Matrix Games Forums

Are the fires out?

Which ones?

Also, forgot to mention -

Shokaku bails some more water, dropping two more points of flot damage. On top of that, they fix a point of Engine damage.

She is now at 34/76(64)/52(38).

March 28th, 1942
It was a short break as things start to get lively again, this time in the Pacific.

India/Burma
Blenheim IV's try some night bombing at Jaffna, out of nine planes there are no hits. In the morning, we try a sweep over Colombo with 30 Oscars. We find 16 Hurricanes and over the course of two waves manage to take down eleven for the loss of eight Oscars.

Shokaku has some trouble today and I get another "Damage Control parties trapped in flooded compartment aboard CV Shokaku ..." message. Engine damage drops a point to 51, but float damage goes up a point to 77. Plus the crew experience again drops - from 61/55 down to 55/51. Also, the Allied subs are definitely swarming now, you can see some in the picture below, like vultures. We get a ton of Val sightings so that seems to be keeping them submerged in the daytime. The nighttime could be an issue. I think our destroyers will arrive in two more days - you can see them below as well - and then I'll feel better. We do get a hit on an Allied sub, so that is good.

[center]
Ceylon situation[/center]

Still no sign of the British surface fleet.

Our sweep of Rangoon finds no opposition so the Allies have decided their attempt to fight our Oscars wasn't a good idea.

DEI
Our tank unit cross the river from Djambi to Palembang and pushes back the last unit from the Padang area.

Pacific
In what is a pretty close call, an American carrier strike hits Luganville today. We had some transports coming to Luganville with the 8th Arty (to build the 8th Div), as well as a couple air support units and a Nav Guard unit - these were just a few hexes north of Luganville so if this attack had been tomorrow we may have been in range of naval strikes. As it is, we will pause near Guadalcanal to let our carrier task force catch up.

The actual attack can be seen below, we ended up with 14 Zeros on CAP and they do a good job of making it to the bombers. On the day, we lose 5 A6M2, but take down 1 F2A-3 Buffalo, 2 F4F-3 Wildcats, 1 F4F-4 Wildcat, 5 SBD-2 Dauntlesses, and 5 TBD-1 Devastators. The enemy planes that do get through hit the airfield but don't do much damage.

[center]
Carrier planes attack![/center]

By my count, the only carriers he should have are Enterprise, Lexinton and Yorktown. I don't think Hornet could be to Luganville yet, and if it was, it would have to be low on fuel from a constant run. By comparison, our CV fleet consist of CV Akaki, CV Kaga, CV Junyo, CVL Ryujo, CVL Shoho, CVL Zuiho, CVE Unyo, CVE Taiyo and CVE Hosho. So I feel like we have the numbers, but as Ceylon showed, numbers don't always guarantee success. Still, if he hangs around, we may get a shot. Certainly our transports will need to wait a couple days while our carrier secure the area.

In minor news, the Lark Bn shock attacks our SNLF unit at Gasmata and gets 1:99 odds. It is then wiped out by attrition.

China
We keep up the air pressure on Pingsiang with every single and two engine bomber in the area attacking the enemy troops. The enemy attack today gets 2:1, but thankfully we had built a fort yesterday so we hold on another day. We are now outnumbered 45,000 to 6,500 troops, but still manage to hold.

Up north, the 12th and 13th Regiments move closer to Lanchow, pushing back the nearly dead 81st Chinese Corp.

At Kienko, the Chinese attack again, and things look worse for them than ever before. Although they still outnumber us 105,000 to 54,000, they get 1:5 odds and lose about 7000 troops versus our 1200 losses. And they are still low on supply.

He used CV planes to attack the AF? And no sweep first? [&:]

Yes. If I recall it was PM phase, so he probably had them on Naval attack for AM. Maybe he doesn't intend to stick around, and he didn't want to waste the trip, so he put them on the PM airstrike. That's my guess anyway.

ORIGINAL: Feurer Krieg

Yes. If I recall it was PM phase, so he probably had them on Naval attack for AM. Maybe he doesn't intend to stick around, and he didn't want to waste the trip, so he put them on the PM airstrike. That's my guess anyway.

If he's smart he had to ensure the priority mission was naval strike with secondary of airfield/port strike.

Yes, well, that is what I meant.

