Adm. Yamamoto: Manila
This admirals appraisal of the situation in China strongly disagrees with the concept of giving up the forested terrain south-west of Xi'an. Giving up that terrain is giving up rather defensible terrain, and not only that achieves nothing of lengthening Chinese supply lines or issues. In fact it will increase they local troop density with respect to ours allowing them to conduct an easier offensive against us. What we must critically realise is that the Chinese gain strength when they are allowed to consolidate forces along a front, rather than us stretch them out. This is because we have the technological and equipment advantages on our troops making our troops stronger in 1 on 1 encounters compared to them.
Any proposal that gives large advances back to the Chinese will just increase their capacity to fight this war, and diminish ours. When I proposed consolidating a front, I meant that we should seek the most advantageous terrain to dig in along. This means an offensive in the far south-east china to get to the Pearl River and dig in along that, as well as smooth out the salient north-west of Guangdong.
While we face supply shortages in Central China it must be noted that the bulk of the Chinese offensive has bee conducted in the South of the country, and we have hardly suffered any major set backs in the North or center that would warrant a retreat to more favourable ground. Therefore there is good reason to consolidate where we are in the centre.
In the north however Yan'an city under the control of the communist is sitting on a minor salient surrounded by our forces. This city may have as many as 5 or 6 munitions and weapons factories in it. If we could capture this city, then we could force much of the fight out of the communists in the north and destabilise the front in this region where we do have relatively good supply to conduct a minor interim offensive. Capturing the city may will cost the communists 50% of their industrial potential.
This should be our priority.
1. Dig in along the favourable terrain in the south and center, and change to a defensive stance here
1.1 - Use our transport aircraft wing to aid with air supply missions into central china to raise morale
2. Prepare forces for a focused attack on the communists in a month or so time, utilising the bulk of the airforce to facilitate ground operations, both in direct attack, and in suppression of Chinese flanking forces
Engineers make an excellent support unit for main reasons, while they do not have mountain or hills equipment, they do have equipment for fighting in woods, forests, marsh, jungle terrain, as well as the assault weapons to take urban and fortified areas. Indeed large tracts of southern and central China are woodland or jungle terrain, and both the Nationalists and Communists are building fortifications, these will eventually need to be overcome. Furthermore engineers will improve the movement rates of our troops helping to prevent encirclements like the disastrous one during the collapse of Zongrens regime that is tarnishing the armys record currently.
Given we do not have officers to lead our divisions at this time, and given that the supply draw of new divisions instead of bolstering current divisions with support brigades, it makes more sense in the interim to produce a batch of engineers to add to one of our Gun in order that they may benefit more immediately.
This ties in very well with my second point because they are precisely the kind of units we need to help with picking apart the communists. Note that I do not imply that we need build new engineers to attack the communists, we have many engineering brigades already. However these divisions will need to be removed from there current deployments and moved north in preparation. This is why we consolidate along the terrain in the south, because their loss represents a minor reduction in fighting strength meaning we need to prevent the Chinese taking advantage of an opportunity.
Currently we have a good opportunity to make the collapse of Zongrens regime a pyrrhic victory for the Chinese if we can also get the nationalists communist allies to fall in a similar manner. These actions represent a new phase to the situation between us and the Chinese in China.
Production:
I'm inclined to agree with Admiral Baltersar that after the next heavy fighter wing, and CAG wings have been built we should suspend new production of either, since we should have a relatively large enough fighter air wing for the near future, and with our air doctrines ever improving now to what they should have been awhile ago they shouldn't suffer too large a loss of organisation from operations.
Similarly after the production of the IJN Kashii and IJN Kurama, we can give additional industry over to the Army. I would like to keep two light cruisers in production, in echelon at all times Adm.Baltersar from now until the end of war as we will take losses over time and the Americans will also be producing more ships it is important that we don't allow our rising sun to set at sea.
With the reductions in aviation production and ships that frees up 36.15IC for new allocation. I would like to see part of that allocation go into laying down one of the Battleship hulls, and another fraction go into setting up or first rocket test site. However this will be at the lowest production priority to run at about 25-50% as an IC soak. This should use up about half our allocation giving the army a bit more budget for engineer and mountain troop production. Although I suggest a small fraction of the army budget be funnelled into a second brigade of tank destroyer armour, as part of a future modernisation program. After all it is no good us lurching from one crash program to another.
This is why I reject Gen. Holy.Deaths appraisals of “considering to field late”r, when it is later we will regret not having followed these courses earlier. Just like the Army now regrets not taking up my initial proposals years ago for raising mountain divisions. Don't prepare to fight your current battles, prepare to fight your future ones. Having said that 3xMTN sounds reasonable for mountain divisions. I do not suggest more than a corps worth however of such divisions for the moment.
Fleets:
We do not need specialise ASW fleets, me and Adm.Baltersar are in general agreement here that the IJN needs to stay in high fire-power fleets.
