April 6th, 1942 continued
A couple things I missed in the last post - one is that SS Trusty was found three times by DD Samidare and Kawakaze after their surface fights. Thankfully Trusty wasn't able to torpedo them. Also, our battleship TF was attack by SS Salmon, but we were saved by a dud torpedo. Anyway - onwards to the Pacific!
Pacific
All kinds of action here, as we dive into the remains of the Allied fleet and have a field day.
First up, Zuiho sinks early in the night phase, so that's a bummer, but not unexpected. The rest of the fleet will do their best to make sure her death was not in vain!
First, our amphib force makes landfall at Koumac without incident. So the entire basis for our combat ships to be in the area was successful. The 28th Division and 8th Tank Regiment will march down the island and seize Noumea.
The rest of the night is pretty quite. Once the sun comes up, the first combat action of the day occurs when our Akagi TF stumbles across CA Chester, CA Chicago and three DD's! Both TF's bolt from each other, but not before CA Ashigara hits Chicago at the impressive range of 30,000 yards. The shell doesn't penetrate Chicago's deck armor, but still a nice shot.
Next, as CA Chester and Chicago flee our carrier TF, they cross the path of I-9 which fires a spread of six torpedoes at CA Chester and hits with three of them. I-9 gets away and then returns later for another attempt, but DD Benham gets in the way so I-9 fires at Benham, misses, leaves and calls it a day. A good one for any sub to put three fish into a heavy cruiser.
During the AM Search phase we get three hits on unidentified destroyers and one hit on a CV - not sure which one it was.
The first airstrike we launch is from the Akaki TF and is 49 Zeros, 34 Kates and 6 Vals. They find the most important enemy ships - Lexington and Enterprise. Lex gets 3 torpedoes and Enterprise gets 4 bombs hits - both ships are reported sunk.
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The last two big carriers go down[/center]
After that we have strikes going all over the place to try and get various USN Ships.
4 Kates and 7 Vals attack CA Northhampton, scoring a torpedo hit.
13 Kates armed with bombs find CA Chicago and manage to hit Chicago with 3, DD Benham with 3 and DD Fanning with 2.
19 Vals find DD Dunlap and hit with two bombs, sinking the ship.
6 Kates and 8 Vals hit DD Cummings and Mahan, and score 1 bomb hit on Cummings.
3 Kates fail to hit DD Gridley and with that the morning comes to an end.
In the afternoon, we keep at it. During the search phase Vals hit DD Cummings once and DD Mahan twice. Then the naval strikes start.
25 Vals attack CA Chicago, and a pair of DD's. Chicago gets six bombs, DD Fanning gets 1 and D Maury takes 1.
6 Vals miss Gridley.
24 Kates go to where Chicago was, but find the ship has sunk.
26 Kates hit DD Ellet and Gridley. Ellet is hit once while Gridley gets hit six times and is confirmed sunk.
5 Kates miss DD Cummings.
7 Kates and 8 Vals hit both DD Cummings and Mahan with two bombs each, sinking Cummings.
With that the day ends. Our surface force failed to connect with any enemy ships, but our air wings do plenty of damage. Here is the summary of hits from both yesterday and today. We will surround Suva with subs and hopefully catch some of these damaged ships. Every destroyer listed below is at 'heavy damage, heavy fires', so some might not make it home, although the Allied damage control is legendary. The 'sunk' notes below are those that were listed as sunk in the replay. For comparison a screen shot of the sunk ships list is also below.
Hits (both days) -
CV Lexington 2 bombs, 5 torps (sunk)
CV Enterprise 8 bombs, 4 torps (sunk)
CV Yorktown 6 bombs, 3 torps (sunk)
CA Northhampton 1 bomb , 2 torp
CA Indianapolis 0 bombs, 5 torps (sunk)
CA Chester 2 bombs, 4 torps (sunk)
CA Chicago 13 bombs, 1 torp (sunk)
CA Pensacola 2 bombs, 2 torps
DD Dunlap 2 bombs, 1 torp (sunk)
DD Ellet 2 bomb , 0 torp
DD Craven 2 bombs, 0 torp
DD Benham 3 bombs, 0 torp
DD Fanning 3 bombs, 0 torp
DD Cummings 4 bomb , 0 torp (sunk)
DD Maury 1 bomb , 0 torp
DD Gridley 6 bombs, 0 torp (sunk)
DD Mahan 4 bombs, 0 torp
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