Part 14: Operational Report: 20/12/41

The task force moving towards the North of Borneo finds a lone enemy destroyer, a few shots are exchanged, and the enemy ship and the HMAS Vampire are hit once a peace. The two sides then loose each other in the night. Searching for their elusive target, they then find a freighter in dock unloading troops and sink her. The crews of out ships estimate three hundred bodies in the water.



Their night is not over yet. They then fall upon a larger enemy force and massacre them.

In Rabaul, the defenders continue to fight on. Despite the fact that the enemy are landing fresh troops daily.





The Argonaut hits a freighter off Japan twice to good effect.



The Chinese army continues to fight several small battle across the country, but nothing more than a hundred casualties apiece.





Today the Cap above Manilla seemed to be improving after the abandonment of Clark field. We managed to put up ten planes against the first wave and shoot down four enemy planes.



The B-17, who are still occasionally flying against ships that they feel worth the risk, find something docked south of Vigan of value.



One of the Japanese carriers is attacked, although it is only an escort carrier and not one of the bigger ones, seems to have made port just north of our front lines. We are facing either a very brave or overconfident of the enemy to do this, we must see what response we can make.

We lose the bases of Tuguegaro and Atimonan to advancing ground forces today, with about five hundred casualties to both sides.






The CAP above Rangoon once more meets the enemy in the air, with continued success.












A good day all round, enemy losses far outstrip our own, and we've added a good number of ships to our tally.



Any day when we sink nearly three ships for every one we lose is a good one. And as all our losses were smaller ships of no real value, this has been a great day on the sea and in the air.



We now have a good number of Aces, although three of the top five are wounded at this time. I have also noticed that the fatigue levels of the British 67 and 243 squadrons are rising, and have reduced their combat orders somewhat to counter this.



Sigintel tells us that the enemy are moving another force towards Wake. Now comes a hard choice, Wake is being bombard constantly, and moving an Aircraft carrier or two into the area puts them at risk for an Island that is to small to defend, but is in a key position.

For now, we must loose the island rather than my daughters.


As there is nothing else to talk about today, I will now pull back the fog of war. Here is the complete list of ships we claim sunk by our men.



Two cruisers, two destroyers a few patrol boars and 18 freighters. For a total of 26 ships. Now lets look at the plane losses



Not all of them of course, but we can see the big losses. Now I load the game up as the Japanese. Lets see what their seeing.



Another cruiser reappears, as does some more patrol craft and minesweepers. We also see a number of subs – these are the mini subs used at pearl, as you can see, they were less than effective. This is a total of 61 ships. Three times what we are claiming sunk.



Interestingly, air reports are much more reliable. We're only slightly overestimating our kills, as are they.

That's all I looked at, no troop movement or anything like that. But it gives you an idea of how that is going to mount up – after thirteen days we have that much difference, what's it going to be like after a few months.