Part 506: Operational Report: 26/04/43

The O24 comes under depth charge attack for the second day running.



Our carriers make a sweep over Rabaul, as expected, there are now no fighters in the area to protect the harbour, the one plane the enemy get up has no chance of surviving our sweep.



This doesn’t mean there are no planes in the area however, as Gasmata gets another visit from the long range Betty's.



The lack of fighters puts our bombers in a good position to make their own attack runs, its only one Beaufort, but it does us proud.



This is followed by another larger raid that starts our aim to put that runway out of commission before the main assault.



The carrier based planes go out for a third tanker at Rabaul, she is left with her cargo burning, and a supporting cargo ship is destroyed.



In the afternoon, they find the Kiso is still afloat, and do their best to solve that problem. This time internal explosions are reported.



While another raid on the runway removes more planes from the threat.



A later raid on the cruiser fleet finds only the destroyer remaining.







There is another raid on Cox's Bazar, which heaps a bit more damage onto the airfield – and there are supporting fighters today.



Although this is only in the morning apparently, as a Betty raid comes in unescorted in the afternoon and loses nearly half of its planes.








We see another ineffective raid on Nagasaki.







Eniwetok comes under carrier attack once more, but they like the change of pace.







There is more fighting at Chuhsien, which we continue to see.



We take more losses than the Japanese today at Kiangtu, but the squad losses are firmly on our side.



While our Indochina forces run over another speed-bump of Japanese forces.









It really is looking like the enemy are abandoning Rabaul, there were hundreds of planes there a few weeks ago, now there are a token few. The harbour is still teaming with ships however, and I'm going to try to smash as many of them as possible.



We added two more to the list today, which is nice, but I want more, lots more! It should be noted however that the Japanese forces now are estimated to number 23,000 men, a much more likely number.