ORIGINAL: Feurer Krieg

Yes, well, that is what I meant.

Oh, yeah! I see that first part now! [:D]

Weird he wasted CV pilots on that strike.

I agree. I can only think either he was hoping I had overstacked the small airfield, or else he is trying to slow down my expansion of the airfield. Once it its size four Bettys and Nells will make that entire area dangerous for Allied ships.

March 29th, 1942

India/Burma
Our battleships join Shokaku and the KB today. SS Gato fires some torpedoes at Ise, but thankfully they miss. SS Finback is spotted before it can attack Hyuga. At least those two subs were distracted by battleships today instead of going for Shokaku.

We get a ton of sub sightings, and in one hex we get two hits, although it is hard to say if they are on the same sub or not. In another hex we get a hit on a Gato class sub as well. Destroyers should arrive on station tomorrow so hopefully that will help.

Unfortunately Shokaku gets a "Temporary flotation repairs failing aboard CV Shokaku" message and float damage goes up two points and system damage goes up a point. Thankfully no drop in crew experience from this event. Damage is now: 35/79/51.

At Colombo we fly a sweep again, but today the Hurricanes come out on top by about 2:1.

[center]
Ceylon situation - sub infested waters![/center]

Most importantly, the 38th Division has arrived at Trincomalee and attacks today along with 2 tank divisions. We only get 1:2 odds, but do show good casualties and drop forts to level 2. I get a leader '-' and I look and the guy in charge of the 38th is terrible. But it costs 255 PPs to change him out! I run near zero PPs so I'm not going to change him out yet. I expect it will take less than 5 days to capture Trincomalee anyway, but I will make sure this guy is switched out before the 38th gets to Colombo. The division is a 90+ experience division in almost perfect condition, so I don't want it ruined by a crappy leader.

DEI
At Palembang our main forces have arrived also. The 55th division and the 21st Ind Mix Brigade join the 16th Nav Guard unit and attack today. We get 2:1 results against forts level 1. We drop forts to zero, so I expect the base will fall tomorrow.

We also capture a small base island called Bima.

Pacific
Normanby Island is occupied today as our troops are unloading.

China
The Allies attack Pingsiang (45,000 versus 6,100) but they only get a 1:3 result! There is no supply negative, but there is a disruption negative. So given that forts were at zero, I have to assume the aerial blitz against those units has saved the day. Reinforcements should be there any day so we might be able to pull off a success here after all.

March 30th, 1942

India/Burma
No submarine attacks today, and our Vals manage to score four hits against enemy submarines. One is a Dutch class sub, so that is good since their torpedoes work. Unfortunately Shokaku continues to worsen. Today she picks up a point of System, float and engine damage. Current state is 36/80/52. I am increasingly getting nervous about losing a perfectly good ship to submarines in the process of guarding a ship that may not make it home even if the way was clear. Now that the destroyers are on station, I am considering sending everything else east. The other carriers are already damaged after all and another two torpedo hits could possibly sink any of them.

[center]
Sub near Ceylon[/center]

On land we attack Trincomalee again and drop forts to level 1. We get a 1:1 result and about 1:4 casualties. Maybe it will fall tomorrow, but hard to say for sure. The Brits do send some Blenheims at our troops, but they don't do any damage.

Also, our troops seem to have rested up a fair bit at Colombo, and the 2nd Tank regiment, formerly at Trincomalee has arrived here so we attack today. We get 2:1 odds against fort level 3, and drop forts to 2. I certainly didn't expect a 2:1 result, so we must have got a good die roll. Clearly the enemy troops lost a lot of fight during their failed shock attack a few days back. This bodes well given that the 38th, 16th, 48th and 55th Divisions are all on their way over the next couple weeks. Also, a review of the combat screens indicates that the enemy 46th Ind Brigade must have wiped itself out in that shock attack since it is no longer on the land combat screen.

DEI
On the west end of Flores Island we capture Ruteng.

A small raid of 5 B-17E attack Koepang but only lightly damage the airfields there.

We have large group of transports waiting off the coast of Palembang for the base to fall and our minesweepers to clear it so we can get the 55th Div and 21st Brigade loaded up for Ceylon and Burma ASAP. Today, some Catalinas from Palembang fly out and attack us. The first pair misses, but the second manages to hit an xAP with a bomb. The ship will be fine, but it does have to go back to Singapore for repair. Those Allies never stop fighting, that is for sure.

