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Continuing along...apparently movers in New Zealand aren't up to too much, since Saros's PC got cracked in half in his jump between cities. Meanwhile, I've been in Wales and Ireland for the better part of three weeks looking at rocks. Astonishingly, despite being outdoors 9-5 just about every day we got rained on properly all of once, for about 15 minutes - what are the odds of that?

Game-wise, I have no real specific memories of what was going where after five busy weeks away, so I expect to make some entertainingly dumb mistakes over the next couple of days.

Feb. 6

Japanese forces take a crack at Singapore, and with twice the force of the defenders they take just over twice the casualties in the attack.

Fighter sweeps over Rangoon, Surabaya, Clark etc hit air; the IJAAF is bolder in China, where Nates have been playing at being ground attack aircraft for a while. They're not bad at it, actually - Chinese infantry corps are so completely devoid of AA equipment that they can't even hurt fighters flying at 100ft. A little silly - you'd expect the odd splatter here and there just from enough guys with rifles at that sort of altitude - but rien fait.

The IJA deathstar continues its blitzkrieg through the mountains towards Xi'an, pushing back the two Communist corps as expected; the roads in their direction are good enough that the next fight will probably occur before any reinforcements make it into the hex, making it ~1600 vs ~6000. Not good odds, even if you're not the National Revolutionary Army. There are no really significant forces anywhere between Xi'an and the Szechuan basin, and there is as far as I'm aware no contingency plan for a Chinese collapse; it'd be particularly damaging considering I'd hoped to make a show of Burma - the release of such a mass of Japanese land forces would make that impracticable.

A number of Japanese construction and airbase units make landfall at Lautem in East Timor; there'll be hell to pay from the Portuguese, that's for sure! More practically, it suggests this'll be the main point of origin for aircraft attacking Darwin.

Eastern Fleet will make Colombo tomorrow; those ships that need yard time will get it, while the destroyers play whack-a-mole with the dozen or so Japanese submarines that have shown up between Colombo and Cochin in the last couple of days. The situation as regards supplying Ceylon is a little strange - rather than running tankers straight into Colombo I've been unloading everything at Karachi and just using ships for the last leg, from Madras to Trincomalee. Less efficient, and theoretically the ships are at risk of being boxed into the Bay of Bengal, but there's only a few of them and they're getting enough cargo over unobserved and unmolested to keep everyone happy, while the Japanese sub force stalks around with nothing to shoot torpedoes at.

Still no Catalina flights from whatever the island was called; I guess either it's a supply issue (which would take either a ship or weeks to fix, neither of which are available) or a support issue (which would be fixable, but would also leave a lot of people dangling in the breeze). Either way, it's not worked out, so they're shoving off for the mainland. Lesson learned - I still like the idea, however, so I think I'll mostly keep them together, give them a little more bombing practice and then let them loose on targets in range of the Australian mainland, of which there should be a few by the time they're ready.

Another SNLF fragment is signalled en route to another South Pacific island; the way the range of the PBY-4 works out, I can just get a load of troops to oppose this one, while retaining the ability to get them out safely. Should be interesting to see what the response will be, assuming they don't arrive before the airliners do.

Construction and defense batallions approach Penryhn and Malden islands; I'm a little concerned here insofar as that a B-17 gave me a (very dodgy and so far unconfirmed) report of three Japanese ships hanging around Christmas Island, so the potential for harm exists. They're all escorted, up to a point, but...

Feb. 7-8

Thai-Japanese attacks on Burma Corps take place; outnumbered 4-1, 1st Burma Div still manages to inflict more casualties than it takes. I'd send them off for tea and medals, but 'more' isn't enough given the numbers arrayed against them. BFF Bde has taken a few casualties and is now entirely out of combat, though substantially intact; conceptually I suppose they all buggered off into the jungle. I do feel a tiny little bit hard done by here, given that the Thais weren't supposed to be crossing any borders in the first place, but it's too late to do anything about it now. 17th Indian Div ordered to Shwebo instead of Rangoon to start digging; forces at Rangoon will bug out once 1BD is pushed over the Sittang, which will probably be tomorrow or the day after.

Unloading at Malden and Penrhyn Is begins; ETA on the airfields is uncertain, but hopefully won't be too long - there's plenty of construction equipment coming ashore.

Two Japanese ships are spotted heading for Savaii (100 or so miles NW of Pago Pago); the last attempt to contest one of these didn't go off as the aircraft orders somehow didn't take; this time I've triple-checked them, so a combined US-NZ force should be in place to oppose the landing. Pago Pago is obviously the current objective for the Japanese down here; it's reasonably well supplied, but could definitely be taken, especially with the amphib bonus around.

