Mike Solli
Posts: 15792
Joined: 10/18/2000
From: the flight deck of the Zuikaku
Status: offline
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22 Dec 41
Tomorrow is going to be an exciting day. Lots of operations are beginning as noted below.
Sub War
The Ro-66, patrolling off Cooktown, spotted 2 US 4 stackers . That’s the first sighting of any US destroyers I’ve had so far. I’d venture to guess that more of the Asiatic fleet is harbored down there.
5 Fleet
Nothing new to report.
4 Fleet
The engineers have landed at Wake. Now I can begin working on the forts.
SE Fleet
The Rabaul Invasion force (Gds Bde, 144 Inf Reg and Maizuru 1 SNLF) will land, escorted by 2 BB, 2 CL and 4 DD with close cover by KB. It appears that Rabaul is empty, but the Aussies may be just cowering in their holes. A base force and the 23 Air Flotilla HQ are enroute with the 23 Air Flotilla aircraft waiting at Truk to move forward once Rabaul is liberated. The SNLF will provide the garrison to Rabaul and the Gds Bde and 144 Inf Reg (and 90 Inf Reg when it arrives) will continue to Pt. Moresby.
I will use extreme caution when moving on Pt. Moresby. I suspect an ambush. The Dutch and US fleets are unaccounted for. Given the sighting of the US DDs, I know there is something out there. US carriers wouldn’t be surprising either. KB is freshly fueled (with the fast AO fleet nearby) and has full loads of planes, pilots and torpedoes.
Mindanao
Nothing new to report.
Philippines
The tank regiment that landed at Aparri is moving to Tuguegarao to engage the isolated 3/12 PA Inf Bn.
Bombardment of Clark Field continues.
The 6 artillery regiments at Hong Kong are loading for movement to this theater.
China
Nothing new to report.
Borneo
I think Ted pulled a Sir Robin in the Northern SRA. He may have forces in Java, and I suspect there are ships that are attempting to ambush me at Ambon and Kendari vicinities (I always make that assumption). But, Miri seems to be pretty safe. Tomorrow, I will form a TF with the TKs assigned to pull fuel and oil from Miri and move them there. I’ll disband them in harbor and create the CS TFs as needed. I have allocated a total of 19x 1250 TK, 6x Kasu-D and 10x To’su PBs in 5 TFs to haul the oil and fuel from Miri/Brunei.
Elsewhere, the 21 IMB and 2x SNLFs successfully ousted the Dutch from SIngkawang. The DA resulted in 26:1 odds and caused 432(32) Dutch casualties vs. 43(0) Japanese losses. The Dutch remnants fled to the base to the east. I will place 24 AS there but can’t spare a full base force. The base forces have all been allocated. It will become a backwater soon anyway. One pleasantly surprising result of this attack was the destruction of 3x B-339D and 3x 139WH-3 Dutch aircraft on the ground.
The Tarakan invasion (21 Division) will hit tomorrow. It is escorted by the 4 BB TF and the Hosho/Zuiho. A base force is enroute as the garrison. Once Tarakan is secured, the force will move on to Balikpapan.
The Hosho/Zuiho TF stumbled upon an xAK. Both TFs fled. Later that day, the Zuiho’s Kates put her down. Unfortunately, they used torpedoes. That leaves 9 torpedoes for the 9 Kates aboard.
Burma
The 1 Raiding Regiment will perform a para drop on Pt. Blair tomorrow. I’m using every transport plane that will reach and Pt. Blair from Bangkok will be LRCAPed by the Oscar Ib sentai based at Victoria Point.
The 33 Division will begin landing at Bangkok tomorrow. Then it will begin its long trek to the Burmese frontier.
Malaya
Ted attempted to bomb the ships in Kuantan harbor today. He sent 3x Bleinheim IVs escorted by 12 Buffalos. Only 5 Buffalos returned to Singapore to tell the sad tale. I suspect he didn’t realize that I had over 50 fighters stationed there (Zeros, Tojos and Oscar Ics).
My forces continue to pour into Malaya in preparation for the assault on Singapore. In the north is the IG Division and 2x tank regiments. Georgetown is surrounded and isolated. Taiping was captured today by one of the tank regiments. The second tank regiment is in Georgetown and 2/3 of the IG Div is about 20 miles outside of Georgetown. Once these forces arrive in Georgetown, they will assault and destroy the 3 units there.
The last third of IG Div is marching to Kota Bharu to engage the Indian brigade that has been beat up there since 7 Dec.
There are a few British units in central Malaya along the rail line. The 18 Div is marching out of Kuantan (slowly) to pursue these forces, which include the remnants of the Kuantan garrison.