On land, we attack Palembang again and only get 1:1 odds this time. Guess it they are being stubborn. We were low on supply and high on fatigues so I'm sure that contributed.

Philippines
Guiuan is occupied today.

Pacific
B-17's show up at Port Moresby. It has been a little while since they were here. 5th Sentai is still using Oscar As while they wait for the Nick to start production. 16x B-17Es attack, we lose 1 Oscar on the ground and 1 in the air.

China
The AVG is over Pingsiang today, but our Oscar Sweeps and escorts do well and we bring down 11 H81-A3 and lose 3 Oscars. They do manage to get to the bombers on one raid and we lose 3 Anns.

The Chinese try again on the ground and only get 1:2 - this time against level 1 forts though. Notably they do NOT bring down our fort level.

Submarines
I-160 takes a shot at an AM near Brisbane, but misses.

Other
R Kawabata was found today. Given that he was a low xp trainee, I suspect he just landed his plane at the wrong airstrip and got 'lost' at the local saki den.

Also, since I will probably forget to mention it by the time I get to April 15th, I have switched a couple of my Oscar R&D factories to Vals so I can build the Myojo pool for late war trainer/kamikaze units. I also switched one of my J1N1 R&D factories over to the K-45 Nick D model.

March 31th, 1942

India/Burma
Only one sub hit today (Shark class) but Shokaku settles a little lower in the water today as we get another 'temporary repairs failure' message. She picks up 3 System and 2 Float damage. Current status is 39/82/52. The rest of the fleet is definitely leaving tomorrow. Too many subs around to risk good ships for the slowly sinking Shokaku. Shokaku will be left with a half a dozen destroyers and a slow cruiser in the escort TF. Also the two upgraded ASW TF's of four DD's each will follow. We are about 3 more days from being past the 'corner' of Colombo Hudson range so we can start heading due east. Then at some point we'll need to decide whether to go for Trincomalee or Georgetown.

At Trincomalee our attack again doesn't take the base. We only get 1:1 odds, but the casualties are quite lopsided so shouldn't be much longer. Also we drop forts to zero. The 4th Air Division has actually arrived after a several day walk from Koggala. So as soon as Trincomalee goes down, we will be ready to fly torpedo bombers. Interesting note was the adjusted AV for this fight was 101 versus 101 - exactly the same!

The xAK Manko Maru which had been trying to hang in there at Jaffna finally is overcome today and sinks.

We send some Sally's at Rangoon today and they damage several planes on the ground. Two H81-A3 and 1 Buffalo are destroyed. Some Anns try to hit a pair of motor boats as well, but they miss.

Still no sign of the British fleet. I've checked several ports, but nothing. Where did they go? I don't think could have escaped west since the KB would have got them. I'm going to send my battleship fleet to Trincomalee so they will be in place to guard the troop convoys bringing in the 48th and 16th division since those TF's have some of my fastest and largest xAP's in them. A British surface attack while those big ships are unloading such solid divisions would be a major problem.

DEI
West of Jesselton, we make the last attack to push a Royal Navy base force into Beaufort. As soon as this Nav Gd unit reaches Beaufort, we will simultaneously attack four locations on Borneo to eliminate all the guerrillas still around in one shot.

The Catalinas from Palembang attack again and this time the hit an xAK. Again, the ship is fine, but will need fixed at Singapore.

At Palembang, the base goes down easy with a 14:1 result. Since there is still a dot base in Allied hands, the enemy troops retreat to the west, but Palembang is now ours! We destroy 7 Do-24K-1 and 3 Catalinas and now the Allied eyes in the DEI are effectively poked out. Aside from few more small, mostly dot, bases, the DEI campaign has ended on March 31st, 1942.

The facilities at Palembang are in great shape. We have 1020 refineries, of which 10 are damaged and 900 oil centers, of which 9 are damaged. Very nice! We will get some tankers in here ASAP and start shipping this fuel home. Once China has a solid route open, I'll ship to Singapore instead, but for now, this still will be shipped directly to the Home Islands.

Philippines
Suriago is occupied today.

Pacific
B-17's hit Port Moresby again, but miss the target today.

