26 July 1942
So little happened here that I'm essentially skipping it. The one event of note is that my heavy bomber raid on Lahaina was intercepted by the KB's Zeroes. 5 Wildcats were shot down but the bombers got through.
27 July 1942
Another uneventful day.
S-31 torpedoed a cargo ship off Kona, Hawaii. KXV torpedoed another in the Celebes Sea, which was abandoned by its convoy, allowing KXV to finish it off as it burned. A pair of heavy cruisers bombarded Palembang and managed not to get attacked by my torpedo bombers and fighter-bombers. The KB moved south of Kona, prompting me to back off some troop reshuffling at Palmyra.
28 July 1942
Major air battles over Hawaii
Hawaii
A cargo convoy docked yesterday and dropped off 3 subchasers for Pearl. An enemy sub attempted to sneak into the harbor this morning but was spotted by a destroyer-escort from the convoy. Despite numerous damaging depth charge near-misses, the sub got away. A Kingfisher bombed another sub near Pearl.
Knowing the KB was lending its CAP to protect Lahaina, I had VF-5 perform a high-altitude sweep. They hammered the initial CAP but got sucked into a longer fight as the enemy scrambled more fighters, which stopped the hemorrhaging for the enemy. Losses here were 13 Zeroes to 4 Wildcats. A few B-17s went after the carriers next. The enemy CAP was somewhat depleted and failed to stop any of the bombers. But AA got two, and unsurprisingly, the Shokaku and Zuikaku were able to avoid being hit. After that, the rest of the heavy bombers, and one squadron of B-26s, hit Lahaina with Wildcat escorts. We lost 5 Wildcats to their 3 Zeroes and many Zeroes got through to the bombers. The heavies were a meat grinder for the Zeroes; one of the kills was by the bombers and many more Zeroes were damaged without bringing down any of the heavies. The B-26s were much more vulnerable though--we lost 5.
The enemy launched some small strikes of its own going after my new subchasers. Wildcats took down 2 Zeroes, 7 Kates, and 2 Vals in at least 3 different raids. Five of those kills were all by one guy, a rookie on his 2nd sortie ever and my newest Ace-in-a Day (FO Pond, Z.A. of VMF-223). But 6 Vals got through in the last raid, and 3 of them found their marks, 1 for each subchaser. So that was a really short career for them.
Malaya and Thailand
I now have a strong army sitting outside Bangkok, the enemy has responded by rebasing bombers to attack them. Which is a problem, because of losing Tavoy--I have the fighters to protect them, but they're flying too far to have sufficient loiter time. His armies from Tavoy are moving to cut off my army, so I'm going to let him, then double back and defeat that blocker army. By then I'll have other forces closing in on Tavoy and we should be back on track.
I few my recon B-25 variant from China to Singapore to snoop Johore Bahru. That flight, combined with SIGINT reports, leads me to believe that the overwhelming number of troops there are support troops with very little actual infantry. Depending on the level of fortifications there, this could be a paper tiger. There are significant resource producing sites there, so if I were to take it, those resources would end up in Singapore's factories and be converted to the supply I need to survive the siege. And with the bombers having other things to do up at Bangkok, the time to make a move here may be coming.
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