18 Feb 43
Sub War
The Tunny sank a Std-E xAKL a hex to the SW of Adak. Looks like he has subs stationed directly to the W and SW of Adak. I want to get some ASW ships and planes there but it’ll be a while. I want to put a DB chutai with Judys on ASW duty as soon as I get enough. I currently have 6 Judys in the pool. Soon…
5 Fleet
Adak’s fort level is up to 5.70. The few remaining LCUs that are <100% continue to take on replacements. Supply is up to 14.2k.
4 Fleet
Nothing to report.
SE Fleet
Ted sent 4 air raids on the troops at Lae (very few troops present) consisting of 31x 4E, 29x 2E and 51 SBD sorties.
He didn’t bother sending any P-38s to Rabaul today.
Shortland Island’s damage is down to 0-42-0.
The S-42 decided to drive into Truk’s hex and hit a mine. She didn’t sink outright, but I’d bet against her making it home.
SRA
Well, my guesswork for MKB worked. They ended up 5 hexes from the Allied convoy and hit them with just about everything in the inventory. I have to paste the combat reports:
Morning Air attack on TF, near Cocos Islands at 26,124
Weather in hex: Light cloud
Raid spotted at 16 NM, estimated altitude 17,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 6 minutes
Japanese aircraft
A6M3a Zero x 4
B5N1 Kate x 2
D3A1 Val x 27
No Japanese losses
Allied Ships
xAP Talma, Bomb hits 8, and is sunk
xAK Cornish City, Bomb hits 5, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAP Tairea, Bomb hits 3, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAK Bhima, Bomb hits 4, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAP Tilawa, Bomb hits 3, heavy fires, heavy damage
Allied ground losses:
3784 casualties reported [X(]
Squads: 121 destroyed, 76 disabled
Non Combat: 95 destroyed, 114 disabled
Engineers: 25 destroyed, 9 disabled
Guns lost 36 (26 destroyed, 10 disabled)
Vehicles lost 34 (24 destroyed, 10 disabled)
Aircraft Attacking:
2 x B5N1 Kate bombing from 14000 feet
Naval Attack: 2 x 250 kg SAP Bomb
2 x D3A1 Val releasing from 2000'
Naval Attack: 1 x 250 kg SAP Bomb
9 x D3A1 Val releasing from 3000'
Naval Attack: 1 x 250 kg SAP Bomb
16 x D3A1 Val releasing from 1000'
Naval Attack: 1 x 250 kg SAP Bomb
Heavy smoke from fires obscuring xAK Cornish City
Heavy smoke from fires obscuring xAP Talma
Massive explosion on xAP Talma
Heavy smoke from fires obscuring xAP Tairea
Massive explosion on xAP Tilawa
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Morning Air attack on TF, near Cocos Islands at 26,124
Weather in hex: Light cloud
Raid spotted at 34 NM, estimated altitude 18,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 14 minutes
Japanese aircraft
B5N1 Kate x 17
No Japanese losses
Allied Ships
xAP Tairea, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAK Cornish City, Torpedo hits 3, and is sunk
xAP Tilawa, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAP Largs Bay, Torpedo hits 3, and is sunk
xAK Martand, Torpedo hits 3, and is sunk
Allied ground losses:
7739 casualties reported [X(]
Squads: 142 destroyed, 235 disabled
Non Combat: 469 destroyed, 508 disabled
Engineers: 35 destroyed, 11 disabled
Guns lost 331 (316 destroyed, 15 disabled)
Vehicles lost 326 (311 destroyed, 15 disabled)
Aircraft Attacking:
17 x B5N1 Kate launching torpedoes at 200 feet
Naval Attack: 1 x 18in Type 91 Torpedo
There are some ground units that aren’t going into combat for a while, if ever. So far, 2x xAPs and 2x xAKs are gone and 2x xAPs and an xAK are badly damaged. MKB is out of torpedoes, but still has all 27 Vals and 21 Kates available with plenty of fuel and sorties available. Intel says the convoy has 8 ships remaining, 4 of which have been identified (and 3 of those are damaged). MKB will remain in contact tomorrow and the sub coming from the Australian coast in a day or two. We’ll see what happens tomorrow, but I’m probably going to detach the CAs from MKB to do a little hunting. They may as well have a bit of fun too.
The 4 sunk ships total 4700 troop and 13.5k cargo capacity. That’s a lot of stuff gone, with more to follow. Yeah, it’s only merchant shipping, but it’s full of troops and it’s still a lot of fun to make Ted react to me. The tide hasn’t completely turned yet!
Burma
Nothing to report.
China
I had some troops advance over the river just north of Kweiyang to hit the remnants of the former Kweiyang garrison (1x HQ, 1x Corps, 2x Base Force). The 21:1 shock attack pushed the Chinese out and caused 1941(190) Chinese to 35(0) Japanese casualties. The rabble ran up the road.
Other Stuff
Reinforcement:
xAK Namba Maru – Std-C – will convert to a TK.
D4Y2 R&D advances to 2/44.
Ki-100-II R&D advances to 12/44.
I hope I’m driving Ted nuts with my carriers showing up where they are. I believe he thought this was a safe part of the world, since this convoy is most likely not protected at all. That was a big risk and now he’s paying for with lost troops. My goal is to completely destroy the convoy, which will completely destroy the LCUs it was carrying. It could be just garrison troops on board, but I doubt it because of the large number of guns and vehicles. Sure, FOW may be rearing its ugly head, but there are still a lot of troops that are fish food and equipment on the bottom of the ocean right now with more to follow.
I got really lucky here because those 3 baby carriers have only 9 Zeros to protect them. Now they have no torpedoes remaining should some substantial enemy ships show up, but I don’t think there’s anything in that part of the world. I’m willing to take the risk.
I had been wondering what to do with these carriers because they don’t have much hitting power by themselves. They can’t stand up to the British carriers either. I almost moved them to Truk to team up with the rest of KB. Glad I didn’t. The extra hitting power is minimal for KB and it can be of use here (as we are seeing).
As you know, I keep track of many numbers daily, mainly to see trends. One of the numbers I track is the Allied and Japanese troop losses in the intel screen. The Allied losses jumped from 13,742 to 14,199 from yesterday, an increase of 457 for the day. The big losses were the attack in China (180 squads) and the fiasco south of Cocos Island (1564 squads). About 90% of the losses were from the ships or about 410 of the increase. Does anyone have a clue what each point of troop losses equates to? I haven’t a clue. I’m just curious if the losses shown are realistic. I guess if the whole convoy is sunk (my goal, obviously), the units will be completely destroyed. Did I say I really hope they’re good, offensive units?
One last thing: The Tonan Whaler Kyokuyo Maru, which took 2 torpedoes from the Perch on 19 Jul 42, just arrived in Singapore yesterday and is now loading resources and oil to haul back to the Home Islands. It took 8 months to repair her and get her back in operation. If she had been full of oil, she’d be a reef right now.
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