As our ships continue to converge on Luganville and get organized for the hop over to Noumea, a Val gets a hit on an enemy sub. This probably lets John know our carriers are here, so I suspect he will probably stay back to protect Suva rather than risk a battle with lopsided odds. In about three days we will sail for Noumea. I'll send a fast transport TF down to grab Tanna as well. Our carriers will generally stay west of Efate, so it is possible a well placed Allied CV force could hit our TF going to Tanna, but those ships won't linger there.

Other
CA Chokai is returned to service at Singapore. CA Takao and Atago are returned to services at Tokyo. The latter two will head to Rabaul.

We have four air units due for withdrawal, but one of them is sitting on the carriers operating near Luganville, so I'll pay the penalty to keep it in action for another week or so. Just long enough to get the troops over to Noumea.

Another month comes to an end, and it was a lively one.

The rate of base captures slows some as we run into some opposition during our Flores Islands cleanup in the DEI. Although that has been dealt with, there won't be that many more bases to vacuum up as we get closer to our planned expansion goals. This month we capture 54 bases, compared to 85 last month. The highlights of the month were the capture of Luganville, Bataan and the fact that Trincomalee is nearly captured. With luck we will finally take Colombo in April, as well as Noumea and maybe even Suva depending on what the US CV arm does.

The naval war picked up in the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. Although we did sink a British carrier, it was at a high cost as we will probably lose Shokaku. There have been some successes though as we damaged Royal Sovereign and put Resolution under with nearly all submarine attacks.

The DEI is firmly under our control now, and Palembang has finally been taken, safe from any Allied bombing attacks. It is in excellent shape with little damage sustained by the facilities there. We have convoys setup for most of the bases throughout the DEI and Heavy Industry expansion going on in order to minimize the amount of product we need to ship out of those islands. In preparation for the late war, we have adjusted some R&D to account for a better night fighter mix, and also have expanded LI in areas that we expect to control for a long time such as the Home Islands and Korea. If and when we ever run low on fuel, the extra LI will still be pumping out supply for us.

We are starting to pull some maneuvers in China that will hopefully work out well in the coming months. The Chinese are already showing signs of low supply and that should work to our benefit.

Beyond April, the only open objectives still are to secure northern Australia and Burma.

Some numbers for February -
Bases captured: 54
VP Ratio Mar 1: 1.796:1 (Japan)
VP Ratio Apr 1: 2.191:1 (Japan)
Air losses: 359 Japan, 302 Allies
Ships lost - Allies: 27 Ships, 543 Points
Ships lost - Japan: 17 Ships, 68 Points

Capital Ships lost (entire war):
Allies
CV Saratoga
CV Indomitable
BB Resolution
BB Prince of Wales
BC Repulse
CA San Francisco
CA Australia
CA Canberra
CL Adelaide
CL Caledon
CL Dragon
CL Enterprise
CL Java
CL Leander
CL Marblehead
CL Mauritius
CL Perth

Japan
CL Kashima

Here is the sub list, and below that current scoreboard. We only lost one sub in March, but it is unfortunately our 2nd highest scorer. The .2's and.4's on the list are from splitting up the credit for taking down Resolution. With 5 for 5 hits and 3.4 ships sunk, I-165 has a commanding lead now.

[center][/center]

April 1st, 1942

India/Burma
A close call today! SS KIX fires four torpedoes at Zuikaku and thankfully misses. Then, later, SS Grayback fires four more at Zuikaku - they miss as well. Lucky carrier! John mentioned something about 'ships that are supposedly sunk sailing across his cross hairs'. I imagine that FOW is telling him all four of my big CV's went down. Clearly he knows there is at least one carrier still afloat now if he had any doubts about FOW.

Shokaku suffers another setback with "Damage Control parties trapped in flooded compartment aboard CV Shokaku ..." and float damage goes up a point to 83. Experience drops from 55/51 down to 51/46. The crew seems to be fighting a losing battle. On the plus side, we did get two more Val hits on Allied subs in the area. Given the risk these subs pose to my three good carriers, I am thinking I will have to leave Shokaku behind soon. Shokaku: 39/83/52

On the land, we launch a shock attack at Trincomalee and the base finally surrenders. We capture about 12,000 Commonwealth troops and take ove a nice size port and airfield. The port will be good since we should be able to unload the inbound divisions within two days of their arrival. I've checked the British arrival times, and there are a couple of units that John could attempt to send in as reinforcements arriving soon. One of the divisions arrives at Madras, so I'm going to drop some sub laid mines there to maybe catch some transports if he tries something there.

