3 January 1944
HMS Royal Sovereign sinks, KB fights off land based air attacks
Strait of Malacca
I'm pulling a rather risky move with my subs. The KB has to come back to the Pacific at some time, right? And I've avoided shallow water so far, like the Strait and the area around Singapore. So, if I tried to use subs to blockade the Strait, he might not see it coming.
I have 3 British subs already there or at the doorstep and a bunch of US subs relocating there from the Borneo coast. One of those subs, HMS Tally Ho, was spotted near Singapore and depth charged for moderate damage. At the northwest end of the Strait, HMS Clyde was spotted by a replenishment group and depth charged for minor damage. So... not bad, but 2 sightings may be enough of a pattern that he'll start to sanitize the area.
DEI
I switched New Mexico and Arizona's target to Kendari for this run. 167 casualties and an Irving destroyed on the ground.
Air raids:
Koepang (ground forces): 0 casualties
Kendari (airbase and ground forces): 1 hit, 0 casualties
We captured Bima (west of Timor) with an airborne assault, no resistance.
Andaman Sea and Burma
A frustrating day for us as many attack aircraft raided the KB but many fighter squadrons assigned to escort duty took the day off. First was 10 Beaufort torpedo bombers and 11 Avengers flying out of Rangoon with just 12 Hurricanes on escort. The KB's CAP was 61 fighters, and we got slaughtered. 5 Hurricanes, 10 Avengers, and 4 Beauforts shot down. Amazingly we did get 6 Beauforts and 1 Avenger to the task force, attacking the CVE Shinyo and CV Zuikaku... but the enemy dodged all the torpedoes.
That was followed up by 16 Beaufighters with 14 P-51s flying out of Pegu. The enemy CAP was down to 48 thanks to the earlier raid, but still enough to deal with us. We shot down only 1 Zero, while 5 P-51s and 11 Beaufighters bit it. Another Beaufighter was lost to flak. 3 Beaufighters managed to make attack runs on the CVE Chuyo and BB Kongo but missed.
Next up was an entire squadron of 16 Vengeance dive bombers with no escort. They suffered 11 losses; the surviving aircraft withdrew. A second squadron with 14 aircraft came in next, also with no escort. They also lost 11 aircraft, but managed to attack with three. One of those was shot down by flak. They attacked CVE Kaiyo and CV Hiyo... and missed. These two attacks would likely have been devastating if they had fighter escorts!
The enemy raids were next, oddly targeting ASW patrols near Rangoon instead of the limping Royal Sovereign. 34 Zeroes escorted 3 Kates and 6 Judies while we put up a CAP of 12 Hurricanes, 7 P-40s, and 6 P-47s. We splashed 12 Zeroes with no losses, but the bombers got through and sank a minesweeper. Pappy Boyington (who I tried to retire from the Army and move to the Marines to command VMF-214) finally got his 5th kill in this fight.
We had some piecemeal raids after that, costing us 2 Hurricanes, 4 Vengeances, and 3 Beauforts with nothing to show for it. The KB made a followup raid on Rangoon with 18 Kates and 20 Zeroes; we got 10 Zeroes and 3 Kates without loss, but lost another minesweeper and our airbase took a pair of bomb hits.
Other air raids:
Pisanuloke (ground forces) 72 casualties
China
Air raids:
Sinyang (ground forces): 27 casualties
Philippines
Air raids:
Cagayan (ground forces): 188 casualties
In the Strait of Luzon, Beaufighters attacked a tanker convoy, but did so with just 2 aircraft. "Due to range or weather" the full flight of 12 failed to find the target, so they apparently split up and these 2 got lucky. We managed to get 2 bomb hits on a large tanker, setting it on fire. It did not appear to be oil/fuel cargo burning, so this is an outbound convoy.
Reinforcements
BB Iowa arrives at Eastern USA
SS Guitarro arrives at Balboa
265th Coastal Artillery Regiment arrives at Pearl Harbor
Seventh USAAF Engineer Aviation Battalion arrives at San Francisco
5th USMC Tank Battalion arrives at San Diego
31st Indian Mountain Gun Regiment arrives at Karachi
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