As promised, I will spend a couple posts providing overviews of the preceding war. With little going on game-wise, I will probably cover two seasons in my next regular post. There is also increasingly likely that the game may end with no further significant combat on my part, so I may soon start over or switch to a different game.
Now That It’s Over, I’ll Give It A Name
Since the war started, I’ve been doggedly trying to avoid referring to the war directly, since I haven’t been able to come up with a good name for it. The name “World War II” doesn’t really fit, since I did most of the heavy lifting against the western Allies, and Japan was not materially involved in the first world war. So, after giving plenty of consideration, one thought in particular occurred to me: the nations that I was primarily at war with (Britain, France, the Netherlands, the USA, and eventually Spain and Portugal) all had a tradition of colonialism in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. Therefore, I came up with a good name: The Colonial War. I reserve the term “World War II” for the German conquest of continental Europe and their protracted war against the Soviets.
The War At Sea – January 1939 to July 1941
Considering that the three main nations in the war – Japan, United Kingdom, and United States – it should come as no surprise that the most critical period of the war was the naval period. The naval war is delineated pretty well, with the first combat ensuing within days after the declaration of war in January 1939, and the last major battle (involving capital ships on both sides), ended near the end of July 1941. While I had numerous naval engagements after that period, the later ones were not competitive, usually limited to port strikes or interceptions of small groups of destroyers, etc.
One of the challenges of naval warfare is its unpredictability. Fleets are very fast, at least relative to land units; because of the expansiveness of the seas, it is difficult, frequently impossible, to control your enemies’ movements; and, unless you have many radar stations (which is unlikely early in the war), it is difficult to keep tabs on the locations of enemy fleets. As a result, my strategic naval plan could be summed up as, “play it by ear”. That’s a sloppy way of running a war, but considering the circumstances, I decided it was better to prepare myself mentally and strategically for the unexpected, rather than attempting to impose a plan on my navy that my opponents obviously had the ability and inclination to avoid.
In lieu of specific offensive plans, I employed standard techniques and tactics to improve my chances of victory. Here’s a rough outline of my standard tactics:
- Always escort troop transports;
- Fight with a significant numerical advantage whenever possible;
- Attack the enemy in their ports;
- Focus on one theater / enemy at time, to ensure thorough victories;
- Maintain an adequate strategic reserve to deal with contingencies.
The first four tactics account for the bulk of my early victories. In real life, the Japanese had the comparative luxury of knowing where the American and British fleets were stationed and launched reasonably successful surprise attacks to help damage those fleets within the first few days of the war. I, however, could only make educated guesses about the location and composition of enemies; more importantly, the bulk of the enemy fleets were out of range for me, in places like Scapa Flow and San Diego, and even Pearl Harbor was out of my effective operating range in 1939.
I anticipated small fleets to be in Manilla, Singapore and other significant ports in the region, and planned my opening moves accordingly. I focused my early landings on Borneo and the Philippines, and early port strikes at Singapore. I escorted the landing operations with significant gunship fleets; once the troops were landed, the escorts began intercepting the smaller fleets with overwhelming force. That done, they switched over to the South China Sea to take over on the initial offensive fleet operations. By rotating fleets, using overwhelming force, and focusing on one region (and ignoring the Dutch, Americans and Australians) we were able to sink 36 warships in the first three and half months, including two battleships and a battlecruiser, at a cost of only two of our cruisers.
The need for a strategic naval reserve became apparent in mid-April, when the Dutch launched an ill-advised attack deep in our home waters. By using fleets from Tokyo, we were able to turn a mild disaster into a significant victory, sending virtually the entire Dutch navy to the bottom of the sea at no cost to us. Thus, the value of a reserve was emphasized, but an additional fact became apparent. Even after months of lop-sided victories, I was still outnumbered two-to-one. Not only would I need to play perfectly, I also needed to capitalize on Allied mistakes. Fortunately, these occurred early and often.
The War in the Pacific
It is impossible to overstate the importance of the Battles of Naha and Iwo Jima, in July 1939. The American navy is the most formidable of the game. They have more ships than any other navy, and they are focused on heavy-hitting aircraft carriers and battleships, rather than the cruiser-heavy focus of lesser navies.
