Back in Bayan Tumen the retreating enemy divisions are slowly being eliminated by ground attack from my interceptors. The interceptors are being used as this is an easy target and it will help build them up a bit. Whilst they should probably be off defending China there isn’t a suitable airfield for them to recover on so they might as well stay here for now.
01:00 25th October 1942 b
With the counter-attack on Bose broken off and full air support we have put in a three division drop on Wenshan. It may seem like an unimportant province but it is the only passable connection between the interior and SE Asia. The rest of the boundary between interior and SE Asian territory is blocked province borders.
Unfortunately the drop suffers from some really strange combat effects. Enemy troops from both adjacent provinces are moving (orders unknown) to Wenshan and the game has declared that I am attacking them for the right to occupy Wenshan. This seems more than a little unfair and given their numbers it is no great surprise that this attack ultimately fails and the Fallschirmjägers must retreat to Bose.
Over Burma my TAC based air patrols have intercepted the enemy bomber and will get to win handsomely due to numbers and combat bonuses. This is a good success but any major resurgence of enemy air power will cause big problems in this theatre.
The Marines have ventured back to the Philippines and the first landings are going in. Nine divisions are making three separate landings to secure the Southern Philippines. All have some naval support (strength very variable) but the landing forces are more than a match for the enemy divisions despite plain marine divisions being rather weak.
All forces are ashore successfully and immediately set about clearing the surrounding provinces of enemy presence. The next step is to take control of all of the Southern Philippines as a base for further offensive operations. Additional troops will be brought forward for the strike north so that the marines can be withdrawn for further amphibious operations (I need at least one more amphibious attack to take the Philippines for a start).
Allied Spy Plane picked up over Potsdam
Meanwhile additional game edits are beginning to have an effect. What appears to be an allied long-range reconnaissance aircraft has been spotted at night over the Potsdam research centre. Despite desperate measures the aircraft disappears without trace. Perhaps we shall see more ominous developments as the game progresses.
End of Month Review
This is rather an interesting end of month since we have just started on what has become a clearly understood plan. This leaves little to be said about what I intend to do next except for a brief restatement and a few facts and figures.
The current plan is to seal off SE Asia by land and try to starve them out by convoy attacks. This will be a long drawn out process since I gave all the British convoys and escorts to the Petal Throne. It is about time we made use of this sort of warfare again. The scale of this AAR should mean that all types of warfare occur in it and this seems like the perfect opportunity. For this purpose the reserve u-boat fleets in Europe are all being transferred to the east but this may take some time.
My main objectives in the next period will be to annex the Philippines and then move on Australia and New Zealand. I haven’t decided yet whether to detour north to take out Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Ryukus but this does seem like a likely choice. If I do detour it does have some interesting consequences involving security of these islands (they need garrisons and supplies). Once the Australia campaign is launched then units of all three arms will be moving south in massive numbers.
The Manchurian front is likely to be subject to German withdrawal at some point since I am not willing to commit troops on the scale needed to guarantee my defence against the Petal Throne forces already present. If I do withdraw then the security of primary air bases will be the paramount objective and any advances will be subject to punitive bombing.
I am currently considering a strategic bombing campaign of the Petal Throne and the following information is highly relevant.
The southern Japanese islands and Honshu, up to and including Tokyo, is within turbojet escort fighter range of the Chinese mainland. North of there has little IC. On the mainland there is significant IC in Korea, Manchuria and Vladivostok. I should be able to bomb most of their IC with escort fighters. By the time I launch such a campaign I will have a full set of turbojet tactical bombers and turbojet escort fighters making my air force highly competitive with any defending interceptors. Where necessary I will use advanced strategic bombers which shouldn’t fair too badly even without escorts.
Unfortunately the overall effect is likely to be rather disappointing due to their off map IC but it should result in major damage to their air force and maybe halving of their new unit production.
The industrial position is still not good so serious action will be taken immediately. I will start the month with a change of minister to exploit annexed/occupied IC much better than I have been. Remember the rules declared near the beginning of the game, one free minister change per year and this is the one for 1942. This should yield an additional 200 or so IC which is enough to address my underlying TC problem so that when I am in a low strategic movement state the TC will be green (when did we last see that?). In addition production levels will continue to be reduced. Current production is as follows
26 air base runs
1 naval base run
8 CV IV runs
8 CVL III runs
7 CA IV runs
12 DD V runs
4 strategic bomber I runs to end Dec 24th releasing 52.8 IC
4 TAC IV runs to end May 25th 1943 releasing 41.2 IC
1 Fallschirmjäger run
1 Air transport run
9 StuH 42 runs, 8 runs to finish soon
16 Esc Ftr II runs to be ended Nov 4th releasing 43.2 IC
2 HQ runs
3 CAG runs
Builds of TAC and SB are 2 steps obsolete against current technology and Escort Fighters will be once jet technology is researched.
As you can see I am releasing a further 90 IC before the end of the year and some more before Mid 1943. This should yield sufficient surplus to balance the books on supplies and to start reasonable progress on upgrades. Despite many upgrades currently being blocked waiting for final technology I am currently only about 50% funding despite having already terminated a fair amount of production. Current upgrades are mostly CAS to turbojet models and strategic bombers to advanced. Soon upgrading will be the TACs and all of my artillery brigades. TACs with escort fighters will be blocked from upgrading until there are two steps available for the escort fighters.
Current German Strength
Army
150 Inf, 1 Cav, 48 Mot, 48 Arm, 8 Para, 12 Marine, 12 Mtn, 82 Garr, 10 HQ, 45 Mil
Navy
48 CV, 10 CVL, 1 BC, 39 CA, 16 CL, 115 DD, 139 u-boat, 82 Transport
Air
64 Int, 64 CAS, 28 Str, 144 TAC, 47 NAV, 11 Trans, 96 Esc Ftr
