Mike Solli
Posts: 15792
Joined: 10/18/2000 From: the flight deck of the Zuikaku Status: offline
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13 Aug 43 Sub War I’ve been noticing a clump of Allied ships at a little base south of Tabiteuea called Vaitupu. What’s significant is that there is no airbase there or nearby. I’ve had about half a dozen subs surrounding it (loosely) thinking some of the damaged ships from the carrier battles had stopped there to repair damage. I now know that is not the case. I had sent in I-5 on a (somewhat) suicide mission to get some intel and maybe fling a torpedo or two. What she found was very interesting. There are at least 2 convoys there. One is a single DM TF and the other is a fully loaded TK TF. The DM went after the I-5, but she has no ASW ammo! The I-5’s skipper thumbed his nose at her. Then the I-5 launched on a TK and missed. Not to be stopped, she launched on the big TK Tide Penn, hitting her with 2 torpedoes and watching her do a very nice impression of a torch before slipping beneath the waves. Later in the day, she found the AV Chandeleur there and put a torpedo into her, heavily damaging her. I’ll bet she was maintaining some flying boats that were doing naval search. The I-5 will remain and be joined by 2 other subs tomorrow. Could be fun. A couple hexes east of Shortlands Island, the RO-110 caught up with a TF that I thought may be damaged ships, but I was wrong. She found some DDs that sank her. Ah, well. 5 Fleet 4 Fleet Nothing to report. SE Fleet The Allied bombers finally put Manus’ airfield out of commission. I see an Allied CV TF hanging out south of Rabaul. From the number of aircraft, I think it’s probably the TF that trashed MKB (2 CV, 2 CVL). There’s nothing for them to go after other than bases. All of my warships are tucked away safely at Truk. I may send a few DDs to pop them if the opportunity presents itself. The moonlight is increasing though, so it would have to be a really good opportunity. SRA Nothing to report. Burma Today, Ted sent a bunch of British bombers to hit my tank regiment at Warazup. They managed to destroy the 2 damaged tanks. I noticed that there were no fighters present. My air force in this AO is pretty much grounded from the lack of supply due to the monsoon but I’ll try to put some fighters on his bombers. I flew my most elite fighter sentai to Lashio to try and LRCAP Warazup tomorrow. There’s not much supply there but I put all my transports in the area on supply missions to Lashio. We’ll see if they can fly. It’ll probably only be for a single day, but they could wreak havoc. Keeping fingers crossed that they fly. Could be fun! China I goofed today. I forgot to take the artillery off bombardment, so they did it with little ammo. The result was negligible, but I did learn that the Chinese AV dropped about 1000 (15k to 14k gross) from the attack yesterday. With only 180 supply gained in Chungking a day, I don’t expect much of it to recover. Disabled squads need supply to recover, right? Other Stuff Reinforcements: 21 Air Defense AA Battalion, Western Army 67 Field AA Battalion, Southern Army 13 RF Gun Battalion, 15 Army, to Burma 14 RF Gun Battalion, 15 Army, to Burma 65 Field AA Battalion, 8 Area Army 66 Field AA Battalion, 8 Area Army 12 RF Gun Battalion, Southern Army 59 Construction Battalion, 23 Army (China), converted to Southern Army 60 Construction Battalion, 13 Army (China), converted to Southern Army 61 Construction Battalion, 11 Army (China), converted to Southern Army 62 Construction Battalion, General Defense Force 63 Construction Battalion, General Defense Force 64 Construction Battalion, General Defense Force 65 Construction Battalion, Southern Army 66 Construction Battalion, Southern Army 67 Construction Battalion, Burma Area Army 69 Construction Battalion, General Defense Force Lots of engineers! The Ki-84a Frank finally became operational. Initial production is just under 120 a month. I’m bringing the size 55 factory to 60 and the other 2 factories (27 and 22) to 60 as well. In about a month I’ll be at 180 and then make a decision on further increases. I may increase the large factory to 90 right away so I’ll be at 210 in a month. Exciting stuff! There are 6x30 R&D factories working on the Ki-84r. That model will become operational in 2/44. I pulled some air units off some of the carriers that had really high aircraft fatigue and you guys are right, the fatigue drops much faster on land than on the carrier. Thanks! I’ll rotate them as the fatigue levels drop off. The issue is that I have too many planes stationed at Truk and not enough AS. I need to find a nice sized air HQ to bump up the AS there.
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