Part 390: Operational Report: 31/12/42

The Haddo forgoes torpedoes and makes a surface attack on a light Japanese ship.



Tarawa receives another heavy pasting today.







The Haddock bounces a dud torpedo off the side of a enemy submarine, faulty equipment once again robs us of a valuable kill.



For the second day, our bombers try and hit the Japanese light industry.



With no hits, I think that this shows something is not happening. Tomorrow I will switch them to bombing the port for a day, as someone has been urging, and see how that goes before picking another target.







Bombers hit Akyab again today, but 67 squadron is waiting for them. Unfortunately, the massed enemy fighters are to much for our boys, and no one gets through to the bombers.



After another 10 raids, we get some more planes up in the afternoon, but this goes badly for us, it seems that the men of 67 are a bit rusty.







A squadron of Betty's makes an attack on our troops unloading at Finschhafen, but a combination of fighters and ship based flak drives them off without any damage to our ships.



The cleaning up of Guadalcanal continues to go well, if slowly.



At Finschhafen we start our attack, but the Japanese fortifications are going to make this tough going.







Another day of fighting over Darwin, we lose a plane, and the pilot, Shannon, goes down with it. Shannon is our second rated Ace in the theatre.



We make sure that the Japanese pay for this though.





The Japanese assault our forces at Nanning once more, and the fight is starting to go their way.



We continue our attacks at Kiangtu, and continue to inflict some nice losses on the Japanese forces.









Nothing much to comment on today, the attacks continue as normal, and we're making decent ground. Finschhafen is going to be a tough nut, but we should be able to crack it.



Here is the list of Aces. Shannon's loss today cements Wigglesworth at the top.