Catalinas finally fly, hitting...Rabaul and Port Moresby? The mind boggles. They're headed back to Australia now, anyway.

Everywhere else is quiet. A number of collisions will take place in China over the next week or so, but for the moment it's all movement.

Feb. 9

Today was an interesting demonstration of how having unreliable aircraft can, very, very occasionally, be useful. IJNAF fighters have been buzzing Batavia for a while now; usually they've been doing 'ok' rather than 'well', but despite fairly acceptable losses on our part the number of fighters rising to meet them has been dropping pretty steadily as Buffalos drop out of the line for a while to get their engines replaced. So, apparently, today marked the next phase of the plan:



This wasn't the only raid; the next one was escorted, though the escorts only managed to stick in combat for a few minutes. Maybe operating at long range isn't ideal, even given that you theoretically can? Anyway, tally for the day was 54-45 (claimed/sensible estimate) bombers shot down over Java in exchange for a couple of Buffalos. Not complaining...

Japanese light carriers - or rather, what's left of them - have pushed through the Malay Barrier and are headed...well, I don't know where they're headed, but given past performance I suspect it's Perth, given that that's the only place between Christchurch and Colombo with enough shipping traffic to merit dangling carriers out like this.



Well, when I say 'suspect', what I actually mean is 'hope':



Really, really hope. Actually shipping to W.A is mostly (70/30 or so) going into Albany rather than Perth, the former being unbothered by submarines, but Perth is still pretty busy. Other possibilities are hitting Java (low-risk, but why bother with carriers?) or Ceylon (a heck of a long way and just as heavily armed as W.A); or, on an outside guess, maybe putting ashore a few half-starved naval infantrymen at Port Hedland, Exmouth etc. Nothing to do now but wait, anyway.

Burma Corps continues to resist attacks on the Sittang; casualties continue to be comparable for both sides despite a 4-1 numbers match. BFF Bde has extracted itself from the battle area and is setting off for India; it'll be a while before it's useful (currently 0/100 squads are combat-ready), but it'll get there eventually.

SS Pompano is attacked by Kates three separate times off Nauru, which would seem to locate at least some fraction of Japanese carrier strength in the Pacific. It's possible this is just Hosho, but it's also possible it's the whole pod, which would be nice.

Pacific Fleet cruisers are on approach to Tahiti; they will attempt to demonstrate a presence, hopefully by intercepting a couple of cheapie landings, without doing anything too rash.

Pacific Fleet carriers are three weeks out from Cape Town. Crikey, imagine if I had them in the East Indies right now, eh?

Light comedy as the Japanese guess incorrectly (I went for the dot hex for this exact reason) while hunting Catalinas:



Two aircraft and a few dozen base force staff remain; hopefully they'll be out by tomorrow.

Feb. 10-13

Disappointment reigns in Batavia; Japanese light carriers turned north to follow the coast of Java, jumped up into range of aircraft flying from Bandung for just long enough to get my hopes of hitting them up, then turned for home. As yet, no aircraft have flown off any of them.

Catforce is in Pago Pago at the moment, having got their claws out earlier in the morning to sink large seaplane carrier Kamikawa Maru and a patrol boat. Two more AV-PB pairs appear to be operating around Norfolk Island, so we'll attempt a raid on Suva (reported contents: half a dozen Japanese ships, including three AS, along with all of two aircraft) tomorrow and then move back towards New Zealand.

Forces at Bataan are recovering, slowly, having passed back up through 1000av today; the Japanese are making no attempt to follow us in, which suggests Saros finally worked out that burning half his army up to take the place wasn't too bright. Shame. With the extra forts I can practically build here the defenses should actually be a little stronger than they were at Clark, but we're down to 5000t of supplies, which ain't enough to get anything done.

1st Burma Div continues to hold out against what's now five times their number on the Sittang line, though they're now down to 200av or so. Bloody marvellous performance by them - support units have all made it out safely, forces at Rangoon are ready to rail north the moment the river line falls, and significant land forces to include the Chinese 66th Corps (450av), 18th Brit Div (450av), 6th Aus Div (500av), "45th Ind Div" (360av) and 7th Armoured Bde (150av) will join 17th Ind Div (345av) and Chinese 5th Corps (~320av, dispersed) look like they'll be in position in time to do their respective things. Really is a shame about the Thais...

7th Aus Div will begin loading tomorrow, destined for Burma also. This leaves Australia a little (!) short on defences; don't think Canberra's going to be too happy, although several US pursuit sqns will reach Adelaide over the next few weeks.

China's been busy today:

- Japanese main force runs into around half the Chinese forces moving to oppose them southeast of Xi'an; at the end of the day, J are down 750av and C are down 450, for somewhere around 5500:2400av. Reinforcements are 5-6 days away, so the outcome here will probably depend on how furious the Japanese feel like being. Ideally they'd be just furious enough to burn out their army and not quite enough to break through...

