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Alikchi posted:I didn't really time my attacks properly tbh. The B-24s were never going to hit the carriers, but if they'd made their runs before the dive bombers, the CAP might have been exhausted enough to get a few through. I also should have started flying the Hellcats and Corsairs over sooner, shouldn't have flown in the cream of my dive bombers and fighters to Groote to get bombarded the next morning.. but I'm still really happy we managed to actually avert a Japanese attack. I thought he was bringing in reinforcements when I saw his landing ships back at Mornington! Go for the highlight reels of any day that stands out and just skip the minutia of "bombed Broome". If you hit nothing during operation useless dirt and don't tell us, we'll live. If you sink the IJN Glorious Sun of the Divine Emperor's Shadow Dragon and don't tell us, that would be undesirable.
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Mar 8, 2024 07:56
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SerthVarnee posted:Go for the highlight reels of any day that stands out and just skip the minutia of "bombed Broome". WiTP has this funky feature that divides one raid into smaller parts for purposes of reporting, to represent different areas of the battle happening. So if you see 3 raids of bombers of 10, 6 and 4 aircraft that represents one raid of 16 bombers in that group. It can get pretty annoying later in the game when the allies do thousand bomber raids of Japan.
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Mar 8, 2024 14:09
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Hey so I don't understand a lot of the mechanics, but what would happen if you flew those bombers in at, like, 100ft? Does WitP let you do really heavy skip bombing?
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Mar 9, 2024 01:23
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Plek posted:Hey so I don't understand a lot of the mechanics, but what would happen if you flew those bombers in at, like, 100ft? Does WitP let you do really heavy skip bombing? I think so but IIRC it is unreasonably effective to the point that it is often banned by house rule.
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Mar 9, 2024 01:39
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I mean, it worked pretty well. But yeah I can see having house rule that keeps you from rolling a 1000lb bomb into the side of a boat as good balance and a sanity check. I guess.
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Mar 9, 2024 01:44
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Cimber posted:WiTP has this funky feature that divides one raid into smaller parts for purposes of reporting, to represent different areas of the battle happening. So if you see 3 raids of bombers of 10, 6 and 4 aircraft that represents one raid of 16 bombers in that group. It can get pretty annoying later in the game when the allies do thousand bomber raids of Japan. Yeah I know, but he can still cut out the non essential posts and just focus on the pressure points of a turn.
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Mar 9, 2024 07:09
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SerthVarnee posted:Go for the highlight reels of any day that stands out and just skip the minutia of "bombed Broome". Yeah, just doing the important stuff is fine if it's saner for you.
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Mar 9, 2024 23:43
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Plek posted:I mean, it worked pretty well. But yeah I can see having house rule that keeps you from rolling a 1000lb bomb into the side of a boat as good balance and a sanity check. I guess. The game doesn't support changing loadouts over time, so the way they get around this is that bombers fly with half load on low naval (1000 feet) and strafe/skip (100 feet) missions. There are dedicated attack bombers that get their full loadout, mainly later model B25s and A-20s. But fresh pilots don't get lowNav skills, so to really shine you have to do some on-map pilot training (extremely tedious). Fighter pilots also don't get much lowNav/lowGrd, and yes, those are separate skills with zero transfer value. To prevent skip bombing fighters early War, most early war fighters don't get bomb loads to speak of at all, but late war models fling 1000lbers left and right.
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Mar 10, 2024 02:54
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Time to make up the deficit with a few gigantic posts: I have a summary for May 7-15 here, then a string of updates through the 18th. Next post will be May 19th-21st. May 7-15, 1943 430507 https://pastebin.com/0PS0rXZu 430508 https://pastebin.com/nSF5LSyp 430509 https://pastebin.com/d6m4CwYB 430510 https://pastebin.com/qgRVzm6R 430511 https://pastebin.com/bLFVeHDK 430512 https://pastebin.com/uE1eybzm 430513 https://pastebin.com/WeYcA2NZ 430514 https://pastebin.com/2APNRcMd 430515 https://pastebin.com/wjASUYMJ I have given up trying to write about this period in my usual way and will instead provide links to the combat reports and the following Executive Summary: With the invasion of Mornington Island predicted, and no way to ship in reinforcements quickly, we turn to the paras. The 1st Australian Para Battalion and the 3rd USMC Parachute Battalion have been stationed on Horn Island, preparing for a potential assault on Gove. C-47s are flown in and the paras drop on Mornington on the 7th. On the 8th, Japanese landings commence, supported by Junyo, Hiyo, Tairyu and Donryu. It’s a single brigade, the 65th, and absolutely would have been enough if the paras weren’t there. A week of very bloody fighting follows. Zeroes gobble up the torpedo-armed Beauforts and I scrape the barrel for more fighters and bombers. These are also fed into the maw, resulting in a TBF-delivered torpedo hit to Junyo on the 9th. Flak and PT boats inflict damage and waste op points, too. Normanton remains fully operational just two hexes from Mornington, and B-25 ground support severely lowers the enemy AV. The 65th Brigade was evacuated from Mornington Island overnight on the 14th. On the 15th, I’m surprised to find them gone instead of reinforced. In India, he’s crushing me through this period. Bhavnagar falls and the Waziristan Division surrenders. The lovely road and rail infrastructure of the Gujarat-Rajasthan area are the only thing keeping him from blasting right towards Karachi from this angle, as far as I could tell. In the north, Aligarh falls, and his armored spearhead (the Guards Tank Division and a gaggle of independent regiments) surges towards Delhi. Elsewhere: I continue occupying islands near Milne Bay and prepare a force for Tagula Island, just south of it. Makin invasion prep continues apace. May 16, 1943  The sub war never sleeps, and both of us have a significant fraction of our overall submarine fleets off Australia. USS Herring misses a shot, as does I-180, but HMS Tenedos sticks around and Herring gets away. Tenedos expends nearly all her depth charges and almost definitely destroys the Japanese submarine.  