Part 50: Operational Report: 25/01/42

TF110 continues its reign of terror, today it has moved up to Watampone, where it comes across a large enemy troop convoy.



The slaughter they wrecked was terrible, sinking all of the escorting warships, they then turned their guns onto the transports. Although they managed to get away from our ships initally, the damage slowed them down and they were soon hunted down and hit once more.



Estimates of nearly 4,500 bodies in the water tell of what damage we have wrought upon the Imperial army today. The bulk of our damage was on the destroyer Tenedos, which took an early hit from the Japanese destroyer Arashi, she's burning, but so far still afloat.

The enemy do get some revenge later when TF110 tries to strike at a much smaller convoy, the defending destroyer from which his the Banckert and sinks her with a torpedo.



To the north, at Balikpapan, the battleship Harunaand her escort sails into harbour and sinks the small cargo ship in harbour.



The arrival of a battleship in the area is worrying, as it means the enemy are now committing more forces to the area. And having not seen a battleship in weeks, we have now seen reports of two in two days.

After a week of trying, the enemy finally sink the Dutch mine layer in Singkep.



And it seems that I must eat some humble pie after my words about the Hurricanes yesterday, as one gets shot down today with a P-40 today in exchange for one Zero. Although they do do a lot better against the afternoons unescorted bomber raid, shooting down two thirds of the attacking planes.



Singapore continues to suffer heavy bombardment throughout the day, as the enemy seem to be unwilling to push on our defences there without first resting up after their raid advance down the country.







Knowing they had been discovered yesterday, the ships in Wake try to flee home, but the planes from the American carriers find them, although their targets are not one battleships and a cruiser as yesterdays reports indicated, but two battleships and a cruiser.



For the loss of one plane, we get a total of twelve bombs and three torpedoes into the targets in one massed raid of a hundred aircraft.
An afternoon raid by the aircraft is just as effective, and many more hits are reported.



Other smaller raids were sent after single ships fleeing the island and our oncoming armada.



Wake itself is visited by another massed raid, and three ships in harbour are sunk.







In Burma, a deep striking enemy raid is met by a few of our older fighters in the area, and punished.







As Luganville continues to be a small battle with both sides unwilling to commit large numbers of troops, the enemy have expanded their hold by invading yet another island in the New Hebridies.



Surely those men could have been better spent reinforcing the land they have already taken? Oh well, just another small unit for us to isolate and ignore.







Best day of the war so far, this is what it feels like to dish out some serious damage then, lets hope our boys have chance to get used to it!
Although air losses have been roughly similer, its in the other areas we've done extreemly well – the rating for the losses for the Imperial Army has shot up from 319 to 370 overnight, and lets justn look at that list of ships sunk.



Twelve ships, including these fine prizes.



Now, these are like the Kaga – still unconfirmed, but I plan to send the carriers after the fleeing enemy ships to make sure that these two are at the bottom – there is a dam good chance that these are accurate reports, both ships took multiple torpedo hits, and are at high seas, but we can't be 100% sure.
Anyway, there's still a cruiser out there.






There are a veritable swarm of targets fleeing from the might of our carrier force, who have been ordered to pursue and destroy as many of the ships as possible.



As you can see, our scouts report a battleship and three cruisers in the area, but they are excited after today's battles, and still fairly green when it comes to this type of thing.



This will be the last day of carrier operations though, as today alone has burned through half of the supplies and ordinance on-board the ships. This tells us that our carriers are not going to be able to perform sustained action without resupply bases.



And that's the 50th turn folks.
That's right, 50 days of uninterrupted updates, even though I did lose my phone line for a while about two weeks in, but we're still trucking.
I still think I'm mad for trying this.