The answer to the first question is yes. But Gili Glil needs to be better defended. PM left in place as a major base threatens all of southern New Guinea plus Rabaul. As you probably noted there was a lack of aircraft in the area to repluse or delay the assault on Gili Gili. It would be a good time to point out most of the Imperial Navy was engaged in the Java Theater. Which was a major and poor decision on my part.
I was in command of both carrier groups. The first was sent to be raiders in the Coral Sea and try to take some pressure off the Rabaul area and possibly the carriers in the Java Area. Our last operation in Java and Koepang was code named " OPERATION RESOLVE". It was a do or die operation.
Lack of pilot quality was only surpassed by lack of aircraft. Most of the good pilots left were off carriers and even they were down to 50% quality. Most of the group based carrier groups were from either destroyed carrier or heavy damaged carriers. Lack of aircraft was more of a direct result of planes being destroyed on the groun. Lack of pilots was result of fighting battles and not having enough airbases in the area to support operations. Both battles for Lunga and Port Moresby were support with plenty ground aircraft to acheive air surperiority for both battles. The same cannot be said for my operations in Timor area
It's late I will continue the interrogation later. If you have more questions I can answer them later.
PM would be a threat if the DEI operations were over and you had full flexibility and the intitiative. Here, all that the PM garrison does is guard a wrecked airstrip.
The carriers were raiding; I thought that they were trying to transit the Torres Strait and reinforce the Java fleet via the short route.
Yes, now that I have access to the files, I have made a short list of the plane situation.
Japan Land based Combat A/C (F,FB,DB,LB,TB) - 1900
" " Naval " " " " (all less FP) - 200
Allied Land based Combat A/C (less Soviet) -3450
" " Naval " " (all less FP) - 445
Additionally, the Japanese experience levels are well below their prewar #'s, as would be expected with the loss figures.
Ran some of the next turns to check out some results:
Zuikaku rolled over the next morning, joining her sister on the bottom of the Banda.
Akagi proved a tough old girl, taking over 100 more 500# hits as she rowed home toward the Solomon Sea (I think that if a couple of 1000# equipped Libbys hadn't shown up she would STILL be afloat....) Shoho was also dealt with short of reaching safety.
On the Allied side, the Formidable (as I recall) was the one that ate 2 torpedoes and was heading home over 40 sys and around 50 float. All the other Banda Sea carriers were fine, though some air group attrition on the English ones was significant.
In the Coral, the Enterprise and Hornet were both over the combined 50 sys/flt damage levels, resulting in their airgroups taking severe hits in ditching planes; as the combat was just a hair too far out in the ocean for the planes to reach land. Both were at around 30 sys, so would be out about 2 months. Yorktown had made the scene (and was involved in the combat originally, not late as previously reported), but until the Lex and Sara return and Wasp arrives from Suva she would be the only carrier to cover future operations here.
Finally, had the 2nd UK Division and two Aussi brigades DA the Jap forces at Palembang, ejecting them from the hex. This was mainly due to the low or non-existant supplies there. Another attack like this at Surabaya failed to reach 1-1 as the forces there still had more than 50% supply for the IJA. Note that the "beginning" AV values that we had been seeing would not have indicated this result in Palembang; another reason not to trust everything that you see, not everything is what it appears sometimes. Of course, it helped to "see" the Japanese supply reports.....
NOW, for the $64,000 question.....to what factor(s) do you attribute the reversal of fortune that occurred to the Imperial Japanese in this timeline?
