Mike Solli
Posts: 15792
Joined: 10/18/2000 From: the flight deck of the Zuikaku Status: offline
|
5 Jan 42 Sub War The I-9 has been tooling around off Sydney looking for some nice prey. She found and obliterated an AM. Well, that’s one less ASW ship to worry about. 5 Fleet Nothing new to report. 4 Fleet Nothing new to report. SE Fleet I have decided to invade Lae to build up the airfield there. That’ll allow me to sweep and bomb Pt. Moresby from a shorter range to reduce op losses. I have a nice sub wolf pack south of Pt. Moresby to prevent resupply convoys as well as a daitai (soon to be 2) of Bettys flying out of Rabaul on Naval Attack. Philippines Nothing new to report. China I’ve been night bombing the AVG at Changsha for a week now. I finally killed one on the ground. Interestingly enough, since they flew on 30 Dec (and shot down 2 Anns), they haven’t flown again. The two tank regiments are across the river just south of Chingchow with an infantry division not far behind (and more behind that). They will move NE and cover next 2 hexes. The encirclement has begun. The northern pincer (1 Army) is moving as well. It’ll take the dot hex to the north of Loyang and then complete the northern part of the encirclement. SRA TKs are enroute to Tarakan and Balikpapan to begin the movement of oil and fuel to Davao. Manado fell today to a 4:1 DA. Losses were 48(1) Japanese to 430(101) Dutch. The remnants fled into the jungle. Recon will fly there tomorrow to begin their naval search. Now that I have naval search farther into the SRA, I will begin moving toward Kendari and Ambon. The 21 Division will begin loading for movement to Makassar to allow 21 Air Flotilla to begin operations from that airfield. The intent is to isolate Java from the south. From there, the 21 Division’s next stop is Java. Burma Nothing new to report. Malaya The Singapore assault force will begin movement in 2 days with the 2, 5, 18 and 38 Divisions. The 18 Division is still coming out of strat mode. Behind them will be the IG division (still enroute to Johore Bharu) and all the supporting engineer and artillery units. They will move to Singapore after the initial invasion recovers from their disruption. Meanwhile, air bombardment of Singapore continues. Singapore has airfield damage left each day (not much though) so it is succeeding in preventing the increase in fort levels. A Lily was lost to flak today. I have ~90 2E bombers hitting Singapore daily. Once the 3 Air Division HQ is finished moving into position, that’ll increase by about 50 more Sallys and Lilys. Currently, all of the 3 Air Division 2E bombers are allocated to Singapore and all of the 1E bombers are allocated to Burma. Guam Thought I forgot about that place? Not really. I have sent the 84 Naval Guard there, which was a recent reinforcement out of Saipan. It’s all on Guam now and today’s attack was a 1:1 DA. Losses were minimal to each side but the fort level was finally reduced to 0. Tomorrow, a shock attack. Other Stuff KB: With the loss of Hiryu, KB is now at 3 effective carriers. Soryu will be out of commission for a couple of months and Kaga is detached to the SRA. Kaga really isn’t needed any more in the SRA. The SRA has MKB in two TFs right now. Ryujo is with Kaga at Cam Ranh Bay and Zuiho and Hosho are together at Balikpapan. I will combine the baby carriers together for support in the SRA and move Kaga to Truk. KB will move to Truk shortly as well. Good news is that Shoho will arrive in ~25 days. She will move to reinforce MKB. That will give MKB a total of 86 Zeros and 42 Kates, enough to protect itself and put a hurting on any enemy that might cross its path (other than the massed US carriers). Also, the 4 BB TF will remain with MKB for protection. I currently have 3x CVs and 5x DDs accelerated. I may switch some or all of the DDs to the Junyo and/or Hiyo to speed them up. Their lack of speed really makes them nice flagships for MKB though. They can’t keep up with KB. Still thinking about it. I forgot to mention that the 9x Fubuki Is went into refit on 1 Jan 42. They’ll be out until ~20 Jan or so with improved AA and DC racks. Then off to Truk for service with SE Fleet. Next are the 12 Mutsukis, which upgrade in Feb 42 and also do not have DC racks yet. The Mutsukis will provide escort to the fast AOs. The economy is looking good. I increased the engine factories at the beginning of the month, which was required. The only airframe factories still increasing are the Ki-43-Ic factories (3 of them), which will be complete in a couple of days. I’m now pumping out 4-5 Ics a day. Another month or so and all of the 3 Air Division Nates will be gone. Then I’ll begin work on the 5 Air Division Nates. Oil is looking good. Only Tarakan and Miri have damaged oil. Tarakan has enough supply to repair it all and Balikpapan will need ~90k more supply but has enough to last through the end of February with an additional 60k sitting on ships at Cam Ranh Bay. I’m having a hard time getting enough supply at Hong Kong to repair the HI (or increase it). I’ve set Hong Kong’s supply to accumulate, but that’s not helping. I sent a supply convoy of ~50k supply from Japan which will arrive in a few days. That should do the trick. Once it’s repaired, I’ll probably increase the HI there. I’m trying to look on the bright side of the loss of the Hiryu. Before I lost her, I had no IJN fighter pilots in the general reserve. (Increasing the Ryujo’s fighter daitai to 30 cleaned it out.) Now I have Hiryu’s complement of pilots in the general reserve, a total of 21 pilots. My intent is to get as many elite pilots as possible during the Java campaign and these spare pilots will allow me to do that. As my pilots gain that status, I will pull them out of the front line units and replace them with Hiryu’s pilots. This will allow more pilots “access” to the Java campaign to get easy kills and increase experience. The main unit that will perform this mission is the Yamada Det. I am going to give that unit some spare pilots so it will always have a full complement of pilots as I pull the elite pilots and replace them with Hiryu’s pilots. The goal is to increase to number of elite pilots by 24 or more. Right now I have 2 IJN pilots in TRACOM. We’ll see what’s in there at the conclusion of the Java campaign. I would like to do the same with the IJAAF, but I don’t have any pilots in the pool yet. Still too early. My training units (both IJA and IJN) are doing nicely, but they’re not quite there yet. I’m hoping to have at least a few by 15 Jan. That’ll allow me to try and get some IJA pilots in TRACOM. Patience…..
_____________________________
Created by the amazing Dixie
|