Part 288: Operational Report: 20/09/42

Urggghh.....



Thank the gods, I thought I was going to lose her there for a second. I decided to send the British carriers out on a sweep, and there is once more a Japanese submarine waiting.





In a busy day for the Japanese submarines.



Three torpedoes seems like over kill to me. But at least I'll only lose one ship.



The Japanese continue to make their strikes on Cox's Bazar, I wish I could get those planes out of there, but its still not allowing me to rebase them.





Today's target for the Japanese torpedo bombers is a transport – while not happy, I can accept this, as I have more of these than warships.



The Japanese launch an attack one the Yorktown with their Lilly bombers, which, seeing their inability to hit anything and lack of escort, I consider foolish.



Ah well, In shouldn't complain about free experience for our pilots.

We use our tanks to take out the last defenders of Tarawa. The Japanese put up a hard fight, knocking out six of them, but their destruction is inevitable.







The Japanese make a raid on Buna, but our CAP drives them off without any serious damage.









Tarawa is not completely ours, and I am reloading most of the troops for a strike on Ocean Island. This is further from the Marshall islands, and may be out of the range of those Bettys. If not, then I expect it to fall as easily as Tarawa.

The second Lunganville Invasion starts tomorrow, and the 27th Invantry Division is now in Suva to support this if they can make a beach head but need more troops to finish the job. I really have no idea what the enemy defences are like, but the base is not worth 550 points to the enemy, and is their furthest south holding. So I need to take it off them.

Unfortunately, that ship torpedoed of Ceylon becomes our first ship loss in 17 days. That is a record for us.



I'm also going into the planning phase once more. Milne bay and Rossel Island are both thorns in my side, and it seems like the Japanese are reinforcing them. As the invasion of Port Moresby now seems unlikely, I'm going to start some of the troops from there planning to attack these two bases.