A second Japanese task force ambles in front of Herring and she targets a tanker. One torpedo hits and fails to detonate.  Tagula is one of several places I’ve been eyeing for ages, and with decent fighter cover (Corsairs and Kittyhawks) based nearby at Milne, I can finally grab it. This is an APA dropping off a company of Aussie infantry. Engineers and aviation troops are also already at sea and should begin landing tonight.  Morning breaks, and we’re shooting down floatplanes.  The RAF in India is nearly broken, I’m putting up only token resistance here. Time to start thinking about pulling way, way back and rebuilding some squadrons.  He’s got full control over 50,23, where the Cawnpore garrison has been trapped. Another probable maneuver victory for the enemy’s India army.  The American squadrons in India aren’t doing that much better than the RAF and Commonwealth guys.  Rough day already.  I’ve sent what remaining healthy squadrons I have to bomb the Japanese tanks at Aligarh, along with fighter sweeps. Looks like the bombers are going in before the sweeps, and he’s well prepared. No hits.  There goes my partially-rebuilt Vengeance force   Blenheims..  Boomerangs.  Lots of B-24s heading into the thunderstorms today.  Probably not worth it, though lots of Tojos are getting damaged, even if it doesn’t show up in the CR.  This squadron is left on naval attack and flies all the way to the Bismarck Sea to harmlessly dumb five hundred pounders into the sea. But it’s worth it: Shokaku is located.  We’re putting up big Liberator numbers. Hopefully the weather is more cooperative tomorrow.    Well, at least I’ll have a couple of semi-healthy Warhawk squads at the end of today.  Oh yeah, I still have nearly forty P-39s at Port Hedland without much to do. They can’t reach Broome without a drop tank, and carrying a drop tank means they can’t carry a 500 pound bomb. I think what I will do is pull one of the two Airacobra squadrons back to Exmouth and then Perth (probably) and go from there.  Well. I was hoping to maybe catch the withdrawing invasion task forces that Herring spotted earlier - or even put together a combined strike with B-24s and other planes from Normanton and Horn Island. USS Sangamon’s Avengers and Wildcats at least showed up.  The French float-torpedo bombers come in unescorted, and separately, and are dealt with accordingly.  B-24s from Portland Roads get eyes on Tairyu and suffer a mere 66% casualties for their trouble.  Alright, that’s enough headfake work done on Tarawa. Time to focus bombing entirely on the real target: Makin Atoll. Troops are already loading at Tabiteuea - a full Marine regiment, plus Raiders units, engineers, artillery and Kiwi tanks. A second wave of Marines is also loading further south at Suva on Fiji, in case resistance is strong. It doesn’t seem like it will be.  I feel very strong in New Guinea right now. Port Moresby is full of supplies. Milne is ours, and we’ve secured the far side of the Kokoda Trail. Lae/Finschhafen is the final big target here, but I am wary of paratroopers until I’ve marched larger units in. The big IJA para regiments are particularly dangerous.  The Liberators do manage a couple of Zeros this time, but don’t make it home unscathed.  Another wave, also out of Portland Roads. If only they’d ground down the CAP before the Avengers and Wildcats showed up! Day isn’t over, though.  More losses than I would have liked - where’s the P-38 escort? - but drat, a pair of really good hits. Inflicting a last few casualties on the Mornington invasion brigade feels good too.  Gove can only muster one Tojo at this point. Hello tanker!  Jubbulpore. Troops are being flown out as fast as they can be (before they’re too far behind enemy lines to be rescued ) Bangalore. Resisting the temptation to attack.  Well this is a disaster.  Bellary.  Maybe if I’d attacked a day or two earlier, I could have had this? His still having a unit or units in move mode makes me suspect something’s recently arrived. Could be worse, not many tank losses, but it’s time to pull back and abandon what’s left of the Cawnpore garrison.  No more combat today. This is a very useful upgrade. Terapo has a lot of aviation support but I was hitting the ceiling on coordination; going from level 4 to 5 will help there. Summary & Orders  Terrible day in terms of aerial losses, and I think India may be fully doomed now. But the steamroller is still coming. USS Essex commissions in three days. The invasion of Makin is loading right now.  Ducking Sangamon and her compatriots into the harbor at Horn Island so they can enjoy solid air cover from land-based AC tomorrow, then slip south towards Cooktown/Cairns/Townsville over the next night. I have a lot of very juicy capital ships and cruisers (not to mention a CVE and CVL) floating around in decent proximity to a bunch of his carriers, and he still has those Nells, too. So: lots of land-based fighter cover, lots of auto-disbanding in ports overnight to avoid being caught at sea in the daylight hours. As mentioned, Essex is about to arrive, Enterprise is ~40 days from repairing, we’ll have another British CV here soon too.. May 17, 1943  I’m going mostly defensive in the air over India today. Hopefully he isn’t too bold.  Alright, not totally defensive, I have a few sweeps planned. Pretty bloodless so far, though.  This is more like it. Modern P-40s with veteran pilots, in sufficient numbers, at a short range, fighting overstretched enemies. Best circumstances possible.  Oh god, a sweep like that over Jodhpur gives me horrible premonitions of paratroopers cutting the rail line. I need to fly in fighters TONIGHT. If he does anything fancy like that.. it becomes extremely difficult to imagine saving any part of the Indian army, or holding India at all. Bleak!  Or that, that can happen. A lot of bombers concentrated here, what with enemy carriers and Yamato hovering off Karachi and all. Back to Delhi it is - at least there’s plenty of AAA there, even if it is well within Ki-21/Ki-49 range now.  