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Old 06-10-21, 11:01 AM   #31
Molon Labe
Silent Hunter
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: Along the Watchtower
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16 December 1941

CVL Zuiho gets a rude welcome into the combat zone

Malaya
We've got nearly all our Buffalos out of Georgetown. It actually looks like none are going to be left behind when its overrun. His air raids are switching focus somewhat, he's targeting my frontline troops and trying to finish off the Repulse in drydock. I can live with that, every bomb he hits Repulse with is a bomb that doesn't destroy a Buffalo on the ground, potentially anyway. He's outnumbering me badly over Singapore, during the peak raids he had about 40 Zeros and 20 Oscars to maybe 10 of my Buffs. I could really use some Hurricanes right about now. I lost 4 more Buffs over Singapore, but in Kuala Lumpur my Buffs got 4 unescorted Lilys.

He's not doing that great of a job protecting his ships; my medium bombers went after ARGs and missed, but my torpedo bombers got on the board again today, hitting two cargo ships with one sinking immediately. These appeared to be supply ships, not troop ships. The onboard fuel burned really nice though.

Philippines/Celebes/Makasar Strait
He's already got troops in Manila, and one of the battalions I had tried to send towards Naga has been cut off before I could get it to Manila. His soldiers made a push on Clark that failed, taking significant casualties. Clark is a hard nut to crack, fortunately. I'm continuing air operations there for now. Speaking of which, the air was was pretty even, we got a Zero and 3 Betties while losing 2 P-40s and a P-26. We also got our first US ace... who was in one of the P-40s that was shot down and is now wounded and off the roster.

One of his surface groups managed to intercept two sub tenders I was trying to pull out, he sank one and damaged the other. They're still looking pretty stuck there.

I should mention that I gave my opponent a "Mulligan" on this turn--he was working late and forgot to give orders to ships at anchor at Ternate, which included the Ryujo. I'm told in the first version of this turn, the Ryujo suffered 300kg bomb hits from Dutch bombers. In the redo, these bombers just bombed land forces in Manado.

But, the Zuiho appeared for the first time (the first time I identified it anyway, it could easily have been responsible for raids in the area in the prior days) in the Makassar strait, escorted by just 1 cruiser and 4 destroyers. Dutch sub KIX spotted her and fired 4 sadly-small 45cm torpedoes, hitting the Zuiho once.

I checked the database on these, the 45cm hit about 2/3rd as hard as a Mark 14. So it's probably still a pretty good hit.

Air raids around Celebes and Makassar continued (they got some retreating tankers and a minelayer), and the Zuiho was probably responsible for some of those, so she's still in the fight. Land based light bombers attempted an attack on her and got massacred by Zeroes, 7 Falcon bombers lost along with 1 Demon fighter. I lost another Buffalo over Balikpapan that was trying to defend ships in the harbor.

China
Putting the AVG on long-range CAP over Ichang worked out. The air raid came and we got 5 Nates. I just didn't have enough planes to get to the bombers though, so my troops were still hit. But my bombers got through to and hit theirs. I'm not sure whether I'm actually going to press the ground attack, but if I can draw their planes into a trap over it I'll keep going.

Enemy troops are starting to move out around Wuchang. I'm not sure if they're just clearing the roads or if this is the beginning of a push.

Further north in the Chengchow area, he's captured the central crossroads area. Again, there's not big enough of a commitment to tell whether he's clearing roads or starting an offensive.

Solomons Area
He's landed a unit of marines at Luganville, and he did it while I was offloading artillery there. If he was just a day earlier, I would have had more there, along with cruisers covering it. This could complicate matters, I was hoping Luganville would be a major base for me that would help get me a foothold in the Solomons later on. I still have other potential bases around here though, so as long as he doesn't grab those too I should at least be able to make life miserable for them on Luganville with daily air-delivered explosive hate mail. I'd consider an early-game amphib landing to get it back too, I'm just not sure it's practical right this moment with no air support and not a whole lot of troops in-theatre.

I'm kind of screwing up the logistics out here, I'm trying to land ships that I started with at sea and loaded with troops. They're not in amphibious configuration so they can only land at ports, and the ports here are mostly too small to dock at, and I didn't notice. That's slowing me down, and well, now he's going to get Luganville instead of me.
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