Hi AirTech,
The Japanese did attack the Russians in 1939, and they did get into serious do do.
BTW, it's where Zhukov started his rise to prominence.
Even though the Japanese outnumbered the Russians initially, the soviets had far more tanks, aircraft and artillery, and demonstrated how to use it well; but there were few Japanese surviving officers paying attention to their strategy or tactics; just tactical notations to the effect that Japan couldn't afford such 'heavy industrialized extravagances'.
While true, it didn't prepare the IJA for what happened in 1945 when the soviets took Manchuria so easily.
Exactly what IJA equipment are you referring to that was superior to the USA's?
At Bataan, the IJA complained about the superior American artillery, which was repeated throughout the war, there were M-3 light tanks in the Philippines, and M-2A4's on up to M-4 Sherman's on Guadalcanal.
In regards to who had superior tactics, while Japanese night assault preparations were impressive, overall they failed miserably against the Americans, and motivated British empire forces where supply was maintained.
Regarding axis logistics the less said, the less damning; consider Rommel only had a major to run everything westward after the ships were unloaded at Tripoli [and thought it was the German general staff's responsibility to build and maintain his logistics] while the British started with a major general, and eventually made it a Lt. gen position, IIRC.
Japanese logistics don't bear any better scrutiny since both the IJN and IJA grabbed 2 Mt from the Japanese merchant fleet [6+ Mt] at the beginning of the war for their private use, of which almost 2 Mt were wooden coastal vessels and fishing boats, that had relied on another 4 Mt of allied or neutral shipping pre-war [~10+ Mt total] but only captured around 440Kt in port when they launched the war, leaving the rest of the economy to live off of around 2 Mt instead of the 10 Mt; so the Japanese home economy began to starve itself by 75-80% almost from the war's beginning.
Nor was it helped by the IJN and IJA seized ships passing each other empty or together half full to the same bases, since they refused to coordinate shipping and convoys until almost the very end of the war, the IJA going so far as to build dedicated supply submarines for its isolated island bases, despite the navy building bigger ones and modifying many more.
The Germans nearly shut down their whole economy during the winter of 1941, having sent so many trains full of supplies to the eastern armies, that were blocked by poor improvements ans repairs [adjusting the soviet gauge to German] inadequate sidings and RR building troops [a German deficiency going back to the Franco-Prussian war], supply and quartermaster troops to unload and deliver it, etc, etc.
The claim of German military professionalism founders on it repeated logistical incompetence.
The Americans may be Johnny-come-latelies when it comes to war, but the lessons of logistics were driven home at Valley forge, Morristown and a thousand other fields from 1775 through 1942, when the army was finally able to implement the lessons of the Industrial War College from the 1920's.
Given the SE Harchong provinces that the IHA apparently traveled through, the IHA is indeed still only hundreds of miles from HE territory, but will be a couple thousand miles away by the time they enter the republic.
Forex, feeding that many men, horses and dragons, means staying close to a canal since without one, just 400K men and a 100K horses would require something like 2100 tons per day or over 100 fresh supply dragons every day, for a month, ie ~3150 dragons, which I've seen no sign of in the textev so far, just to go 500 miles.
So keep an eye on the canals.
L
[quote="AirTech"]*quote="Weird Harold"*[quote="saber964"]And took horrendous casualties to do so, the only other peasant army to suffer even more casualties against a high tech foe was the Chinese army of the same time frame.*quote*
Yep, Stalin pretty much summed it up, "Quantity has a quality all its own."
I cant' be sure without a lot of research about where the eastern front was exactly, but the big difference in WWI and WWII was the difference in a "war on foreign soil" and "defending the motherland" -- IOW, a war of agression and a war of defense.
The Harchong Peasant Army is hundreds of miles from home fighting an enemy that hasn't invaded their homeland; I expect them to follow the WWI Tsarist example rather than the WWII Soviet example.[/quote]
And logistics are the key to winning wars, if, as the church has demonstrated, you try to live off the land you strip it of supplies your army starves, like the Japanese did during WWII. The American Army was militarily and in terms of equipment not quite as good as the opposing forces in most cases, what the Americans had were an incredibly strong logistics train keeping a steady stream of food, ammunition and replacement tanks and ships.
If the Japanese lost a ship (any ship)they couldn't replace it or the crew, the Americans would shrug and place a requisition that would be filled in under a month in the same position. The Japanese had better tactics, better equipment (at least early in the war) but had really bad logistics (and a less than brilliant strategic leadership). This was because the Japanese were fanatical about actual combat so no-one wanted to be a supply officer and think about where the next box of rations or fuel was coming from. The Germans were slightly less intent but the same mind set was underneath with an expectation of a short victorious war (and that's what they needed (and didn't get)). The Russians traded land for time and similarly had a continent of back-up, but if the Japanese had attacked they would have been in serious do do.[/quote]
