7th August
The division at the northern tip of the Shanghai front is prevented from crossing onto the Shangdong pensulia by two chinese militia divisions at Ganyu. We are reinforcing the attack with another infantry division to hopefully cross the river. We will be landing at Qingdao when the fleet returns to the Chinese coast from the home islands, perhaps within 24 hours - so the success of this attack is not important but we do wish to begin waging a war of attrition.
The advance towards Nanjing is slowed down on the southern approach by an enemy militia division. It has no defensive bonus from rivers etc so we expect it to be defeated shortly, battle commences at 46% to victory.
The battle of Nanjing begins. The Chinese militia division has four brigades, courtsey of our CAG scouts who are performing ground attacks into the capital.
8th August
Another infantry division joins the battle of Nanjing as a reserve.
The marine corps and a support corps arrive at Qingdao. The two marine divisions lead the assault into Qingdao. 68% towards victory.
The purpose of the Qingdao attack is to establish a defensive position to take the brunt of the Chinese counter-attack from the Shanxi front. The quantity of enemy divisons moving on the Shanghai front is terrifying.
We lost two more provinces at the eastern fringe of Guanxi. Guilian looks deeply threatened, with enemy divisions in 7 surrounding provinces, Japanese units in two surrounding provinces.
Nanjing is now 78% towards victory.
11th August
The southern approach to Nanjing is cleared as the blocking division retreats. We should be able to bring more units to bear at Nanjing soon, but it may be unncessary with combat at 82%.
We are victorious at Nanjing.
12th August
At the battle of Ganyu, the southern edge of the Shangdong pensulia with Qingdao, our progress accelerates to 77% with very little organisation damage suffered and the defending enemy division nearly destroyed for organisation. This suggests our forces are much stronger then the present Chinese ones.
We won the battle of Qingdao.
The Chinese try to attack us at Yushe in Shanxi, this is the province next to Shijazshong where they had previously attempted to assault. A quick counter-attack and the Chinese abandon their attack plans, we abandon the counter-attack.
Japanese forces enter Nanjing. General update on the state of the Shanghai front.
The nationalists are 20% towards surrender.
We are victorious at Ganyu.
We have captured immense stockpiles at Nanjing. We now have 99,999 energy; 99,999 metal; 51,004 rares; 11,169 oil.
We also control all of the ports into China now so Xiebi aside, the nationalists cannot trade any deficits they may have.
14th August
Nationalist divisions have abandoned the northern section of Xiebi's border into Shanxi. We respond by attacking with 3 divisions of cavalry into Uxin Ju, a hilly province guarded by one infantry division. It will provide vital information on the relative strengths of our cavalry versus Xiebi's divisions before the advance out of Yunan begins. This advance is being delayed by the slow movement of nationalist troops, itself simply a factor of the sheer size of provinces in the region.
Barbarossa begins.
Portugal failed in Africa.
15th August
The mountain corps finishes training and begins organising its affairs on the home islands. Its position in the training barracks were replaced by a corps of hopeful cavalry men.
We won the battle of Uxin Ju! None of our cavalry forces took any organisation damage, despite the hilly terrain. We began to suspect that the nationalist divisions in Xiebi had serious supply problems as none of them have managed to move out of southern Xiebi/Yunan in two weeks.
The carriers set sail south to support the Guanxi line. We sent the IJN Amagi to join them and show us the power of our new carrier.
The Soviet Union had "For the Motherland!". It is worth noting that Finland, Romania and Hungary are all Axis states, and between them and axis Italy they control the entire of the balkans.
The nationalists are attacking us at Jiexi in Guanxi east. They are 81% towards victory and it appears they will rout the eastern-most division of our Guanxi line.
More factories will only cost 3.5 IC and 258 days. Another 10 were added to the bottom of the production queue for when we have no priority construction projects. This is a good choice because I want to produce a large wave of light cruisers, more factories means more light cruisers.
