Battle for the Pacific AAR

[scottsmm]

arado I admire Tim's courage in the face of defeat.

[arado234]

Absolutly scottsmm.NEVER SURRENDER.Even if it means Japan becomes an atomic wasteland.

[scottsmm]

The war continues as Hiroshima falls, Chungking will fall on my next turn, and Osaka/Kyoto is likely going to fall in 2-3 turns. Meanwhile Tim is frantically trying to get reinforcements over to Tokyo and Seoul/Mukden, although it's too little too late at this point, as a new major offensive which will commence soon will likely destroy any hope of Japan surviving until January 46'.

[scottsmm]

9 turns left as the Allies close in on Kyoto.

[scottsmm]

The Allies are making a painfully slow crawl up to Tokyo, where there is an abundance of Japanese troops, the only good news is that the Allies are only one turn away from celebrating the complete capitulation of all Japanese forces in China. There is however only 8 turns left for me to capture Kyoto, Seoul, and of course Tokyo.

Hopefully Tim will make a post soon so that everyone will get both sides of the story, and not just mine.

[Timskorn]

Yes, time is thankfully on our side now and each turn counts. Rain over Japan has been extremely favorable to Japanese troops digging in against US troops who are making their way up, but they have a lot of bodies, mountainous terrain and erratic supply lines to deal with along the way. A US division tried an amphibious landing just west of Tokyo, but the beaches were well defended and the next turn was annihilated. We are allowing little room for US troops to land by sea. An SNLF division makes a bold attempt to head back home from Korea and manages to safely skirt past the Allied navy. They will be most useful in the defense of Tokyo.

In China we have an Army and artillery at Sian holding off the Chinese hordes, but that is all they can do. Chungking has fallen and what units we could pull back from China are now defending Seoul. Troops are also being pulled back to better defensive positions against the impending Soviet attack. We may be able to incur enough losses to force a peace treaty with the Allies before they can take our capital. Weather will be a big determining factor in that!!

[arado234]

If the weather was anything like battle I had with KSW then Timskorn you will be quite pleased.I had quite alot of rain.You may luck out.

Have the A-bombs started dropping yet?They cause massive damage to the troops on the city.

[scottsmm]

They’re not going to be dropped, because I've basically captured every city in which the bombs would have been used on. Either way I'm preparing my airborne forces for a special operation in which should win me the war, enough said .

[Timskorn]

The steel beasts have landed in Japan, to which we have little defense against. The US lost a unit last turn from our counter-attack against Kyoto and retook the city. They retake it and we counter-attack again and destroy another invader. Our most experienced troops are now being sent to the front lines outside Tokyo but even they won't be able to hold up against the armor units, so all that is left is....BANZAIIIII!!!!

[scottsmm]

I would like to thank you Tim for such a good game, because if the skies are clear on my next turn it will be checkmate. You've put up one hell of a fight as Japan but in the end it was no match to what the Allied combined forces were able to deploy against you. You might have done much better if the GV was at a different level, because then you would have stood a much better chance in India but in the end the British 8th Army saved the Allies from potential defeat. It's been one good game and I've learned a lot from it, thanks once again.

Back to the actual game, my Aircraft carriers (Brits and American) have been reinforced and along with my ground air force (Brits and American) will combine for a knockout punch against Tokyo where there is currently a Japanese tank unit. Of course this is weather permitting, but I expect that the gods are finally going to give me the green light and the 11th Airborne will raise the flag over Tokyo. The USSR has finally joined the Allies although her entry is really pointless at this time as there is very little for her level 4 tanks to do. In Korea a US heavy tank division has moved in and has deemed Seoul as secure. In Japan my heavy tank unit destroys another Japanese Army division.

[Timskorn]

Yes and thank you too, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did! And I hope everyone else enjoyed reading along with the AAR. Scott is a great opponent and look forward to playing him again someday and good luck to anyone who faces him.

You have clear skies this turn, but we hope to fight on another day. It's currently August 18th, 1945 and Japan puts into service her last produced unit of the war, an AA battery outside Tokyo, giving the capital duel defenses against the impending Allied air assault. It likely won't be enough to slow down the 20 or so strikes I expect on my defenders, but if we are given another turn after the city is captured we will most certainly take it back!

Outside Seoul and US SF unit is destroyed as the combined IJA forces in the area converge, simultaneously attacking the US and fleeing the Russians!

[scottsmm]

Japan surrenders as Tokyo along with Kyoto has finally been brought to her knees. The victory is bitter sweet as I have to admit that I did get a bit of luck throughout the entire campaign and this is without question a factor in my eventual totally victory. Japan surrendered at a good time though, because on the turn she surrendered I authorized the use of the Atomic bombs. I will write a more lengthy composition tomorrow on the events of the war, but as for right now I'm pretty tired, and I just want to go to bed.

