War in the Pacific AAR Thread - ML vs JFranzen

[Molon Labe]

29 January 1941
Round one of Battle of St. Lucia Bay becomes this timeline's first-ever fight between carrier battle groups

CENTPAC
Christmas Island was invaded and immediately captured. My bombed-out troops offered no real resistance. The only attack on Pearl today was Betties and Nells out of Lahaina. He's already moving scoutplanes in even though the whole base is wrecked--I'm worried my shipping lanes are next.


Coral Sea
Several near disasters here. A minesweeper escorting a reinforcement convoy was attacked by Betties from Rabaul. Somehow, we had no CAP on these guys. The Betties were only carrying bombs, though, and missed the small ships. My other minesweepers at PM would then find and clear 15 mines after going a day or two without finding any--which probably means a sub just laid these. My cruiser group arrived next and bombarded his troops again. The destroyers escorting them detected a sub on the way out but lost track of it before they could attack. I think there are at least 5 enemy subs in this area now--with 2 of them potentially being severely damaged by bombs. More than 20 Oscars swept PM; we managed only 9 P-40s to meet them. Neither side took any losses--we probably averted casualties because these were 2nd rate Oscars, armed with just 1 .30cal and 1 .50 cal machine guns.

We're also landing engineers on Milne. A submarine tried to attack them, but my single destroyer-minelayer escort drove it off. Then he dropped paratroops in--bad call, they're now outnumbered and surrounded. More concerning is a new task force approaching that includes cruisers. They're already close enough that there isn't anything I can do to stop them from getting to my transports. I'll try to hit them with Banshees if they're still there at sunrise.

Battle of St. Lucia Bay
As expected, Tarakan was invaded pre-dawn. Most of the cruisers from the covering force had transferred to the 56th Division's ARG to try to suppress the coastal defenses there. This was a good call--even with the fire support, my batteries managed hits on 4 transports-3 of them probably fatally. But that won't be enough to stop 2+ regiments. 7000+ troops made it ashore, with armor support. Tarakan will be his tomorrow. A Dutch sub tried to penetrate the landing area, it took a shot at a CL but missed.

The enemy began the air battle with a raid of 12 unescorted Vals seemingly coming from Tarakan. They ran into a wall of fighters: 6 Sea Hurricanes, 3 Fulmars, and 7 US Army P-39s flying from Balikpapan. The Vals were wiped out. But this could only mean that the enemy force at Tarakan includes at least one carrier.

Our strike package was 18 Albacores and 6 Fulmars, plus a few Buffalos from Tarakan. The enemy had 36 obsolete Claudes on CAP, plus 5 Zeroes and 2 Oscars. This would have gone very poorly if he had enough Zeroes to replace the Claudes, or if if he hadn't dropped the Soryu's Zeros off at Rabaul to support his attempt at Port Moresby. We can thank our pilots in the Philippines and Singapore for that. Outnumbered, we weren't able to shoot down any enemy fighters, but they only managed to splash one Fulmar and 1 Albacore. The strike package made contact with 3 ships that hadn't been reported here before: CV Soryu, CVE Taiyo, and BB Hyuga. The Fulmars missed, but the Albacores scored one torpedo hit each on Taiyo and Hyuga. Flak claimed one more Albacore.

Afternoon saw both of us launch unescorted strikes (I continue to be frustrated by my commanders' inability to pair fighters on escort duty with dive/torpedo bomber strikes). Our group was attacked by 11 Vals; our CAP got all but two of them. Of those, the CVBG's gunners shot one down before it could attack--and the other right after it dropped its bomb, which missed. Our strike was 12 Albacores. A pair of Buffalos from Tarakan tried to help, but the target is more or less between them and the fighters they're trying to protect, so they didn't even get into the fight this time. We lost 6 to the CAP and another to flak, with no hits. The enemy CAP wasn't any weaker this time around, which leads me to believe the damage to the Taiyo did not incapacitate its flight ops.

The last event here was him landing a paratroop unit fragment at the small base of Tanjoengselor, just south of Tarakan. It was empty, so it's his now.

And that's the end of round 1. Now I have to decide if I want the Indomitable to stick around for round 2. Shooting down 2 waves of Vals probably means the enemy carriers can only play defense, and I can shift my own fighters from CAP to escort to get more TBs through. But, I still have to worry about long-legged Zeroes and Betties flying in from other areas to reinforce here. Actually, now that I'm writing this out, the answer is obvious--with the carriers playing defense, my bombers aren't getting easy targets, which was the reason for this entire operation. It's time to go.


Malaya
I forgot to mention this earlier, but I noticed a day or two ago that there is a large task force at Mersing and troops seem to be leaving Singapore to head there. I'm not sure what to make of this yet. One possibility is he's planning on bypassing Singapore for now and taking Sumatra. If that's the case the Indomitable is in the wrong place right now. Yet another reason to pull out now.

Air raids here were all army--which makes me concerned that the Zeroes and Nells here are reinforcing the battle at Tarakan. But anyway, the Nates were just no match for our Hurricanes, and their bombers too high to bomb accurately. We claimed 7 Nates and 2 Sallies and they had only light damage to my airfield to show for it.


Dutch East Indies
Aside from the the major battle in progress, the enemy is progressing overland in Celebes, and a task force was detected south of Celebes, possibly headed towards Timor. I have Falcons there waiting for him, plus Dutch surface forces held in reserve that can potentially interdict.


Burma
Enemy land units have crossed overland into the road space adjacent to Pegu. The scale of this offensive is not yet known. I'm going to hit them with bombers tomorrow and see if they can tell me how many there are. The enemy picked a great time to show up, Hurricanes and medium bombers for Kinky Boots have been assembling at Rangoon and are ready to get to work. Kinky Boots took the possibility of enemy movement into Burma into account, the plan is to defeat the invaders first and then press on against a hopefully weakened enemy. If the enemy pushes further north to flank our frontline, though, Kinky Boots will have to be postponed.