18 December 1941
Japanese land forces advance
Malaya
Japan gave most of its bombers a maintenance holiday. They flew a few strikes near Kuala Lumpur, escorting Oscars took out 2 Buffalo and lost 1.
I tried to sneak in a couple AKLs to resupply Singapore--kind of a test to see if I could. One was intercepted by a sub and sunk. But now we know why subs were spotted around there, it's a quiet blockade.
On the opposite side of the South China Sea, we had another incident of a Dutch sub captain running on the surface getting shot at but not shooting, resulting in damage to the sub. Was it the same guy?...Yes. Yes it was. I looked up the sub's specifications, the main deck gun is an 80mm Bofors AA with a range of 15,000yd... that beats the ranges of some of the ships he's engaged. Is the behavior of this sub bugged in some way? I'm not sure I can do anything to change its behavior other than replacing the captain...which I will, his stats suck. But if that doesn't fix it, I may have to relegate this sub to minelayer duty.
Java Sea and Makasar Strait
I tried to move to take advantage of two enemy subs being crippled/lost in Batavia, sending tankers out of Palembang. But there were yet more subs waiting for them and I lost two tankers. He's clearly made this mission a priority for his sub fleet, I will need to try to get more destroyers down here. I'm a bit aggravated that the DDs already here have yet to get a confirmed sub kill between the availability of targets and the shallowness of the water that should be making them easier depth charge targets.
A heavy cruiser and two destroyers entered the harbor at Balikpapan and sank a minesweeper. One of the DDs hit a defensive mine on the way out.
What I assume was the Zuiho raided Surabaya, my biggest base in the area. Their fighters fought my Buffalos and Hawks to a stalemate, and their Kates flew into the harbor to bomb a US destroyer, causing serious damage. This is just humiliating.
China
The IJA cleared my troops out of 2 road hexes near Wuchang, opening supply routes to Kuikang and Nanchang. One of my units--a third of a division--surrendered instead of retreated! I'm going to see if I can look back at the previous turn to see if there was a problem with hexside control that made retreat impossible...No, they had valid retreat options. ****ing conscripts. Somebody really ought to tell these guys that being in a Japanese POW camp isn't a vacation.
The enemy also captured Kweiteh, a small town sitting on a rail line that when held by China obnoxiously blocks units from moving by train from the main Japanese-held coastal areas to the front line at Kaifeng. About 6,000 Chinese soldiers were killed or captured in these battles.
The AVG drew some more bombers over Ichang. Most of them arrived unescorted; we claimed 4 kills while the rest went through to bomb my troops. It's clear at this point that as long as those bombers are getting through, my troops won't take the city.
Elsewhere
-Luganville is officially theirs, their marines finally pushed and destroyed my partial artillery unit there.
-He's asking me for the status of the Arizona and Nevada by email. As if.
-We've detected 9 submarines near Pearl. A Bolo bomber on patrol managed to hit one with a 500 pounder before it went deep (decent chance that's a kill), but the rest are still lurking. I'm putting a lot of destroyers out there that I'd rather have escorting something, but I have to deal with this.
-This was the first time we had fewer planes lost than them for two days in a row.