Canoerebel
Posts: 21100
Joined: 12/14/2002 From: Northwestern Georgia, USA Status: offline
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1/20/43 Battle of Balikpapan: The four USN destroyers rumble into port and savage two enemy TFs, sinking five xAKs, two xAKLs, and a PB. Judging by VPs, the xAKs were pretty good ones. I was hoping for tankers, but no doubt this raid got John's full attention and left him a bit rattled (judging by email comments). The destroyers performed well but shot up all their ammunition. They'll have to retire with a bunch of fully-aroused Apachees hot on their heels. (The blood lust for enemy tankers was partly satisfied when a USN sub put two torps into a big tanker near Brunei, sending it under.) Battle of Sumatra: A fairly quiet day: no enemy sweeps or combat TFs at Sabang, the enemy stack (three divisions) south of Langsa only bombards (doing more harm to itself than to the Allied units), and about 25 SBDs hit the port facility at Sinabang, hopefully delaying enemy work on the airfield. Battle of Burma: The RAF sweeps Rangoon (this is one of the rare time I've used sweeps due to the lack of fighters and the high need to maintain CAP) to modest results. On the ground, an enemy division (55th or 53rd or something) dislodges a solo UK brigade, creating a mounting risk that John will move this division to cut off my big stack south of Magwe. With respect to that big stack, 41st USA division attacks by itself without success. (Tomorrow, all Allied units in the hex will attack.) Further to the north, a modest Allied army boots two-thirds of a Royal Thai division (1/A and 1/C) from a hex north of Schwebo, interdicting the rail leading to Katha and Myityina. A Chinese division arrives at Taung Gyi and finds it defended by a non-fighting unit (so it should take that base tomorrow). Finally, both sides have stacks in a jungle hex just east of Ramree. I think John diverted the 55th (or 53rd) division from this stack, leaving it with one heavily reinforced divsision. The Alies will attack here tomorrow, hopefully preceeded by large SBD divebombing raids. All of this is confusing in type, so I'll post a map later today. Reinforcements: 9th Aussie Division just arrived at Aden. She'll probably be committed to Burma in the short term, but ultmately she's prepping for Medan in Sumatra. If the Allies manage to hold Sabang, then Sumatra will be the western campaign focus in the second half of '43. Key Question: What are the prospects for the Allies holding Sumatra? There remains a chance, perhaps slightly higher than this time a week or two back. I'm guessings somewhere in the 25% to 30% range. That's good enough for the Allies to commit everything available to the fight. I'm using all of my carrier air now (well, mainly the F4Fs with occasinal use of SBDs) since Sabang (and Langsa to an extent) is an unsinkable carrier. I think the key date is April, when the Hellcats come online at the rate of 130 per month. That's a long, long way off, but we'll see. In the meantime, the secondary objective remains to attrit to Kaigun. This has been a good week for that with the sinking of Takao and Ashigara.
< Message edited by Canoerebel -- 1/5/2016 3:39:54 PM >
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