Naval Strength and Organization

    Naval forces are strange.  You take years to build them up, then they sit around for another few years, consuming precious supplies, just waiting for the few brief hours when they’re relevant.  But, during those few hours, they are the most important parts of the game.  Then they go back to being nearly useless for another couple years.  Even so, I find the naval part of Heart of Iron every bit as interesting as the land campaigns.

     As with my air forces, I like to keep my navy fairly simple.  I keep my transports in separate fleets, and escort them with combat fleets when necessary.  I dislike submarines; they’re easy to sink, useless in battles, have a minimal strategic impact, and eat up way too much research.  So, my navies are generally made up of two types of fleets: carrier fleets and gunship fleets.  I use my carrier fleets for “backbreaking” duty.  I send them in for first, biggest, battles.  They help soften up the enemy’s major fleets, in particular wearing out the enemy’s air crews.  After the main fighting is done, they’re handy for port strikes and anti-submarine duty.  The biggest problem with aircraft carriers, however, is that they are only good for one or two battles before the CAGs wear out, and the entire fleet becomes largely useless.  Thus, the need for gunship fleets.  I use battleship-based fleets for finishing up the enemy’s fleets, wiping out the smaller groups, shore bombardments, and anti-convoy duty.

     For my carrier groups I prefer to use two full carriers, accompanied by 5-7 destroyers.  While light cruisers have better anti-aircraft, destroyers are still pretty good with AA, are better for submarine hunting, and are cheaper to build and replace.  I don’t use escort carriers; why spend three quarters of the resources for a ship with half the punching power?

     My gunship groups can get a bit more complicated.  My ideal fleets are two battleships, accompanied by 5-7 light cruisers.  Of course, I usually have many smaller capital ships at the beginning of the game, and tend to try to work those into existing fleets when possible.  I prefer battleships, though, because they’re longer range, bigger punch and better hull makes them flat-out better in combat than battle-cruisers and heavy cruisers.  My feeling is that if you’re going to have a navy, build one that wins battles decisively, and preferably without taking any major losses.  Cruisers have better anti-aircraft and mission range, but come up short when it counts.  As for the escorts, I prefer light cruisers over destroyers because they are more suitable in ship-to-ship combat, which is what these fleets are designed for.  I will, however, use destroyers in some cases, especially if I want to simplify my research.

     One of the drawbacks of playing the Big Three (USA, UK, and Japan), is that they start with established navies, frequently composed of ships that I wouldn’t build, and others that start to show their age about halfway through the war.  Japan starts out with 98 ships (including the destroyer being built), which run the gambit.  The 20 transports are somewhat useful, but with the new transport craft introduced with Their Finest Hour, these are a lot less of an advantage than they used to be.  The three carriers are good (carriers don’t really age as much as other ships), and the six battleships are also nice, but you’re also saddled with an escort carrier, four battle-cruisers, eight submarines, and 14 (!) heavy cruisers, all of which, frankly, are worth more as scrap metal than as ships.

     When playing as Germany, I take all of these lackluster ships and put them into one fleet, and use it as an auxiliary fleet, and just build the main navy from scratch.  When I’ve got this many, however, I’m sort of obligated to use them.  I divide up the aircraft carriers into two fleets, and split up the destroyers between them, making the fleets larger than they might otherwise be (12-13 escorts, instead of 5-7).  For the gunship fleets, I split them up into five fleets: one with two battleships (1 Kaigun, “Yamashiro” and “Fuso”) and the others with one battleship and one battle-cruiser (2-5 Kaigun).  I put two heavy cruisers in 1 Kaigun and three in each of the others.  1 Kaigun receives five light cruisers, while the others receive only four.  I hope that the solid anti-aircraft abilities of the heavy cruisers ameliorate the fewer-than-usual light cruisers.  Occasionally I simply leave the heavy cruisers as separate auxiliary fleets, using them in peripheral roles with no escorts; but I find they usually don’t accomplish much in those cases, so I’m going to try using them in my main fleets this time.  At the very least, they’ll draw some fire away from the battleships.

     I prefer leaders with spotter for my carrier fleets (they seem to have problems finding other fleets), and superior tactician for my gunship fleets.  I also have a fairly simple rank system: skill level 1-2 = commander; 3-4 = rear admiral; 5-6 = vice admiral; 7+ = admiral.  It isn’t perfect, but it helps the best admirals stay in charge.  Thus, in the summer of 1937 my combat fleet looks like this:

1. Kaigun	2. Kaigun	3. Kaigun	4. Kaigun	5. Kaigun
Vice Admiral Ozawa	Rear Admiral Mikawa	Rear Admiral Nagano	Rear Admiral Nomura, K.	Rear Admiral Fukudome
BB-I Yamashiro	BB-III Nagato	BB-I Hyuga	BB-I Ise	BB-III Mutsu
BB-I Fuso	BC-II Kongo	BC-II Hiei	BC-II Haruna	BC-II Kirishima
CA-III Atago	CA-I Izumo	CA-III Takao	CA-II Aoba	CA-III Maya
CA-III Ashigara	CA-III Nachi	CA-III Myoko	CA-II Furutaka	CA-III Chokai
CL-IV Mogami	CA-III Haguro	CA-I Asama	CA-II Kako	CA-II Kinugasa
CL-II Yuru	CL-IV Mikuma	CL-II Oi	CL-II Kinu	CL-II Abukama
CL-II Yubari	CL-II Naka	CL-II Nagara	CL-II Kiso	CL-II Kuma
CL-II Isuzu	CL-II Jintsu	CL-II Natori	CL-II Kitikama	CL-II Sendai
CL-I Tatsuta	CL-I Hirado	CL-I Tenryu	CL-II Tama	CL-I Yahagi
10. Kaigun	11. Kaigun
Vice Admiral Yamamoto, I.	Rear Admiral Koga
CV-III Akagi	CV-III Ryujo
CV-III Kaga	CVL-II Zuiho
DD 101	DD 202
DD 102	DD 203
DD 103	DD 204
DD 104	DD 205
DD 105	DD 206
DD 106	DD 207
DD 107	DD 208
DD 108	DD 209
DD 109	DD 210
DD 110	DD 211
DD 201