April 19th, 1942
India/Burma
More night attacks on Trincomalee, this time with no hits at all.
The big news is a Colombo though, where after about 8 weeks of fighting the IJA finally captures the base! Today we get results of 10:1 and we capture 75,000 Commonwealth troops, although we do lose a tank regiment. Notable units destroyed include the 18th British Div, the 6th and 7th Australian Division, Eastern Fleet HQ and Ceylon Command HQ. See full list below. Also, below, you can see the some of the history of this battle as I have been tracking it. You can see a couple other units that were eliminated along the way. This victory brings our VP ratio up to 2.677:1 as we gain 2428 points today. 600 from the base and the rest presumably from the captured troops.
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Colombo surrendered units
Colombo ground combat history EDA/EBA/ESA = enemy attack, DA/BA = Japan attacks, NP = not present, XX=unit destroyed[/center]
The fall of Colombo is definitely a big moment for us, but it is just that. A moment. The divisions will only have about 3 days to rest before transports show up to load them for their next job. We managed to capture about 30,000 supply from the Allies here which is great. Some of our more wrecked units will rest here longer, but the 95% or better TOE divisions are headed to Burma and/or Australia to get those areas under control before we start to settle in for defense and supply hoarding.
At Burma, we get a free capture at Toungoo, which is good since it means John won't know for sure what size unit is there. With Colombo captured, we order all system go on Burma. We will air drop 3 small parts of para units into three undefended bases (at least as of last recon check). Meanwhile the bulk of our planes will drop as much of the 1st Raider unit as possible into Bassein. We already have our tank regiment in place at Pegu, and a brigade is set to cross the river tomorrow there, so both of those units will attempt to coordinate their attacks. All air power in the area is on ground attack for Pegu.
The unit at Toungoo is on the march northeast towards Mandalay, and the 65th Brigade, which is quite a large one at 140% TOE, is unloading at Moulmein tomorrow. Hopefully three brigades, four para units and a tank regiment can hold things together for the first week while a couple of our crack divisions come back from Colombo. Some of these divisions are quite good - the 48th for example is at 110% TOE and has 93 Experience.
Pacific
Midget sub Ha-16 hits a couple mines and sinks at Suva. This leads me to believe they just put mines down since we have been there for a long time without hitting mines before. Hopefully they will leave Nadi unmined.
The 8th Division is fully loaded now, so we just need to wait for the 26th over at Noumea to get loaded. In the meantime, we spot a TF moving westwardly, located southeast of Car Div 2's location. We'll move about three hexes southwest and switch to bombs to see if we can bag some DD's or APD's or whatever is there.
CA Ashigara, in the Car Div 2 TF, is attacked and hit by SS Silversides. Thankfully the hit is a dud torpedo. Another good reason to shift SW a few hexes.
China
New planes are spotted over Changsha today where we are sweeping and bombing. The Hawk 75M. I'll have to take a look and see what this plane is about. Today we managed to bring down four of the Hawk 75Ms, 2 H81-A3s and lose one Oscar to ops loss.
At Ankang, the 22nd Division attacks there, finally bringing some infantry support to the four tank units there. We get 1:1 results, but we also disable about 10% of the enemy forces. So I think this will fall soon. Unfortunately it won't be tomorrow as supply is low so we will wait a day.
Sining inches closer with another 1:1 result (226:130). Here also, supply is low so we will need to wait a day.
Other
Five DD's are returned from refit at Yokohama.
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