Before I start, I know Drex will probaly read this tommorow before doing the turn, but I'm not saying anything he does'nt know.
Some of you no doubt read about my 'turkey shoot' where Drex slaughtered my air fleets. I had some luck after that combing the carrier planes with Lunga's field in crippling his transport operations to his base in Munda, but then he brought down his four carriers and whiped my planes again. Wanting to stop me from attacking his transports supplying Munda, he re-inforced his carriers and the base again with Zero's, although I have'nt seen many bombers, which also suggests he's hurting in strike planes.
My pools are exhausted and two of my carriers are damaged. Also, the carriers still have plenty of fighters but no attack planes left.....I could'nt mount a strike with a dozen Dauntlesses and twenty Avengers from them. So I decided to send the two damaged carriers back to Pearl in the hope that the remaining two would get dibs on the replacement planes.
Drex siezed the chance right away. I'm criticaly low on combat ships due to eariler operations and although I've done a lot of damage to the Japanese navy, he still outnumbers me in all areas.
There is one faint hope -- cold American steel. I did just get two battleships, Washington and South Dakota (with a screen of four destroyers) and raced them up to Lunga. I also have about a dozen PT boats, but they are next to useless. No new naval units are coming.
Sure enough, October 14th 1942 was the scene of a major battle. Two Japanese fleets came in to attack and shell Lunga. A smaller fleet of a heavy cruiser, light cruiser, and four destroyers came in and defeated some PT boats. Then they ran into my battleships. Lucky me.
Here was a small victory at least......I was able to mangle all of his ships with light damage to mine. Drex confirmed all the ships are either sunk, sinking, or heading back to Japan. Then, luckily, the main Japanese fleet -- three battleships, four heavy cruisers, and some destroyers -- ran into more PT boats. I did'nt want my BB's going up aganist his!To make matters worse, the airfield is damaged and all four of his carriers are right off the island. I scraped together all my fit combat ships -- two battleships, two heavy cruisers, six light cruisers, and eight destroyers, along with a second force of about eight PT boats left -- aganist the main Japanese fleet plus the carriers.
Six game weeks eariler I fought two weeks of surface battles and major air and land battles to take Guadalcanal and Tulagi. Now the gate is wide open to losing everything. It would mean a crushing defeat and one I doubt I could recover from. I doubt my battleship fleet could stand up to his, plus there are his carriers.
So, I could use some help.....suggestions for what you would do in my place?
I'm all that famous stubborn American streak of fighting with our backs aganist the walls, but not if it's hopeless.
