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May 19th, 1943
A sweep by our training fighters at Chungking bags 6 P-43A's and no losses to our own fighters.

Akyab was hit by bombers.

Another enemy sub was hit today - this time a Ki-32 Mary DB hit the SS Saury near Maumere.

May 20th, 1943
Little to report today. Our fighters weren't very tired after yesterday's sweep, so they flew again and took down 3 P-43As today.

Our planes are shuffled around a bit in Burma. We now have 2 Sentai of Jacks at both Meiktila and Lashio. Also, both fields have about 180 fighters, with about 100-120 on CAP each day.

Several destroyers left Kwajalein today to head to Tokyo for upgrades. Also a couple of our slow Katori cruisers left Truk for upgrades at Maizuru also.

A large supply convoy is splitting up at Naurau Island to supply just about all our bases in the South Pacific from the Solomons to Bora Bora. The convoy had about 350,000 supply, and most of the bases I try to keep at 10-20k supplies.

Across the Empire, total supplies continue to rise, currently at 5.1 million and rising. At the current rate I may well have 6 million supply within 2 months.

May 21st, 1943
All quiet - except Chungking. The guns rumble on...

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Japanese artillery shells Chungking[/center]

May 22nd, 1943
Two strikes hit Akyab today, escorted only by P-66s. Are the P38's and Thunderbolts getting ready for a real attack?

May 23rd, 1943
Today's attack on Akyab was only Vengeances. None of the heavy or medium bombers.

May 24th, 1943
SS Skipjack was hit by a Ki-49 Helen near Maurmere today. That is a dangerous little spot for Allied subs to cross.

The I-17 leads a charmed life I think. A few weeks back, the ship was hit by a depth charge out of many many that were dropped and only suffered 3 pts of flood damage. I decided to keep it on station longer. Today, it was attacked again and took a hit from a Mousetrap - and again, suffered very little float damage. System damage is getting up there, so I think this time I will count my blessings and send the tough ship home for repairs.

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I-17 survives again[/center]

May 25th, 1943
It seemed like an attack might be brewing, today it arrived. We got a full court press from the Allies on Meiktila. They took advantage of a break in the thunderstorms and struck us from several different bases. However, when the dust settled, they still lost more planes than we did, and much more encouraging, our fighters managed very well against the P-38G and Thunderbolt combo.

First - the rest of the war:
SS Salmon was hit by a Ki-32 Mary near Maumere.

Our fighters flew over Chungking, but the Chinese fighters have decided they are done fighting for now.

Burma
The Allied attacks went off about as well as one could ask. The initial attack of many fighters wore down our CAP and subsequent waves of bombers were able to get through without much loss.

Wave 1:
Our CAP was 36 Jacks, 64 Tony, 7 Tojo and 4 Nick(a). Against us came 21 P-38G Lightnings, 21 P-40N Warhawks and 40 P-47C Thunderbolts. I was very concerned that these new Allied fighter would tear us apart, but thankfully we caught a couple bounces, and even when we were bounced, our planes were often able to evade. This might partly be due to the fact that then enemy fighters had to fly 300 miles from their base, or they were escorting friendly bombers or the AVG pilot quality has deteriorated from previous combats (the AVG was flying the Thunderbolts). Losses are posted below. 90% of these bombers got through and did moderate damage to the base.

Wave 2:
Our CAP was now down to 18 Jacks, 20 Tony, 2 Tojo and 1 Nick and many of these planes were low on ammo and/or fuel. They still put up a good fight against the 20 Beaufighter VIC's that were escorting the bombers. Again most bombers got through and they wiped out the runway, and some hit resource centers in the area as well.

Wave 3:
The last attack was also a large one, and our CAP of 18 Jack, 2 Tojo, 1 Nick and 17 Tony was about done. They damaged a few of the B-24's but could do little more than that. The last attack wiped out anything that was left of the airbase. Thankfully most planes were in the air or our ground losses would have been much worse.

Losses: The good news is that A2A we did better than the Allies. We probably did even better when looking at pilots lost.

Total Losses
Japan: 74 (33 A2A/41 GRD)
Allies: 90

A-to-A losses
Japan
Ki-61 Tony - 29
Ki-44-IIb Tojo - 3
Ki-45 KAIa Nick - 1
J2M Jack - 0

Allies
P-47C Thunderbolt - 34
P-38G Lightning - 19
P-40N Warhawk - 11
Beaufighter VIC - 10
Blenheim IV - 6
Vengeance I - 5
Wellington III - 3
B-24D Liberator - 1
B-25C Mitchell - 1

Ground Losses for Japan
Ki-61 Tony - 22
J2M Jack - 12
Ki-45 KAIa Nick - 5
Ki-44-IIb Tojo - 2

Pilot Losses for Japan
Army - 19 KIA, 5 WIA
Navy - 0 (!!! - Go IJN!!)

