War diary of General Surt, Army HQ North.
26th July.
AG Canton I, 2nd Homengun seem to strike out to the north, the pocket should be secured now.
28th July
I start think the planner should have considered making a pocket at Peking, I'll think about that if we ever get an comparable situation again. The major cities usually holds longer therefore they could potentially be surrounded, but it's difficult to make reasonable orders the corps commanders can follow.
29th July
Yes there could have been make a pocket there, even if the fighting in the city would have been difficult with a lot of divisions encircled there, lets see if we can do that on any other major city.
30th July
Bad news from AG Canton I.1 the Chinese breaks through the Guangxi front.
31th July
AG Canton I.1 Homengun tries to close the pocket again, well done.
2nd August
Peking, the northern Capital, falls, again we fought 2:1 but due to the city our loss ratio was only 3:1, on all other battlefields in the north our divisions push back the Chinese against overwhelming odds, soon we will encounter the Shanxi and Commies which will shore up the KMT armies.
3rd August
The Konoe government falls to be replaced by the Old Admiral Kiichiro, he has more fascist tendencies than his predecessor. Someone must have threatened Konoe to leave the position to an Old Admiral, hmm who could that have been.
Canton II.1 Homengun invades east of Canton to try to establish supplies, the diversion west of Canton seems to have worked as they land unopposed in the harbours and an attack on Guangzhou is started.
Haikou must also be cleared totally cleared soon so our troops there can leave and join the main event. Which reminds me I must check up on if we have started training the Gar to hold the harbours.
12th August
The southern pocket seems elusive now though an attack directly north by Canton I.2 might still be able to close the pocket. The GuangXi troops north of the river are of a better quality than the original closing division they used.
And Canton II can stop attacking eastward now as the eastern most harbour of the plan is secured, they should also move in a more northerly direction now.
We will soon need 5 Garrison division for the ports here, I see a note here that the production continues on many infantry divisions which is both good and bad, good as we always need more infantry, bad as we need the Gar more as they use less supplies, frees up trained troops and are faster trained.
I will have to write a note to the armaments minister that he puts most or all of the infantry builds on hold until we have the required Gar, that will also help on our backlog of support unit production. Those that takes the longest to complete should be put on hold, on closer examination all 3 should be put on hold and 1 discontinued once we finish the current run. And as soon as we free the 3 rare material mines we need some MP's there to stop sabotage of the mines.
The north-western Homengun seems to have a little trouble fighting its way forward, but it has 2 months or more to reach its target, the 2(3?) others seems to be on schedule. Also we don't want Shanxi to fold just yet, it will just make the rest of the warlords join the KMT. The Shanxi and ChiCom are now fully engaged on the north front according to our air recon, now is the time to strike at Shanghai.
Jinan is soon in our reach and the landing in Shanghai/Qingdao might be able to make a pocket in the Qingdao peninsula, but I don't have high hopes on the number of enemy units there.
Faster advances would require motorization of more of our divisions which is not an option right now, even if it would have made closing of the southern pocket easier but also used more supplies, we have made our bet and now we must live with it.
The southern campaign is also now just a 100km south of the rares we need for our industry as we only got 40 days left of them, coincidentally that is how many days it should take to secure Nanjing too! and my agents tells me there should be at least 3000 tons of rare materials there alone.
Despite the AG Canton's request for more air power, HQ north will not endorse this in excess of the already allocated 1 tactical bomber and 1 ftr, a H.Ftr can be stationed on Taiwan to cover much of the front. Any CaG the navy can provide to AG south will be appreciated, much of Peking and Shanghai AG's needs can be coved either with ftr on the continent or heavy fighters at islands.
The 3 LB must continue to support AG Shanghai also due to supply problems in the south. For the same reason no ships may be stationed in any port that draws supply form the continent. See army post #146 for planes allocation.
When all 4 Homengun in the south moves a bit more inland the marines might have to be withdraw if we don't get enough supplies through the 5 available ports, note there will be supply problems anyway so we are only talking massive as in a substantial number of provinces are overloaded.
I also got my hands on the armaments ministry report on the economy, the upgrades and reinforcements looks roughly right, but the 40IC need on supplies is worrisome, luckily my logistics officers tells me that some of the need is due to double ordering and bad storage management* causing excessive demand hence the 30IC allocated is right but that won't help us as the supplies are moved to the storage depot in Asia.
The new radars are also more expensive at start than anticipated, but we are going to be glad for them later.
Our financial troubles looks like it comes from import of supplies, maybe we need to cancel some deals again, on the other hand our deficit in energy is due to storage problems and the iron might be the same, so only the rares and to some degree the oil is a problem. The oil situation can be improved by trading more with the us, hence we need more money and for that purpose we need to cancel some supplies import.
Also a war tax should be introduced now.**
Otherwise I expect the plan to continue, as the only thing gone mildly wrong yet is the pocket in the south not forming yet. I expect the next meeting of the General Staff and the Emperor around the time of the fall of Nanjing, earlier if some catastrophic event happens.
OOC:
* both the supply bugs are still in here so too much is transported to the mainland, check the northern supply depot, also supply convoys don't get started correctly like we talked about earlier.
** did we do that? or can't we afford it right now? might have to turn off auto trade and cancel some imports until we can pay for it