- Chinese movements into Wuhan meet enough force to prevent the twin cities from falling, but not enough to kick them out; the force north of the river has a Japanese armoured group a few days away from its entry point, however, and the forces guarding the way out aren't really up for AT work, so will have to pull back. Shouldn't be a problem as they were IDed early enough - the RAF P.R.U at Changsha has been an absolute lifesaver so far.

- Nanchang changes hands for the third time in as many weeks, as Japanese forces here pull back in the face of a much larger force. Usefully, almost 6000t of supplies were captured along with the base (which had been set to draw extra supply - oops!) - that about justifies the movement on its own down here.

- AVG fighters, 2/3 on P-39s and 1/3 on P-40s, arrive Changsha today. Should put an end to Nates playing the strafing game for a while, if nothing else...

Feb. 14

Catalinas refused to fly at Suva, for the second time in three days; today's failure was probably a good thing, however, Japanese fighter cover having at last arrived. They'll shift down to Waipapakauri and attempt to catch the AV still lingering around Norfolk Island tomorrow.

1BD finally shoved off the river line today; forces at Rangoon have been ordered to push off for Shwebo. Whether they'll make it probably depends on the order the system processes movement orders in...

The AVG announces its presence with a bang; four Nates and 26-34 Sonias (realistic/claimed) go down over Nanchang. Suspect China will see an influx of modern Japanese fighters to "balance" things out, but at least they'd be in China rather than Burma, Java etc.

In among the usual joke Colombo, Pearl Harbour etc unit planning intercepts there is one of an artillery regiment for Darwin; no guesses as to where the horde currently on Timor are going.

Feb. 15-16

Japanese troops land at Norfolk Island. Two Australian commando companies (20av) are up against an SNLF (28av). Will probably fly some more in if things get dicey, but the troops currently there have enough supplies to last them several months, so I'm happy to just let the Japanese stew a bit for once.

Two CVs reported in harbor at Suva and the emails that come along with my turns keep hinting at "something big", so that's possibly an invasion of Pago Pago. The garrison there has been growing a little lately, with about 2/3rds of an infantry Rgt yet to arrive (the other 1/3 going to Savaii, next door). Interestingly shipping to Pago Pago hasn't been bothered at any point, so supplies are relatively plentiful here. Ultimately with the amphibious bonus in effect there's little I can do about it if the clown car that disgorged at Fiji shows up, but if something smaller arrives it could be fun.

Another thing these emails have been doing a lot lately is crowing about the two battleships that sank in transit from Hawaii to the USA - apparently they've shown up as a points loss in Tracker and everything. Needless to say I'm not discouraging the idea, but the PH 8 are all fine - six of them are a few days out from San Francisco, and two of them are staying put as it's quicker to fix them in place.

Elsewhere, pretty boring - just stuff moving around.

Feb. 17

A G4M squadron shows up over NorIs, hitting one of the commando companies so hard it's entirely useless in the combat phase. They all seem to have recovered now, though, and their colleagues held off another Japanese attack with no casualties. Two detachments from a USAAF P-40 squadron have flown into Norfolk, and a bunch of aviation support along with a significant fraction of 8th NZ Bde will land overnight; hopefully the Japanese go all out tomorrow.

A large convoy reaches Tahiti; half a dozen Japanese submarines make attacks on it in the Tahiti hex alone - and this with over a dozen destroyers, eight PTs and assorted YP, YMS, AMc etc floating around entirely independently of the convoy. Only one small ship is hit, but it was the one (out of 40 or so?) carrying 17 P-43s. A couple of other fighter units unload, however, along with four Coast AA Rgts, some 6" guns, a Marine Bde and tank Rgt, 180 aircrafts' worth of aviation support and a bunch of other stuff I forget offhand. Hopefully we'll have a carrier raid on Tahiti at some point in the near future!

Imperial Guards Div zips across the Sittang and into Pegu; 1st Burma Div retires into Rangoon. Still pretty pissed off about the whole thing - absent the Thai rule being broken, then the new Thai rule being broken, this would have taken several more weeks. Still, everything not nailed down got out of Rangoon and up-country safely, so it could have been worse. Expectation is that an armoured unit will attempt to force Toungoo while the infantry take Rangoon; an independent AT unit have completed the march across from Imphal to Burma, but they're a couple of days away from a railhead - we'll see how that works out.

A Japanese battleship squadron is displaying plumage in front of Billiton; objective is unknown. My naval search in the Java area is minimal at the moment as there is not much I can do with the information.

