June 18th to June 22nd, 1942
Fallen off the front page, need to change that.
North Pacific
Zzz…
Central Pacific
Pretty quiet, been shuffling some units about in the Marshalls to maximize aviation support. Unlike my previous game I'm putting this theatre on the backburner in terms of reinforcements.
The USN light cruiser St Louis dodges IJN naval search and picks off two xAK's and PB west of Nauru Island. Search is still poor here, but work is underway to firm it back up and lock Allied raiders out. On top of that I'm sending everything via Rabual, which should be a more secure SLOC.
South-West Pacific
Good progress here. On the 18th, Betties from Fiji sortie at the ships reported of Tongatapu and make torpedo runs on some big USN xAPs. The Wakefield takes a torpedo in the AM phase and another in the PM phase, while the Mount Vernon takes one in the morning and three more torp hits in the afternoon. The big xAP West Point escapes unharmed, unfortunately.
IJA artillery on Fiji begins bombarding the defenders at Suva, for dismal effect. We do, however, generate good intel on the defenders:
Ground combat at Suva (132,160)
Japanese Bombardment attack
Attacking force 360 troops, 28 guns, 24 vehicles, Assault Value = 1539
Defending force 44189 troops, 839 guns, 881 vehicles, Assault Value = 1308
Japanese ground losses:
Guns lost 9 (5 destroyed, 4 disabled)
Allied ground losses:
12 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 1 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 1 disabled
Assaulting units:
Maizuru 1st SNLF
Guards Mixed Brigade
4th Division
54th Division
16th Division
62nd Naval Guard Unit
17th Army
23rd Medium Field Artillery Regiment
Defending units:
41st Infantry Division
24th Infantry Div /1
8th NZ Brigade
Americal Infantry Division
27th Infantry Division
8th Marine Rgt /1
1st RNZAF Base Force
147th Field Artillery Regiment
148th Field Artillery Battalion
131st Field Artillery Battalion
8th Marine Defense Battalion
9th Australian Brigade
115th USAAF Base Force /1
114th USAAF Base Force /1
Some US Army fighters have been darting around between Tongatapu and Suva, but they've not flown much and when they have, IJN Zeros have swept them from the skies.
This has left the IJA bombers on Fiji free to keep flying milk runs suppressing Suva's airbase. The Allies have enough engineers to keep re-opening it, but it's wasting supply and thus fulfilling the primary goal.
The only real move from the Allies in the air has been small night time bombing raids on the Japanese airbase and Nadi. So far, damage has been mild, but I've sent a small Rufe group to fly night CAP to put their aim off.
The IJN adds to the bombardment on the 22nd, hitting Suva for mild results:
Night Naval bombardment of Suva at 132,160
Japanese Ships
CA Chokai
CA Maya
CA Takao
DD Asagumo
DD Minegumo
DD Yamagumo
DD Arashio
DD Michishio
DD Oshio
Allied ground losses:
50 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 3 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 10 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Airbase hits 2
Runway hits 14
Port hits 7
Port supply hits 1
The IJN ships are headed back to Luganville to rearm and get the Fiji Express rolling.
The sub war has calmed down some, but IJN subs are generating good intel about Allied ship movements at Pehnryn Island and Tahiti, but no big sightings or sinkings since the British CV force.
We do get some luck with the four Type KRS minelaying submarines. In May they dropped some mines off at Pehnryn, and on the 22nd a Dutch destroyer ran out of luck.
TF 236 encounters mine field at Penrhyn Island (168,159)
Allied Ships
DD Evertsen, Mine hits 1, on fire, heavy damage
All four of the minelaying subs are en-route to Rabual to rearm, and then will likely be redeployed to mine Tahiti.
Northern Australia
Not much to report here. The Base Force is starting to come ashore, the 40th Division is en-route. Additional units are in the pipeline.
The Allies appear to have abandoned Darwin entirely. 12 units are reported at Katherine with just 1 unit (the static CD unit) reported at Darwin.
The Darwin CD unit doesn't have much AV, so I'm considering two options to exploit this.
Option A involves rushing a paratrooper unit from Tokyo to Timor and taking the base by airborne descent.
Option B involves taking the six slow battleships currently at anchor at Soerabaja and using them to cover a brute-force amphibious landing of a SNLF unit at Darwin.
