[Molon Labe]

10 April 1942
Be careful what you wish for: surface task forces evade US and British carrier forces

Thailand and the Andaman Sea

A troop convoy headed for Rangoon was intercepted at night by the heavy cruiser Aoba and a destroyer:
xAP Talma, Shell hits 2, Torpedo hits 2, and is sunk
xAP Tilawa, Shell hits 4, on fire
xAP Rajula, Shell hits 3, heavy fires
xAK Somelsdijk, Shell hits 13, heavy fire
xAK Marpessa
xAK Gard
KV Jasmine, Shell hits 9, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAK Somelsdijk sinks....
KV Jasmine sinks....
xAP Tilawa sinks....
(spoiler alert: tomorrow-- xAP Rajula sinks....(lost control of flooding 2 hexes off Rangoon))

Allied ground losses:
1471 casualties reported
Squads: 81 destroyed, 28 disabled
Non Combat: 78 destroyed, 37 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Guns lost 11 (11 destroyed, 0 disabled)
Vehicles lost 43 (20 destroyed, 23 disabled)

I am appalled that an enemy task force was able to lie in ambush in an area surveilled by Catalinas from Rangoon and where I had a carrier and a surface task force waiting for exactly this to happen. But it's my own fault. That Catalina squadron in Rangoon--just 4 planes. And I'd made assumptions about how many ships in my task forces were carrying scout planes; the number is actually quite low. So it makes sense that a very small task force was able to avoid detection here.

Back on land, I switched to sweeping and let my bombers rest. The battle ended up being 13 Hurricanes vs 11 Oscars and an 8-on-4 followup, we shot down 9 and only lost 1.


Hawaii and CENTPAC
And it wasn't just the Brits. At Christmas Island, a light cruiser and 3 cruiser-minelayers blundered into my landing task forces at night. Neither side wanted to play, but that they were here meant they snuck past PBYs and scout bombers--yes, my carriers are here. The enemy CMs laid their mines and took off; my scouts searched for this task force all day and never found it. I've ordered the Hornet CVBG to move north to maybe get another shot at this guy and to try to make sure we see the next one. I've also ordered two destroyer-minesweepers to deal with the new problem.

I'm disappointed this is all they sent, I was really hoping to take some pressure off Pearl. They had some immediate success--one of my cargo ships delivering Christmas presents (in the form of USMC Wildcats) hit one of the freshly-laid mines, but sustained only moderate damage.

Java
Horrible turn for the Dutch air forces. My fighter bases are a mess and aren't generating many sorties. But the bombers I moved to Palembang still flew. And ended up with few to no fighters escorting them. We ran into a hive of Zeroes and Oscars--30+ each, at the western beachhead of Kalidjati. We ended up losing 13 (of 23) B-25s and 2 P-40s with no enemy losses. No bombers made it to their targets; a the survivors aborted and returned home.

Malaya
We lost 2 bombers to flak at Johore Bahru, despite bombing from relatively high altitude at 10,000 ft. I had been hoping to take advantage of recon reporting no fighters around. But these guys are dug in and have a lot of big flak guns, apparently. I'll look elsewhere. This probably means having my Singapore armies try to retake the Malayan peninsula is not an option for now, they'd take heavy losses crossing the channel to the mainland that would change the balance of forces here.