An Idiots Guide To Losing Your CV's Before 1942: WiTP:AE KyzBP vs UCG

[JasonPratt]

I don't think the big difference has been Geek's aggression -- the Japanese were historically very aggressive in prosecuting the early war.

I think the big difference is that the Imperial forces in the game have 100% unity of command (namely UGeek); whereas in real life Japanese generals and admirals within and across services constantly lied to and kept important secrets from each other, in ongoing attempts to leverage the war for their own personal advantages. (Plus a sort of artistic cultural habit of speaking obliquely about formal matters, which translated into honor/shame guessing games about what each person actually means.) American (and it was mostly American) inter- and intra-service command rivalries were problematic enough to be the chief inspiration for Eisenhower's argument for a Supreme Allied Commander for the ETO, but they were pale shadows compared to upper echelon Imperial problems. (Mid-level military managers, having to deal with actual combat at the point of fire, tended to work out most of the real cooperation between and within the Japanese services. They didn't have the luxury of playing power games.)

Eliminate that factor (or mostly so, since Geek has to keep a Manchuria garrison except in dire emergency triggers), and Geek can put the full Imperial Army and Navy power into effect.

[KyzBP]

March 27th, 1942

Sub attack at Truk.

The cool thing about this was the Greenling had hit a mine before engaging this AKL.  Her tubes are damaged.  I liked that
the sub attacked on the surface because of the earlier damage.  It's the little details that make this game so awesome.

Attu bombarded.

This may seem pointless but it served 2 purposes.  First, I had a few ships at Dutch that weren't doing anything so this will help
them build experience.  Second, I can recon through bombardment.  The info at the bottom of the result screen tells me that the
79th Infantry Rgt. is present.  It however, doesn't tell me the strength.

Rockhampton bombarded.

This was the only way I could blunt his airstrikes.  It won't last long but it may allow me to hit his ground troops for a bit.
I'm still surprised he pulled all his naval power out of here.  I imagine the upcoming Burma/India campaign is going to be a
doozy.

ASW at AM.

We continue to plug away at his subs here.  We have to make the Risk/Reward ratio as unfavorable as possible.

Brisbane bombed.

A much lighter attack courtesy of the earlier bombardment at Rockhampton.  I would keep the bombardments up there but
his DD TF has been sighted near Rockham.  Now isn't the time to get the rest of my Oz Navy beat up.

B-26's bomb Bihoro.

We hit the airfield twice and neither time was there any aircraft present.  He must have them farther back.  I may send the CV's
a little closer and see if I can hit one of the other airfields.  Once Slash Field on Uruppu-Jima is up and running I should be able
to hit anything on Hokkaido with the Marauders.

The invasion of Palmyra begins.

So far so good but 41 coastal guns makes me a little nervous.  Geek may have more here than I thought.

Geek troops attempt to stop me on the beaches.

Crap!  He has a lot more there than I thought.  If those units are near full strength then he has nearly 10k in troops.
I'm bringing about half that to the dance.  I may not be ready for this yet.

Nope. >:(

I think I just wasted my Raider Bn's.  I'll play this out a bit longer.  There are still some inbound units but Palmyra may
need to be softened up a while longer before taking it.

The invasion force out paced the bombardment TF so they hit the beach ahead of the pre landing bombardment.  That was a
coastly mistake.

AND we lost another Chinese base.

Next time I play this I think I'll sub-contract out China.  I'm clearly no good at it. :(

[KyzBP]

I don't think the big difference has been Geek's aggression -- the Japanese were historically very aggressive in prosecuting the early war.

I think the big difference is that the Imperial forces in the game have 100% unity of command (namely UGeek); whereas in real life Japanese generals and admirals within and across services constantly lied to and kept important secrets from each other, in ongoing attempts to leverage the war for their own personal advantages. (Plus a sort of artistic cultural habit of speaking obliquely about formal matters, which translated into honor/shame guessing games about what each person actually means.) American (and it was mostly American) inter- and intra-service command rivalries were problematic enough to be the chief inspiration for Eisenhower's argument for a Supreme Allied Commander for the ETO, but they were pale shadows compared to upper echelon Imperial problems. (Mid-level military managers, having to deal with actual combat at the point of fire, tended to work out most of the real cooperation between and within the Japanese services. They didn't have the luxury of playing power games.)

