4 February 1942
China
Major land battle outside Nanyang, we took significant casualties but it was mostly squad disablements, while Chinese casualties included a lot of squads destroyed. They're breaking.
Dutch East Indies
We had a long-range CAP out of Singapore trying to protect Palembang from the Dutch scorched-earth bombing raids. We only shot down 1 and the enemy managed to get another Oil hit. But better than the 5 hits we took yesterday. I'm moving in fighters to Palembang itself to protect this better; aviation support is being airlifted from Singkawang in addition to the incoming base forces (we're packing up from Kuching to rebase everything there to Palembang).
The Java invasion is planned to have two prongs, and the task force for the eastern group is nearly done loading at Singapore. We're probably something like 7-10 days from launching that operation.
We've captured Tarakan with an over-the-river shock attack. There were paratroops there trying to take the base but the conventional army caught up with them.
Coral Sea/Solomons/New Caledonia
A pair of bogeys showed up at Horn Island again, but this time I had surface assets nearby, so I rushed them. Was just 2 AKLs, both sunk.
The Port Moresby-to-New Caledonia task force finished loading and is ordered to rendezvous with another invasion force heading south from Truk. I expect them to land together at the north end of New Caledonia in 5 days.
Home Islands
The enemy has built up Adak Island to port size 2, which may be a sign of a fledgling forward sub base being built. Up to this point, there has been no US submarine activity near the home islands, but it looks like that's going to change. Hopefully I've got at least another month so that I'll have suitable deep-water depth charges on my subchasers and enough floatplanes and ASW-trained pilots to support them.
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