload supplies between Tripoli and Alexandria.
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Aug 12, 2016 01:09
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nothing to seehere posted:Did benghazi not have a port they could ship supplies to? Surely there was somewhere they could offload supplies between Tripoli and Alexandria. For the eastern part of Libya that would have been Tobruk.
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Aug 12, 2016 01:27
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nothing to seehere posted:Did benghazi not have a port they could ship supplies to? Surely there was somewhere they could offload supplies between Tripoli and Alexandria. There were ports, but they weren't big enough to handle the daily supply requirements of the Afrika Korps.
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Aug 12, 2016 03:38
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   I think our subs have enjoyed their rest.  Because they are back – I think this is my experimental 2 sub taskforce for a known busy sea route.  Large numbers of B-17's come after these ships.  I try using my bombers against the Indian division, but once again, their escorts don't bother showing up.  Its a shame the escorts and the CAP are different things. Odd that.  All these planes flying around watching the bombers get attacked and going, “Sorry lads, not our mission.”   We land troops on the other side of Timor.  Time to cancel the bombers again.  At least we got a nice couple of kills.
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Aug 13, 2016 05:00
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  Unsurprisingly, my landing at Koepang brings in a few level bombers.  Taking this base would allow me to get an airfield up an running.  And they don't have much beyond forts to stop me.  Bombers hound me down here – the heavy level bomber is the only thing I seemingly have to fear.  At least here I can fight back.  It feels good.  My turns at the moment consist of watching 20 or so B-17 raids across the DEI.  I can't say they are not effective though.
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Aug 13, 2016 18:33
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what is going on with the AI just sending in planes to die against you forever how many planes do they have
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Aug 14, 2016 08:06
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It's the allies so...essentially infinitely many
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Aug 14, 2016 08:14
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   Deck gun time!  The next invasion force is heading north, and the enemy bombers find them.  The waves of enemy bombers come in after them.  Most of the pacific bombers missed their targets today.  This doesn't stop all my ships from sinking.  11 days until I order the invasion of Midway then. Time to get a FEW more planes into the ships.
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Aug 14, 2016 18:29
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What's your goal in invading midway? Draw out the enemy carriers? Any airbase you try and set up is going to be leveled by B-17s from Hawaii
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Aug 14, 2016 22:51
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Does the AI have any hope of invading an island with level 5 forts? Seems like an easy-ish way to game their fixed invasion script.
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Aug 15, 2016 00:23
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Grumio posted:What's your goal in invading midway? Draw out the enemy carriers? Any airbase you try and set up is going to be leveled by B-17s from Hawaii obvious solution to that is to invade hawaii
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Aug 15, 2016 03:09
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Decoy Badger posted:Does the AI have any hope of invading an island with level 5 forts? Seems like an easy-ish way to game their fixed invasion script. You can invade anything if you cut off supply, it just takes a while. For all its faults the AI (usually) doesn't repeat shock attacks into situations where it has no chance of winning. They will sit there and happily bombard you for weeks. The issue is when it doesn't bring enough troops to actually do anything but sit there, or just kind of ambles reinforcements over in transports with no escort, etc. GOOD TIMES ON METH fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Aug 15, 2016 |
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Aug 15, 2016 05:25
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id like to see some lp of someone making a total mockery of the AI as japan
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Aug 15, 2016 08:59
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  Troops land at Chittagong, but the British 6” battery there is very accurate.  Their planes, not so much.  Its a real mix of modern and old planes, but there are a lot of fighters up here.  The mass bombing raids continue here.  We finally take the island though! Which is good.  Chasing down these small units is taking some time now, but its worth it when we catch one.  We're moving north, but drat is that shore battery a pain in the arse. We did take a base and kill a lot of Chinese though!  But again, shore batteries.
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Aug 15, 2016 18:02
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277 is a lot of 6" shells.
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Aug 15, 2016 18:46
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goatface posted:277 is a lot of 6" shells.
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Aug 16, 2016 01:20
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umm, did the brits sneak around you and retake Cox's Bazaar?
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Aug 16, 2016 05:25
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Yeah, it happened a few days ago.
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Aug 16, 2016 06:14
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Wikipedia tells me that one standard HE shell for a Mark VII 6" gun weighed 100lbs. They fired 27,700 lbs of shells, 12.5 metric tonnes.
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Aug 16, 2016 13:28
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As mentioned on the Wikipedia page, a three-gun battery fired over a hundred shells during a duel with German cruisers during WWI, and it is far from unlikely that considerably more would be used against an invasion. Since these guns were used heavily on WWI-vintage warships that had virtually all been scrapped (which is were the guns came from in the first place - the warships themselves were obsolete, but the guns worked just fine), so the British had massive supplies of ammunition that they had virtually no other use for.
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Aug 16, 2016 14:36
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Why are you "island hopping" along the Indian coast instead of just walking to your destination, not only will you miss all those destroyed ships not too long from now, you are also increasing the risk of getting your men cut off.
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Aug 16, 2016 15:54
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  We're back to making Pearl unsafe.  Shore fire causes one of our ships to sink at Chittagong.  The RAF fly about ten sorties like this – they have a hell of a lot of fighters up here!  Another carrier is spotted! The Nachi takes several hits.  The afternoon attack drops several more on her.  We clean up the Chinese 50th Corps.  The battle of Hankow opens with exceedingly heavy losses for us – somehow we occupy the riverside hex, but they get a terrain bonus! I'm just going to write that up as city fighting bad!  The day gets worse as the Allies recapture Sebang – with my troops still in the ships in harbour!  Well, that was a disaster of a day. I need to get the carriers up and out once more to take out that new carrier! On the plus side, I will be evening the odds for Midway, but it will put the operation back a few more weeks!  The Nachi is the largest and most expensive ship I've lost all war. This is a good thing I think!
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Aug 16, 2016 17:00
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Grey Hunter posted:
So, you'd landed, forced the allied troops into the jungle around the town, then when your men were loading back onto transports the allies came charging back out of the jungle, overwhelmed the defenders, and captured the transports with all the troops loading onto them? That's going to make one hell of an epic movie in this timeline.
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Aug 16, 2016 18:14
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What the hell was Nachi doing out there all by her lonesome? Was it just carrier bait?
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Aug 16, 2016 18:20
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Hunting cargo ships like the Haguro was doing ~a week ago, I assume.
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Aug 16, 2016 18:39
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Was Nachi actually traveling alone, or was the rest of a naval squadron just not present in the action? If she was alone, bad. No warship should be alone without even a few destroyer escorts, even if hunting transports. Anyways, we've lost our first major warship, and only 2 years, 2 1/2 months ahead of her historical sinking - though thankfully without the war crimes.
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Aug 16, 2016 20:20
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