Part 302: Operational Report: 04/10/42

The Japanese return to Darwin, this time at night. The damage is minimal, but shows that the city is being targeted for a sustained attack.



Come the morning, one of our valuable tankers gets lucky as yet another Japanese torpedo turns out to be a dud.



The daylight raid on Darwin costs the enemy more planes.



And butcher their Lily raid.







The Greyback puts a dud torpedo into the side of an Japanese transport off Rabaul.







Cox's Bazar comes under attack once more, but they only continue to reduce the ruined runway to more craters.







Today is a big day, as the first of our planes arrive over mainland Japan. They cause no damage, but the implications for the Japanese high command and the man on the street are huge – we are now able to rain death on their citys!







The Japanese decide to push at Sinyang for two days in a row, but this changes nothing.



We continue to push the Japanese forces back, again with more casualties.



There is still bloody work to be done at Canton however, and we pay the price for clearing one section of the enemies fortifications around the city.







The men on Luganville now report they control the island.



There may still be enemy soldiers there, but they are not going to affect our ability to move around the island.







So while the attack on Nagasaki was pointless from a purely damage point of view, its a start – I'm going to ship more planes to the city and see what that can do. Time to look into expanding the airfield! This at least proves that we can use Shanghai as a bombing platform.
Taking Luganville has reduced the Japanese score by a net 400 points, but not raised ours much as its worthless to us. But we are now less than 8,000 short of starting to win the war.

I mentioned a few days ago “Operation Castration” this has now entered its first stage, the American carriers are being diverted to Suva.
It has come to my attention that the Japanese fleet is concentrated in the Coral Sea, so in an attempt to reduce their numbers, I am going to use our massed carrier fleet to sweep the area and try and take out the remaining strength of the Japanese fleet.