Actual Feb. 17 (I got a day ahead again somehow)

G4Ms hit Norfolk Island, like yesterday. Unlike yesterday, 2/3 of a squadron of P-40s are up in the air today; 11 aircraft fail to return to Noumea. 600 men of 8th NZ Bde also made it in overnight, but there were no attacks on land; we'll attempt to move the Japanese seawards after another day's reinforcements are in.

Battleships Nagato and Hyuga bombard Batavia, destroying one Hurricane on the ground but otherwise not doing much. Unfortunately the CD guns here top out at 4.7"; not really up to zapping battleships. They're far out of range of aircraft by morning.

With all unloading complete, there are 120,000t of supplies at Tahiti and about enough troops to stop anything up to and including a full Japanese division from taking the place. Transports are moving off to return to Panama, while cruisers retire towards Anchorage A - rather than keeping all the support ships at Tahiti itself, I've stashed them out of sight a few islands over. Also notable is that 30,000t have made it into NZ over the last few days - the potential for raids is there, so I'm not putting any huge convoys through, but single ships are making the voyage.

Troops at Bataan are about out of supply; artillery bombardments are reducing the active force by about 20av per day with no return casualties, so even absent any more attacks the clock is ticking. Singapore still has 50,000t of Stuff and forces there have actually recovered somewhat recently; if nothing else they're up a couple of days on the 'historical' time of collapse, and this after all that confusion on the peninsula with the loss of a bunch of valuable stuff. Absent Japanese reinforcements these guys could probably go for weeks yet, but of course reinforcements there will be. I got my first 'X prepping for Palembang' intercept today, too, so that looks to be going ahead soon; there's about 200 Dutch AV at PB - I haven't overreinforced it for the simple reason that I don't want the game to end in May! - which is reasonable enough, but there ain't much in the way of engineering capability around so it's not a heavily fortified sort of place.

Just checking in to say that I'm enjoying the read . . . I'm intrigued by your CatForce. Are you solely trying night attacks, or day attacks as well if you think there will be no fighter cover? And are you trying to match torpedo-cabable headquarters with the 'Cats, or are you ok sending them in as bombers? Finally, what are you doing for search assets with all your Catalinas otherwise employed?

ORIGINAL: Blackhorse

Just checking in to say that I'm enjoying the read . . . I'm intrigued by your CatForce. Are you solely trying night attacks, or day attacks as well if you think there will be no fighter cover? And are you trying to match torpedo-cabable headquarters with the 'Cats, or are you ok sending them in as bombers? Finally, what are you doing for search assets with all your Catalinas otherwise employed?

There hasn't been much daytime flying (well, there hasn't been much flying at all, really - range issues, I guess) but they've been attempting to fly in the day where fighters are non-existent or minimal - Truk reportedly had eight I think when I was putting that together, so 10-15 is probably about the cutoff point for day raids - I don't get many of the things, after all. Not too fussed with torpedoes, to be honest - the crews have been training bombing vs torps as a lot of what I've been trying to do is direct port strikes and conceptually bombing would be more useful if and when they got back to being patrol aircraft.

LR Search assets otherwise are a couple of 'spare' Catalina squadrons (the PBY-4s are all flying as searchers - Tahiti, Pago Pago, Auckland and somewhere else, plus the -5s at Kodiak) but mostly B-17s - the USAFFE B-17D squadrons got battleshipped on the ground on Mindanao a few days into the war, to the point where the squadrons had to withdraw back to the US; this released the aircraft themselves (since they were just disabled, rather than being destroyed) and I sent them to Hawaii, Midway, Xmas Is etc rather than the front. I can get away with this since there's a limited amount of shipping to actually protect in the Pacific - currently there's a convoy heading for Hawaii, another for Tahiti from LA and a third returning from Tahiti for Panama, and other than that it's just independent sailings.

It seems to be working out so far, anyway - anecdotally the B-17s seem to suffer a lot less ops losses on VLR naval searches, so from that perspective using them is helpful; the fact that we're fighting deep in the Pacific is also a bit of a blessing in disguise as there are coastwatchers absolutely everywhere - never mind faffing around with recon aircraft, I can just listen to the radio! and having the Catalinas vs pure bombers is immensely helpful around all the tiny little islands as they spend about half their time flitting troops around - I can shift about 650 per day, and that's with the squadrons running at about 2/3 strength (since there's not the av. support to keep all the aircraft running in most places as it is).

So, yeah. It's an interesting little game to play - my understanding is that this mix is basically what the USN wanted the Catalina for, only to have the performance not permit much combat flying in practice; for the time being, there are so few Japanese aircraft in the area (1xG4M at Noumea, 1x?fighter at Suva and beyond some recon stuff that's about it) that they can do what they like. I'm a little annoyed at Norfolk Island happening now, actually, in that there's been at least one CV reported at Suva for the past three days and I could really do with taking a crack at it!

