18 March 1942
West Australian Coast
In a night surface attack, I-165 hit an unescorted cargo ship with a pair of torpedoes near the northwest corner of Australia, sending it right to the bottom.
Timor Sea
Battleships Nagato and Fuso shelled Darwin, inflicting heavy casualties, heavy airbase damage, and moderate port damage. Part of the reason for this attack is that recon keeps claiming there are cruisers in port. There were no reported hits on any enemy ships, except for a minesweeper on patrol that we ran into and sank on the way in.
China
A small flight of 3 Oscars sweeping the road to Sian intercepted and downed one of those irritating I-15s that's been picking off the occasional IJA aircraft.
With help from some previously idle bombers from Luzon that have been temporarily rebased to China, I'm pounding the enemy army at Kukong enough to severely disrupt them. I think we're going to hold against this counteroffensive. And speaking of that, this enemy army attacked today, achieving only 1 to 2 assault odds, squad destruction favoring me at 3 to 5, and disablements favoring me at 85 to 92. Those aren't great numbers considering I'm outnumbered 2 to 1 here, but they're still encouraging, especially with our forts back up to Level 2.
I also found a division that I managed to forget was available that I'd originally planned to send to Sian--now this is going to be the reinforcement I need to tip the balance at Wenchow. They're on the way to meet up with resting/recovering armies at Chusien, once they've linked up, we'll head back east to the coast and get the job done. Once that's done I'll push southeast with the goal of linking Japanese-occupied China with Vietnam, theoretically creating a ground supply route that goes all the way to Singapore.
Our main Sian stack cleared out 3 1/3 enemy corps remnants from the road, destroying 392 devices while losing only 1. Probably the last obstacle before we get to Sian.
For Sian, I'm going to try to focus most of my medium bombers here while mostly light bombers deal with Kukong. Sian is open territory so bombers will be very effective. Troop level looks to be about 130k, which is plenty, and I'm expecting significant fortification because it's taken this long to get here. What I don't know is the condition of the enemy troops--how many of these 130k were at one point part of the Nanyang stack? Any such troops are probably suffering a lot of squads disabled and low morale, potentially making this stack weaker than it appears. My stack is about 111k troops plus 5 regiments of armor-plus 2 divisions in reserve, resting in Nanyang due to casualties they sustained clearing out the Nanyang stack.
Java
The attack on Batavia has begun. First round reduced enemy forts to level 2 with moderate casualties to both sides, with actual squad destruction favoring us significantly. Our troops did not sustain a lot of fatigue or disruption in the attack so I'm going to order a rare two-days-in-a-row attack. We could take it as early as tomorrow, if not the third attack will probably do it, we outnumber them 2 to 1 and our troops are just better quality.
One of our "mop-up" forces captured Semarang, which had 12 Falcon bombers for us to destroy on the ground.
Strait of Malacca
It took long enough--at least two subs have been spotted near Singapore. I've turned this area in to an absolute ASW juggernaut with aircraft patrols out of Singapore, Palembang, and Singkawang, plus subchasers on patrol. Now that we have confirmed sightings, I'm sending out main fleet DDs that are otherwise on standby in Singapore as hunter-killer task forces. Let's show these guys they can't mess with my tanker routes!
SOPAC
Mavises from Noumea picked up a 4-ship bogey traveling west just north of New Zealand yesterday. I have a surface combat task force intercepting now, which has been counterdetected, presumably by Catalinas flying out of Aukland. Whether I get a successful intercept probably depends on whether the enemy changes course.
The KB successfully transited the Solomons after offsetting east to avoid the obvious straight-line route to Truk that would have a chokepoint between Rabaul and the Shortlands. I was able to sanitize the alternative chokepoints between the islands with an advance DD patrol. Just trying to avoid any underwater surprises.
Reinforcements and Planning
Many of the subchaser depth charge upgrades are completing, so I'm cycling in the ones that stayed online with the upgraded boats. A lot of the upgraded boats are working their way towards the deep water chokepoints like the Makassar Stait and Banda Sea, plus keeping a few in reserve in Japan in case American subs ever show up off our coast.
We're about a week out from a rotation of DD upgrades completing.
I had been hoping to get the Nick by April, but R&D isn't moving fast enough. So it'll be May. But I'm hoping the Nick can play a critical role in this campaign, in part inspired by the ASUW success of my attack bombers in my last campaign, plus my opponent's success using Nicks to counter heavy bombers. I've started to shift IJA fighter training to include low altitude naval attacks to prepare.
With Java wrapping up, and my Luzon troops rested, I'm getting ready for the next major operation...Most of Luzon's troops have already been staged in Singapore, I'll be adding some of Java's troops to that soon too.
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