Part 100: Operational Report: 16/03/42

Our submarines have been quiet for the last few weeks, but the Salmon comes back with a bang today, putting one of her fish into the side of a cargo ship off the coast of Japan.



She hangs around after this hit, and when the ship does not go down after a few hours, she puts three more fish into her side, two are duds, but the third explodes, causing more damage to the target.
The Seadragon is not as lucky, as two of her torpedoes bounce off the side of a light freighter.



She has more luck later when she gets a live torpedo into the side of a troop ship, there are not many enemy casualties reported, but any are good for us.

Sinyang erupts again today, not on the scale of previous days, but still a nice 3-1 kill:loss ratio for us.



Oddly, the enemy only used a small proportion of the 92,000 troops reported to be in the region.

Our own attack at Nanchang suffers heavy losses as they charge a well dug in defender.



One thing the intelligence reports never tell you is the fortification levels in a base, so you really have to go in blind in that respect. The level 4 forts here will be a tough nut to crack.






Off the northern coast of Borneo, the KVII hits a troop ship, starting with a surface attack and then putting two torpedoes into her side.



To the south west, the O-19 does its part and hit another ship.



Like the Salmon, she also returns to her prey hours later to hit her with another torpedo.

Denpassar is visited again by the Japanese Air Force, but the damage today is really minimal.



South of Soerabaja, the enemy land troops at Malang to try and close the noose around the capital of Java.







Eniwetok is visited again today by the Japanese bombers, all the manage to do is get a single bomb hit on the port.






In the action I though I would have in Burma yesterday, the enemy storm forward and capture Mandalay, the troops there surrendering or retreating without a fight as the enemies armoured columns roll towards them.







As you can tell from the stunning number of 10 operational losses for the Japanese, there were very few plane raids today, and only one of note. Really, it was a day of submarine action, as our long quiet subs finally showed themselves again.



As you can see, they have claimed four kills today, as well as a reports that a Destroyer ran into a mine near Ramree Island and sunk. That's not one of our bases, so it looks like it could be a friendly fire incident.

The Yorktown and Enterprise are now back at Pearl Harbour, and should fix up their minor damage in 5 days time. This is also plenty of time for them to replace lost planes and the like.



There are some movements to reinforce Koepang.