Our Warhawk pilot escapes with a damaged aircraft.  Eleven versus four is slightly better odds.  And this is a fantastic result from our Hurricane hodgepodge.  They are doing their best to keep that chunk of the 31st Armoured from escaping.  I knew there was a B-24 squadron I forgot to stand down here. Sorry guys. That’s quite a CAP over Gove - I had thought the carriers would have moved on towards Darwin today..  This is good and useful practice, though. Note to self: rebase this B-25 squadron up to Terapo now that it’s level 5.  Alright, I forgot two B-24 squadrons. Portland Roads naval attack from 20K in the storms. That’s just silly.  This is a proper airfield attack on Gove. The weather and CAP still make this a bit wasteful, but the turret gunners do impressive work on the Japanese fighters and 4 of 5 Liberators make it home. Not terrible.  SOPAC, theater of my heart. Only good news resides here. The supply and airfield levels at Abemama are high enough that we have Hellcat escorts all the way to Mili. Tarawa and Makin are ripe for the taking, and we are maybe two weeks away from taking one of them.  Plus a secondary strike on Kwajalein, just to show we can. Please! Divert some fighters here instead of SWPAC or India! I’m begging you!  Back to this. Hello Hiyo!  Hope I’m not in for another Nell strike at Jodhpur today.  Nooo.. I had P-38s there to escort you.. Why..  Not worth it.  The P-40K is the MVP of India right now. This place could really use another Spitfire injection. All gone now.. That squadron caught on the ground haunts my dreams.  Good stuff. These SBD pilots are bringing their ground attack skills up very rapidly.  TBFs too.  I do have troops marching on Salamaua, so this isn’t just idle practice. It is also that.  I gotta stop trying to provide air cover for 50,23. It’s over for those guys   Jubbulpore. I’m still flying Chindits out of here…  The Warhawks overhead can’t stop the IJA tanks from smashing their way towards Bareilly. That very valuable airfield will have to be fully evacuated. India is .. incredibly grim.  Like really bad.  At least Bangalore is still around.  Tying down a tank brigade with this weird little airfield hex. The base troops are being evacuated as well, with lower priority than the Jubbulpore infantry.  There’s Tagula taken! And the engineers and aviation troops are safely on the ground as well. Time to build.  Bellary.  And that’s that bit of the 31st forced back. Summary & Orders I forgot to write this. May 18, 1943  I-160 down! Farenholt depth-charges her to the surface, and Duncan and Meredith put her back down with 5 inch fire.  I-157 misses the freighter Exhibitor west of New Caledonia with two torpedoes. Good good so far today.  While I’ve been flailing around getting bomber pilots killed, the engineers on Groote Eyelandt have been diligently repairing their runway. The actual airbase facilities are still shot to poo poo, and the port is basically pulverized, but the runway? You can land on it now. This gives us an opportunity to use our very short-ranged (4 hex maximum!) Spitfires aggressively and contest the air over Gove in a way that isn’t ritual Liberator sacrifice. This wave is very roughly handled by Tojos, but more are coming.  More than Spitfires, too! Actually, the Spitfires loosened the CAP up for the Lightnings, it’s like opening a jar.  Airacobras: still kinda viable sometimes in mid-43.  Kinda sorta. Try this squadron on for size!  P-39s still useful in India, too. I have almost nothing to spare defending Jodhpur, so it’s nice to see what I can spare have a good day.  They will wear Jodhpur down at this rate, though. I have the troops there now to prevent a paratrooper coup, that fear is alleviated, but the carriers and battleships hovering just off Karachi, the quietude of the Ahmedabad front.. Lot of spooky things I don’t like about Pharnakes’ position in India right now. The army barrelling directly towards Delhi is also bad.  Big strike on Gwalior with Helens and Zeroes from Nagpur. Bad weather and good CAP from the RAF’s best fighters in-theater save the airfield from serious damage.  A smaller, second wave comes in unescorted and finds the Brits still thirsty.  Two infantry divisions and a lot of supporting troops are at Gwalior - most of the Bhopal army has made it here. Part of why the flak is so murderous, I think.  No CAP means Cawnpore could be a viable target for what’s left of the Wellington force. I need to put the Hurricanes to better use though.  The Spit VIII still behaves like a superfighter sometimes.  It’s been a good day for Spitfires in general, apart from that first morning engagement.  B-25s getting very experienced at messing up Umboi Island’s runway.  4th Ind. Mixed Regiment, that is useful to know. I have started thinking about what I want to do next here in SWPAC. One possibility is taking Umboi, or even skipping Umboi for a landing on New Britain proper. Alternately: just hop up the coast to Madang and onwards, never even touch the Solomons or New Britain. The only thing I’m sure won’t happen is an invasion of Guadalcanal. Seems like a pointless deathtrap at this stage. Yes, it is scary as a Betty/Nell base, but it can be suppressed (probably by B-24s, later this year) without diverting ~15,000 infantrymen.  A Rufe gets a B-24 kill!! Can’t help but respect it. At least I’ve forced him to throw something up to defend Kwajalein.  Aggression is working for us.  The Gove defenders are exhausted and we’re taking advantage.  Still pushing here at 52,19 too.  PM phase and our cap over Gwalior is gone.  Hello guys! Still don’t know what you’re trying to do here.  Makin.  Jubbulpore will not be falling anytime soon.  Tip of the enemy spear arrived at Bareilly. They’re very likely to conquer the place in the next shock attack, probably within 3 days.  Ghurka battalion obliterated. We will hono(u)r their sacrifice by making our escape from this big army. Already mostly done!  We’ll start surrendering here soon.  Bangalore.  Bellary.  And that’s it. Level one forts for marginal defense from paratroopers, especially at Tagula Island. I have a full Australian brigade squatting at Buna, and they’ll keep it safe for a while. I’m concerned about cruiser and battleship bombardments at both locations, too. Summary & Orders  Pretty drat good effort today. Alikchi fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Mar 20, 2024 |
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Mar 20, 2024 20:19
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Bloody fighting in India. Good to see this going on! Keep up the good work!