[center]
Trincomalee goes down - one more base and Ceylon is ours.[/center]

DEI
We drop off some troops at Mataram. There are a some Dutch still left here and I think I'll need another unit or two to actually take the island.

Minesweepers move in and start clearing mines from Palembang, 87 mines cleared today.

Philippines
Siargao is occupied today.

Pacific
Some B-17's do little damage at Port Moresby.

We capture Woodlark Island with a small barge force.

China
We try a DA at Sining and only get 1:2. We'll probably have to wait for the brigades that have trekked across the desert to get here before this base is ours.

Submarines
Near Brisbane, I-160 fires at DD Worden and misses.

Other
Madras expands to size 8 AF today. I've no doubt that we will see 4E bombers flying from this base once the British start to get some.

About 8 subchasers start refit at Tokyo, Singapore and one at Babeldaob. DD Natsugump also starts refit at Manila.

April 2nd, 1942

India/Burma
Our DMS arrive to sweep for mines at Trincomalee and they clear out 47. They also get attacked by SS Salmon which misses.

After much consideration, Huryu, Soryu and Zuikaku head away from Shokaku. They leave slow light cruiser Kashii and four destroyers in the escort TF, as well as the two mod-2 depth charge TFs of ASW (two TFs of 4 DD's each), to try and keep the carrier covered on the way home. Perhaps feeling the pressure to get home in one piece, the crew steps it up and drops float damage by a point - Shokaku is now at 39/82/52.

On land, some Blenheim IV's attack our troops at Colombo and we have few Oscars on CAP. They have some some Hurricane IIa's in the mix, plus a Martlet and the normal IIbs. We lose a couple Oscars but don't take much damage from the bombers. The notable thing is the IIa Hurricanes. I haven't seen them for a while and it makes me wonder if the IIb pools are running low for John.

Some Sally's hit Rangoon and manage to destroy a Hudson on the ground.

DEI
Four B-17E's attack Koepang. Our Tojos are here and they shoot down one of the big planes outright. The other three only manage one airfield hit.

Pacific
Pentecost Island, near Luganville is occupied today. Luganville goes to AF 2. We should have it up to AF 3 pretty quickly as well.

China
Near Taiyuan we finally push the last Chinese unit back across the river towards Yenan.

Other
Saipan goes to AF 5 and I think we will stop it there. Dili hits AF 4 and that will stop as well.

April 3rd, 1942

India/Burma
There are a series of air battles over Ceylon today. Hurricane IIa's from Madras sweep Trincomalee, but we had already stuffed the base with Oscars and some of the TBs that had been at Koggala. We put up 59 Oscars against 16 Hurricanes there. The Blenheim's come back to Colombo and we have 19 Oscars on CAP there against a small escort of 2 Hurricane IIa and 4 Hurricane IIb. Finally 8 Hurricane IIb sweep over Koggala and we put up 8 Oscars there.

At the end of it all, we lose 4 Oscars to 8 Hurricanes, 1 Martlet and 2 Blenheim IVs.

[center]
Lots of air combat at Ceylon[/center]

CL Kashii protects Shokaku the hard way by taking a torpedo from O23. The small carrier can't take much, so one torpedo may be enough to do her in. Shokaku herself manages to drop another float point - the ship is now at 39/81/64, and very close to the place where she can turn east since we will be past Hudson range of Colombo.

[center]
CL Kashii takes one for the team[/center]

DEI
The dot base of Tanahdjampea is occupied today.

Philippines
We manage to hit a KXI Class sub near Bataan Island twice today with Sallys on ASW. They are getting pretty good - most 60's skill.

Pacific
Our troops ships are loaded and will set sail for Noumea tomorrow (from Luganville), although they won't go far due to low ops points from refueling and stuff. Car Div 2 is loitering just west of Luganville, and our battleships will be escorting the amphib group.

China
he Chinese try attacking us at Tienshui and we get a good result. Their lack of supply shows as they only get 1:9 result and take pretty heavy casualties.