[Timskorn]

A long, brutal war. Congrats Scott!

[scottsmm]

Congrats to you too Tim, after all you were the one who took the side of the underdog and you had me on the ropes for quite a portion of the campaign. I honestly feel that I did my best against you and I thought for a while that I was going to lose both India and China and therefore get publically humiliated on this forum. In the end however I got a bit of luck and from there I had the huge industry mite of the US industries and that ultimately won the game for me.

Some things that I noticed that you could have done better with would have been to be much more aggressive in the early going (capture all initial objectives by Feb 42' not Aug 42'. To have kept any worthless unit on Diampur once you captured it to make China fall. The last thing I think you could have done better at is something which could have backfired on you if it failed and that is to have your entire navy engage me in one big titanic battle. If you won this then you would have almost certainly of had a much better chance to get at least a stalemate. However if you lost this battle I would have become extremely aggressive and would have moved on Japan much earlier then what I did (I was still rushed when I did launch my attack on the Japanese home islands). You also could have chose to move your 13 strength army into Kyoto at the very end of the campaign and this would have postponed the ending, but I wonder if you did this purposely as you probably observed the hopelessness of your situation.

Some of the mistakes I made in this campaign would be the disaster of the British navy early on in the game, giving away my navy units locations because of pointless small islands spotting them, and a few times when I had Chinese units attack your Japanese units which in experience your units where much stronger then mine (this didn't happen a lot). I'm sure you noted some other mistakes that I made in this campaign and I look forward to hearing how I could better myself. Once again I have to thank you on a most interesting struggle, it was a blast . btw I haven't forgotten about your diary and I look forward to seeing that too.

[Timskorn]

To be honest, there is little in terms of "mistakes" that I can point out in your war effort. You played a very good game on all sides of the war. Your defense of India was well done, and shuttling in US aircraft early on to assist helped a great deal. In my diary I made assumptions about Britain's ability to defend India, and was going on the assumption you had far less units available than you actually had. In this sense you were able to delay my advance into India long enough to allow the US to come to its aid. I made plenty of my own mistakes there to have sealed my doom, let alone having an opponent who took advantage of them. One thing is for sure, once I pulled the entire IJN out of the area, I essentially gave up on the Indian campaign. Without their tac and air support my troops were doomed to failure.

However, I wasn't prepared to take on the USN either. My fleet had slowly been whittled down over time, and my carriers weren't full strength. I had a feeling you would come up to hit me and trap me near India like I did with the RN, and as you'll see in my diary I felt that not only would I have lost that fight, but the way to Japan would have been wide open. Having all my carriers intact would, hopefully, had kept you more cautious in your advance on Japan and buy me time. As I underestimated Britain's defense, I may have also overestimated the USN's offense. If I had wanted to I could have shuttled in more air to Malaya and tried to make a stand there, but I chose to steam back to Japan and refit. I just had little confidence in my ability to get into a situation where I could sink a lot of your carriers, which is the only result that could possibly slow down the US advance on Japan.

The only thing I'll say is that you could have done some things different, but it doesn't mean what you did was "wrong". What I mean is, because I abandoned the outer islands, the USN could have been used to attack me elsewhere while the IJA was in India. At the very least, to establish an airbase to station bombers to hit my supply ports in DEI, Brunei and possibly even Malaya. At most, an invasion of the Phillipines or even an aggressive push against Japan itself. These actions would have spooked me to shift my fleet back towards Japan prematurely. Because in the end, the IJA is the only threat against the USN. If you can see all my carriers in India then it'll take a month or more before they could steam back to Japan or even the Philippines area.

But as you mention you were fearful about losing India, so it makes sense that you sent the USN there first. In China I criticized the fact you walled off about 5+ units behind the river to the north, as that allowed me to easily head for Chungking and bypass those units. In the end though it helped keep China from surrendering, even if the capital was in my hands.

Also, by coming at me later with the USN, rather than earlier you helped to scare me away from a conflict. Had you steamed the USN to India by early 1943 I would have felt that I had a numerical advantage and had welcomed a fight. Since you came later, and more teched up I decided to retreat.

So, again, very well played game Scott!

[scottsmm]

Tim the whole point of building those fortifications was to save China from surrendering and because I knew you would need Changyeh before China would surrender and because of its terrain it would take a lot of time for you to make any sizable advance. In the end I realized that if I fought you around Chungking all I would have done is doomed China to surrender, as there would be no units left to defend Changyeh once Chungking/Kunming would inevitable fall.