Eliminate that factor (or mostly so, since Geek has to keep a Manchuria garrison except in dire emergency triggers), and Geek can put the full Imperial Army and Navy power into effect.

That's a much better way of getting across what I was trying to say.  The Japanese, as far as I know, never invaded Australia.  ;)

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

They did.  They were just much sneakier about it that you'd imagine.

[KyzBP]

That's good, SDR! ;D

[FarAway Sooner]

I don't think the big difference has been Geek's aggression -- the Japanese were historically very aggressive in prosecuting the early war.

I think the big difference is that the Imperial forces in the game have 100% unity of command (namely UGeek); whereas in real life Japanese generals and admirals within and across services constantly lied to and kept important secrets from each other, in ongoing attempts to leverage the war for their own personal advantages. (Plus a sort of artistic cultural habit of speaking obliquely about formal matters, which translated into honor/shame guessing games about what each person actually means.) American (and it was mostly American) inter- and intra-service command rivalries were problematic enough to be the chief inspiration for Eisenhower's argument for a Supreme Allied Commander for the ETO, but they were pale shadows compared to upper echelon Imperial problems. (Mid-level military managers, having to deal with actual combat at the point of fire, tended to work out most of the real cooperation between and within the Japanese services. They didn't have the luxury of playing power games.)

Eliminate that factor (or mostly so, since Geek has to keep a Manchuria garrison except in dire emergency triggers), and Geek can put the full Imperial Army and Navy power into effect.

It's ironic, because you look at the shit that went on between American, UK, and French commanders, and you realize it's a miracle the Allies won the war in Western Europe.  But then, you look at the absolute strategic bullshit that afflicted both the Japanese and the Germans--who had none of the cross-cultural challenges to deal with compared to the Allies--and you realize just how much better the strategic leadership was for the West.

Tactical leadership was a whole different issue.  But strategic leadership?  The German and Japanese high commands couldn't find their collective asses with their own two hands if they weren't wearing pants.

[JasonPratt]

I think there were competent and even brilliant upper-echelon leaders among both the Germans and the Japanese. It's just that their social cultures encouraged fighting for power among themselves in two somewhat-different kinds of treacherous despotism.

Hitler tried to solve that problem by micromanaging from the top, which would have worked better if he hadn't been super-evil and insane.  ::) :P

Tojo, by contrast, didn't have the personal horsepower to impose his will on the seething plots and counterplots to force strategic decisions coherently.

[FarAway Sooner]

Agreed, Jason.  No commentary at all on the smarts of the individuals serving under them.

Unsuccessful Fortune 500 companies are chock-full of smart senior leaders who couldn't function together effectively.  Same story on both Axis high commands and the cultures in which they operated.

I have no idea how disfunctional the German high command was in the early years of the war.  But my sense is that Hitler's micromanagement was a problem from the start, and as soon as he stopped getting lucky in his guesses (e.g., Stalingrad) it became obvious.  If you look at the way Marshall handled the US war effort, even with all the gaffes they made and taking off the rosy-colored glasses, you could argue that it only took about 6-12 months for the Americans to get the right people in the right places to make reasonably good decisions. 

Of course, it helps when you're manufacturing more artillery shells than the other team is machine gun bullets...

[Sir Slash]

Just finishing the book, "The Most Dangerous Moment of the War" about the Japanese raid into the Indian Ocean in 1942. The author quotes Churchill as saying if Japan had successfully invaded Ceylon, his government would have fallen and a Peace Govt. would have followed. Leaving America to fight the rest of the war alone.  :o

[JasonPratt]

I just reached the point in Bergerud's Fire in the Sky (which I'm reading in tandem with his Touched By Fire), where he talks about the various strategic plans of "where next" that were being tossed around (and out) by the IJA and IJN senior brass (i.e., where Japan thought about going other than the South Pacific New Guinea / Solomon area). In his estimation, Ceylon would have been a disaster for the IJN (and the IJA) in the long run, although better than the other Far East plans on tap (i.e Persian Gulf or Madagascar, although had the North Africa and/or South Russian campaigns gone better those would have been worth exploring as long as Hitler decided to mutually cooperate. Which no Imperial senior officer at the time, nor Bergerud, thought he would.)