And the nailbiter at Pingsiang comes to a close as the Chinese attack on the same day that our reinforcements arrive. They get a 1:7 result and tomorrow we will counterattack to take advantage of their likely high disruption. This is where we have been severely outnumbered and I wasn't sure if we could hold long enough.

Ground combat at Pingsiang (82,54)

Allied Deliberate attack

Attacking force 43665 troops, 296 guns, 0 vehicles, Assault Value = 836

Defending force 29560 troops, 211 guns, 4 vehicles, Assault Value = 853

Allied adjusted assault: 169

Japanese adjusted defense: 1305

Allied assault odds: 1 to 7 (fort level 1)

Combat modifiers
Defender: terrain(+), forts(+), op mode(-), leaders(+)
preparation(-)
Attacker: disruption(-)

Japanese ground losses:
423 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 39 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 2 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 4 disabled


Allied ground losses:
2377 casualties reported
Squads: 72 destroyed, 189 disabled
Non Combat: 2 destroyed, 25 disabled
Engineers: 1 destroyed, 22 disabled


Assaulting units:
37th Chinese Corps
73rd Chinese Corps
26th Chinese Corps
74th Chinese Corps
29th Group Army
57th AT Gun Regiment
4th Heavy Mortar Regiment

Defending units:
12th Ind.Mixed Brigade
6th Division
69th Division

April 4th, 1942

India/Burma
Our destroyers chase away SS Swordfish from Shokaku, but CL Kashii is again called upon to sacrifice herself by stopping a torpedo launched by SS O16. Kashii goes under, and we lose our second 18 knot cruiser. The destroyers also spot and chase off SS O20. Shokaku suffers a bit, and picks up a point of sys damage and a float point. The ship is at 40/82/52 now. On the plus side, the ship is now headed east since it manage to cover two hexes today and is now past the immediate threat of Colombo airstrikes.

Hiryu, Soryu and Zuikaku are well out of the sub infested waters now and headed to Singapore. After doing some repair math I have decided that Zuikaku will head to a size 100 repair yard at the Home Islands, Soryu will go to Hong Kong and Hiryu will repair at Singapore. This will get all three carriers back in action in a little over a month.

Our minelaying mission at Madras goes poorly, as we discover enemy mines are there the hard way. Of the three subs we sent in, two hit mines. Thankfully they are still afloat. One is a bit iffy, but if it can make it back to Trincomalee I think it will be fine. We manage to put down 40 mines, but an AMc there sweeps them up right away. The damaged subs will lay theirs at Trincomalee in case the British surface ships decide to come by and bombard the place.

More air battles over Ceylon - 13 Hurricane IIa's sweep Trincomalee and meet 70 Oscars. Plus another Blenheim attack at Colombo meets our CAP. By the end of the day we lose about 6 Oscars and take down 12 Hurricanes and 1 Blenheim.

DEI
Next to Ternate we occupy the small base of Djailolo.

6 B-17E hit Koepang, and we shoot one down with the Tojos and another goes down to AA fire.

Philippines


Pacific
Lunga reaches size four airfield - now our Betties and Nells can fly at full strength.

Our fast transport TF drops the 1st Inpt SNLF Coy on Tanna and they capture the base. Our tranports head towards Koumac while the Car Div 2 lingers nearby.

China
Our counterattack at Pingsiang goes well, with at 2:1 result which send the Chinese running with 14,000 casualties - 99% of which are destroyed squads. The 6th and 69th Divisions will follow and cross the river to the northwest to see if we can shake things up a bit. If I can get enough gathered around Changsha I could trap a big stack there, but I might not quite be able to do that.

[center]
Moving to flank Changsha[/center]

Other
Five destroyers go into refit at Yokohama.

April 5th, 1942
A quiet day in most places, except for the South Pacific where an unexpected carrier battle breaks out!

India/Burma
Another sweep of Trincomalee, but this time only 5 Hurricanes come by. We shoot down three for no loses. Unfortunately, a couple Mabels and six Kates decide to go after a mine sweeper at Colombo and bring 25 Oscars with them. I say unfortunately because the 22 Hurricanes (6xIIa, 16xIIb) on CAP chew up our Oscars on escort badly. We lose 16 Oscars and only down 3 Hurricane IIb. All the TBs make it home and they do sink the AMc Rahman, but at the cost of a bunch of fighter planes.

