38. The invasion, part 13
(16th - 31st October 1942)
Advance to the East must continue, therefore
Burley (northern desert province) was attacked. US army tried to delay the attackers, however brilliant major general Kawabe Masakasu countered US army tactics with shock. He's now level 6 general and is nearing level 7 (during the attack he had 60% to level 7).
Mountainous province of
Spokane defended by Canadian army was attacked from multiple directions and Canadian were expelled without suffering too many casualties.
Yreka was captured and remnants of the pocket are shrinking with every moment. 24 allied divisions are about to be crushed.
Battle of
Trinidad has been won and nearly 200 thousand US allied troops surrendered. 2 US divisions including armored one in
Redding surrendered shortly after which meant final destruction of the pocket. 24 divisions were destroyed and Allies lost about 250,000 troops in this pocket.
Situation in the South is much more dire, therefore attack on
Yuma was launched in order to deplete organization of trapped divisions. This pocket must be contained as soon as possible due to increasing pressure on the bottleneck provinces.
Delta was captured which opened possibility to mount the attack on
Grantsville which was won after 3 days long skirmish where
522 Japanese soldiers were slain while US army have lost
2904 soldiers. Occupation of Grantsville will open second direction for upcoming attack towards Salt Lake City.
After collapse of the pocket West Coast looks much more nicer when it's fully under Japanese control.
Pressure on
Lordsburg and
Safford is increasing and Japanese forces are about to be expelled from those bottleneck provinces.
After suffering severe amount of casualties
Taiwan Shidan of general Horii Tomitaro is expelled from Lordsburg, defenses of
Safford were defeated 5 hours later before reinforcements have chance to arrive. Luckily no mobile divisions were present during US attack so it's likely that Safford will be secured and Taiwan Shidan will have opportunity of safe retreat.
About 20 divisions are now being strategically redeployed to various places at the front to strengthen Japanese army.
In the north Imperial Japanese army is slowly gaining upper hand and more and more provinces are falling into hands of Japanese.
Yuma was secured and violent attack on
Tuscon is raging. If these three divisions will lose organization before any US divisions will manage to arrive to Lordsburg of Safford those divisions will be lost.
In the end
182 Japanese and
2372 US soldiers have died, this also meant destruction of another Allied divisions which would be needed by US elsewhere.
Casualties:
| JAP (this update) | JAP (total) | USA (this update) | USA (total) | Allies (this update) | Allies (total) |
Bombing | 403 | 8145 | 1565 | 92292 | 1815 | 97268 |
Combat | 8423 | 110992 | 26284 | 256903 | 29860 | 293894 |
Total | 8826 | 119137 | 27849 | 349195 | 31675 | 391162 |
Causality ratio has risen to 3.28 from 3.26. Allies suffered too low casualties from ground attacks due to lack of air bases our bombers could operate. Therefore securing of Salt Lake City is main objective before winter arrives.
Detailed information about every event can be found in this Google docs spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1q_g63z2AukTXzsBXtEoxhE7lhIOtfjT7zyzA8WNl3dA/edit?usp=sharing