Part 151: Operational Report: 06/05/42

The S-38 is hunting around Soreabaja, and today finds a light freighter.



The ship starts settling as the submarine slips away.

The Kongo avoids our forces by sailing north, right into Port Moresby. Unfortunately there has been a grievous error in our intelligence.



Not one, but two Kongo class battleships are in the area! The Adelaide is outclassed, and rapidly blown out of the water by the massive guns of the might of the Imperial Navy.
The Revenge follows in, expecting one ship, she in fact finds three capital ships facing her.



The battle is a forgone conclusion, as the Japanese ships are just so much better armed and armoured than ours, and after a brave fight, we lose another battleship of the Royal Navy.
The cruisers Achilles and Enterprise come up on the two ships, and reign fire on the two ships at long range.



Hunting battleships seems to be a pastime for the crew of the Achilles, who two years ago hunted down the Admiral Graf Spree in the battle of the river plate, and here they deal much more damage than they receive.

The air battle sees our planes failing to shoot down two of the three planes that raid Port Moresby, despite the fact that twelve fighters are put into the air.



While the Banshees make an ineffective strike at the Hiei.



The carriers around the Solomon islands hit our forces once more.



Their waves continue to strike the defenceless ships.



Our forces in Guadalcanal finally get back into range of the enemy forces, and begin their attacks again today.







There is a massed battle in the air over Chittagong, but only one plane is damaged after much manoeuvring.



With that many planes in the air, I would have expected more kills, especially with the 67th in action there.
A later raid is again met in force, but we come off even worse from this encounter.







The forces we sent to attack Hong Kong are forced back once more.









Well, that was one hell of a bad day.



I'm going to get it in the neck for the Revenge, but there was not a single report in the last week that made me think that there was more than one battleship in the area. Where the Hiei came from I have no idea, but its shattered the Royal Navy in the area.



In Port Moresby itself, three ships are tied to the piers undergoing emergency repairs. They can't do anything major, but at least they can pump out any excess water.

This is going to be a setback. I'm now running out of undamaged ships, so I may have to suspend offensive operations for a couple of months to allow repairs. And then come out stronger once the American carriers are repaired.