Shokaku has no close calls today and manages to drop a point of float damage bringing her down to 40/81/52.

Philippines
Allied subs have been hanging out off Bataan for a while, so I finally decided to mine the area. A couple hundred mines there should eventually hit any subs loitering there.

Pacific
Here was the main event of the day. USN carriers show up about 5 hexes southeast of Luganville. I suspect they were planning to hit the transports there, but only John knows for sure. In any case, one of our carrier TF's reacts, splitting our forces into two groups. Even so, we still have a decent range advantage on the US Carriers as our closer TF (Akagi) is six hexes away, and the other (Kaga) is seven hexes away.

Our first strike from the Kaga TF is a nice one - 44 Zeros, 29 Kates (both N1 and N2), and 17 Vals. Enemy CAP consists of 14 Buffalos, 12 F4F-3 Wildcats and 13 F4F-4 Wildcats. The Zeros do well and although we lose 4 or 5 Zeros, we only lose 1 Kate and 1 Val to A2A. We lose another Kate to AA fire. Unfortunately, the weather is pretty rough and we don't get a lot of hits. The Vals do well, putting 4 bombs on CV Enterprise, 2 on Yorktown and 1 on Lexington. One Kate does manage to hit Yorktown with a torpedo as well.

Our second strike, from the Akagi TF, does better. 46 Zeros, 36 Kates and 18 Vals are met by a reduced CAP of 3 Buffalos, 4 F4F-3 and 6 F4F-4. We get through the CAP easily, and lose a Kate and a Val to AA fire. However, we score a few more hits this time. Enterprise gets four torpedoes, Lexington gets two torps and a bomb, CA Northhampton gets a bomb and CA Indianpolis gets a torpedo.

The first US strikes arrives over the Kaga TF, surprising since it is farther away. It consists of 12 Wildcats and 28 SBD's. We take down a few Wildcats, but most of the Dauntlesses get through. CVL Zuiho takes three bomb hits, CVL Ryujo gets one and CVE Hosho gets one. No heavy damage marks yet, just fires. However, Zuiho's planes divert to Luganville.

The final strike of the morning is the US TBD's going for Luganville. They carry bombs in and drop them on three of our transports. One will probably sink (3 bomb hits), the other two should survive (1 hit each).

The afternoon gets off to an interesting start. 9 Bettys make the long flight down from Lunga to attack the enemy carriers. Along the way, 3 Kates and 9 Zeros of the rebased Zuiho groups join them from Luganville. This group finds Yorktown and manages to drop three bombs on her - one of which is from one of the Bettys!

Next up the Akagi TF reacts again and moves a hex closer to the enemy. First is a strike of 46 Zeros, 40 Kate and 18 Vals. No enemy CAP is present so our bombers have it easy with only AA fire to worry about. No planes are lost but they manage a bomb and torpedo on Yorktown, with assorted other hits on cruisers and DD's that I'll summarize below.

Our next strike from the Kaga TF - minus Zuiho - is 30 Zeros and 44 Kates. Again, no enemy CAP. This one puts a torpedo into Yorktown and confirms her sunk, taking several planes down with her. Indianapolis get three torpedoes and is also confirmed sunk. Northhampton gets a torpedo as well.

Although there was no enemy CAP, somebody is still flying planes because 3 Wildcats and 29 SBDs show up over over the Kaga TF and although we take a bite out of the SBDs, 20 of them still get through. They hit zuiho with four bombs, one of which causes an ammo explosion, and CVE Unyo is hit with 1 bomb.

The last attack of the day is 4 TBDs attacking Akagi now that it is within 5 hexes. Our CAP of 75 Zeros makes easy work of the TBDs and none of them go home.

Overall a great fight - our carriers and battleships are in good shape (except Zuiho and Unyo) and they will all head east. The battleships will hope to cross paths with some slower damaged ships while our carriers will make sure we finish off Enterprise and Lexington. Suva is still a good distance away, and with only a size 2 airfield we don't have much to worry about from there. Our troop ships will continue on towards Koumac.