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Mar 21, 2024 00:39
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wedgekree posted:Bloody fighting in India. Good to see this going on! Keep up the good work! Thank you! Here's the next three days: May 19, 1943  An enemy dud torpedo is a nice start to the day. Losing Salem, even temporarily, would be a big blow. The 150+ mines she can lay per run are one of my better tools for deterring bombardments. They might be the #1 killer of Japanese destroyers, actually.  Night CAP.. your performance is disappointing. In their defense, the Nells are maybe 40 mph slower?  Back in the Gulf, I’ve tentatively sent out a pair of LCTs loaded with supplies from Normanton to Mornington Island. RO-101 can’t get a good angle for her torpedoes..  .. so she surfaces and takes out LCT-131 with her deck gun.  Daylight sweeps of Delhi. It will be hard for me to defend it and sweep outwards simultaneously. All the Warhawks are on Sweep orders over the enemy tank spearhead, and I’m surprised the scraps (and Spits) left behind for CAP did so well.  The combat report makes us look invincible, but we are getting damaged and worn down rapidly.  Empty skies over Gove. Disappointing, I was hoping to pad the score more today. Time to bomb the airfield out, make it safe to make our next move?  Stragglers do nothing.  His little battlegroup off Karachi has not budged. I don’t like that at all.  Helen support at Nander! Perhaps the IJA will attack again this turn?  Nice and miss-y.  Geez they don’t want for numbers.  Surprise raid on Tennant Creek! There’s not much to hit, though. Half a dozen B-26s and three LB-30s. All useless for want of replacements; they’re essentially training squadrons right now, feeling pilots into the reserves until they can be reequipped with modern bombers. The new B-24 model is coming in at a decent clip, but the B-26s are waiting for the B-25G.  There will probably be a few more of these sweeps into empty Gove airspace today. Meanwhile, the adhoc American wolfpack licks its chops outside Darwin.  Now that Umboi is full knocked out, I decided to hit Gasmata again instead. I should have waited a day to do some recon first because I wasn’t expecting Zeroes here. The B-25s get lucky and only lose one. Will have to do some sweeping over Gasmata.  These poor Kittyhawks get mauled, but the DB-7s are OK.  The weather is really helping us get away with this.  It also means we can’t hit much.  Nobody home!  The v o i d  Okay, I knew I ordered a fighter sweep of Gasmata along with the bombing! Late Kittyhawks but very effective against the worn-out A6M3a gang.  These Spitfires might pull back to Port Moresby soon if he’s abandoning Gove. I have plans to base them at either Buna or Kiriwina Island when they’re built up.  The token resistance over Jodhpur is of a slightly different composition than yesterday’s, but still token.  RIP guy.  These Spit VIII and Scythe squadrons are all single-digits now.  Weather is good, SBDs start inflicting casualties on the Makin garrison.  TBFs too.  B-24s focus on Mili as the closest Level 4 airfield to Makin.  The surrenders have begun at 50,23.  Bangalore.  He does go for an attack at Nander, which is productive for him.  Bellary. May 20, 1943 North Pacific The perpetual quiet continues here. A massive fuel and supply stockpile has accumulated over the past year. Dairly recon flights over Paramushiro are all they support, for now. Central Pacific Our first giant floating dock (ARD) is almost to Hawaii, escorted from Los Angeles by the best ASW ships I could find. South Pacific  A B-25 squadron joins the B-24s in attacking Mili airbase. We’re not doing a lot of damage, to be honest. Avengers and Dauntlesses are focusing on the garrison of Makin now, no more “diversionary” bombing of Tarawa. Our invasion fleets have disembarked their troops and/or are scattering to the east, away from the potential reach of Japanese carriers spotted near Kavieng. Sets the timetable back a few days. Still, we have one Marine regiment heading north that will not disembark, and our bombing continues apace. The bombardment battleships are also working their way into position. Southwest Pacific  I try to catch him over Gasmata and find nothing. Hellcats, Corsairs, Lightnings and Kittyhawks all sweep Gasmata. Oops!  Most of our fighters at Groote have pulled out, but we’ll leave a squadron sweeping Gove to discourage him from rebasing planes there before we’ve pulverized the airfield. India/Southeast Asia  He’s doing his best to grind down the RAF over Delhi, and he’ll probably succeed soon, but we give these Zeroes a bloody nose today.  Bareilly falls to the Japanese armored spearhead, but we retreat over the river in decent order. We’ve also successfully extricated two divisions from Gwalior along the railroad through Agra to Delhi, so the threat of him charging straight into the Red Fort is gone.  The Japanese CVLs are still hovering off Karachi. Hitting the Liberators on the ground is too much. An air HQ is on its way back to Karachi from the front line, to supply torpedoes for night-attack Swordfish and Vildebeests. Summary & Orders  Ops losses hurting him more than me today.  That LSD will be very useful; I’m really gorging on fantastic amphibious equipment right now while Pharnakes is starving. I think we saw all of Japan's LSDs in the Mornington Island operation. The British infantry brigade will have to sit on their hands until the Japanese stop blockading Karachi. If that never happens, I suppose they’ll be beefing up the garrison at Socotra. May 21, 1943 South Pacific  The B-24s are honing their aim. The B-25s score another few hits. We’re getting there. Southwest Pacific  Okay, we’ve mostly rebased all the squadrons that flocked into Normanton to defeat the Mornington Island operation. Back to the original plan for May in this theater - bomb out Umboi, Gove and Gasmata. Unleashing the TBFs is part of that.  Always good to knock out a Zero on the ground, too. India Lots of surrenders today, I’m afraid.  This was a classic botched retreat! And I swore I’d stop.  Bellary surrenders too.  Meerut holds by the skin of its teeth. Every day bought to beef up Delhi helps. Summary & Orders  Our poor Hurricanes, fighting outnumbered against A6M5s in 1943. One thing I wish I could do in this game is direct the Lend-Lease spigot directly at India. I’m going to get a bunch of C-47 reinforcements instead because they were doing the “over the hump” China supply stuff at this point historically.  I’m going to assume the recon here is correct, and this carrier task force is heading for Milne Bay. With a few days’ warning, all the shipping in the area is “safely” in port.  Off to the west, I’m not sure what he’s doing in Darwin. I rearrange my cloud of submarines. They are slavering for a shot at the carriers when they eventually leave. Alikchi fucked around with this message at 06:09 on Mar 21, 2024 |
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Mar 21, 2024 01:33
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Keep up the good fight! What's your current situation in Dehli when it comes to setup?
