Yes. Â As Japan. Â Both Germany and I used this type of strat to drive toward Moscow. Â Germany threw everything at Russia (primarily through Caucasus), while I went through BUR-YAK-ENO and CHI-SINK-NOV (your “northern and central prongs”, ncsc). Â I dropped J1 factories in MAN & FIC, and started churning out tanks, concentrated fleet in SZ60 to protect trannies (UK didn’t pop the KWA tranny, and I bought one more on J2 for a total of 3), and ignored US/UK fleets (the UK fleet had escaped to Med on UK1 anyway). Â I tried to get everything I could to Moscow as quickly as possible.
Germany concentrated every ground & air unit within range to hit CAU on G1, even the Med BB (his Med tranny carried a couple of units from SEU as well). Even with CAU relatively well defended, he was able to achieve nearly 3-to-1 superiority. Â Russian got some good dice rolls, however, and my German compatriot lost more units than we predicted, even though he won. Â GE then kept piling tanks into Russia, and attacked on a broader front in G2/G3 as well.
The good news is that we reduced USSR to a shambles, and, Moscow had to defend against two armor columns from both directions on G4 AND J4. Â
The bad news: Â had flown a couple of fighters to Moscow, and these (along with another above-average set of rolls) provided just enough for him to hang on. Â At the end of our attacks, there were still 2 Russian tanks and 1 fighter sitting in Moscow.
Well, at this point, I was still sitting in a decent position; still had my navy, had grabbed a nice pile of IPCs, was under no immediate threat (although US navy was becoming a concern), and had more avenues to continue expansion. Â But you can imagine the precarious situation Germany was in. Â UK/US had been left pretty much free to do as they pleased in the Atlantic. Â US had taken Algeria/Libya, and had a nice invasion force ready to go for WEU or SEU (or even Balkans, for that matter). Â UK had taken Norway and was ready to go into WEU or even GER itself. Â And the whole continent was just an eggshell; Germany had put everything into schwacking Russia. Â UK5 and US5 were going to be very ugly indeed. Â Germany was spent, and could not remount an attack on the Russian capital from the west, as he was about to get crushed. Â I could keep pressure up on my end, but I didn’t have enough to take Moscow on my own. Â Our drive just petered out.
So…the strat was indeed quite flawed, and I don’t think I’d try it that way again (at least not on German side). Â Our A&A group, however, is pretty green. Â We started playing a couple of weeks ago, I think we’ve played 9 games altogether. Â Prior to that, only a couple of us had played A&A classic (MANY years ago…like, in the '80s). Â So, the focus, strength, and speed of our drive was quite the surprise to the Allies, and it took US/UK a couple of turns to adjust their plans…they really should have hit Europe at least a turn earlier, in my opinion. Â
If I were to try it again, I would probably play Japan very similarly, but would probably schwack the US Pearl Harbor fleet (the “light” method, w/o using the SZ60 BB) on J1. Â For Germany, I’d say his biggest mistake (given that one pursues this sort of all-or-nothing approach in the first place) was in not taking Egypt and closing the Suez on G1, and at least getting a few IPCs (however temporarily) in G1. Â I’d also probably adjust the German build, from strictly tanks to tanks + 1 fighter per turn).
In any case, it was fun, even though we lost.