Cuttlefish
Posts: 2454
Joined: 1/24/2007 From: Oregon, USA Status: offline
|
Obviously from the screaming troops you barbarically strafed the day before, you know there were troops aboard those transports. The newsreels of your dastardly acts will inspire the home front to greater exertions. - Q-Ball 9/2/1942 – 9/6/1942 Kido Butai approached Fiji and found no targets. Side slipping the islands to the west my carriers moved south and there they found a task force of at least five APs and an AMC. AMC Hector was sunk, as were xAPs Koolama, Klipfontaine, and Macedon. Another AP was left badly damaged. There were a lot of troop casualties reported, many of them engineers. Those transports may have been carrying base force or engineering units. Messing them up is not a bad thing. After the attack I moved KB to cover the transports that are braving a gauntlet of submarines to take two divisions off Noumea. One of the divisions, the 4th, is being moved to Rabaul for the time being. The other, probably the 19th, is going all the way to the Marianas. The 48th is being split up and will cover Noumea, Koumac, and Luganville. The 53rd will remain at Noumea for now in case I decide on a further attack in the South Pacific. China: I am beginning my push on the units Q-Ball has scattered south of Changsa. Some of these are stacks with three or four full-strength corps. Others consist of a single corps that have been so badly beaten in early fighting that they pretty much consist now of twelve guys and an ox cart. It occurred to me that I would be doing Q-Ball a favor by destroying them because eventually they would come back as one-third strength units, which is a lot better than they are now. I asked him about it and he said yes, once a Chinese unit falls below 5% strength he keeps hoping it will be destroyed. To the frustration of both of us, though, they never are. They just keep retreating. And they block a road or rail line as well as a stronger unit. Burma: it looks like some of the ten units recon says Q-Ball has in Akyab are moving towards the road south. I have a regiment keeping watch on that road two hexes below Akyab. He may have seen that unit and is reacting to it, or he may be thinking of infiltrating me from that direction. I have the Imperial Guard and the 2nd Divisions to react to a move there and the 38th Division is coming up from Java. Shipping News: Port Arthur is right now the busiest Japanese-held port in the Pacific. There are about 1.4 million resources there and I can’t seem to haul them away fast enough. Not that I’m not trying. The screenie below shows Japanese shipping in the Yellow Sea as of 5 September. Every one of the task forces visible is either at, heading to, or coming from Port Arthur, with the exception of a few ASW forces close to Japan. So far I haven’t seen any Allied subs in the Yellow Sea. Some of them operate in the East China Sea, though, and they are like old friends. I know some of them so well I could draw their patrol zones on a map. Finback, for example, recently returned after an absence of some weeks and some of my sub chasers threw a welcome home party. My ASW forces might as well hand out cake and streamers; it’s about as effective as anything else they try and do.
Attachment (1)
|