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Mar 21, 2024 04:39
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wedgekree posted:Keep up the good fight! What's your current situation in Dehli when it comes to setup?  The 10th Indian Div has arrived by rail from Gwalior via Agra, along with a chunk of the 31st Armoured. More's on the way, thankfully, but I think this is enough to prevent a walk-in by his tanks. Having retaken Agra is helping us redeploy. I'm trying to set up a relatively coherent defense along the Yamuna (I think) River.
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Mar 22, 2024 02:33
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FYI I learned that engineer units still provide support and repair aircraft if they are in strat mode. They will not expand ports/airfields/forts, but they will give ground and aviation support. So you can keep your engineers in strat mode all the time and only take them out if you want them digging.
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Mar 22, 2024 03:17
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Cimber posted:FYI I learned that engineer units still provide support and repair aircraft if they are in strat mode. They will not expand ports/airfields/forts, but they will give ground and aviation support. So you can keep your engineers in strat mode all the time and only take them out if you want them digging. That is useful, thank you! May 22, 1943  I’ve found that the K-boats, with their shorter range, can’t really operate with the O-boats from Perth. This is partly why I’ve put together the Exmouth sub base. Until it’s fully set-up, though, the K-boats are quite useful in places like the Solomons, or here in the Marshalls. I hope K-IX is okay, she needs to serve her historic purpose of being sold for less than a thousand pounds.  We finally get some effective ASW in the Gulf of Carpentaria - from a teensy little motor gunboat.  K-IX seems fine. Feisty, even. India  Tojo and Zero sweeps all across the subcontinent meet only token resistance, and Helens bomb unimpeded. Our fighter force is absolutely exhausted. RAF Hurricane squadrons shattered like those Confederate regiments in 1865 with two dozen guys in them. One of the firmer ones tries a tentative sweep over Bareilly and is met by 75 Tojos and 14 Nicks. To defend Delhi from his Zeroes, we can muster barely twenty fighters. By the end of the day, we can muster seven. We look weak because we are weak, I’m afraid! Not even mentioning the carrier task force cutting us off from the Mediterranean. We do launch one attack against his spearhead. This is the combat debut of the Ventura bomber (aka the PV-1) which is unimpressive, but better than a Hudson or Blenheim. On the ground, as mentioned above, we’re rushing troops towards Delhi through the cleared rail line. But more are out of position, marching to defend other parts of the Yamunna.. Actually, I guess the part of the map I mean now might be meant to represent the Chambal? Hard to say. SWPAC  I have enough fighters at PM and Terapo to keep some in the sky over Umboi and Gasmata on most days.  Makes it safer to launch raids like this. Good hits! A few more days of bombing of this quality and we’ll knock Gasmata out. Ten DB-7s follow up and do a little more damage. Then another ten B-25s. I am getting serious here!  This strike accomplishes nothing but is illustrative: I have TBFs at Port Moresby and they are properly escorted. Hopefully this will discourage further bombardments of PM, Milne, or Buna. We also continue bombing and sweeping Gove. No coming back allowed! SOPAC  The poor Maizuru 4th must know they’re doomed by now. Bombing of Mili by B-24s and B-25s continues, as well. I’m pretty sure that xAKL K-IX took a shot at was helping resupply Mili. We can’t knock the airfield out, but repairing it costs supply. Summary & Orders  Not good, not terrible.  Where are they going? All the easy-pickings shipping targets have fled to the west. He could still snatch up a few if he charged full-speed. Another concerning possibility: a port strike at Cairns or Townsville. Some other things to consider. Let’s do a little tour of the map:  HMS Victorious is finally ready to go be USS Robin. She came through the Panama Canal in the middle of February, and has been having a thick coat of Bofors and Oerlikon applied by San Diego shipyards for the past three weeks. She also has an Anglo-American airgroup: VF-8 are ex-Hornet.  Lucky lucky Enterprise will be available for service in 35 days.  And USS Essex will pop back onto the map in 5 days. A gang of destroyers will escort her the rest of the way to Pearl. Look how busy this patch of ocean is.  Hamilton and Scourge have put enough distance between themselves and the Japanese carriers around Guadalcanal now. Today we reverse course and head back towards Makin. With the garrison seemingly only a single SNLF and some engineers, I think the Marine regiment embarked will be enough to take the place in a single shock attack. If not, the second wave will easily do it. I’d just prefer for the carriers to be beyond my range of vision before I stick my neck out. Barring any further delays, I expect to control Makin in four or five days.  We also have USS Camden, the next Essex-class, coming in roughly a month. HMS Illustrious (repairing at Pearl) and Susquehannah (another Essex) will be available in 60 and 65 days, respectively.  Plus the G3s in less than two weeks. Frankly, I have no idea what to do with them. Carrier escorts? Also, they are arriving in Aden.  This is my final point. With the Mediterranean secure, we can now send ships directly from the Panama Canal hex to the Aden hex, and vice-versa. Do we bring the G3s all the way around the world to serve in the Solomons and Marshalls? Or do we send some American and British carriers the other way around, break the blockade of Karachi, and reinforce India?  We have one brigade sitting idle already, and two divisions are due over the next couple weeks. I’m leaning towards sending the carriers through after the Makin Island operation, if night attacks from Swordfish don’t force him to keep his distance in a few days. We will see how things develop.
