Canoerebel
Posts: 21100
Joined: 12/14/2002 From: Northwestern Georgia, USA Status: offline
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9/3/44 Battle of Shikuka: Another hard-fought, scrappy 2-1 victory for the Allies. Most of Eric's TFs are out of ammo; most of mine are too. Some of my guys finally made it back to Shikuka and replenished. I can offer one CA/CL TF, one big DD TF, and one small DD TF, augmented by mines and scores of PT boats. That's not enough, but it might buy a few days. Allied PT boats put a fish into CL Isuzu. A sub put four fish into CL Kitakami. Enemy forces returned the favor by putting a fish in CL Santa Fe and nearly finishing off CA Boston. In the air, the Allies prevailed 2.5:1 against massed sweeps by Georges, Franks, and Jacks. My guys are pretty gassed now. Eric's lost 1000 planes in three days; his guys may need a bit of R&R. It is likely that Eric will marshall his forces, replenish, and send another host against my meager defenses. If he blows through the ships and bombards airfield, the end will be in sight. The CVEs are down to 18 days on the upgrades. (Drat the timing on that. Drat it! I don't think Eric timed this battle to coincide with CVE upgrades - I think he timed it for the full moon. But what timing!) KB: Some of Eric's big combat TFs are still loitering around out here without ammo; that suits me. Half of KB is stationed east of Shikuka, halfway to the Kuriles, to prevent egress. The other half is west of Sikhalin. Egress? With a modest combat fleet to guard Shikuka, I'm not ready to pull the egress trigger quite yet. What I really hope is that I can somehow squeeze out about four more days. That depends mostly on whether Erik's been able to replenish a stout combat TF or two or six. Ship Losses: In looking over ship losses yesterday, I came away a bit discouraged about the overall condition of the Japanese fleet. In this battle, Erik has lost at least 7 CLs with at least one more damaged; that's fully 1/3rd of his light cruiser fleet. He's lost 1 CA, bringing the total to 9; he has 18 total for the game, so not quite a crisis there. A handful of other CAs have been damaged thus far, but none seriously. None of his BBs has been touched in this clash. He still has 10 of the 12. I think 25-30 of his subs have been sunk or pretty heavily damaged in this clash. He gets 150 in the game, and I'd guesstimate he's lost about 60; so alot left. He gets about 235 DDs and has, by my reckoning, lost perhaps 65; again, he has a zillion left. So his navy is stout for this late in the game. His only real weakness is in cruisers.
< Message edited by Canoerebel -- 4/28/2018 3:27:58 AM >
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