16th August
Advances by the nationalists in Guanxi. We remain unconcerned as the mountain corps will be able to chew through the entire flank of the nationalist forces here when they are ready. The nationalists are only occupying more hills/mountains driving them further into our specialists favourite fighting ground and they're capturing worthless provinces.
18th August
Noting the lack of fuel on the front, the three panzer divisions on Shangdong were withdrawn.
19th August
seven CAGs begin attacking the Nationalist flanking manovure at Guanxi.
The advance into the heart of Xiebi has begun.
The battle of Dainkog pits four cavalry divisions against one enemy infantry division at 47% towards victory.
The battle of Darlag pits 2 cavalry against 1 infantry and 1 cavalry division. This is 19% towards victory.
The trigger for this advance is a western offensive into Yunan (i.e. our supply lines) by the nationalists. We are moving one square division north to hold the line amongst the binaries in the area.
On the Shanxi-Xiebi frontier, the three cavalry divisions that captured Uxin Ju attack Shizuishan. It is defended by two enemy divisions with a fort. However one the divisions is the recently defeated force from Uxin Ju and is on near-routing levels of organisation at the opening of hostilities. 19% towards victory.
There's 11 battles raging across the various fronts right now. Four in Yunan, one in Shanxi and six in Shanghai.
A check on the Soviet-German front showed Germany has made no progress. We don't see germany surviving beyond mid '43 if this situation continues. It is not really possible to invade the Soviet Union from the east so we're apphrenshive about a quick Soviet victory in Europe.
20th August
We won all three battles on the Yunan-Xiebi border.
21st August
A binary division of cavalry at Juilong on Yunan-China border was attacked and quickly routed. A square division is a few provinces away so should be able to close down this new whole in our frontier.
A panzer and one of the garrisoning GI divisions launch an attack into Haixfang on the Shanxi border. 81% towards victory against an enemy infantry division. The panzers could serve well at Shanxi due to our big expansion of Humhuang port.
Shizuishan combat advances to 60% towards victory. Our cavalry has taken no org losses despite the big bonuses for the defenders from terrain and forts. We estimate the defending division to be at 20% org. These combats on Xiebi-Shanxi are important and are featured in the reports because they allow us to shut down the size of the Shanxi frontier. By taking Uxin Ju a two province front was reduced to 1. If we take Shizuishan, Liangzhen and Otog Qianali, we can reduce the size of the front by another province.
Supply shortages are turning our Yunan-Xiebi attack into a farce. The cavalry are advancing at 1.6kmph. Supply shortages are beginning to bite in Shanghai frontier as it has to supply the Qingdao offensive as well now.
Both China and Japan have areas we are winning and losing in. However Japan is winning where it counts most.
25th August
We have occupied Shizuishan and begin attacking into Liangzhen with two supporting infantry divisions, bringing the power against this province to the level of a whole corps.
26th August
General overview of the fronts.
27th August
The mountain corps boards the transport fleet and sets sail for northern china. We are unable to supply southern china adequately so there was perceived to be no gain in sending more divisions there.
The central section of out Shanghai line is heavily outnumbered by Chinese divisions and will be split within a few months, this was decided as the point for the Mountain corps to attack forward through.
28th August
The mountain corps begins landing at the beaches of eastern China to march inland to prevent the enemy breakthrough in central-Shanghai front. These divisions have approximately 60% of maximum org values.
29th August
Another marine corps was ordered and given priority over the factory production.
We are being defeated at the southern section of the Shanghai front because of supply shortages reducing the effectiveness of our units. Defeats in bad areas are making our positions untenable in good areas too, so we're forced to pull back more units then we'd like. However the whole front is riding on how long the mountain divisions take to march inland and how well they will perform once they reach there. The Chinese are pressing in on Nanjing.