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Mar 22, 2024 19:43
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A few comments if I may a) Make sure to double verify that tip about engineers, I don't want to screw you over if my version of the game handles it differently than yours. b) How come you didn't take your aircraft on Enterprise and put them to land for training purposes? I don't think they can train at all if they are on a ship in drydock. c) Thoughts about doing a carrier raid from Socotra off the coast of Africa to hit either those carriers blockading Karachi or hitting bases on the west coast of India, then immediately beating feet back through the Med and the PC to the South Pacific? You'll have him chasing his tail trying to defend against these raids.
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Mar 22, 2024 20:04
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Cimber posted:A few comments if I may The aviation support thing definitely works and always has, but I don't intend to leave them in strategic longer than I have to in any case. quote:b) How come you didn't take your aircraft on Enterprise and put them to land for training purposes? I don't think they can train at all if they are on a ship in drydock. They seem to be training just fine! I suspect that's because they're set to range 0. But I do have VF-6 offshore in Seattle training in their new Hellcats.   quote:c) Thoughts about doing a carrier raid from Socotra off the coast of Africa to hit either those carriers blockading Karachi or hitting bases on the west coast of India, then immediately beating feet back through the Med and the PC to the South Pacific? You'll have him chasing his tail trying to defend against these raids. I think that's what I will do. The timing works in my head, something like 90 days from now after we're up four more carriers. Aden->Socotra->Karachi. I feel compelled to keep fighting for India, for pride/historical verisimilitude reasons. And maybe grand strategy. I think if India does hold out, we'll re-activate China sometime in 1944, but if India is fully occupied China will feel compelled to stay "neutral" until Soviet activation in 45. This will leave us a little naked in the Central Pacific for a significant portion of summer 1943, but we can weather it. In any case, we have weeks and weeks ahead of operations in the central, south, and southwest pacific before all that.
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Mar 22, 2024 21:33
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I thought you guys had pilots coming out of the pipeline at 65 XP?
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Mar 23, 2024 18:20
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Cimber posted:I thought you guys had pilots coming out of the pipeline at 65 XP?  His come out at 60 - mine are in their vanilla ranges, between 30 and 40. I have enough locked training squadrons on the West Coast to mostly meet my needs, though. A few dozen of the best US carrier aviators are flying from airfields in SOPAC/SWPAC until their carriers are ready.
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Mar 23, 2024 21:31
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Ahhh, ok. He sure has a lot of benefits this scenario. Do you have anything material or are the allies pretty much stock? [edit] And FWIW, pilot training is such a huge pain in the rear end that I often forget to swap out my training pilots into the general reserve. I still haven't figured out what the group reserves are for.
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Mar 23, 2024 21:51
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Cimber posted:Ahhh, ok. He sure has a lot of benefits this scenario. Do you have anything material or are the allies pretty much stock? The Allies have a bunch of ahistorical ships and planes. For example, USS Scourge and USS Hamilton (both battleship/carrier hybrids) were active at the start of the game, and IIRC they're currently undergoing refits to full (if not impressive) carriers. EDIT: And the Scythes you see scattered throughout the airwar pictures are British prototype heavy? fighters that never actually entered production in the real world. Zurai fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Mar 23, 2024 |
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Mar 23, 2024 22:10
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Cimber posted:Ahhh, ok. He sure has a lot of benefits this scenario. Do you have anything material or are the allies pretty much stock? https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3952093#post510921234
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Mar 23, 2024 22:11
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May 23, 1943 Excellent start! Fuel cargo burns.  S-27 pays for the risk I took sending her into shallow water, but I couldn’t resist the temptation of all those tankers.  Haha uh oh!  Tone and two destroyers slip through our naval search and intercept a tanker/oiler convoy off San Francisco. They all go down! All I can do is applaud, and fair is fair - I did the same thing to him with Enterprise, and this is both lower risk and higher reward. Taking out Mobilube is a huge reward, really. I had noticed a bunch of Japanese floatplane spotting reports a couple of turns ago - and assumed it was submarines. This does give me an opportunity to sink Tone, though.India  Over in India, I’ve pulled every fighter I can back to Delhi and am putting in maximum effort to maintain the defensive numbers advantage as long as I can. This is a very fragile reed. He has enough Tojos sweeping against no opposition available to wrest control, he just can’t or won’t deploy them yet. Until that happens, we can chew up A6M5s when they come in in penny packets like this. The weather helps us too. There are a few other waves like this, but his air is mostly focused on Jodhpur. That, and his blockade. It’s disconcerting. I am moderately prepared to check a headlong rush into Delhi. But marching up along the coast would be difficult to stop. An aerial landing at Jodhpur or a naval landing at Karachi (god forbid) could see us forced.. basically offmap into Iran? Right now, he’s still working on taking Gwalior. He destroys quite a few of our tanks today.. I really frittered away a lot of the 31st Armoured. On the other hand, an accidental shock attack (I’m guessing an enemy infantry regiment crossed the river the wrong way?) kills a couple thousand Japanese troops at Jubbulpore. South Pacific  Ah well.  Again, this is what happens when we sail right into the hex. Southwest Pacific  More and better airfields with more aviation support means larger and more consistent waves of B-25. This is one of several attacks on Gasmata today. We also hit Umboi Island and (especially) Gove, which receives lots of B-24 and B-17 attention.  