May 16th to May 24th, 1942
Yikes, a rescue from page 2!
In bigger news, Lex and Sara are off the sunk list. Disappointing.
North Pacific
Not much to report here, other than sightings of Allied naval traffic in to Dutch Harbour. It's evident the Eastern Aleutians and Alaska are being built up, but I'm stalling for time here. If I keep the Western Aleutians in my possession for another few months with an absolute token garrison I'll be more than happy.
I've got some air power at Toyohara supplementing the floatplanes, and currently it's all engaged trying to sink a persistent USN sub off Hokkaido.
Moving forward, I'm hoping that the close proximity of Allied bases to the Hokkaido will tempt Loka to send his subs up here. I'll have the area well ringed with ASW assets and hopefully make it something of a VP farm.
Which reminds me that I need to get working on mine warfare in this region, with the Kuriles taking priority. I like to punish errant mis-routing of ships if at all possible.
Central Pacific
An Allied cruiser force jumped a Japanese amphibious force south of the Marshalls, sinking the ships with a aviation unit aboard. Otherwise unremarkable, other than the loss of a Japanese LSD, which hurts. The cruiser force went on to bombard Roi-Namur to little effect (missing a convoy at Kwajalein in the process!).
This theatre has been stripped bare by commitments elsewhere, so I've bumped it up in the priority list for the time being to try and at least provide some warning of future raids. I'm currently hampered by the lack of aviation support, which should be solved shortly with the arrival of a large number of xAK > AV conversions due to finish in a few weeks.
I sent the myriad air groups deployed here back to the Home Islands via transport TF for re-sizing, upgrading and re-deployment. Beyond Nav Search aircraft, I don't see much need here for any serious air commitment. Ditto on the naval front.
South-West Pacific
The KB manages to insert itself into a target rich environment east of Pago Pago...and miss most of the rich targets.
Over about ten days or so, it cruises from east of Pago Pago to south of Fiji, attacking a large number of task forces. Most are merchant ships, and most are empty.
About thirty ships are sunk, most being xAK/xAP types, with a smattering of DD, DM and PC craft in for good measure. More interesting is the sinking of three AKE vessels which confirms my suspicions of major Allied warships operating way east of Pago Pago.
Low on torps and sorties, the KB is returning to Luganville to meet with replenishment ships and then to re-cloak.
Based on intelligence gathered from this raid, I'll be re-shuffling sub patrol zones further eastwards of Pago Pago to hopefully get a swing at big Allied targets and generate intelligence for future raids.
On the ground at Fiji, the stalemate continues. I'm resting my troops up, closing hex-sides at Suva and bombing the airbase to interfere with fort construction and to burn supply. More IJA bombers are en-route, but supply shortages are keeping me back at present.
Kandavu Island (south of Suva) has been built to a level 1 airbase, and is currently hosting a floatplane search base to keep the Allies off Suva. The Allies are responding by building a base at Tongatapu in the Tonga islands.
Interesting times ahead for SWPAC.
DEI
The big convoy re-shuffle happened, and seems to be going well. Had a few positive encounters with Dutch subs off Java, so hopefully will get more of that in the future.
Dot base clean-up is progressing well.
Still shy on engineer and aviation support in this theatre, but there's not much to be done until more reinforcements arrive or get freed up from elsewhere.
Luzon
Allies are beat here, mopping up operations are continuing to get Bataan firmly in Japanese hands. Minesweepers and transports are sitting outside the bay waiting for the all clear to get these troops moved on to Suva.
China
We've cleared the last roadblock before Chungking at Kweiyang, and now moving to reduce the remaining Chinese pockets before investing the city. Besides the Chinese forces in the western mountains, there's a sizable force at Chihkiang in central China that now has no relevance to the struggle for China. I'll keep them as a live-fire bombing target and for a EXP piñata for low EXP reinforcements.
Burma
After months of worry on my part regarding the situation at Pegu, we at last displace the formidable force of Chinese defenders with massive casualties!
Ground combat at Pegu (55,53)
Japanese Deliberate attack
Attacking force 80632 troops, 899 guns, 450 vehicles, Assault Value = 2295
Defending force 64091 troops, 505 guns, 1 vehicles, Assault Value = 1319
Japanese engineers reduce fortifications to 0
Japanese adjusted assault: 1155
Allied adjusted defense: 179
Japanese assault odds: 6 to 1 (fort level 0)
Japanese forces CAPTURE Pegu !!!