Feb. 18-19



Saros still hasn't worked out that the mere fact that a unit is planning to make an opposed landing at Colombo, Auckland, Pearl etc doesn't mean I can't figure out they're not actually planning to do so. Or, er, something like that. Not that I'm going to tell him...

Japanese 'fast' transports deposit the other half of the SNLF on Norfolk Island, bringing its strength up to 40av. Opposing it are 70av of Australian and New Zealand troops; a Japanese attack today was a fiasco (adjusted av something like 15:90), so we'll attempt to give them a kick tomorrow. Japanese fighters from Noumea are attempting to intercept the Catalinas flying in; since N.I. is in the middle of nowhere with two friendly fighter squadrons based there, they're having limited success. The US Navy has had its first live torpedo for several weeks, with a large AMC and a 4500t fast minelayer falling victim to S-23 while streaking away from Norfolk.

Another Japanese attempt at Singapore failed; what may be reinforcements are massing across the Johore Strait, but there's at least some fight left in the place.

AVG aircraft operating out of Changsha pay a visit to Wuhan, trading one P-40 for eight Nates. The day after, a Zero squadron 'accidentally' swept Nanchang. I'm sure it was a coincidence. Job done, the Americans are headed back to Burma; I may need them there over the next few weeks.

A full US fighter group (P-39) arrived at Adelaide today, with a full bombardment group (B-26) and two AA Rgts due in Bombay tomorrow. That brings US strength up to, nominally, 200 fighters and 30 or so bombers in Australia and 57 bombers and 75 fighters in India, with more on the way to both places.

Feb. 19-20

Saros is very confused as to why I'm fighting hard for Norfolk Island, of all places, having I guess expected yet another painless occupation, and thinks the point of doing it is to delay his invasion of Pago Pago - nice to hear these that from the horse's mouth, at least. There's a grain of truth in it, in that the reinforcements for this invasion will have been getting ready for something, but what I really want to do is try and get him to dump as much of an army as deep into the map as possible - the hope is that he'll want to stick to a timetable, and bring more toys down into the middle of nowhere to acheive that. That means a bit of attrition and some "demoralising defeats" (heh) for me in the short term, but it should hopefully be useful further down the line.

USS Skipjack has an entertaining duel with a Japanese freighter north of Rabaul; it's left disarmed, riddled with holes and burning heavily, but managing that used up Skipjack's entire torpedo complement (24; no detonations) and every single 3" shell carried. Yyyyyyyyyep.

Norfolk Island invasion is reinforced by the Japanese 146th Rgt; USS Benham, the only real warship between Perth and the Cook Islands (barring HMAS Adelaide, which I'm keeping in hand for the moment) misses out on intercepting the landing by a few hours. An attempt will be made to catch the transports as they scuttle back to Fiji, but I'm not sending the ship out too far - it's also the radar station for Norfolk Island, where fighters (this time with the competent guys flying) will be going up again today, and having it there is the difference between 3 and 30 minute warnings of incoming raids. Absent a major collapse in my ability to get aircraft in and out or big guns showing up on bombardment duty (both of which are possible), it ought to take another Rgt to shift the forces here, at least until supplies run out (3wks, assuming no further resupply).

45th Indian Div and the non-motorised parts of 18th Brit Div are out of the jungle and should hit Katha in a day or two. 6th Aus Div will start walking from Kalemyo in about a week or so, when 7th Aus arrives; they'll be going direct to Shwebo, which is an easier trek than the one the Katha-bound lot have been put through; meanwhile, 6th is building up its supply line. A single Japanese tank Rgt is burbling its way up Burma; I may send the shiny new B-26s over to say hello to it in a day or two.

Forces at Bataan stood up to an all-out Japanese assault, somehow - 3200av against 800 of Filipinos armed, at this point in the supply 'game', with rocks, and casualties were still about 2.5:1 in our favour. One or two more assaults will crack things here, however. (I remember thinking that back in December!) Still - it means they're not on Java or Sumatra, and Singapore is now five days 'late' and counting.

There is some movement around Hankow that may (or, equally, may not) be the first rumblings of an attempt to take Changsha directly; the 'big' army is still up in the hills outside Xi'an, having gone all quiet after their one attack didn't quite get through. The forces opposing them are all dug in now, too, which they weren't before...

