Now the time has finally arrived to begin the Mongolian campaign. I have concentrated my initial attacks against two provinces so as to achieve decent odds. The size of the enemy forces is such that I need to be careful about dispersing my effort. If I attack too many stacks at once my offensive forces will lose a lot of org and things are likely to fall apart later in the campaign. For now I am trying to get things moving with the minimum of casualties. All forces involved are put on attack supply and with movement starting it soon becomes apparent just how bad my TC situation is. It was bad with all the mobile divisions stationary and now it is a lot worse.
The two attacks are supported by two complete air fleets. By assigning them after the battles started I managed to get a full 16 TACs on interdiction against each target. Just for information the second attack must have used either a nearest battle or least supported battle rule to get all their air support there. It does prove that you can use a lot of air support in one air sector as long as you have more than one battle.
Following this initial attack the air support has to remain on interdiction as they immediately return to the pointless behind the lines dug in targets. You should assume there are no ground support missions destroying units in northern China until I indicate otherwise. Even the interdiction missions are semi-pointless since the targets are irrelevant small groups of enemy division who have already had their org reduced to minimum levels. The air targeting rules remain a real problem.
The u-boat fleet demonstrates its inability to deal with small IPT destroyer task forces and yet again I am losing u-boats. This is all very annoying as the enemy force isn’t all that big. I guess we will have to go for the traditional u-boat run away process. It looks like big u-boat fleets are unable to defend themselves so I may be much better off deploying small reconnaissance forces that have a better chance of not being spotted.
Further south that big IPTN taskforce has attacked Palembang and badly damaged a couple of transports before running away. This is a fairly harmless activity and I can stop worrying about them attacking anything else.
The escorted transport fleet heading to pick up garrisons seems to be having a quite exciting and successful journey. Just for once a few of my destroyers are gaining credit for sinking enemy ships. I have to admit the provision of a large destroyer escort was based on the hope of meeting a few enemy submarines and other small fleets. Usually I am pretty poor at sinking submarines as we never close to destroyer range but in this case I have nothing else so my fleet either runs or closes.
This is called making a mistake. The IPTN taskforce hasn’t run for home as expected but has headed north to set upon my u-boats. Unfortunately the u-boats are too stupid to run away and promptly lose three flotillas as a result of closing within CVL range. This is all very horrible and now ALL the u-boats must run for port although they won’t even be safe there.
This is a classic air-ground-air attack sequence going through its ground stage. The bombers have been on interdiction to prepare the target for this ground attack and once the enemy is retreating the bombers will switch to ground attack and destroy them. This process is slowly working through all the French divisions south of the River Congo using 12 SB squadrons and 16 TAC squadrons.
With the IPTN taskforce some way off I am moving my transports to the ports where the marines are located ready for potential operations against the next two Indonesian VP provinces which lie just to the northeast. The usual enemy dross turn up and end up beaten up if not sunk.
Kriegsmarine taskforces are now in place in all the sea zones leading to the next two VP provinces so I am now looking at launching a quick invasion whilst things are reasonably quiet.
Now the big IPTN taskforce is returning to the Singapore area. A bit of bombing will soften them up but this does take the pressure off the u-boats and it looks like they can regroup safely. It is a bit of a puzzle a I cannot tell what the AI is up to. I’m not going to run away as this task force is manageable but I will be keeping a close eye on it.
My fleeing u-boats have a change of heart and decide that for a change maybe they could have a turn sinking something. I suppose this is a refreshing change but it still isn’t all that encouraging.