Another small bit of luck for us - many of the B-24s and B-17s based at Cloncurry are in the air and not available to be bombed by these Nells. These deep strikes are very unsettling but this one could have been a lot worse. Summary & Orders  Lots of ops losses for the enemy today - attacking in bad weather sucks. First order of business: what do we have available to catch Tone and friends?  Best-placed is a contingent of Enterprise’s escort group, waiting in Seattle while she finishes her last four weeks of repairs. USS Indianapolis and three destroyers charge out at full speed. If Tone does slow down, they can catch her.  HMS Victorious left San Diego and headed to meet USS Essex at sea a couple days ago. She and her escorts now surge in Tone’s direction. There’s almost no chance he would try to escape south instead of west, but you never know.  Finally, HMS Repulse is at Pearl, about to receive her June ‘43 upgrades. No matter - she and two American CLs and DDs sprint north to hopefully cut off the enemy. This is USS Oklahoma City’s chance to avenge USS Oklahoma, perhaps?  Cloncurry airfield’s toast. We pull the aircraft out, some up to Coen for more bombing.  S-27 will be fine if she can make it home. I think she will.  The worn-down defenders of Delhi. You can see my defensive line slowly coming together along the river around Agra, along with the location of several previous and future disasters. 
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Mar 28, 2024 23:39
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Have you thought about making a sub minelaying mission in Darwin? [edit] Even around Darwin would be annoying, its shallow seas so they decay at the rate of 1 percent a day. Cimber fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Mar 29, 2024 |
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Mar 29, 2024 00:18
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Cimber posted:Have you thought about making a sub minelaying mission in Darwin? This is a good idea. I have been underusing sub minelaying generally (and probably overusing my CMs and DMs)
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Mar 29, 2024 03:00
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Actually, the more I think of it the better I think doing a few missions in the hexes adjacent to Darwin would be pretty useful. No yard minesweepers and it's going to force him to put minesweeper units in more of his convoys. You do that in Darwin, outside Palembang, a few around major bases on Eastern India and that's going to give him some indigestion. You just need to put enough in and near random ports in a few regions and he will eventually need to have sweepers in every convoy.
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Mar 29, 2024 03:05
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Now that you have a carrier in play again in the area, you did remember to set to its pilots off training and on boat sinking right?
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Mar 29, 2024 08:14
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SerthVarnee posted:Now that you have a carrier in play again in the area, you did remember to set to its pilots off training and on boat sinking right? Yes, thankfully. Victorious probably won't find anything but her Avengers are ready.
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Mar 29, 2024 21:02
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May 24, 1943 Good start to the turn. 107,126 is a prime hunting and scouting position for our submarines, but it’s very risky. Lots of frontline destroyers and planes on ASW. Still, now that Mark 14s mostly work and I’m commissioning a new American submarine every 15 minutes, it’s worth trying.  Over in the Gulf, I’m back to running supplies in to Mornington Island via landing craft from Normanton. RO-101’s skipper doesn’t have the Samurai Spirit in him. That MGB did some genuine damage, it appears.  Never mind, he’s still got some juice. Central Pacific No sign of Tone. We are fanning out. I give Repulse and friends the best chances of actually catching her. I also suspect he might still have an oiler floating around somewhere in the empty waste above Hawaii. That is where Repulse is headed. India  No big fighter duels over Delhi today. He’s systematically bombing the airfields near Karachi - first Jodhpur, now Ajmer too. On the ground, Meerut falls to the Japanese armor, led by the Guards Tank Division. They’re right across the river from Delhi now. South Pacific Just the regular bombing of Makin. Invasion convoy inches closer - they will be almost to Tabiteuea tomorrow, I believe. Southwest Pacific  Taiho, Shokaku and Zuikaku - probably the most dangerous carriers afloat right now, apart from the very green Essex - swing right into range of all the bombers and fighters from Port Moresby and Milne Bay, and sucks in half a dozen separate air strikes. This is the first. One Avenger makes it through to drop a torp and is promptly blown out the air by, I’m guessing, one of Taiho’s fancy 100mm guns.   P-38s, Kittyhawks, Scythes, Skyrockets, Corsairs.. His best pilots can still master them. No hits, a lot of losses. A wing of four DB-7s break through and splash bombs all around Shokaku, that’s the best we do. For some reason the small Vindicator squadron at Milne (look, I’m desperate for dive bombers) launches and the 14 SBD-5s stay on the ground. I fly in more bombers and fighters - Avengers from Vanuatu and Warhawks from Normanton. Milne, Port Moresby, Terapo and Lae are all bulging with aircraft. Need to lay more mines at Milne before he bombards that place into oblivion. Maybe that’s what this carrier sortie is about? Drawing all the torpedo bombers in like moths to flame to clear space for bombardment or counter-invasion? I’ll keep wearing him down tomorrow as best I can.  Also in this theater, another long-range Nell strike. 31 Nells, and good damage to the runway. This would make it harder for me to counter-bomb Darwin if I was so inclined (I’m not - yet). Finally, I refuel the MGB chilling at Mornington by siphoning fuel from all the barges unloading supplies and send it back to the hex RO-101 is in. Hopefully we can finish the sub off. Summary & Orders  Not a particularly impressive day for us! A lot of aircraft expended for no hits. Taiho, Shokaku and Zuikaku are exactly the kind of targets worth wearing down, though, so we’ll continue to do that. Funny how many dead Jakes there are though. I imagine they died to LRCAP of one of the task forces around New Guinea.  I do have a cute little surprise here that will hopefully go off in the early morning of the 25th. An Air HQ has arrived at Karachi, torpedoes have been supplied, and every last torp bomber I can find in India is doing a night raid on his blockade. Pray for hits.
