Japan - No Ships

quetzilla said:

With starting techs you get 3 paras in one transport (15/5 = 3). airborne equipment reduces weight by one, and cargo hold increases capacity by 1, so you get 16/4 = 4. You need 4 more levels of cargo hold to get 5 brigades in a transport.. so 1947? .

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Hmm maybe my invading mainland USA time then Tech rushing is slower in 1.3 (beta). so I don't think I will get thereto early.

29th June : Japanese launch Plan Asia

The Japanese launched near simultaneous attacks on various allied targets. Notably Singapore and Saigon fell without a shot being fire. However, Additional landings took place across the area. The most notable battles were:

Hong Kong : Both ground based attacks and paratrooper landings took place against the British Garrison.


Rangoon : The port was quickly surrounded by Japanese landings and the pocket started to rapidly close in. There was no sigh of British reinforcement, their forces being mainly focused in Europe.



Hanoi The French garrison forces were set back from the coast allowing the Japanese to take the port and cut of any supplies. As Saigon was also taken the French did not have any major ports left in Indochina.



Malaysia As with the French in Indochina the British lost all of their ports in the area without a shot. Japanese paratroopers did engage the British in the jungle north of Singapore though.



Early July - Dutch Indonesia With Singapore taken the Japanese now had the range to start attacking the Dutch in Indonesia. Although in they desperately wanted to take the population centres and oil fields. The first step was to encircle and crush the Dutch army in the region.

July 1939 : Plan Asia Accelerates

(I have to admit I got carried away and did not stop to try and remember/screen shot the details. Bad me! So here is a big summary of the events of July as best as I can remember)


*Red = Ground Attacks
*Blue = Air Assaults.
*Yellow = Planned ground movements as of 3rd August.

1 : 29th June War declared on Allies. Attacks begin against the most important ports and airfields.
2 : ~8th July As the first priority targets are crushed. Additional forces are sent to surround the Dutch army. Troops are also send to capture critical oil fields that require a long march to get to.
3 : ~16th July With the Dutch army crushed massive paratrooper waves take all remaining Dutch resources and strategic points. Holland becomes a government in exile based on the eastern Indonesian Islands with minimal resources and Industry. Japan decides to switch focus to India rather than take every province.
4 : ~21st July British air field in Mandalay is taken without a fight. It is Immediately put to use as a staging point to launch further air attacks.
5 : ~22nd July Japanese take the ports and Calcutta and Chittagong. While neither port is defended a British division is discovered between the two ports and is promptly encircled.
6 : ~27th July Attacks are launched north to try and destroy the British puppets of Nepal and Bhutan.
7 : ~31st July A temporary airfield is created in central India to be used as a staging post to reach the west coast of India.
8 : ~1st August Bombay is captured without a fight.

quetzilla said:

I just did a similar take over of dutch east indies in my game as nationalist spain, only with amphibious landings along the coast (land, then move back to the transports with ctrl-right click). I have to hold off on malaysia for the moment as the british fleet still outguns mine and I'd rather not lose the two battleships I started with .

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Aye. Taking the provinces by air or sea is easy but then you need to get your troops to slog it back to the ports/airfields. Luckily I have enough paratroopers now that I can move onto India while men are still marching through the jungle in Indonesia and Indochina.

Indonesia has crazy manpower, even with occupation penalties and overseas penalties I got a significant boost. I can only imagine what independent indonesia would get...!

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Oil and manpower! Two things I can not get enough of I am less worried about resources and IC, ultimately all I really want to build is paratroopers (the limit just now being manpower) and have enough fuel to keep my planes operational. My biggest fear is I will start to run out of fuel and no longer be able to jump them at will.

August 8th : British India effectively lost.

With the capture of Bombay the British defence of India was in serious jeopardy. However barely a week later on the 8th of August India was effectively in Japanese hands.



The Japanese had captured all of the major ports on mainland India. Also Bhutan finally surrendered and Nepal was surrounded and their troops gradually pushed back into the mountains. Any British troops left in India would soon start to run low on supplies, where as the Japanese troop numbers in the area were still increasing as they moved more divisions west from the jungles of Indonesia.

The British did have reasonable raiding opportunities though. The Japanese were unwilling to attack either the Maldives or the Nicobar Islands as neither had an airfield capable of lifting paratroopers up again if the islands were taken. As such it would take almost 5 months to build airfields to remove any troops that took the islands.

Colombo however did look like a viable target for the Japanese. Their net phase would be to capture the airfields there and subdue the remaining large cities especially Delhi. After that the Japanese planned to push through and attack Afghanistan and Persia.

Enewald said:

The AI is still no match for you.
All the airbases are belong to Japan! :rofl:

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The British AI simply does not have enough troops in India. I don't think it would hardly matter what tactics I used. I suspect the real fighting is a couple of months away when I get into Europe

12th August, Nepal Surrenders

14th August Delhi and surrounding cities fall.

