FeurerKrieg
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Joined: 6/15/2005
From: Denver, CO
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April 13th, 1942
India/Burma
Lots of action in this theater today. Our fleet does indeed engage the British, and although things don't go perfect, our greater numbers and bigger ships win out overall.
Surprisingly, the British fleet spends the night bombarding our troops at Colombo before setting sail to the northwest. By the time the day comes, and the British set sail, our fleet is in position at the expected battle hex, one hex northwest of Colombo.
It is a day of rough seas and crappy weather, and although Tanaka is a good commander, his sailors' eyeballs are not better than radar. Max visibility is 7,000 yards, and the British radar finds the Japanese right through the rain and fog. The Japanese do not detect the British and the British fleet is able to sneak up on us and gain a solid full round of shots before we are able to give anything back. Thankfully, our battleships draw most of the fire from the enemy heavy cruisers and Revenge and our armor is up to the task of deflecting most shells. The exception to this is that CA Mogami gets targeted by Revenge and CL Glasgow. Although the Glasgow rounds don't penetrate, they do cause some topside damage. Some of the big shells from Revenge however land hard on Mogami, heavily damaging the ship. BB Ise also takes a couple penetrating shells from Revenge, but not enough to put her in danger. It takes a while before our ships get straightened out and start shooting back. But until they do, this was looking ugly...
 British radar gives them a head start, Mogami suffers for it.
Once we got turned around though, our ships opened up with devastating accuracy at ranges as close at 2,000 yards. Revenge was hammered by our battleships and at that range both our 40cm shells and slightly small 36cm shells penetrated and Revenge went under in short order. Once Revenge and CA Dorsetshire went down, the British were in full retreat, but all their ships were slowed down by damage and we were able to keep putting shells on target. By the time the fleet scattered into the weather, CA Exeter, CL Hobart, CL Enterprise, CL Glasgow and DD's Nestor and Napier were still afloat. All of them were heavily damaged except CL Enterprise which had only taken a couple hits.
 By the end, we come out on top.
After losing the enemy into the weather, our fleet moved into the Colombo hex and from there they will head back to Trincomalee for temporary repairs before heading back to Singapore and Georgetown for final repairs. CA Mogami could not survive all those large caliber hits and sinks. CL Sendai also sinks later in the day having been shelled heavily by CA Dorsetshire and CA Cornwall. The rest of our ships are in decent shape and none are at risk of sinking. Their condition can be seen below.
Even with the bad weather, our planes manage to get a couple parting shots in. Two Vals find CA Exeter and they both hit with their 250kg bombs. Ten Kates find CL Hobart and Enterprise, and put three torpedoes into Hobart, sinking the cruiser. We also suffer a minor air attack when 2 Albacoress and 2 Hurricanes attack our fleet, but lots of Oscars augmented by about a dozen float planes shoot down the enemy planes easily.
In the afternoon a pair of Vals attack Exeter again but miss and six Kates attack CL Enterprise, also missing.
 Parting shots take out CA Exeter and CL Hobart
So in the end, we lose CA Mogami and CL Sendai.
The Allies lose -
BB Revenge
CA Dorsetshire
CA Cornwall
CA Exeter
CL Hobart
CL Danae
CL Glasgow
DD Napier
DD Tjerk Hiddes
CL Enterprise and DD Nestor get away for now, although we may still get them with subs tomorrow. Neither is heavily damaged so they are probably making decent speed. This should put an end of British strength in this area for a while. We still have to watch out for Formidable, Illustrious and Hermes, all together they have about 100 plane capacity which can do some damage for sure, but they will have little in the way of capital ship support for a while.
DEI
Thirteen B-17's hit the port at Babo. Not sure why they hit the port and didn't go for the oil production there.
Pacific
Two hexes southeast of Luganville, the dot base of Ambrym is occupied. Luganville goes to airfield size 3. Not sure if it will hit level 4 in time to help at Suva, but it is going up pretty quick.
Car Div 2 is all restocked and mostly fixed up at Rabaul. It will set sail tomorrow at cruise speed to cover the invasion of Suva. In general I sail warships at cruise speed whenever possible to conserve fuel as much as possible.
At Noumea our tank unit arrives ahead of the infantry and with recon showing light defenses, we do a Deliberate attack. We take no casualties and knock out 13 enemy squads, but the results are only 1:3. We'll wait for the infantry to get here before attacking again.
Other
Bangkok goes to AF size 5 and we will stop it there for now.
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April 10th, 1942 - 
Not sure what you have in that area, but if you can boot them out of Hengyang, you can probably roll up the rail line toward Kweilin. Very nice move Bob.
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