Mike Solli
Posts: 15792
Joined: 10/18/2000 From: the flight deck of the Zuikaku Status: offline
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13 Dec 41 4th Fleet The long awaited invasion of Wake occurred today. KB launched 134 Kates escorted by 14 Zeros. They found 10 Wildcats waiting for them and shot down 4 Wildcats for no loss. I really like the ability to set an air unit to naval attack with a secondary mission of ground attack. We were never able to do that in WitP. Anyway, the invasion fleet went in and landed it's troops. Accurate Marine CD gunfire hit the Katori, an xAKL and 6 PBs with 20x 5" shells. All of the ships are expected to survive. The troops went in and shock attacked the stunned Marines, taking the island and 1983 prisoners for 103 casualties. The garrison is a NG unit and a SNLF. I'll scrounge up some engineers to build up the forts. I'm not sure if I'll keep the SNLF there. KB is headed to Kwajalein where the Akagi, Kaga, 2 BBs and escorts will set up their home for awhile in case of an Allied incursion. The rest of KB will head to Truk then south to Rabaul and Pt. Moresby, which brings us to..... SE Fleet The Admiralty Islands invasion force just moved on to Wewak and landed there today. The Rabaul invasion force continues to plod south. Mindinao The Hosho & Zuiho TF found some targets east of Mindinao. The Hosho's Kates put down an xAK (which had been torpedoed by the RO-33 earlier in the day). The Zuiho's Kates sank an xAKL and damaged an xAK. The Ryujo didn't enter the port of Babeldaob (because of the reef hexsides). Now she's really only one hex from port. Her damage improved slightly to 52-25(5)-21(4)-0 and the Hatsukaze is about the same as yesterday. The I-123 is still limping to port (28 hexes out) and had her flot damage improve by 1 - 28-81(71)-16(9)-0. Philippines There was very little Allied air power today. I sweep over all the occupied Allied airfields and ran into only 2 P-49Es, shooting down one. I've effectively cut the Philippines into 3 sections. The breakout from Lingayan has isolated 2 Philippine divisions from Manila and I finally landed at Atimonan isolating Naga from Manila. Not sure if there are any troops down there though. A US sub sank an SC at Vigan, but in return ate a DC. Hopefully, this was enough to send her packing. Malaya The RAF is still contesting Malaya, but Buffalo numbers are lower than a week ago. For the loss of 1 Zero we shot down 6 Buffalos, 1 Blenheim IV, 1 Hudson and a Swordfish. That makes 33 Buffalos shot down over Singapore since the war began. I wonder how many they have left? The RAF (and Dutch and whoever else they're scraping up) still have teeth. A Do-24K-1(!) put a 300kg bomb into the Kongo. I don't think this did much damage, but later a Swordfish put a torpedo into her. She'll survive but a couple of DDs are escorting her to Cam Ranh Bay (she can't go to Saigon) for repairs. Her damage stands at 6-34(28)-2-0. An xAK was also hit at Kuantan and later in the day sank. On the positive side, we liberated Kuantan, causing almost 1000 casualties to 64 losses. Kuantan is really a poor invasion site, due to the poor roads. China Various firefights are occurring, with the Chinese almost always taking the brunt of the losses. The only place I'm concerned is at Ichang. They have 6 or 7 corps there against my division (and a very poor garrison division). I should have evacuated the place. I bombarded and caused 111 casualties. We'll see what happens. I attacked some Chinese 3 hexes W of Chingting and routed them, causing 2500 casualties to 231 Japanese casualties. I also bombarded Hong Kong, causing 138 Brit casualties. Burma Not much to talk about here. Mostly, the 15 Army is plodding northward. A tank regiment moved into Victoria Point and will attack tomorrow. This is significant because Victoria Point will be the jump off for the air invasion of Pt. Blair. There are air support and engineer units just about there with the 1st Raiding Unit leapfrogging it's way there too. I will probably detach an infantry regiment from the 25 Army to use as a temporary garrison until I figure out the permanant garrison. The 22 Air Flotilla is allocated to Pt. Blair. The Zeros from that Flotilla are the ones eating Buffalo every day. I hope the RAF in Malaya is subdued by the time Pt. Blair is ready to receive the 22 Air Flotilla. Japan Well, >90% of the resource hauling cargos are in place and most are fully loaded with resources. Here are some stats to show how significant the Tokyo resource black hole has been, in just a week of game time: I started the war with 7.3 million resources. Today, one week later, I have 5.6 million on the map and another 900k on ships, making 6.5 million resources available. That's an 800k shortage. I should only be down about 15-20k in a week's period. Scary, ain't it? The amount of resources in Tokyo is down to ~925k, so the black hole isn't today.
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