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FeurerKrieg -> May 25th, 1943 (4/9/2009 6:37:34 AM)
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May 25th, 1943
It seemed like an attack might be brewing, today it arrived. We got a full court press from the Allies on Meiktila. They took advantage of a break in the thunderstorms and struck us from several different bases. However, when the dust settled, they still lost more planes than we did, and much more encouraging, our fighters managed very well against the P-38G and Thunderbolt combo.
First - the rest of the war:
SS Salmon was hit by a Ki-32 Mary near Maumere.
Our fighters flew over Chungking, but the Chinese fighters have decided they are done fighting for now.
Burma
The Allied attacks went off about as well as one could ask. The initial attack of many fighters wore down our CAP and subsequent waves of bombers were able to get through without much loss.
Wave 1:
Our CAP was 36 Jacks, 64 Tony, 7 Tojo and 4 Nick(a). Against us came 21 P-38G Lightnings, 21 P-40N Warhawks and 40 P-47C Thunderbolts. I was very concerned that these new Allied fighter would tear us apart, but thankfully we caught a couple bounces, and even when we were bounced, our planes were often able to evade. This might partly be due to the fact that then enemy fighters had to fly 300 miles from their base, or they were escorting friendly bombers or the AVG pilot quality has deteriorated from previous combats (the AVG was flying the Thunderbolts). Losses are posted below. 90% of these bombers got through and did moderate damage to the base.
Wave 2:
Our CAP was now down to 18 Jacks, 20 Tony, 2 Tojo and 1 Nick and many of these planes were low on ammo and/or fuel. They still put up a good fight against the 20 Beaufighter VIC's that were escorting the bombers. Again most bombers got through and they wiped out the runway, and some hit resource centers in the area as well.
Wave 3:
The last attack was also a large one, and our CAP of 18 Jack, 2 Tojo, 1 Nick and 17 Tony was about done. They damaged a few of the B-24's but could do little more than that. The last attack wiped out anything that was left of the airbase. Thankfully most planes were in the air or our ground losses would have been much worse.
Losses: The good news is that A2A we did better than the Allies. We probably did even better when looking at pilots lost.
Total Losses
Japan: 74 (33 A2A/41 GRD)
Allies: 90
A-to-A losses
Japan
Ki-61 Tony - 29
Ki-44-IIb Tojo - 3
Ki-45 KAIa Nick - 1
J2M Jack - 0
Allies
P-47C Thunderbolt - 34
P-38G Lightning - 19
P-40N Warhawk - 11
Beaufighter VIC - 10
Blenheim IV - 6
Vengeance I - 5
Wellington III - 3
B-24D Liberator - 1
B-25C Mitchell - 1
Ground Losses for Japan
Ki-61 Tony - 22
J2M Jack - 12
Ki-45 KAIa Nick - 5
Ki-44-IIb Tojo - 2
Pilot Losses for Japan
Army - 19 KIA, 5 WIA
Navy - 0 (!!! - Go IJN!!)
The airbase is at 72 service/99 runway. Our 182 engineers there, with 20,000+ supply should be able to fix the place up if they can get a break from the bombers.
[image]http://i275.photobucket.com/albums/jj283/bfeurer/meiktila.jpg[/image]
Major attack in Burma
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