Combat modifiers
Defender: disruption(-), preparation(-), supply(-)
Attacker:
Japanese ground losses:
2160 casualties reported
Squads: 6 destroyed, 142 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 16 disabled
Engineers: 7 destroyed, 83 disabled
Vehicles lost 8 (1 destroyed, 7 disabled)
Allied ground losses:
26264 casualties reported
Squads: 1023 destroyed, 6 disabled
Non Combat: 1086 destroyed, 38 disabled
Engineers: 210 destroyed, 1 disabled
Guns lost 138 (134 destroyed, 4 disabled)
Vehicles lost 1 (1 destroyed, 0 disabled)
Units retreated 16
Units destroyed 1
Defeated Allied Units Retreating!
Assaulting units:
55th Engineer Regiment
33rd Division
14th Tank Regiment
56th Division
18th Division
38th Division
21st Division
143rd Infantry Regiment
2nd Division
32nd Field AA Battalion
31st Field AA Battalion
25th Army
35th Field AA Battalion
23rd AA Regiment
55th Mountain Gun Regiment
3rd Mortar Battalion
35th Fld AA Gun Co
5th Mortar Battalion
1st Hvy.Artillery Regiment
15th Army
1st RF Gun Battalion
21st Fld AA Gun Co
Southern Army
26th Fld AA Gun Co
21st Medium Field Artillery Battalion
Defending units:
81st Chinese Corps
71st Chinese Corps
95th Chinese Corps
16th Indian Brigade
25th Chinese Corps
1st Chinese Corps
4th Chinese Corps
66th Chinese Corps
57th AT Gun Regiment
7th Artillery Regiment
30th Group Army
2nd Burma Brigade
3rd Heavy Mortar Regiment
221 Group RAF
7th Chinese Corps
65th Chinese Corps
4th Heavy Mortar Regiment
The Allied units flee into Rangoon, which I suspect will be a formidable Allied backstop to Pegu. My initial moves are to pursue and close off the hexsides to Rangoon and then clear the rest of Burma. The large number of IJA air assets in Burma are being re-dedicated to bombing Rangoon, and I'm looking at getting minesweepers to clear the approaches to Rangoon to permit me to send the IJN upriver to drop shells on the city. That will entail damage to the industry, but I'm not hugely fussed as Burmese industry is always on the frontlines one way or another.
Industry & Production
Trends are good.
Supply is up in Japan, as are resources. Fuel and oil is still falling, but that should start to swing as the convoy system gets underway.
Aircraft pools are good. I'm a bit tight on IJA 2E bomber airframes, but that's intentional. I want to minimize the number of IJA 2E bombers I build before the transition into Lily DB and Peggy (T).
The Nick is in production as well, and is nearly ramped up to 60/month. I've yet to convert any squadrons as I'm waiting to pull another cadre of trained fighter pilots from the squadrons before converting to Nicks.
The G3M3 Nell is also being produced for 30/mo. While this is on the low side, I'm keeping it there for now as there's 120 M2 Nells in the pool, along with 135 Betty's. The M3 is the best model, but I see no need to burn the supply just yet.
The Junyo and Yamato have arrived, and are parked up in Tokyo for the present.
Pilot Training & VP's
Pilot training seems to be going well. The quality over quantity approach seems to be working well. About 60% of my reserve pilots are above the 50 EXP threshold, and I plan to induct those below this point back into squadrons at some point for additional training.
I think this has been reflected in the overall air losses. While the Allies have the lead in overall air losses (1131 Japanese planes lost to 987 Allied), the Japanese have less than half the air-to-air losses of the Allies (204 Japanese planes shot down to 459 Allied). Predictably, Ops losses for Japan are much highter (723 Japanese crashes to 498 Allied), but I attribute that to a very passive Allied air force.
Recent victories in China, Burma and on Luzon have put the VP situation into sharp focus.
Currently, the numbers are 19164 Japanese VP to 8259 Allied VP, for a 2.32:1 ratio. Not autovictory level, but positive nonetheless. Nearly half of the IJ VP total comes from Allied army losses (~8k) - those points are never going away, so let's add to that!
So far, so good. I don't like getting complacent with Loka, he's always up to something nefarious...
" - BBfanboy