He doesn't think the British would have folded with any of those strikes, and might actually have reinvested. India was never going to play ball with Japan in any case, and was going to get its independence from Britain by then in any case, so mobilizing hard for a threat on Ceylon would have been a good political and strategic move for good faith future relations to Britain.

So it's interesting to see that Churchill thought a real possibility of folding existed with that success. One supposes he had a fair read of the political possibilities in which he was navigating. It goes to show that Japan had a theoretical chance of winning what they wanted by a political victory (cue the Clausewitz quote!) if they could just convince the other side(s) to give up and go home.

[Sir Slash]

The author--John Clancy-- has written 15 books but all local histories of S.E. England and has a degree but in Archeology not History. He opines that India and Ceylon would have been very tempted to revolt against England if cut-off by the IJN from their control and they had also considered an invasion of Madagascar to completely deny the Indian Ocean to the Brits rendering their position in the Middle East untenable and allowing a link-up with the Germans if they could push to the Suez Canal. The threat of losing all that together would've caused Britain to cave and make peace. Plausible or not it's an intriguing argument.

[FarAway Sooner]

It is intriguing.  The simple math of the IJN merchant marine made the logistical burden of getting supplies to more further-flung colonies a real challenge.  Unless they wanted to stop bringing oil back to Japan for their warships...

It sounds like it would have been a race between Japanese logistics and Commonwealth political will to see who wins.

If India were considering revolting, I wonder what Roosevelt might have been willing to promise in an effort to keep them on the Allied cause.  I don't think the Indians were in any frame of mind to welcome the Japanese as liberators...

Bergerud's Touched by Fire is good but I found Fire in the Sky to be better.  The only thing I really got out of the former was an appreciation of just how damn well the Aussie army fought in WWII.  I was aware that they'd whupped Rommel in North Africa and I knew they'd overcome some of the toughest conditions imaginable on the Kokoda Trail campaign, but I'd never connected the dots on how well they fought.

As for Churchill, he is certainly a very qualified commentator, but he was also never above slanting the narrative to tell a better story and to make himself a more heroic figure.  He was an instinctually political animal with a keen enthusiasm for being at the center of the spotlight, and I have a strong (although unresearched) impression that he sometimes let this color his analyses.

Honestly, I don't trust much British history around WW II.

[JasonPratt]

I kind of doubt India would revolt so much as ante up with the Japanese Empire right on their doorstep -- maybe leverage their cooperation in mutual interest with a faster or smoother withdrawal of colonial authority. Regardless of the rank and file, the Indian leaders had very good relations with Britain (for a colony of non-British seeking independence) and wanted to continue the economic relationship at least, thus also the political relationship.

[besilarius]

There was an article in the US Naval Institute Proceedings on the Indian Ocean Incursion.  It was a success, but only if you treated it as a raid.
By the time KB headed home, they were basically out of bombs and torpedoes.  Somerville recognized that he just had to keep a fleet in being to keep the Japanese from accomplishing anything long lasting.

[JasonPratt]

Bergerud says he agrees with the Imperial critics who argued that any attempt at pushing out a holding force of any size whatever (and proportionately worse as the size increased) could not be realistically supplied; not without ceding the Pacific totally to America in order to protect the supply line even only to Ceylon. They just didn't have the ships and aircraft (and perhaps subs vs surface raiders). Troops they could have gotten, had they reduced their numbers in Manchuria and/or China at large (which no one wanted to do for fear of Russia -- the Sovs had stomped them hard in recent pre-war years after the 1909 Japanese stunning victory over the Tsarist forces. IIRC, Zhukov was a key player in that.) Transports they could have gotten, despite Army whining otherwise -- all those excuses evaporated when disaster loomed in the Philippines and encroached in the Central Pacific. Sea power, they didn't have enough of, even supposing they had converted the Burmese coast into a way station which they hadn't gotten close to doing yet (and by the time they took the Burmese coast they had beaucoups other problems.)

This leads to an interesting analysis of whatever Geek may be planning, if those ships as Kyz has guessed are going to Ceylon. (I'm putting it that way because those of us reading his thread have a pretty clear idea what his plans are and aren't.)

Which I could speculate theoretically on, but I don't want to give wrong or right ideas!  :P ::) But I guess the question is, if he goes there, how do the map-edge game mechanics affect the possibilities of success for whatever he might try?