Feb. 21-22

The B-17 makes its first 'proper' combat debut, with 17 aircraft (plus five B-24s) bombing troops at Norfolk Island over two days. Because the Japanese units involved have essentially no AA capability, I sent them in at 5000ft - end result, the Japanese are down 24av (plus several Zeros that failed to bump through the P-40 CAP to get at the bombers - since the bombers are going at 5000, the Zeros, which are on LRCAP, aim for that - then our CAP comes down on them. They haven't even made it through CAP yet!). More aircraft are on the way - since it's within normal flying range from Auckland, I can keep them running these raids for a while, and at this rate the Japanese on the island will be a gibbering mess by this time next week...unless they get reinforced, which is the idea. I live in hope.

Damaged USN BBs make San Francisco safely; longest repair estimate is 50 days. There are currently nine of the things loitering around SF Bay in various places - truth be told, I don't feel as though I have much for them to do just at the moment.

Java may be (lightly) invaded tomorrow; a couple of APDs are reported headed for the coast between Surabaya and Semarang. Wonder what took so long...

Elsewhere, lots of maneuvers but nothing meaningful.

Feb. 23

Busy day. Notably, resistance collapses at Bataan - the nominal 38,000 (by now down to 800av) defenders can no longer stop 110,000 (3400av) Japanese (!) from pushing through to the end of the peninsula, thus ending fighting on Luzon. Literally nowhere else in the archipelago has been occupied - I have 480av behind L3 forts up in the mountains of Mindanao, though they don't have the supplies for anything but 'passive' resistance, and there are 'divisions' on Panay and Cebu. Good thing the Japanese know I can't move them, eh? Wish I had a wing of DC-3s - could easily put together 900av on Mindanao given the forces scattered around the southern islands.

Rangoon also falls; the remnant 1st Burma Div wasn't able to hold it against Imperial Guards Div, despite L3 forts. They're essentially doomed, having retreated northwest to Bassein, with Japanese airbone infantry also capturing Prome. A single DC-3 (no giggling in the back!) will attempt to extract a few bits.

Singapore...doesn't fall. Casualties on today's attack were 3:1 in our favour, though fortifications have been stripped and are unlikely to rebuilt. Conceptually, I suppose, at this point the Japanese are on the island itself, threatening to move on the heights overlooking what was then the city; General Percival is reportedly dithering as regards what to do.

Bombers raid Norfolk Island again, from which effort the Japanese are down 29av today. USS Benham reports being spotted by a Jake, and P-40s claim that's what the bird they shot down over the island was; if I'm not mistaken those are mostly carried by J cruisers, but on the off chance it's not an approaching bombardment group - and against my better judgement - Benham will stay for at least another day. What I do know is that US sub Skipjack - heading back to Brisbane for torpedoes after that ridiculous slapfight with a freighter - bumped into four Japanese battleships halfway between Milne Bay and New Caledonia. That puts a life-expectancy on Norfolk Island simply because I have nothing to stop them nuking the place once they get there (3-5 days?), but it does mean they won't be bothering me anywhere important.

Signals deliver an indication of Japanese priorities, I think - 183 ships are reported at Truk. Didn't know they had that many...

Feb. 24-26

I'm beginning to wonder if my better judgement is really up to much; Japanese attempt to reinforce the island was undone a little as the troop transports - a large AMC and two patrol boats - arrived before the escorting warships, and, well...

Japanese Ships
PB Nagata Maru, Shell hits 6, on fire
AMC Kinryu Maru, Shell hits 8, heavy fires, heavy damage
PB Hirota Maru, Shell hits 6, heavy fires

Allied Ships
DD Benham

Japanese ground losses:
182 casualties reported
Squads: 1 destroyed, 9 disabled
Non Combat: 3 destroyed, 16 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 1 disabled

Unfortunately the Benham decided to hang around the next day - somehow its home port got reset to Norfolk Island, notwithstanding that it was supposed to be going back to Auckland - Abukuma and two destroyers got in the way of any further attacks on transports and put a torpedo into it at 7,000yds, sinking the ship immediately. Still, a good effort! The Japanese battleship force is now south of New Caledonia, heading for Norfolk; three submarines are between them and the island, and Catalinas will attempt to put some explosives into something come tomorrow, but those aircraft that are flyable have left - I can't physically stop them from blowing the place into the sea. Fortunately the place is - just - within standard range of New Zealand for P-40s, so I should be able to get most of them out whether the supplies are burnt up or not. B-17s are continuing to disable 20-30av of Japanese troops every day; given a couple of dozen more aircraft I can make Norfolk a deathtrap even absent any friendly troops. There have been cautious attacks flying backwards and forwards most days for the last week, but I haven't been reporting them as most of them haven't really got anywhere much. Casualties from these have been pretty light for everyone involved, I'm guessing due to the fact that there's not much heavy weaponry around.

