22 January 1942
Port Moresby repels land attack, barely
CENTPAC
Another day, another BB bombardment of Pearl. The KB launched another massive strike on Palmyra's airbase with essentially nothing to show for it, because nothing's there. But the KB is now between Palmyra and Christmas Island. I imagine he'll switch targets soon. At which point the SBDs will have nowhere to go. The KB was last reported heading east, maybe he's finally going after my shipping lanes? Not thrilled about that, but it looks like the Lex and Yorktown are in the clear.
Burma
A Japanese sub attempted to intercept a convoy delivering bombers to Rangoon. An escorting corvette depth charged it instead, causing moderate damage.
Operation Kinky Boots is scheduled to begin 2/13, although I may bump that up 5 days if I decide to send the last Hurricane squadron to Sumatra or Singapore instead. The pilot situation looks good enough to proceed and the last convoys should depart in less than a week.
Dutch East Indies
A force of 2 CA, 3 CL, and 4 DD is entering the Sulu Sea from the South China Sea. A Dutch sub took a shot at them and missed. I'll be interested in seeing where these guys go. They might merit some air strikes, maybe even Force Y can take a shot at them.
What's left of the CVLBG was spotted retreating out of the area, north of Papua-New Guinea, headed east towards Truk.
Coral Sea
My bombardment task force encountered some presents left behind in Port Moresby. The HMAS Adelaide hit a mine and is returning to port for repairs. A small air battle broke out as Zeroes flew all the way from Rabaul to try to stop my bombers from tearing into his armies. Three Zeroes were shot down, along with one of our P-39s. Land based and carrier-based bombers hit the enemy troops hard, causing at least some disruption. The thick terrain is limiting the usefulness of air strikes.
His armies attacked anyways, reducing my fortifications to level 1. The good news is that it cost him a lot of troops, casualties were 1188 to 684 favoring me. It should take him some time to recover from that. I'm considering evacuating the airbase, but for now I'm going to put my faith in the grunts. The carriers will stick around for longer than I wanted to help make sure this goes my way. I'm also going to send some extra ground forces over...and minesweepers.
Philippines
I managed to get a few more B-17s flyable and evacuated them. Paratroops landed on Jolo Island, which has a fragment of a base force still there. I've evacuated the PBYs that had been flying there, and I'm going to try to counterattack the paratroops. They've got nothing to lose, they are already dead, they now go into battle to try to reclaim their lives.
China
My sweep of Nanchang came up empty, although this is apparently an Oscar base. My bombers blew up an Oscar on the ground and caused light to moderate facility damage.
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