Cribtop
Posts: 3890
Joined: 8/10/2008 From: Lone Star Nation Status: offline
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June 27, 1942 Operation Barracuda does well on the naval side, but the air elements are grounded by bad weather. Damn. Subs Grampus duds on an xAK near Tokyo. Second attack in home waters in as many days. Cribtop HQ recently launched several sub wolf packs. They will move to their targets and cover a large sea area hoping to flood the zone and really nail enemy convoys before moving on. Initial targets are the waters off Karachi, the passage between the west coast of India and the Bay of Bengal, and an area east of Fiji that Funafuti based search planes indicate is CF's sneaky convoy route into Suva. Let's see if the new strategy pays off. 4th Fleet Moving a base force to Ocean to plug the gap. SE Fleet We'll soon get two more bases up and building on Bougainville, which will be a major second line bastion in the Solomons after Munda Point. MKB's ships are repairing nicely, all air groups at 100%. Over the past several days we've had SigInt, often of the "heavy" variety, in Melbourne and Adelaide. Is CF preparing his first counter-offensive in the Pacific here? We'll keep watch and order a third wolfpack to focus on the eastern entrance of the straits between Oz and Tasmania. 14th Army We tediously divide up a 60 point SNLF to meet various garrison requirements. This will allow a regiment to move on Pamakasan and Bali. Lots of resources flowing home from the PI now. 16th Army DA Corunna Downs forces the surrender of the much traveled Broome base force. 12 Nicks jump 2 B-17s at Daly Waters and only 1 of the enemy makes it back to base. We've now pulled much of the excess fuel out of Balikpapan and can switch to a maintenance mode here. Still a horde of oil, of course, but that's moving too. 25th Army We are closing in on Padang, the last enemy held base in Sumatra. Still a few more hexes to go. 15th Army The Operation Barracuda fleet hits Chittagong pretty hard on a clear night with a full moon, damaging 35 Hurricanes and destroying 8. Good damage to the airfield and other facilities too (for example, 40 runway hits, 13 supply hits, hundreds of fires, etc). Sadly, the clear night gives way to a stormy morning and neither the Zero sweeps nor the IJAAF bombing raid goes through. A real shame because we caught CF by surprise here. The Zeros would've hammered a depleted CAP and then the bombers turn damaged Hurris into dead Hurris. That was the theory anyway. Still, not a bad Op, and we'll follow up tomorrow by air if CF doesn't rail out his survivors. China Recon shows only 4 units at Tuyun and 1 at Kweiyang, while no enemy troops have left the Chungking reserve. Nice. So far the biggest opposition to Red Dragon are the poor south China roads. However, this is an effective delay for the enemy that we knew was inevitable. We have to win the race to Kweilin and Liuchow.
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