Fulkerson (J) vs Moore (A) ( no Moore )

[larryfulkerson]

The TF name field says 8Feb Bubble Drop ( or something like that ) and it's now 18Feb so it's a 10-day trip one way to Bubble Drop from
Tokyo. And then another 10 days to return and probably a week unloading and re-loading at the destination. So it's basically 1 trip per
ship per month between Tokyo and Bubble Drop. On average.

[larryfulkerson]

I laid 96 mines at location code named Banjo so now maybe that Allied sub in the hex will run into one of them and sink.

[larryfulkerson]

Okay.......it's 03:22 on Thursday and I've sent my moves to Jim. Let's see what kind of turn over I get this time.

EDIT: It's Friday 20:14 and I've received moves from Jim so that's pretty good. Jim has some real life issues and he still came through
for me. What a trooper.

[larryfulkerson]

First thing, right off the bat......I get a hit on an Allied sub:

[larryfulkerson]

My DD's near Singkawang got rid of some Allied raiders without a loss to themselves.

[larryfulkerson]

And then there was this naval bombardment of Cebu. I'm not complaining about the Allied casualties. Some more of this will help my
troops on the ground I'm guessing. And anyway, it's kinda fun to set it up and watch it go.

[larryfulkerson]

Jim decided to bombard me with his PG ship at Manila. I'm not sure it's doing much for his side.

[larryfulkerson]

And I get to chase down some AKL's and kill them with my DD's. Now to rearm, refuel, refit, and recomit.

[larryfulkerson]

And then one of my subs gets hit near Perth:

[larryfulkerson]

Maybe I picked the wrong altitude for them ( 10K ) to do their sweep, but I'm kinda disappointed in the performance of my Oscars.
I would have thought maybe 20 Oscars could do something about just 3 buffalos but that's just me. Maybe they need more training
yet and my Oscars aren't combat ready yet. I'll look into that and get back to you.

[larryfulkerson]

I've been looking over the three squadrons involved in the above combat action and I've concluded that it was probably the least
experienced squadron that met the Buffaloes and were defeated by them. Maybe I should switch the least effective squadron into
escort or something else, ground attack maybe, almost anything else besides sweep because a sweep needs the kind of results you'd
be able to count on for the follow-on bombers etc. Yeah, I'll swap out that squadron for another one and see if that fixes the problem.

[larryfulkerson]

This is one of the attacks that could have used some escorts. Where are my escorts? I'll have a look around to see what happened
here and fix it. Or maybe this is one of those things that happen in war and there's nothing particularly wrong. I can't remember in any
of the previous attacks on Manila if there were any escorts ever or not. I'm leaning toward not. I'll look around to see what's up.

[larryfulkerson]

The problem was w/ the 24th Sentai. I had them set on escort but their CAP and LRCAP were set so high that's all they were doing. So
I changed it to sweep over Manila at 15k feet and maybe my Nates will do something about that pesky P-40 problem I'm having.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the results of my city attack on Darwin: this rate of damage is easily fixable by Jim. As long as he has the engineers and the
supplies needed to repair the damage, I'm probably not making a dent in his shield.

[larryfulkerson]

I thought I'd try this format and see what it looks like. I'm not liking it all that much. I'm going back to the old way of reporting the combat
results. Anyway..........here's what happened next. My escorts are probably that lesser experienced Oscars and even though they
outnumber the Allies more than 4 : 1 one of my Oscars got shot down. How did that happen? Another good reason to swap over the
other squadron to do the escorting and sweeping and let these guys handle the mess kit repair jobs.

[larryfulkerson]

And then my Sonia's wanted to get in on the action so there was this ground attack near Kendari:

[larryfulkerson]

And here's an example where my Nates are escorts and they outnumber the Warhawks but they STILL lose one of their number. Maybe
I should just pull the Nates out of there because they are up against better pilots? Maybe I should wait until the data is in on their sweep
tomorrow. I've got them scheduled for one bright and early tomorrow morning. Maye they're better in bigger numbers, flying sweeps and
not escorts. Let's reserve judgement for one more day.

[larryfulkerson]

Jim thought he'd just raid me at Hankow, or where ever it was, and he brought out the most ancient equipment he had to do the raid. I
believe it's WWI stuff. Biplanes maybe. Anyway......he got beat up somewhat.

[larryfulkerson]

I must not have enough planes flying LRCAP because it didn't show up for this Allied raid. I'll have to look into that.

[larryfulkerson]

What didn't get shot down in the air was destroyed on the ground when we overran the base. But it was good experience for the Zero
pilots.