Canoerebel
Posts: 21100
Joined: 12/14/2002
From: Northwestern Georgia, USA
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5/2/43 and 5/3/43
Battle of Sumatra: The Japanese break through on the west side, pushing back 1st Marine Division after two days of bombardments by the Six Sisters and massed bombings. The shock attack achieved 2:1 odds and destroyed 48 squads. I did not expect the marines to fail to hold in the jungle-rough terrain against just two enemy divisions. This is a significant blow to the Allied position. This could well be the straw that breaks the camel's back, as John knows now that bombardments of ground troops in non-base hexes is effective.
The Allies had already forsaken the Sumatran lodgement to focus on Operation Circus, as regular readers know. The question now is whether Sumatra holds John's attention another week or ten days. I think it will. I think he'll be jazzed by his progress and continue to press forward on a ground campaign. That should take at least several weeks and probably more like a month to two months. Time is what I need and the ground campaign, while ultimeately successful for him, is still his slowest route to victory. I really don't think he'll invade in the short term, but even if he did, that probably would bleed sufficient time for my purposes.
I think the KB is still posted at or near Georgetown, judging by large Judy/Zero groups hitting the ground troops on the east side of Sumatra.
John sees my weakness in Sumatra. Too, he's seen subs coming into Sabang for weeks and probably rightly guesses they are brining supply. (Supply won't be a problem for at least three more weeks though.) I think he's almost positive that I'm going to try to relieve Sumatra. He probably can't imagine me not doing so with so many divisions posted there.
Operation Circus: Three carrier fighter squadrons upgraded to Hellcats. That brings the total to four (but one is Wasp's squadron with 22 fighters). The total Hellcat compliment will be 130. I won't swap out any more as I need to build the Hellcat pools to permit replacements to the newly equipped squadrons when battle attrition begins. All other carriers are fully equipped with F4Fs.
SigInt on the 4th that 116th IJA Div. is inbound to Darwin. This by no means falls into JIT III reinforcement category. John has seen the Aussie army moving from Alice Springs for Tennant Creek and has deduced (as I want him to) that the Allies are commencing an Australian campaign. So from his viewpoint and mine, this reinforcement makes perfect sense. Over on the west side, an Aussie armored unit is adjacent to Exmouth and will arrive there in just a few days. I don't know if John has spotted it yet, but I suspect he has. I suspect he's taking very careful stock of everything in this theater and drawing certain conclusions. The commitment of 116th Div. to this theater suggests he's drawing the conclusions I'd like him to draw.
Lots of enemy subs nosing around Oz ports. They still haven't found the right places to look. In particular John isn't thinking "Tasmania." The same thing happened in the summer of '42 when the Allies were massively building up for the (later aborted) invasion of New Guinea. Nearly all Allied activity was handled from the Tasman ports without interference from enemy subs.
It seemed like Circus was never going to get under way. It was like a trapeze artist's backswing. As he swings back he slows and then stops for just that brief instant. The trapeze artist's swing has reached its high point now. It's stopped. And momentarily he will swing forward, slowly at first but gathering momentum until he reaches maximum velocity, releases, and summersaults into the midst of enemy territory.
< Message edited by Canoerebel -- 3/8/2016 5:35:34 PM >
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RE: The Good The Bad & The Indifferent - 
Could he be waiting for units to prep?
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