31 October 1943
Kido Butai headed east... objective unclear... possible carrier v carrier battle setup.
Burma
Beaufighters got another bomb hit on that pesky seaplane tender, maybe we finally put her down?
DEI
A second minesweeper arrived at Babar to speed up the clearance operation. The harbor was mine-free by day's end.
All the way to the east near the New Guinea coast, an amphibious task force headed for Manado detected an enemy sub approaching. Escorting destroyers caused a small amount of damage to it before it got away. I'm concerned enough about enemy subs being here because of the traffic that will continue to pass through this area; I've put an ASW task force together to patrol this route and I've ordered fuel to be transported to Taberfane to sustain it.
CENTPAC and Truk
We lost 1 B-24 to George fighters over Truk, and another to flak.
Another damaged AKA went down today.
I still haven't actually attacked Truk with the troops I've landed. Many units were disabled in the landing and I'm hoping the support units can bring them back online. I don't want to make a weak attack.
The enemy continues to raid our marines on Tinian with naval bombardments and air raids. Of significance right now is that a lot of these raids appear to be Judies coming from the KB. The dive bombers are taking significant damage, even some losses, due to them exposing themselves to more and more AA fire the lower they get in their dives. I strongly suspect a significant percentage of the KBs bombers are now down for repairs.
The KB was tracked moving east of the Marianas, in the general direction of Wake. I don't know why. Maybe they're trying to cut off my fleets at Truk from any reinforcements from the east. Maybe they're trying to engage my amphibious ships retiring from Truk. Maybe they believe, correctly, that I have valuable forces standing by at Wake that would make good targets.
If he's looking for a fight, I'll give him one. My non-CVE carrier forces right now are the fleet carriers Essex, Bunker Hill, and Yorktown, plus 5 CVLs. Total air strength: 155 F6Fs, 71 dive bombers, 144 Avengers. I'm really just guessing at his total strength, but he'd need about 5 fleet carriers to match me in fighters. I don't think he has that. Recon flights say 3 carriers, which sounds right: The Zuikakau, Shokaku, and probably the Hiyo. If the Kaga wasn't sunk, she might be back in action by now. If the Akagi survived, I'd be pretty damn surprised if she was back in action this soon. I suppose there could be new ships we haven't seen yet.
To hedge a little, I've ordered a CVE that was intended to provide replacement aircraft to the CVEs still at Truk to cover the withdrawing phibs. That task force already had a CVE with dive bombers aboard; I've flown them to Wake and replaced them with fighters from the CVEs still at Truk. And finally, the Lexington II is nearing the AO; I've thrown a respectable amount of surface combattants from wake into a screen/escort and set them to rendezvous near the retiring phibs. So the actual fighter numbers in any combat might tilt as high as ~245 to 120. I doubt he'd engage my carriers and Wake at the same time, but if he does that's another 50 P-40s and the 27 SBDs from the escort carrier.
Reinforcements
VRF-2F arrives at San Francisco