In-between play the Rookie II-thread and editing the Brisbane Evening Star I took the time to open a game against the allied AI. Partly because I haven't tried that before and partly because I wanted to have a look at how the Japanese side works - in general. I was quite surprised at how much it was to keep track of on that side, at least in the beginning, and what resources were at hand.
Anyway, V.Adm. Nagumo decided to repeat his PH attack twice and after that he loitered a few days north-east of PH to catch any fat fishes fleeing to the West Coast. He did - West Virginia and Colorado passed by - and were stopped dead. So were a few others. After that the Admiral released three of his carriers and their tankers to return to Japan. With the three remaining carriers he moved towards the north-east and positioned himself about one-third of the distance to the West Coast.
Yesterday, air reconnaissance detected ships approaching in north-east and this morning the plotting chart looked like the picture below. Talk about being in the eye of the storm. I suppose he shall whisk his tankers toward the north-west, his carriers, too, if not so fast, and use a couple of his escorts to create some havoc among the sheep's flock.
While only a couple of enemy fighting ships have been detected, there might be others among the sheep. We shall see.
Fred
December 18th 1941:
; Julia Child
