Roger Neilson
Posts: 899
Joined: 10/27/2001 From: England Status: offline
|
Gentlemen, today's briefing will be conducted by the American Naval Attache.... The attache rises, waits for the stir in the room to settle.... there is soemthing up, this is not normal procedure. He clears his throat and begins his tale. Over the past few days we have been tracking the KB as it moved north west of the Hawaiin islands. Yesterday it made a sudden thrust towards Pearl Harbour as if to attack the facilities there. One of our CV Task Forces, with the Flag on the USS Lexington moved to challenge this thrust - a grave mistake - and one which was not ordered by higher command. The result of this was a sustained series of attacks on the task force by overwhelming forces of torpedo and dive bombers from the massed Japanese carriers. The Lex suffered at least five torpedo hits and in the region of 8 bomb hits. She sank shortly after with great loss of life. The CA Portland, also part of the Task Force, was also hit by two torpedoes and sunk. It is unclear at this stage what the rest of the task force's fate will be, they are heading to Pearl at full speed. The CA Astoria is damaged, but reports that she will make Pearl for damage repairs. This rash challenge to a force of roughly five times its strength can only have had one outcome, and we must speculate as to why the commander chose to attack rather than retreat. We must however salute the bravery of the actions. They did not sacrifice in vain, for planes combined from the Tf and Pearl Harbour found the Japanese fleet and scored bomb hits on the BB Hiei,CV Akagi which suffered heavy damage and is on fire,CV Zuikaku, very heavily on fire. The bombs were all 1,000 lbers, which penetrated the lightly protected decks of the Jap flattops and caused significant internal explosions. Elsewhere a surface TF raided Lunga and sunk two Japanese ships at anchor there. I am reminded of your naval losses in the first days of the war, we too have now suffered a serious loss, but already we can see the damage being returned to the treacherous aggressors. The Naval attache resumes his seat, amidst applause from all present.
Attachment (1)
|