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weak and small allied counterattacks from lunga and irau were not able to penetrate the CAP over the lunga invasion force. around 100 fighters were so far succesfully defending the IJN elements at lunga point. the allied lost several SBD, B-17 and B-24 yesterday.

this is the last combatreport from guadalcanal:

Ground combat at Lunga
 
Japanese Deliberate attack
 
Attacking force 75851 troops, 830 guns, 116 vehicles
 
Defending force 36908 troops, 390 guns, 240 vehicles
 
Japanese assault odds: 0 to 1 (fort level 6)
 
 
Japanese ground losses:
Men lost 444
 
Allied ground losses:
Men lost 519
Guns lost 1

in new guinea, i am surprised by the strenght of the allied forces capturing nadzab in the last turn. there are around 10.000 allied soldiers near lae and that forced an massive reinforcement of the lae garnison with some INF units from rabaul. the allied must have supply problems there since PM is still in japanese hands, but i dont like to see the stars&stripes over lae.

i hope to end the battle of guadalcanal asap to get the time for reorganization of the troops and to give my pilots and sailors some free days...and to get more "allied personal" for the burma railroad in new guinea.[;)]

There's a lot more Allied troops in New Guinea than that!

I just wish I had some spare B17's or B24's to drop a few bombs on Lae's ports and airfields that would slow up your reinforcement of that garrison However they are all getting tied into the defence of Lunga and Irau [:@]
BTW you are under-reporting the allied losses, they are heavier than that! [:o]

recon flights from buna report at least 2 brigades! and support troops right west of lae. thats a real surprise and i hope, lae with its 10.000 men garnison (i dont have any more combat troops available since most of the army is bound at lunga) can hold out until more frsh troops arrive at truk. 2 army regiments should arrive there in 5/7 days and will reinforce the lae front.

at guadalcanal, the empire started its first shock attack and reduced the fort level down to 5. the loses were nearly 800 (J) to 400 (US). its time that the battle for lunga comes to a end after more then 2 weeks. 77.000 japanese troops fight there against 34.000 allied troops (most of them USMC troops which give the imperial troops a hard fight).

the bonus of this turn came from the japanese submarine I-24 SE of irau. its part of a submarine chain of 10 japanese subs which were so far noch succesfull intercepting allied shipping between irau and the bases far to the south. this time, I-24 managed to put 2 torpedos into the side of CV wasp. the wasp was already heavily damaged by 6 val bombs some days ago and hopefully this 2 fishes will be her end. that would increase the US CV loses to 6! while the empire lost only a CVL and has 2 CV in dry dock for some months.

ORIGINAL: bigbaba

recon flights from buna report at least 2 brigades! and support troops right west of lae. thats a real surprise and i hope, lae with its 10.000 men garnison (i dont have any more combat troops available since most of the army is bound at lunga) can hold out until more frsh troops arrive at truk. 2 army regiments should arrive there in 5/7 days and will reinforce the lae front.

looks like that your enemy opened up some kind of a valve to release some pressure in the Solomons and to open up a 2nd front... Impressive move. Where did these troops in PNG came from? Airlift from Oz or remnants of the PM garrison?

Mixture of both, he neglected to polish off the PM garrison (I'd sent about half of it north before his troops arrived) and the rest I've airlifted over from Cooktown. Fortunately he had so few troops over there I was able to take a few places, but now he's reinforced Lae which is what I really wanted & don't have the heavy equipment necessary to take it easily before the rest of his army arrived.
I don't have any heavy bombers either to hit Lae port or the airfield, as they are all tied up over in the Solomons. In fact all I've got on the Aussie mainland are two PBY's & about two dozen Dakota's, half of which arn't operational... [:(]
Yeah, the idea was it act as a pressure release valve but it hasn't worked very well as Lunga is about to fall, Irau will probably follow suit soon after, I've lost my sole remaining carrier to US mines & subs & loads of aircraft both on the ground and in the air. When Lunga falls I'll probably loose at least another 400, no matter what I do I can't get the garrison or any planes there to do a thing... [:@]

we seem to have a problem since the beginning of the lunga invasion:

chris told me, that for the most of the time since the invasion, he was and is not able to launch air attacks from irau and now from lunga.

although my efforts and bombardements to close both AFs were very very intense, the only real air attacks i was faceing in the last weeks were few attacks consisting a handfull SBD and 4E bombers which were no problem for the CAP over lunga. the CAP there is realy strong and always over the base with more then 100 fighters. the only time he was able to attack naval targets in force was when my bombardement TF was sailing back from irau and was in range of his strike planes there few turns ago.

chris told me that every turn, the attack mission of his airforce at irau and lunga switches back to "AF attack" from "naval attack" so he can not attack my fleet at lunga point. the only time he was able to attack naval targets was when my bombardement TF was sailing back from irau and was in range of his strike planes there.

so there must be some kind of bug here..although his attack on the bombard-TF was not prevented by this possible bug.

anyway..i realy doubt if i want to continue this game if i realy do not face serious air attacs because of a bug.

Just another reason this game - which Matrix is still trying to make revenue from, needs some attention!

I know. It's very infuriating - I have almost 500 planes at Henderson now, almost half of them attack planes, but the only place they want to attack is Munda airfield! [:@] The moment his bombardment fleet comes close, my planes just default straight away to airfield attack each turn

i think i switch over to WITP and wait for AE. at least, the number of such frustrating bugs there is much much smaller then here in UV. i simply can not have fun in a game in which my respected opponent is not able to "fight back" because of problems with the game engine.

if someone wants to take over a real good japanese game (6 allied CV sunk.only one japanese CVL...12.000 to 5.000 VP difference) despite of this massive bug, let me know and i send you the savegame and the japanese game PW.

Just had a PEM come through - apparently it can happen if there are more than 250 planes on an airbase (irrespective of aviation or general support points), seems to be a glich that the game system gets confused and just can't handle it particularly if there are other things going on at the same base (like bombardment attacks, fighting on the ground etc) - airfield attack is the default mode it will sometimes revert to [:(]

What is the size of Lunga airfield?  What is the aviation support level?  Is the supply level in the red?

Lunga is size level 9. Supplies are currently about 4.5k and in the orange (come down from over 35k thanks to the incessant bombarding & bombing) Aviation level is currently 380 (was 400), there are 450 planes on the field of which about half are servicable & ready to fly.
Runway keeps on getting hit each turn but I have three squads of seabee's + two other engineers (810 & 811) with vehicles there that can in theory repair it in time to fly the following day. Nearly always I am getting a CAP up (my fightres are on 50% escort, 50% CAP) the following morning in order to meet his incoming raids, but my bombers (mix of everything) + FB's just will not take off! They keep on defaulting to hit Munda airfield way to the north and will not stay on naval strike! [:(]