Part 1: Welcome to Pacific Command

Welcome Gentlemen, to Pacific Command.
After the attack this morning on Pearl Harbour, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Philippines, it has been decided that one man should command the entire Allied army. That man, it has been decided is me.

Today has been a grim day, we can confirm the loss of two battleships, tow destroyers, a submarine and a patrol boat. Although the last is not a real loss. We also have a number of heavily damaged ships.



Intelligence estimates we shot down 21 enemy planes today, but lost 77 of our own. Most of these on the ground at pearl harbour. As we cannot confirm the kill of submarine I-121, we will have to leave it off our list for now.
While it may look like we are in a strong position, this is not the case, most of our forces are spread out, and we will not be getting any real replacements for a while.
The British forces are in better shape than the American ones, having been at war for two years already, but the majority of them are needed to fight Hitler in Europe, and America has to train up its forces, it will be weeks, if not months before we see any real increase in our forces, and the Japs are working to a well planned timetable, we must take up a strategy of selling land dearly and conserving our manpower until such time as we can mount a counter attack.



Sigintel will supply us with all the information they can on the enemies movements, although why they could not tell us of the large Japanese fleet off Pearl Harbour yesterday I will not know! When I went down there to speak to the head of intelligence, the man was dressed in slippers and a dressing gown!
Changes will have to be made there, let me tell you. For now, there is little of use, a[art form telling us that something is going on just off Babeldaob, most likely more troops moving towards the Philippines.



I will now begin a sector by sector breakdown of our operations.






Pearl is a mess. The airfield is working at one third capacity and the port is damaged. And the Jap Carriers are still hanging about offshore.
The first thing we must do is ready ourselves for another attack like this tomorrow! I want all our pilots in the air as much as possible tomorrow – 100% Combat Air Patrol (CAP). We may not know how much fuel the Japs have, but we can be prepared.

This may seem odd, but in this game, the Carrier fleet starts with 100% fuel, not the historically low levels – so 2-3 day strikes at Pearl are common.



The state of our fleet is terrible, we have not one undamaged battleship, and the Pennsylvania is still on fire, and it looks like we may yet lose here in the coming hours.



So, lets go through the ship screen a bit, using the most likely doomed Pennsylvania. The first think you'll notice is the fire and the red text. The stuff along the side is the damage types and levels.
Systems equates to the ships ability to function – radar, fire control, pumps, and other such things
Flood shows how full of water the ship is, the first is the current flooding, the Major damage is the amount that cannot be removed – think sealed off sections of the ship, oddly, its the minor flooding that will kill you, as the major flooding won't increase, anything above this means your ship is taking on water still. And at 94% flooded, the Pennsylvania is not long for this world.
Engine and fire damage are pretty much self explanatory.

Endurance and fuel tell you how long a ship can travel, high levels of these allow ships to travel long distances. The list of guns is also self explanatory, the ones in red are damaged or destroyed.
You can also see the ship experience and captain.

I order these ships into the shipyard. Hopefully we can patch them up enough to sail back to the mainland for full repairs.



We may have to wait awhile for these ships.
I have ordered our four surviving subs in Pearl to head north, hopefully we can sink some of those carriers and get some good news into tomorrows papers.

Its not all doom and gloom, the Jap's main targets were not in port, let me introduce you to my three beautiful daughters.



These are our carriers, the Lexington, Saratoga and Enterprise. Luckily out of port today. While some have urged sending them north to deal with the Japanese fleet, I believe this to be suicide. And I'm going to do my best to prevent a dirty Jap from putting his torpedo into one of my daughters.
As such, I've ordered the Lexington and Enterprise to Wake Island, which is looking very exposed about now. The Saratoga will remain in San Diego for now. Once we are sure that Pearl is safe I will form all three ships up there.






Looking at the situation, I have to say that the Philippines are lost. The Japs have a large number of fleet and planes in the area that we cannot hope to match. We are are also critically low on supplies. I have therefore ordered a evacuation of those units we cannot afford to lose. The fighters we do have have been ordered to set up a CAP, while all the freighters are being loaded with what they can carry and ordered down to Java or Port Moresby. The Phillipine national army will be left to hold back the Japs as long as possible.




Checking with Singapore, it seems that the reports of a hit on the Repulse were unfounded, she is undamaged.



Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the Prince of Wales, who will need to spend at least a few days in the shipyard before she can take to the sea. The yard masters are reporting it will take 179 days to fully repair her, but hopefully she can be made seaworthy in a week, which the longest I think she can be safely docked.

As with the Philippines, I doubt that we can hold Singapore, and with two battleships north of their position, any aggressive actions at this stage would be foolish. So I have ordered the Repluse to collect the other warships and set sail for our new fleet port in the region, Soerabaja.



This is repeated along the whole region. I don't like doing this, but we must conserve supplies and ships for now.



I would rather have to ship supplies back to where they are needed than give them to the enemy.





Burma is the current threat in this theatre. Especially Rangoon, which is almost on the border with Japan.



We have about 10,000 men in the area. I have ordered in more supplies to support them and ordered them
In India Proper, more ships are send out to pick up the supplies we so desperately need.




China is not really our war, but now we are all united, we will do our best.
The first thing on our list is the immediate evacuation of Hong Kong. Unfortunately we can only pull out the Kowloon Brigade, the largest unit. The others will have to delay the Japs as long as possible.



Central China is a mess, the long war has lead to no front lines. I'm going to have to work hard to pull this back into some for of order. The troops here are numerous but poorly trained and supplied, any attacks we make now are going to be nothing more than massacres.

I order the units to fall back into greater concentrations so they will be easier to supply.




While not in any immediate danger, Australia and New Zealand are going to be important soon. They have a large number of ships, who are being sent to Cape town and Aden to collect supplies, Fuel and troops from Europe. Some are also sent to the west coast to boost their numbers.
Most of the troops here cannot be moved until enough political clout has been used to free them up.



The most important place at this time is Port Moresby, loosing this key port would give Japan a key port to stage their attack on Australia. I have begin to move supplies here, and will move troops as quickly as possible.



On the West Coast, its more a situation of waiting for troops to arrive, I have set up the flow of fuel and supplies out to Midway, Pearl and Canton and Johnston Islands. These will be key staging points. Wake has not supply, as I think its to far out to risk, it may be attacked any day.
If I'm wrong, I'll send supplies there forthwith.

This is all I can do right now. Over the next few days, as the situation develops, I should be able to make more decisions. But now we need to see what tomorrow brings us.



Right, out of character. Here is the map, as you may have noticed from the screen shots, its a little bit mangled compared to reality.


Click here for the full 2000x1601 image

Not big enough for you to see everything, but enough to get an idea of the scale of the thing. Those are 40 mile hexes.
These two updates have just taken me 4 hours, lets hope to god every turn is not going to be like this.

Come back tomorrow to see me continue to lose the war!