I'm inclined towards Option A as previously I've had bad experiences with the Darwin CD guns. Even though they're only 6 inch guns, IJN merchantmen seem to seriously not get along with them.
DEI
ASW assets tangle with a Dutch sub outside Batavia on the 18th, but fail to sink it. Still, it likely sent the sub home.
The Std-C type tankers have started to arrive, allowing me to pull fuel from Miri much more efficently. As more of the conversions arrive, I'll be re-adjusting convoys from the other oil producing bases as well.
Luzon
The mines at Bataan are all cleared away, the transports are tied to the Manila dockside and the Allies are defeated. This closes this theatre of the war for the time being.
The first wave of units departing Luzon are headed for Java. Mostly engineers and aviation support, they'll get to work on the defense network for the oil centres. More ships are en-route to get troops moving to Fiji and Australia (via Java).
China
Japanese troops move in to Chungking and we get some indication of what sort of resistance to expect:
Ground combat at Chungking (76,45)
Japanese Bombardment attack
Attacking force 9445 troops, 646 guns, 565 vehicles, Assault Value = 7050
Defending force 135590 troops, 674 guns, 0 vehicles, Assault Value = 3162
Japanese ground losses:
Guns lost 4 (2 destroyed, 2 disabled)
Vehicles lost 11 (5 destroyed, 6 disabled)
Allied ground losses:
177 casualties reported
Squads: 4 destroyed, 9 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Engineers: 1 destroyed, 0 disabled
With about 2k IJA assault value in the immediate vicinity of Chungking chasing down stragglers, I'm very excited. Once the situation stabilizes, the Japanese will have a 3:1 advantage in raw AV.
The first deliberate attack should take place within a week, which will give us a better indication of timeframe before Chungking falls. I suspect that Loka has built the forts up to level 7 (Chungking starts with level 6 forts on Dec 7th), but I doubt they'll be higher than that.
In the air, I made a mistake and had some Nicks bomb at 100ft, losing a half dozen or so to flak. Kunming was also bombed again, destroying a few planes on the ground. Flak was quite stiff, so I've drawn off all the bombers from Kunming to Chungking for the foreseeable future.
Burma
In an unexpected move, the Allies abandon Rangoon before the Japanese flanking move is completed. I hadn't seen any indication of the Allied troops moving out (on the map or otherwise), and the Allies were able to withdraw unharmed.
Quite happy to get the best port in Burma fairly easily (as well as take a cool 1200 base VP's off the Allies), and minesweepers are on hand to clear the mines while supply convoy from Singapore is due in a day or two.
The best news is that there's still a solid chance to trap and catch the Allied units before they withdraw further northwards:
There might also be increase air combat. Recently, unescorted Allied Blenheim sorties against IJA troops around Rangoon were punished severely by Oscars from Thailand, but with the fall of Rangoon, Japanese air power can now threaten the Allied airbase at Akyab.
The Allies have marshalled some 40 fighters at the base, and in response I've sent some 90 Oscars to Moulmein to sweep the base. I've seen little, if any, Allied fighters in Burma, so depleting the RAF pools is a big priority for Japan in this theatre.
Other Events
The components of the 1st and 2nd Tank Divisions have arrived. All the units are moving via rail to Fusan, where they'll be loaded for deployment to the DEI. One tank regiment for each division is in action around Chungking - they'll immediately be redeployed to Hong Kong for transfer overseas.
I have roughly enough PP's to move one tank division out of the restricted Kwantung Army command. I'm liking the notion of using both tank divisions in Northern Australia for 1942 then moving them back to Sumatra for 1943 onwards.
The IJN CA force that tangled with the Allied raiders a few weeks back makes it back to Kobe. Repairs will take about a week, after which the ships will relocate to Rabual. The much more seriously damaged Haguro, being repaired at Rabual, is nearly 40 days away from being back in prime condition.
The KB is currently north of Eniwetok, en route to Kobe. I'm running the fighters at 100% CAP at zero range to help boost EXP amongst the newer pilots, but I'm planning to do a big re-shuffle of IJN air units once the KB is down for repairs.
We've also broken 100 IJN pilots in TRACOM, which is nice. Only 36 IJA, but they've not seen as much action as the IJN pilots. Hopefully that will change and we can push more past the magic 81 point!