The airbase is at 72 service/99 runway. Our 182 engineers there, with 20,000+ supply should be able to fix the place up if they can get a break from the bombers.

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Major attack in Burma[/center]

i realy like this defensive air battles over burma, krieg. you save most of your pilots while he loses alot of his ones. also, your rookies get a huge XP boost through this CAP missions.

May 26th, 1943
No further air attacks in Burma, or anywhere for that matter.

The repairs at Meiktila go slowly as the base gets reorganized. 72 Serv/98 Runway

May 27th, 1943
More of the same - nothing.

Repairs start to pick up a bit at Meiktila. 72 serv/93 Runway

May 28th, 1943
The Allies are indeed giving us a rest - the thunderstorms in Burma may have something to do with that.

Meiktila: 72 Serv/60 Runway

May 29th, 1943
The quiet couldn't last forever and today the weather cleared enough for 160 heavy bombers to hit Meiktila. They did not go for the airfield at all though, instead hitting various production sites. With the enemy attention away from the airfields repairs moved along nicely. 72 Serv/23 Runway. Two B-24D's did not make it home from our flak.

A wave of planes also resumed attacks on Akyab.

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Attack on resources[/center]

May 30th, 1943
Attacks on Akyab, but not Meiktila today. The repairs have fixed the runway completely and the hangars are being repair now. 57 serv/ 0 runway. Our fighters have rested and restocked, so they will move back into Meiktila tonight. The returnin force will number some 190 fighters.

The IJN grew by another carrier today! The CV Katsuragi was declared fit for service and docked in Tokyo. It will stay there for a few days while several destroyers are upgraded and will then head to Kwajelein with those destroyers.

As can be seen below, the major ships of the IJN are all in good fighting shape.

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Carriers and Battleships, May 31, 1943[/center]

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CV Katsuragi in trials[/center]

May 31st, 1943
All quiet in Burma as the thunderstorms return. Meiktila repairs are nearly complete. 19 Serv/0 Runway

At Broome SS Skipjack was reported sunk, having been hit by our aircraft several days ago.

That is an awfully impressive fleet for May 43. Kudos to you on your ship acceleration choices. And no BBs lost either!

I don't mean to insult your opponent when I say this, because I don't think there are too many things he could have done at this point - but you're in a damned good position.

Question one - if you were attacked at Wake or the Gilberts/Marshall area, would you respond with the KB?

Another question - have you been training up your new CV airgroups?

go go krieg. get back the air superiority over burma and give your fighter pilots more kills.

Thanks, guys.

I am not entirely sure if I would respond with KB to a Wake attack or not, but I would be more likely to if it occurred after June 15, 43 as that is when Chiyoda and Chitose will be finished with their conversions to CVLs.

I think if the LBA at Wake can get a couple good licks in on the enemy carrier air, then I would be more likely to use KB. I might also try to have KB hang 6-7 hexes away and LRCAP a surface fleet that could go in and mess up the landings a bit. Hard to say!

And attack on the Gilberts or Marshalls is a definite go for the KB because I have lots of LBA there and many bases to attack from and bring even more LBA in. I would probably burn some LBA units on his carrier air for a 2-4 days and then bring in KB.

As far as the CV airgroups - the airgroups on the three new carriers are pretty low experience, but the DB and TB units come in half strength. With Unryu and Amagi, I pulled some high experience land based Val and Kates and used their pilots to fill out the groups. For Katsuragi, I stored up about 6 pilots in the pool before it arrived and I am using my pool pilots to slowly fill out those groups. And the units are all at 90/100% training. So in the end, the 3 new carriers all have groups that are each about half at 50-60exp and half that are at 70-90 exp. Hopefully the high experienced pilots will help pull the others up with the training missions.

Burma - not sure if I can ever truly maintain air superiority, but for now, I think Allies will be hard pressed to keep all my airbases closed, and as long as one is open, it will be harder for them to support air attacks on ground forces. They can probably clear out my resources in the area, but some things are just unavoidable. My hope is to delay any ground assaults on Burma for as long as possible.

Stats! May was a slow month. In airplanes we did well, especially if you look at A2A numbers.

Only two ships sunk - thankfully they were not Japanese!

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June 1st, 1943
A quiet day to start the month. Meiktila is fully repaired, and thunderstorms across Asia keep the Allies from attacking.

June 2nd, 1943
I-28 attacked a subchaser near Johnston Island, but the torpedoes were duds. The enemy ships did not manage to hit I-28.

Woleai island completed its airfield and will finish up fortifications. Then the engineers will move on to the island of Yap to build that place up. (Woleia - sz 4 AF)