Part 146: Operational Report: 01/05/42

The Plunger misses out on a very valuable resupply ship off the coast of Japan. I would really have liked to add her to our kill list.



The Pike also suffers from our thrice dammed torpedoes.



We also suffer a reversal at Hong Kong, as the enemy shatter our men there and force them to rout.







The Japanese must be desperate, as they send only four planes to Wake today, which was never going to be able to do anything.



Then things take a turn for the worse, for some reason, the Lexington only has those five planes in the air protecting her, and another Japanese carrier is in the area.



Four bombs should not be enough to cause crippling damage, but that means another carrier in the dry dock for repairs.



I think the reason for the lack of CAP is that most of the planes are out attacking the Soryu, but even with over forty planes attacking, we can only get one hit on the enemy carrier.



The Lexington Pilots are not as experienced as the now departed Yorktown's crews, but at least we traded in weight – the Japanese planes carry 250kg bombs, and our planes 1000lb, so our bombs are worth twice ours in pure destructive power.
Then three Dauntless bombers, unescorted and alone, make an attack on the enemy carrier.



They slip through the defending planes, and two of the three planes place their bombs onto the flight deck of the Soryu. In think these planes are the ones that sought a home after the Saratoga was hit and they are now joined by the compliment from the Lexington.

The Afternoon raid goes our after the Soryu once more, but only finds her cruiser escort.



This is followed by another three plane raid, which get even more hits on the Tama.







Another raid on Port Moresby is taken apart by our defending planes.



The Banshees claim a patrol boat in their attack, the 1000lb bomb obliterating the small craft.



They then have to go further afield to get their afternoon targets.









A hectic day, with damage to two carriers today, but the reports tell an interesting story – the enemy lost 63 planes in operational losses – which means all the experienced pilots on the Shokaku were forced to ditch into the ocean. That's a loss that the enemy just can't take, even if the carrier herself gets home.
But its not been without cost.



The Lexington is burning, but if they can control it, then there is a good chance that the ship can be saved – not much of the damage is major, so a couple of days anchored at Wake should deal with most of that damage before we ship her back to Pearl for the repairs she's going to desperately need.

The Yorktown will now stay in Pearl for a while, we can't risk losing our last carrier in anything but an offensive operation.






Its that time of the month. And after five months and 145 turns, its time for another summery. Lets start with the score.



Things still don't look good for us, but at least our score is now increasing steadily while the rate of the enemies score rise has slowed in recent weeks. Now that they have only a few bases in the Dutch East Indies to secure, we may well see their score stabilize.



The rate of base change has slowed recently, but we're still going to reach a point soon when the enemy have more than we do. But this has been a remarkably steady change.

Now lets look at the losses, starting with ships.



We still have twice the ship losses than our enemies, but as always, its key to remember that these are confirmed losses, so this is most likely under-reported by about a half.



The points shows a similar story, with a late spike where we sunk ourselves a carrier.
When we turn to looking at the ground losses, the story is much worse.



Thanks to the mass surrenders we have seen in the capitals of Java, the Philippines and Singapore, we have taken four times the number of ground troop losses than the Japanese. But this should slow now.

Air to air losses continue to be the most interesting chart, as this month sees the Japanese losses increase over ours once more.



Japanese losses by type show an unchanged picture, with the exception of a jump of destroyed on field from the sinking of a Japanese carrier.



While the allied losses are more evenly split between the types.



I expect our flack losses to increase as we see more attacks on the enemy, but for now, crashing your own plane is a ridiculously common way of writing off your plane.

So, that's another month down, tomorrows post will be brought to you by Leperflesh, and then I hope to have wifi, if you don't hear from me, then the rest of the week will also be covered my Mr Flesh.