Turn 25: December 30, 1941
>>VIDEO REPLAY<< >>COMBAT REPORT<<
Big day, another carrier battle!
Far Pacific
December 30 begins with an interesting (if one-sided) fight. Last week I sent out the AMCs (armed merchant cruisers)
Kinryu Maru and
Kongo Maru off to do some deep-ocean raiding - hopefully hit a few convoys.
Well, they hit a convoy today, all right, south of the
Phoenix Islands. Unfortunately, it’s escorted by four cruisers and five destroyers.
Our AMCs manage to close in and get a single hit on an AP - this convoy must be carrying a full division at least, that’s a LOT of big APs.
Kinryu Maru takes several shells for her impertinence. When daylight comes, American carrier aircraft - Wildcats, Buffalo and Dauntlesses - appear overhead and bomb our boats to smithereens. Well! At least I know where another one (?) of his carriers is.
Philippines
Yesterday, I mentioned in passing that I would be ordering bomber strikes on Manila to keep the airfield down. They go out - without escort. I forgot that I’d set their escorting fighters to “stand down” and recover their fatigue a few turns back.
The USAAF fighters have a field day chewing up Betties over Manila. It’s a big mess and I lose a lot of them. A wing of Sallies show up without escort, too. Altogether we lose 16 Betties and 13 Sallies today, although not all of them over Manila.
On a more positive note, our troops are starting to reach the Manila and Bataan hexes.
Java/Borneo/Sumatra
We send in four heavy cruisers to Batavia and they sink a transport fleet with torpedoes. The enemy really has no defense here.
As expected, our troops take Merak with no opposition and start marching on Batavia.
New Guinea/New Britain/Solomons
Kairyu,
Hiryu,
Koryu and
Soryu blitz south with their escorts. They make it to the western side of New Britain, just
north of Cape Gloucester. The aircraft go scouting and what do you know: we are in a target-rich environment.
There appear to be at least two American carriers or carrier groups operating down here. They continue to bomb our transports at Rabaul, although thankfully the really valuable stuff (the LSD and two CLs) have made their escape in the night.
Japanese carriers begin flinging machines skyward.The first strike to go out is Zeroes and Vals, hitting ships spotted in Port Moresby harbour. These include the battlecruiser
Australia, whose anti-aircraft guns take a fearful toll of the Vals. We only manage three hits on the battlecruiser, none of which appear to do much damage. Light cruiser
HMAS Adelaide is not so lucky. She catches fire with the first hit, drawing Vals to her like moths, and is almost surely sunk. The poor RAN is really getting hammered this game…
Then the big strike goes out - Kates, after an American carrier revealed to be the
USS Lexington. The Kates receive an unfortunately smallish fighter escort; the Zeroes have been partitioned out to ALL the strikes, including the ones against Port Moresby and the various allied transports floating around here for some reason. Another significant contingent stays behind to protect the CVs from a possible counterstrike. So: 54 Kates go in with 13 Zeroes as escort. Another 27 Kates separate from the main group and arrive with no escort whatsoever. One more caveat: this is an extended-range strike, meaning the Kates do not carry their deadly torpedoes or 800kg ballbuster bombs, but rather 250kg ticklers.
All that said, we do alright. There aren’t enough Zeroes to keep the Buffalo CAP off, and they shoot down quite a few Kates, but once we make it through the hits start trickling in. Three bombs smack
Lexington in the first wave, and four more in the second, leaving the ship on fire and suffering heavily. I’d like to think we sunk it, but I have too much respect for American damage control. We’ve probably knocked the carrier out for five or six months at most.
More strikes go out - against cargo ships heading north and northwest towards Guam. This strikes me as bizarre. If he’d known or suspected there was going to be a carrier battle today, having a bunch of expendable ships floating around is a clever-but-gamey tactic. It certainly succeeded in diverting a bunch of my aircraft today. I don’t think Lord Windy is that kind of player, though.
Tomorrow we’ll cruise around to the southeastern side of New Britain. I expect
Lexington to be running south as fast as she can. Maybe we can catch the other American carrier if she sticks around?
Aircraft Losses
A rough day for us. The heaviest single day of losses in the air war so far - and much of them unnecessary. At least the Kates died well, if you can call getting gunned down by tubby F2As dying well.
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