31st August
I have to recognise that we will be defeated in the areas south of Shanghai. Whilst I have identified a line I would like to hold in a bay 2 provinces south of the port, we will force the Chinese to drive us back to the port. They must be made to expend their strength fighting us, if we allow them to pen us in at no cost they will easily win the war. In the north, the Qingdao-Shanxi region will be joined shortly to create a continous front from Xiebi, east to Jinan then south to the border with Nanchang.
Here you can get a feel for the war, the units in the east are the reinforcing mountain corps. You can see we are being battered aside by the sheer power of the Chinese armies. Hopefully when the front settles down we will have a favourable position. We have two panzer divisions in reserve. If they are deployed they will be broken into four divisions of LT-Mot 6,000 men. This is my safety on the Shanghai front but for now they sit off the coast aboard the navy to avoid stressing Shanghai supplies. We don't want to over-react and send in the units just yet as they may weaken our current fighting divisions due to supply, best to watch the current forces give the chinese, and recieve, a mauling.
2nd September
We're forced with withdraw in large parts of southern-shanghai front as around half the divisions have lost their organisation, the remaining half will be used to avoid any divisions being wiped out on the march back towards a defendable position.
It was painful to be pushed back here, we were at the gates of Wuhan and Nanchang.
Victory is not considered possible. I will need a large bomber force and special forces only to beat the Chinese. Where we created binary divisions to ease supply problems in Yunan, they are smashed. If we peace now we only lose some land in eastern Guanxi with no IC value.
We offered peace to the Nationalists, they accepted.
3rd September
Invasion port-mortem.
Key notes
- The Yunan front was unable to defend itself from a Chinese push westwards. In three key areas our defences were pushed back, threatening two entire corps with being cut off northwards.
- These two cavalry corps in the north, one was set to binary divisions to defend the northern frontier whilst the other cavalry division was in theory, to force a quick surrender of Xiebi. However due to supplies, they were moving at 1.6kmph. This completely destroyed our entire Yunan strategy, in addition nationalist forces seemed to be suffering similar supply and they were slow to leave Xiebi-Yunan, despite having early orders to do so. This cost us a lot of time from our attack.
- At Guanxi we were being pushed back when one chinese division attacked one of ours, despite the terrain modifiers hilly/mountainous. However every attempt by us to attack failed miserably with 5-15% progress and our organisation value falling frighteningly fast.
- At Shanxi, we enjoyed the biggest successes of the war pushing slowly into Xiebis eastern frontier, holding our lines and managing to take 4-5 provinces off the nationalists.
- At Shanghai I think we were too ambitious with normal infantry. It is clear that we cannot supply a bigger army, yet we were being smashed by enemy numbers. In every province where we were supply strapped, the effect of the negative supply modifier was strong enough to make a japanese division weaker then a chinese division. This was mainly responsible for the southern Shanghai line collapse.
- In central shanghai we were unable to hold our positions due to our forces being too spread out further south. Our pre-war vision of cavalry being able to encircle the Chinese divisions was shattered by the sheer quantity and quality of soldiers China was able to confront us with after our initial advance. We were left in little doubt that in a long war, this entire Shanghai offensive would of been pushed back into the port.
*Lessons learned
Cavalry are not strong enough versus Chinese divisions. As a purely encircling force, we already have enough with two entire cavalry corps so the further corps of cavalry in production was cancelled.
We need special forces and serious airpower. Our standard infantry cannot be deployed in the numbers needed to defeat the Chinese, so we need to deploy special forces only.
Actions taken
20 carrier air groups were ordered to be the airforce in China. This came at a cost of 70ICs for 17 months.
10 airbases were ordered to allow a distributed positioning of air assets over the front. This came at a cost of 14 ICs for 126 days.
We will have to build two armies of special forces. These will be built closer to the time they are needed to reduce upgrade costs, but two armies are 500,000 men or 10 corps.
I expect our 'shopping list' to be completed late '45 as a rough guide.
The alternative is to create a great power economy, which we can supply with advanced technologies and our empire. At the moment we have many conquests which are not being effectively leveraged towards powering ICs.