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Mar 30, 2024 23:23
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Sweet jesus, you're going for an Indian Taranto, lmao
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Mar 31, 2024 03:35
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Tomorrow's gonna be fun! ... Or likelier something weird will be set on the command bar and the airstrikes won't launch at all.
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Mar 31, 2024 07:06
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wedgekree posted:Tomorrow's gonna be fun! Hopefully the inspiration of the commander was high, as well as the aggression
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Mar 31, 2024 14:02
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Cimber posted:Hopefully the inspiration of the commander was high, as well as the aggression Well yeah, but then they could also be operating in different squadrons with different leaders so some may launch, some won't, and some will get lost along the way.. (In fairness taht's very much like the war went so the game models this sort of chaos very well)
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Mar 31, 2024 22:28
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wedgekree posted:Tomorrow's gonna be fun! Turns out it was the weather! May 25, 1943 Central Pacific  We find Tone! The two destroyers from San Francisco run into the cruiser and her two destroyer escorts in the middle of the night. Lang and Sterett miss the DDs but Tone receives a couple of non-penetrating 5in/38 hits.  The destroyers are out of fuel and must return, but Indianapolis and her four from Portland are nearby and ready to fight tomorrow. Repulse and friends continue heading into position to intercept in a few days. South Pacific  The damage at Mili is starting to add up. The bombardment task force for Makin is sent out, we’re less than a week away now, I think. Southwest Pacific  That is a confirmed kill on RO-102. Can MGB No.383 get RO-101 as well? Not today.  We’re also still sweeping and bombing Gove. It’s a tough nut, recon reports only ~60% damage. Gotta keep it up and run down whatever supplies he has. This is one of several strikes - Gove was hit by 45 Liberators today. Plus half a dozen Mitchells. India Our own Karachi torpedo bomber strike is scuppered by weather. If you scroll up to the last post it literally says “thunderstorms” on the screenshot with Karachi selected. The forecast was right! It generally is. This does give me the opportunity to take good advice and switch out a bunch of squadron leaders. I’ll stand down the bombers until we have a good forecast. Two days, fingers crossed? In any case, his daylight strike is not canceled - three squadrons of Kates and one squadron of Jills hit Karachi’s heavy industry. I need to turn off repair on that or it’ll suck up all my supplies. Ajmer is hit by 60 Nells, and Delhi receives the much-anticipated swarms of Ki-44s. Our fighters sort of hold their own - the Hurricane IIDs get hurt badly. I pull them back after this turn.  He also catches these troops marching in the open - I was hoping they’d stay unnoticed. Summary & Orders  I like this trickle of ground kills at Gasmata and Gove.  Tagula Island completes its level 1 airfield. Spitfires, Warhawks and Wirraways are flown in (for starters). More troops and supplies will begin arriving by C-47 tomorrow.
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Apr 1, 2024 19:08
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One cruiser doesn't even matter that much in the bigger picture, but somehow the hunt for tone seems way more engaging than all the (more important) stuff that has happened since the last major naval stuff.
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Apr 2, 2024 20:14
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Eh, Tone's actually relatively important, at least in historical terms. I don't know how WitP handles things or what about this has been changed by the mod, but IRL the IJN carriers didn't actually carry recon aircraft, that was done by the heavy cruisers like Tone. And the IJN didn't build very many (any? I'd have to check) new heavy cruisers over the course of the war. Of course, Pharnakes is unlikely to risk a completely irreplacable asset on a raid like this, so it's probably relatively less valuable than in the real war, but still.
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Apr 2, 2024 20:23
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Yeah, Tone has 6 floatplanes stationed on it that can do some really far reaching scouting. Losing Tone could potentially be a bit of a headache for him down the road if he can't find American Carriers. It was Tone's floatplane scouts that spotted the American Fleet at Midway (Though the IJN screwed up passing the message along to Admiral Nagumo until after he had ordered the carriers to rearm for a second strike at Midway Island. Oops).
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Apr 2, 2024 20:54
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That's just one mistake compensating for another, the spotting was done by a floatplane that took off late and changed its route midflight for unknown reasons. (The IJN scouting plan was very, extremely bad.)
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Apr 2, 2024 22:29
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What really matters here is Pharnakes losing the asset he put into a raid like this. Alikchi needs to settle this both to teach Pharnakes that this is no longer possible to do without making it a one-way trip and frankly to give Alikchi some revenge and morale boosting. It has been a long and bloody war so far and almost all of the pain has been felt by Alikchi. Being able to say you lost some very rare ships but countered it by utterly crushing the irreplaceable ship that did the raid? That matters a lot more than whatever actually joins the seafloor exploration division.
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Apr 3, 2024 08:25
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Given Enterprise is coming back online in a month or two, will she get her '43 refit done? That added better radar and a ton of AA?
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Apr 7, 2024 19:44
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