Another massive series of paratrooper jumps :



This time the Japanese attacked along an entire length of railway taking every station on route, including capturing the engines and railway cars. Thus as soon as the troops had landed they had supplies and were able to rebase to the airfields by train rather than matching.

15th August -> 1st September : Japanese crush remaining British in the India Theatre



#1 16th August : To speed up the final moves in the south of India, Japanese paratroopers were sent to take the airfield at Cochin. It would be immediately use to launch attacks on Colombo.
#2 17th August : 7 Divisions (35 Brigades) were sent to attack Colombo. The British forces only numbers 2 Divisions (3 Infantry, 3 Garrison brigades).
#3 18th August : The British punished Japan for leaving their ports on the Nicobar and Maldives intact. 2 British Infantry divisions (6 brigades) launched a raid and liberated Madras from the Japanese. However within hours they were surrounded and under attack from 3 Japanese Airborne divisions. (15 brigades)
#4 20th August : Japanese launch attack against Oman.
28th August : Musqat falls, Oman surrenders.
1st September :: Japan declares war on Persia.


1st September -> 14th September : The race to Bagdad.

(To make sense of some of the actions here you need to understand the paratrooper mechanics in 1.3 (beta). Paratroopers can not be loaded onto planes on an airfield < level 1. A full strength level 1 airfield is ok though. If there is any fighting at an airfield it will likely be damaged and on low infrastructure provinces can take a long time to recover. However, planes can land and take off from any level of airfield. Thus a damaged level 1 or even a newly placed airfield can be used to launch airborne assaults provided the troops were loaded from another airfield.

In this case both Musqat and Bandar-e 'Abbas were damaged and so I was unable to load paratroopers back onto the planes there. The only way I could make my troops effective again was to get to a bigger airfield, Baghdad.

< level 1 airfields are marked red on the maps.
)



The Japanese quickly captured Bandar-e 'Abbas from the Persian Garrison. However, the airfield was badly damaged and it would be several weeks until paratroopers could be loaded safely onto planes there. It was however used to stage further airborne assaults from Japanese troops heading west from India. Within days Tehran and other strategic objectives were either taken or surrounded.

Further raids were launched against the eastern side of Iraq. The port in Kuwait fell without a shot as the British had not Garrisoned it. However the crucial airfield of Baghdad was out of range from the Japanese planes. As such a staging airfield was set up in Kuwait and as yet more Japanese troops flew out of India raids against Baghdad and other Iraqi targets were quickly launched.

The Allied resistance in Iraq was varied. The Iraqi national troops were poorly equipped and often under strength even before battles started. on the other hand there was a small number of well equipped , and well trained British troops, that drew out the process of capturing Baghdad for the best part of a week.

The end result was never in doubt though. By the 14th of September both Iraq and Persia had become territories of the Japanese Empire.

Finally the Japanese paratroopers could get to an airfield where they could load back onto planes.

Enewald said:

Painting the world yellow from air.
Everyone must be afraid of the Imperial Japanese Airforce.

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You would think... But as you will see unfortunately for the AI in Eastern Europe not afraid enough to mobilize their ground forces. The following attacks into Europe would probably have ended the same if they had been mobilized but it would have taken much longer. Also there is a good chance some of the countries would either have joined Axis, or been attacked / annexed by Axis.

15th September -> 29th September : To the edge of Europe



Following the fall of Baghdad the Japanese quickly laid plans to push on, the oil/fuel worries were starting to ease now. However, there were still several divisions fighting their way their way towards Yemen. Thus Japan's next step was to declare war on Saudi Arabia hoping to link up with their troops in Yemen and finally solve their fuel worries. On the 15th of September war was declared. It took just 2 days of fighting in Riyadh but eventually the Royal family was captured and forced to surrender to the Japanese.

At the same time Paratroopers dropped all across the middle east Beirut was captured by the Japanese from France only hours before Vichy France made peace with Germany and took over the area. Japan also made its first footsteps in Africa as paratroopers landed across the Suez. British resistance in the area was minimal.



On the 23rd of September The Suez was finally complete controlled and Japanese supply convoys (Japan's only ships) started sailing into the middle east. Immediately attacks were launched on Cyprus, which once again was undefended by the British. The then followed another lull for several days as Japanese troops from across the middle east made their way back to airfields and were flown to Cyprus.

26th -> 29th September : War with Turkey



On the 26th of September Japan declared war on Turkey. The attack was massive in scale with some 12 Divisions (60 Brigades) attacking and surrounding Ankara alone. Also the Turkish understandably had most of their troops on the Soviet, Bulgarian and now Japanese borders. Their interior had almost no defence as the Japanese paratroopers flew overhead and started to drop. The only area other than Ankara were there was resistance was Istanbul. Again this was surrounded and attack from all directions. Turkey surrendered after only 3 days of fighting.