The invasion of Java began with a (very small) bang yesterday as a couple of APDs dropped off a naval garrison unit at Yogyakarta, on the south coast of the island; the main (?) effort will land at Semarang tomorrow, having set the city on fire today. The intention seems to be to cut the island in half; sensible, although as 95% of the KNIL has concentrated in West Java a little unnecessary. I'm attempting, rather belatedly, to build an airfield out in the Cocos Islands, just to give the local Japanese something to do once they open the Straits beyond throwing everything they have at Darwin and Mandalay.

Limited action elsewhere. Pacific Fleet carriers will reach Cape Town tomorrow, where Lexington and Saratoga will immediately go in to refit; Enterprise and Yorktown are both in need of some engine work, so will join them for a little while and then see if there's much time to do anything fun before they go in themselves. The 'Americal' Div (daft bloody name, if you ask me) and bonus artillery has put off for Bombay, from where it'll head to Kalemyo and (eventually) to the front in Burma; my intention is to use UK, Indian and Australian formations as one 'grouping' and US & Chinese formation as the other; I'm pushing the bounds of political credibility here as it is, so it seems like the least I can do. Another 4x US Div is on its way to Cape Town, though it'll be a while before I can send it anywhere beyond that.

I'm as yet undecided as to what to do with Eastern Fleet in the meantime; until the Americans are done with their refits they can't really stand up to any Japanese raids - and they would be raids, realistically - without putting a lot of high-tech shipping at risk for potentially very limited rewards. Suspect I will actually end up bookin' it for Kilindini, as someone's sig puts it - or at least the far side of Addu Island - for a few weeks just as a precaution, but in the meantime the fleet is off to Bombay to collect Prince of Wales, which is in dock getting a nose job.

Feb. 27-28

The bombardment force - eventually, BBs Mutsu and Yamashiro, plus CLs Yubari, Tenryu, Kitakami, Kiso - hit Norfolk and set fire to the supply dump, burning up all 2000t overnight. Aircraft and troops weren't touched, so between that, air supply, the fact that the LCUs themselves have plenty and continued air raids on the Japanese we should be good to go for a little while longer. The ships are heading to Fiji to resupply - I'm assuming there's an AKE there - but tragically the US cruiser force, currently poking around east of Fiji trying to work out what there is in terms of naval search in the area (so far: bugger all) is about 150 miles short of being able to intercept them before they arrive.

Invasion of Java continues; about 600av in SNLF units - and only SNLF units so far - have been sprayed over East Java. The Dutch air force will attempt to bomb the oilworks at Tjepoe tonight, that being about the only useful thing they can do at the moment. Plans have been made for the MLD patrol groups, currently shuttling engineers into Christmas Island, to remove themselves to Diego Garcia if necessary; they get a whole bunch of Catalinas that I could really use up there.

Singapore capitulates at midnight on the 28th of Feb. 21,000 troops - all that's left of the forces initially in Malaya - are taken prisoner, having done a fine job to hold on so long unaided. Whether the Japanese will see it that way remains to be seen...

18th and 45th Divs are boarding trains for Shwebo. That'll give me 3 Div equivalents there, plus 6th and 7th Australian in about a week and a half. HIJMS knows about the 18th, but not the others; I expect a big hammer up here, but whether it'll be big enough remains to be seen. RAF and USAAF units in India are also expecting an enormous catfight, with the IJAAF units already in Burma likely to be joined by most if not all the air forces that were hammering Singapore and Luzon; it's unlikely to be pretty, but then this isn't Scen. 2 - I do want to make the buggers push hard, for all that I hate taking losses. The supply situation in Burma is 'ok' for the moment; it will likely improve over the next month, even bearing in mind the extra troops yet to arrive.

Mar. 1

Batavia is bombarded again, with the IJN battleships managing to hit the airfield this time; the Dutch are down a couple dozen aircraft, though as luck would have it losses were all useless Falcons etc. Several of the aircraft destroyed were apparently off bombing Tjepoe while the bombardment was going on; not sure how that works. CD guns were of no use to anyone again, but moving the dozen Dutch PT boats to Batavia paid off - they were also of no use in combat whatsoever, being spotted at 11,000yds at night, but managed to lead two of the destroyers chasing after them into a minefield, which they don't appear to have made it out of.

A fourth SNLF puts ashore at Norfolk Island; this one should acheive a little more than the last ones, given the decreasing viability of Norfolk as a fighter base, but it is, again, an SNLF not doing anything actually useful. As an aside: how many of the bloody things do the Japanese have? There's at least two divisions' worth of them on Java, a similar amount in the South Pacific, some in Burma, some in China...the mind boggles.

In other news, the most powerful weapon in the world arrived today:

Mar. 2



You can tell which of them are new for today, can't you? Maizuru 1st didn't quite make it in intact, the AMC carrying most of it having run into four (!) torpedoes from S-3something. They miiiiight just manage to take the place at that, however, because...