I covered these battles in depth when they occurred, but in hindsight they were so significant, they deserve special analysis. While I don’t know for certain, it seems that in each battle the Americans divided their fleets into two parts. The capital ships were deployed in one fleet, with aggressive tactics, while the destroyers were attached to the transports to give them anti-aircraft and anti-submarine defense. This plan might have been a good idea later in the war, when I had many more CAGs available. However, I had few aircraft available in 1939, certainly not enough to overcome the American CAGs, and this deployment instead lead to the disastrous results of these battles, and consequently our eventual victory.
My fleet compositions, on the other hand, were ad hoc, and unintentionally well suited for these battles. Each fleet involved (two per battle) had a battleship, a battle cruiser, one or two heavy cruisers and a few light cruisers. Late in the war these fleets would be ineffective – the varying speeds of each ship would cause them to come into range of the enemy sequentially, allowing them to be focused on and knocked out one at a time. In this case, however, the American targeting and decision making techs were still low, allowing our fastest ships to survive the first blows. Our light cruisers, first to engage, took a few salvos, and were able to retreat, drawing the American capital ships away from their escorts. Our ships then were able to focus on the American pursuers, while the Americans dispersed their fire due to the varying speeds of their targets. The final result was everything I could have hoped for, and, perversely, what the Americans had planned for. We annihilated their battleships, while their destroyers and transports were able to escape unscathed. This emphasizes the drawback of planning for the worst outcome: despite the fact that the land forces were able to carry out their initial objectives, the expeditions resulted in disasters. Americans were able to occupy Naha, but only briefly; now lacking adequate naval support, their land forces were unceremoniously rounded up and captured. The forces at Iwo Jima had arguably better results. That island was well-defended, and the Americans left about a quarter of their landing force dead on the beaches, although the remainder was able to escape. The plans were thus flawed from the beginning. Even if the troops had escaped completely intact, or even if they had occupied their respective targets for months afterward, that would have been very poor consolation for the loss of ten extremely expensive capital ships, each of which would take over two years to replace.
Prior to July 1939, the Americans had a well-composed navy consisting of many strong gunships and numerous aircraft carriers. Gunships are much more useful than carriers during the early years of the war, and the loss of so many at once was a blow from which they would never recover. They could have collaborated better with the British, who still had a strong gunship fleet, but Allied nations never cooperate well, especially in naval matters. Thus, we were able to out-number the Americans in nearly every engagement after that point, winning lopsided battles and incrementally lengthening their odds. The Battle of the Marianas Islands from November 1939 to February 1940, and the Battles of Marcus Island in March and May of 1940, saw the inevitable withering and eventual eradication of their remaining gunships. Now lacking surface support, the Battle of Agano Bay in July of 1940 did to their carriers what the battles a year earlier did to their battleships. The final lengthy siege of Rabul was a one-sided, ignominious end to a once dominating opponent.
The Vaunted British Navy
My battles with the British, by contrast, tended to be much smaller. While they were my primary opponent for the first several months of the war, the outbreak of war in Europe caused a dramatic shift in their priorities. Realistically, the British can import virtually all the raw materials they need from the US, and completely abandon their Asian territories, and they will still have a good chance of winning the war. The Italians and Germans each possessed significant navies, and their constant harassment of British shipping required the bulk of the British navy to stay near their home islands. As a result, their naval actions in the East Indies were limited to sporadic raiding. This was annoying, of course, but it allowed me to chip away at their fleet piecemeal. Numerous battles each saw the loss of a major British gunship and a few escorts, but these engagements were only significant in the aggregate; it was not until August 1940 that I was able to sink more than two capital ships in one month, and by that time the British fleet had been already withered down to second-rate status. The greatest British losses came in 1941, but most of these were due to port strikes rather than open sea battles, as their navy had effectively abandoned offensive operations.
 |
| A chart of major warship losses, 1939-1941; Yellow=Japan, Red=UK, Orange=Netherlands, Dark Blue=France, Light Blue=USA, Green=Australia |
The story arc of the naval war is fairly straightforward. The first six months saw numerous engagements go more-or-less according to plan. Then in July, I am hit by a pair of heavy blows, which put me in a desperate, but not unexpected, situation. I recover and deal my opponents a severe blow. The next year sees almost non-stop intense fights, which generally end in my favor and reduce the fighting capacity of the Allied navies to virtually nothing. Then from mid 1940 to mid 1941, I am in mop-up phase, where the battles are mostly one-sided, and my losses are due to inattentiveness on my part, rather than any actual competition. The end of the naval war sees the effective beginning of the land war, which I will discuss in my next post, hopefully along with a summary of my future plans.