Unfortunately Zuiho is in bad shape. Unlike Shokaku, Zuiho has raging fires so I don't expect her to survive tomorrow. CVL Ryujo and CVE Unyo are hardly scratched from the single bombs they each took. However, CVE Hosho has some damage and will need to head to Rabaul to get fixed, but it really is in no danger of sinking, other than from submarines. Below are some screenshots of the battle, as well as a summary of hits on ships as well as the status of our carriers.

Hits -
Allies
CV Lexington 2 bombs, 2 torps
CV Enterprise 4 bombs, 4 torps
CV Yorktown 6 bombs, 3 torps (sunk)
CA Northhampton 1 bombs, 1 torp
CA Indianapolis 0 bombs, 5 torps (sunk)
CA Chester 2 bombs, 1 torps
CA Chicago 4 bombs, 1 torp
CA Pensacola 2 bombs, 2 torps
DD Dunlap 0 bombs, 1 torp
DD Ellet 1 bombs, 0 torp
DD Craven 2 bombs, 0 torp

IJN
CVL Zuiho 7 bombs(79/75/15/75)
CVL Ryujo 1 bomb (6/2/2/0)
CVE Hosho 1 bomb (25/5/1/0)
CVE Unyo 1 bomb (4/1/3/0)

[center]
Morning air action


Afternoon air action


Air losses[/center]

Other
Paramushiro Jima hits AF level 3 and DD Minegumo begins refit at Singapore.

We get a report of AMc Agra having sunk at Chittagong back on February 13th, 1942. We also get a report of the AMC Kookaburra having sunk at Port Moresby back on January 22nd, 1942.

Great results, especially coming after the big battle on the other end of the map. That is a lot of power projection lost by the Allies. Well done!

ORIGINAL: Feurer Krieg

Another month comes to an end, and it was a lively one.

The rate of base captures slows some as we run into some opposition during our Flores Islands cleanup in the DEI. Although that has been dealt with, there won't be that many more bases to vacuum up as we get closer to our planned expansion goals. This month we capture 54 bases, compared to 85 last month. The highlights of the month were the capture of Luganville, Bataan and the fact that Trincomalee is nearly captured. With luck we will finally take Colombo in April, as well as Noumea and maybe even Suva depending on what the US CV arm does.

The naval war picked up in the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. Although we did sink a British carrier, it was at a high cost as we will probably lose Shokaku. There have been some successes though as we damaged Royal Sovereign and put Resolution under with nearly all submarine attacks.

The DEI is firmly under our control now, and Palembang has finally been taken, safe from any Allied bombing attacks. It is in excellent shape with little damage sustained by the facilities there. We have convoys setup for most of the bases throughout the DEI and Heavy Industry expansion going on in order to minimize the amount of product we need to ship out of those islands. In preparation for the late war, we have adjusted some R&D to account for a better night fighter mix, and also have expanded LI in areas that we expect to control for a long time such as the Home Islands and Korea. If and when we ever run low on fuel, the extra LI will still be pumping out supply for us.

We are starting to pull some maneuvers in China that will hopefully work out well in the coming months. The Chinese are already showing signs of low supply and that should work to our benefit.

Beyond April, the only open objectives still are to secure northern Australia and Burma.

Some numbers for February -
Bases captured: 54
VP Ratio Mar 1: 1.796:1 (Japan)
VP Ratio Apr 1: 2.191:1 (Japan)
Air losses: 359 Japan, 302 Allies
Ships lost - Allies: 27 Ships, 543 Points
Ships lost - Japan: 17 Ships, 68 Points

Capital Ships lost (entire war):
Allies
CV Saratoga
CV Indomitable
BB Resolution
BB Prince of Wales
BC Repulse
CA San Francisco
CA Australia
CA Canberra
CL Adelaide
CL Caledon
CL Dragon
CL Enterprise
CL Java
CL Leander
CL Marblehead
CL Mauritius
CL Perth

Japan
CL Kashima

Here is the sub list, and below that current scoreboard. We only lost one sub in March, but it is unfortunately our 2nd highest scorer. The .2's and.4's on the list are from splitting up the credit for taking down Resolution. With 5 for 5 hits and 3.4 ships sunk, I-165 has a commanding lead now.

[center][/center]

Enjoying watching you push forward...

What program is that with the sub information, and does it keep track of sunk tonnage by sub for you?

If so, I want this!!