Cuttlefish
Posts: 2454
Joined: 1/24/2007 From: Oregon, USA Status: offline
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It was night, and the rain fell; and falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was blood. - Edgar Allen Poe: Silence, A Fable --- 10/8/1942 – 10/13/1942 Three Japanese heavy cruisers and escorts hit Endeh at Timor overnight, sinking two AMs, an xAK, and xAPs Mariposa (a big one), Benjamin Franklin, and Edgar Allen Poe. If Ben and Edgar aren’t enough famous casualties, Oscars staged a raid on the daily RAF bombing run against the Japanese units below Akyab. Four P-40s and three Oscars went down, but one of the pilots involved was a guy named Rutins (I thought maybe it was even E. Rutins, but I’m not sure). His plane was last seen falling on fire towards the jungle and Rutins’ fate remains unknown. Japanese forces continue to build up around the Timor area. In the meantime all eleven Japanese carriers have passed through the Lombok Strait and are now in the Indian Ocean. Unfortunately at least one of the forces was spotted by an Allied aircraft as they transited the strait. I am going to try to use this mishap to my advantage; there is a battleship TF following behind the carriers and I am going to turn it east and have it move slowly down the island chain. With any luck Q-Ball will track it, think this is what he saw, and think I am moving in on Timor. Meanwhile my carriers will go south, out of search range, and then move northeast towards Australia. I’m not sure what the result could be. I might run into his carriers. I might find some shipping (there’s a lot of it through there both ways right now, my subs are keeping watch), or nothing. The one thing I will be careful of is not to engage him within range of the big airfields at Exmouth and Port Hedland. Burma Murmurs: the Imperial Guard Division moved up from Prome and clobbered the Somerset Light Infantry. Q-Ball’s advance in this area seems to be a probe or a diversion and his units look to be holding position or falling back towards Akyab right now. The serious threat is in the north, where a fairly strong force has driven my regiment out of Myitkyina. He also seems to be trying to flank the divisions I have blocking the road/rail line a few hexes above Mandalay. I have units moving up to try and prevent this, however. Still, if he can apply serious pressure from enough directions at once it might mean problems for me. He is flying a lot of bombing missions against my infantry divisions but while they are in combat mode and in the jungle it doesn’t seem to be having a lot of effect. It does force me to move slowly, however, if I think my units are being observed. The effects of bombing get a lot worse for units in move or, god forbid, strat mode. Enter Tojo: the Ki-44 1a is starting to come off my production lines in some numbers now. I will soon have enough to upgrade one or two Oscar airgroups. Looking at the stats in this game the Tojo is an upgrade over the Oscar but the early versions, at least, still only have a firepower rating of 12. That’s not high enough to make it a good platform against bombers, though I am hoping it might at least make a good stopgap air superiority fighter for the Army. Not that I can complain about my Oscars. In the recent fight near Akyab, for instance, my Oscars were outnumbered and got bounced by Allied fighters and still gave better than they got.
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