Odd snickering noises can be heard reverberating around government offices in Washington, London, and New Delhi; Kido Butai has revealed itself - off Auckland! Again! If anything the raid accomplished even less this time, blowing up two minesweepers in harbour and drilling a few holes in the airfields but failing to hit a single aircraft. I expect they'll stick around for at least another day, which should give them a few B-17s (I decided to keep them flying for Norfolk given the fresh screaming hordes), but while they're doing their bull-in-china-shop thing down in the middle of nowhere Enterprise and Yorktown are headed to Indonesia; Indomitable and Hermes will join them, objective being to bag some low-risk shipping if then available, failing that to blow up some oil facilities if that can be done, and hang around out to sea if neither's workable. Shame about L&S going into refit yesterday...wish you could cancel them as would increase my options a bit!

Sub K-7 attempted to torpedo DD Michishio, retiring from Batavia with mine damage - this is the third destroyer missing from yesterday's bombardment, which puts that down as expensive - and misses; the depthcharging from accompanying Natsugumo forces the sub to the surface, at which point it puts three torpedoes into Michishio, presumably as a little fuck-you before sinking.

Mar. 3-4

Japanese banzai charges on Norfolk Island continue. These days they're inflicting as many casualties as they take - not a sustainable situation, given troop numbers are hovering around 2000:8000. I'm just amused at the way this whole thing has turned out - half a brigade of troops and a couple of dozen fighters have absorbed the equivalent of most of a Japanese division, just about every Japanese warship that isn't working over Java and now the carriers, which are spending their third day ineffectually bombing Auckland. Saros I think just wants the whole thing over quickly, which is understandable considering this ridiculous 'battle' has been going on for over two weeks now. I think I'll begin to bring 8th NZ back home tomorrow, if they're still going - gotta figure they'll need a rest.

Darwin by contrast *is* being evacuated; Japanese aircraft have been bombing it since the day before yesterday, but supplies ran out entirely about a week and a half ago; I've been waiting to see whether anything at all would move up from the south and the answer is 'no', apparently, despite the best efforts of various engineering units, so the garrison's buggering off. A shame, but there's no sense in trying to fight off the Japanese with rocks, and I didn't really put as much effort into sea supply as I should have back in the early days of the war. I know Saros is planning to land here at some point, so this will probably accelerate that movement a little, but the end result will be better this way.

Engineering works at Shwebo have picked up speed since the 18th Div arrived; we're currently shipping 1250t per indefinite time unit, with more to come. Don't know if it'll be enough once the shooting starts, but we'll find out then, I suppose. Australian Corps will set off in two days, with artillery, engineers and AA to follow in a week or so.

Enterprise and Yorktown will reach Diego Garcia in 9 days. Too late for Surabaya, which is being overrun by a dozen SNLF units and will likely fall tomorrow, but there should still be something for them to do when they get here.

Mar. 5-8

Norfolk Island falls on the 8th; most of the combat power of the 8th Bde (appropriate, in the end) on the island was extracted overnight (there's those Catalinas again!), so actual casualties were minimal and it's still good to go as a force. Expectation is that there'll be a quick landing on Lord Howe Island, the caveat there being that it doesn't have an airfield and is within Hudson range of Australia - lots of potential for targets if that happens, so here's hoping. Carriers are moving off towards Noumea, probably to restock after wasting all their ammunition bombing Auckland.

A major reinforcement convoy is approaching Tahiti, which should make landfall tonight. Engineers, Marine combat units and another fighter squadron will all be handy, though not all of them'll be staying for too long. Two other convoys, one with two fighter squadrons and some engineers and one with the other two thirds of the units that arrive at Bora Bora, are a little further out. Bora Bora itself is currently pupating, end objective being to act as a reliever for the facilities on Tahiti. I should really draw up a map around here...

China, Burma and even Java are eerily quiet. You could almost be forgiven for thinking the Japanese aren't going to bother with northern Burma, in that there have been no moves by any Japanese north from Toungoo by land, sea or air. A second RAF PRU just got back from China today, however, so we'll see what we can see. If nothing else it's an opportunity to give those US fighter units recently arrived - II Fighter Cmd has settled in at Dacca - a bit of extra training. Suspect they'll need it. Chinese 66th Army is crossing the border, agreement for its release having been reached with the Generalissimo.

Cocos Islands are becoming a practical concern, fed by troops pushed out of their bases by the Japanese and subsequently ignored. The airfield should be up tomorrow, at which point a significant fraction of the ML will jump over for a few days' rest. I'm trying to get supplies in now, as the place will obviously be bombed and bombarded to pieces once Java falls, which effort is helped by the arrival of 130,000t of supply at Cape Town direct from the UK.