In the south, the 5 Division will reach Johore Bharu tomorrow and take it the next day. The Aussies and Gurkhas that were beat up at Mersing have run to Singapore so Johore Bharu is empty. The tank regiment that cut off Singapore moved north and took Malacca today. The 56 Division cannot rebuild (its third regiment is in Mindanao). It landed at Mersing and is following the tank regiment north to assist the destruction of the isolated Indian/British troops. It will then strat move to Burma. The 3x tank regiments will eventually move to Burma as well.
I have decided to land the 2 Division at Mersing. It will move to Johore Bharu with the 5 Division in preparation for the assault on Singapore. The 38 Division is loading at Hong Kong and will move to Mersing to team up with 2 & 5 Divisions for the initial assault on Singapore.
The substantial AS at Mersing is moving to set up an airfield at Johore Bharu. I will station fighters there initially to clear the skies over Singapore of British Buffalos. There are less than 30 left. Once they are gone, I will commence bombing of Singapore with most of 3 Air Division.
Sumatra/Java
I won’t land at Palembang until I’ve cleared northern Java of the Dutch bomber threat. That will occur by stationing the 22 Air Flotilla at Tobali. The 4 Division and 2x tank regiments from 14 Army will land in Java. The 21 Division, 21 IMB and 2x tank regiments from 16 Army will land in Java, most likely at Kaldjati. Hopefully, this will happen by years’ end.
Other Stuff
Today is day 15 of the war. The batch of conversions started on 7 Dec was finished. I got 29x PBs and 36x ACMs. Very nice. Now, all of my ports with mines have ACMs to cover them. It will take up to 5 days for some of the ACMs to reach their destination though….
The PBs will come in handy. There just never seem to be enough of them. Unfortunately, most of them are the Kiso and To’su PBs. Not a lot of Ansyu-C PBs, but they’re coming.
Almost all the Kiso and Ansyu-C classes have been or are being converted to something more useful. The To’sus are done. The 7 remaining Kisos will convert to ACMs and the 6 remaining Ansyu-Cs will convert to PBs. Tomorrow, I’ll look at Tohos to find another dozen to convert to the –t conversion as well.
The upgrade to the Oscar Ic is proceeding nicely. Right now I have 2x 12 plane chutai and 1 sentai (only 15 Oscars in it unfortunately) upgraded. As I get Oscars, I add them to the sentai. When I reach the 12 plane limit for the week, I’ll start a second sentai. Then I’ll add to whichever sentai can accept them.
After an exciting start, I’m finally on a roll. Ted broke the back of the RN (except for the Repulse) causing some merchant shipping losses to me, but only one old Momi DD and an Otori TB were sunk. My biggest loss was the 3x slow AOs sunk in Saigon harbor (as well as time lost from his DDs sailing all over the place). I still have 7 left, which equates to a 56k slow AO fleet. They’re still scattered around but will form up later when they are needed. When not needed, they’ll most likely transport fuel to Truk.
Looking at supply, I’m down 500k from the start of the war. If you add in what’s sitting in cargo ships, I’m really down about half that. Not bad, but I need to start to think about building it back up.
I still have all of the daily stats from our previous game. It’s very interesting to see the differences between the games. Overall, I’m more aggressive this game (partly in response to Ted’s increased aggressiveness). A few details:
Supply: -650k – I was actually up 150k last game. I did a lot of industry upgrades initially this game that I didn’t do early last game as well as many that I didn’t do at all last game. Increasing naval shipyards by 117 this game comes to mind.
Fuel: I have about 100k more fuel this game. Not sure why.
Manpower: While unimportant, this shows how much I speeded up my invasions this game. Initial manpower is 797, last game I was at 800 and this game I’m at 817. Wow.
HI: Last game I hadn’t taken anything with HI yet. I’ve taken Hong Kong early this game. I think using the 104 Div and the infantry brigade along with the 38 Div was the difference.
Nav Shipyard: I increased this from 1384 to 1501 (I can’t count) this game. That’s an additional 117K supply consumed. That’s significant. My pool is about the same in both games so that means I’m accelerating more ships. I hope it’s worth the cost….
Repair Shipyard: Last game I hadn’t increased any of them at this point in the game. This game, I’m where I was by 4 Apr 42 of the last game. Now there’s a big difference. I guess I’m spending up front this game. After subtracting out the yards I captured at Hong Kong and Manila, I’ve still spent over 100k so far. Fortunately, most of the repair yards are complete, or almost complete.
Vehicles: Here’s another place where I spent up front. In my other game, I hadn’t started increasing the vehicle factories. I had the starting 72 vs. 138 so far in this game. That’s 66k supply here. I do have about 730 more vehicle points than last game. By the way, today was the first day my vehicle point level went down.
Pilot losses: I thought I was losing pilots more quickly this game but look at these numbers:
Type of loss – last game – this game
MIA – 29 – 28
WIA – 15 – 13
KIA – 76 – 74
Interesting….
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