FeurerKrieg
Posts: 3397
Joined: 6/15/2005 From: Denver, CO Status: offline
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January 1st, 1942 Wow! What a way to start the New Year. Read on, fans of the Empire! Malaya/Indochina Zero's sweep Port Blair and bring down 4 Buffalos. Nells and Bettys attack some of the ships fleeing Singapore. Two AGs and one xAK are all hit with one bomb each. An xAKL and DD Vendetta are all finished off with torpedoes. The Mabels fair worse today, scoring no hits. Georgetown is easily captured by our northern force. They will continue on their march down the peninsula. Our first serious assault on Singapore goes well. Details are below. The destroyed versus damage counts look good and we definitely have a solid numerical edge. Our disruption is a bit high after the assault so we will rest a day before trying again on the 3rd of Jan. quote:
Japanese Deliberate attack Attacking force 82106 troops, 769 guns, 430 vehicles, Assault Value = 2552 Defending force 28815 troops, 366 guns, 273 vehicles, Assault Value = 342 Japanese adjusted assault: 1903 Allied adjusted defense: 569 Japanese assault odds: 3 to 1 (fort level 3) Japanese Assault reduces fortifications to 2 Combat modifiers Defender: terrain(+), preparation(-), experience(-) Attacker: Japanese ground losses: 2010 casualties reported Squads: 11 destroyed, 244 disabled Non Combat: 1 destroyed, 36 disabled Engineers: 1 destroyed, 60 disabled Guns lost 27 (2 destroyed, 25 disabled) Vehicles lost 20 (1 destroyed, 19 disabled) Allied ground losses: 2229 casualties reported Squads: 78 destroyed, 108 disabled Non Combat: 72 destroyed, 73 disabled Engineers: 2 destroyed, 18 disabled Guns lost 61 (15 destroyed, 46 disabled) Vehicles lost 123 (98 destroyed, 25 disabled) Units destroyed 1 DEI The 124th Infantry from Tarakan fame, storms ashore at Samarinda today with little problem. One xAK is hit by the 75mm CD guns and will likely sink by tomorrow. Our troops are closing on Kendari and today escorts chase SS S-36 away from BB Haruna and company. At Java, the Dutch air force, detecting that KB has left the area rallies up a big strike of 34x 139WH-3 and the last 2x Swordfish. We are counting on the low experience of the enemy pilots to protect us and that pays off today. All bombs and torpedoes miss our transports that are just finished unloading at Kalidjati. The transports will head back north, and will be LRCAPed for tomorrow by Zeros and Oscars from Singkawang. We also spot an enemy ship fleeing south from Singapore, and two of our destroyers will sail to intercept the ship. Meanwhile, on the island itself, the 2nd Tank Regiment captures Semarang from the Base Force there. Philippines Calayan is captured for free today. The rate of these captures is definitely helping me out in terms of cleanup later on. Sweeps and bombing on Clark continue, we hit 1x P-40E, 1x P-40B and 1x P-35A today. We are definitely in seige mode now that Manilla has fallen. I probably won't report much here unless something noteworthy comes up. Pacific First, near Peleliu, a small tanker of ours gets sunk by SS Tarpon. The big action is near Rabaul today! Overnight our escorts chase off SS Sturgeon from our carriers as they arrive east of Rabaul to provide cover for our newly loaded up transports. US carriers attacked here just a couple days ago and now our troops are all loaded up and vulnerable so we don't want to see that happen again. Shortly after the sun comes up, our search planes see enemy carrier south of Rabaul near Woodlark. Kaga acts against orders and moves south another hex, thus splitting our carrier force - Kaga in one hex and Akagi in the other (each with one CVL and CVE each). Akagi's strike reaches the target first and is shredded pretty good. Of the strike seen below, only 6 Vals and 3 Kates make attacks on Saratoga and all miss. All is not lost however, as the seperate attacks split up the enemy CAP and the strike from Kaga is barely interfered with. Vals hit the mark on Saratoga five time, 3 of which penetrate the flight deck. Kates put three fish into the big carrier as well, the last of which sets off an ammo storage explosion. Sara ain't looking too good. To add insult to injury, some Jakes from our CS's attack also, and put a 60kg bomb on the deck too. Next up comes the counterattack. Kaga in her rush to get closer takes the brunt of the attack. 18 Claudes and 19 Zeros do their best, but totally miss the 30 SBD-3s that come in. Hosho, Ryujo and Kaga all take 2 bombs each. Kaga is still able to operate, but Hosho and Ryujo's planes divert to Rabaul - most of them do safely land there. Both sides recover and rearm and in the afternoon the action continues. This time Akagi faces a reduced CAP with Sara out of action, and 17 B5N2's make a run on Enterprise. Three torps plow into the side of the carrier and detonate, although no major fires or secondary explostions are reported. Enterprise's counterattack comes in without escort and our Clauses and Zeros have a field day with 13 SBD-2s. All 13 are splashed easily. Even the Claudes bring down a couple. Saratoga is reported sunk on the intel screen. Definitely cause for celibration. Kaga is still able to operate sorties, so it will rendezvous with the Akagi group while Ryujo and Hosho park at Rabaul to reduce flooding before heading north for repairs. Given FOW it is possible that Enterprise is not that damaged. If so, Enterprise and Lexington (I assume Lex is here) together could still mount a solid attack against our carriers. Because of this, our carriers will rendezvous near Rabaul to get some local land based CAP support. Also, our troops ships will wait another day to sail. If the US CV's retreat, we will sail tomorrow. Nells have been order to search far south and attack if possible. Various submarines have been order into the area as well. It is still tense, but if Sara and Enterprise have been rendered ineffective, then things are looking very good at the moment. Stay tuned to see what happens tomorrow! Battle of the Solomon Sea China Supplies continue to unload at Wenchow as our ground troop try their assault today with the newly arrived 21st Division. No luck though, as they only achieve 1 to 2 odds. 17th Division is en route - once it arrives we will try again. Air support arrives in Nanyang today, so we move in some Nate who will try to ambush some SB-III's that keep pestering our Divisions near Wuchang. Submarines More sub activity today. SS-171 on the Port Moresby death run finds xAKL Kini and sinks the ship with two torpedo hits. Farther west, near Tandjoengbalai, xAKL Larut falls victim to I-156 which pounds the ship under with its deck gun.
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