21 April 1942
SOPAC
I let the Mutsu and Yamashiro dump their reserve ammunition into Suva before leaving, destroying another P-39 and damaging several more aircraft.
Well south of Noumea, I had detected a single bogey a few days ago and sortied the cruiser Katori down to investigate, to make sure no enemy convoys were getting past us towards Australia. As it turned out, that was the cruiser St. Louis with a destroyer in company. We traded shots and the Katori took the worst of it. Fortunately, all the hits except one were either superstructure hits or didn't get through the armor. That single exception let a little bit of water into the people tube and lightly damaged the engines. The ship broke off with significant system damage and a moderate fire, but should be able to make it back to base if it's not attacked again.
We swept Suva from the West again--despite the damage, they got 27 fighters in the air, enough that we only scored 5 enemies shot down to 6 Zeroes lost. The KB followed that up with a port strike, shooting down 4 more fighters and putting two 800kg bombs into the USS Grayback, which really should sink it a few times over. There were supposed to be Betty strikes as well, but the missions did not fly.
China
The enemy put an I-16 over Sian, which was able to shoot down a Lily and escape before Oscars could get to it.
Another enemy unit stepped onto the Sian road, right where our army already was, so we attacked and routed them for another 420 devices destroyed with just 2 of ours lost.
Ceylon
We lost a pair of Betties to AAA over Colombo.
Reinforced with the Imperial Guards Division, our main force attacked Colombo and captured it, inflicting 1948 devices destroyed while losing only 68.
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