Part 53: Operational Report: 28/01/42

The Tarpon tries to sink a cargo ship, when her torpedoes fail to detonate, she surfaces and puts some shells into her from her deck gun. The ship is burning by the time the Captain runs out of ammo and has to break off the attack.



The bombers are continuing their daily raids on Bataan.



The only damage done all day is one hit to the port, for over a hundred planes flown during the day.

Manila sees some bombardment today, but our counter batteries have some success, knocking out some of the enemies guns.








Another Japanese sub is hunting off Australia, and today the Challenger takes the brunt of their fire.



The Missourian is more lucky, as both the torpedoes fired at her miss.








The Vildebeest bombers operating out of Singapore take a crack at bombing the enemy troops attacking the city, but the results are fairly poor.



The Japanese Air Force also pays a visit to Medan, catching some of the defenders off guard and causing some casualties.



Singapore continues to be bombarded heavily.







Chingsha comes under bombardment today from a few smallish waves of enemy bombers, but little damage is done to either side.



A larger raid on Kukong has more effect, but even then losses are minor.



But this is just part of a greater plan of attack, and the ground forces move forward rapidly behind the bombers and drive back the defenders, taking the city today.








It seems that the enemy abandoned Efate right after capturing it, so our men have stormed ashore to find the entire island deserted. At least we have it in our hands now.










A Fairly average day, we lost a few bases, but retook Efate. While it is only worth two points to us, its worth 50 to them, making it better in our hands than in theirs.







Singapore is running low on supplies, so I'm pulling all their aircraft out and back through bases in Sumatra towards Java. There is no need to waste experienced pilots.



Its a shame that I'm going to have to let the enemy capture all that fuel, but there is nothing for it, trying to ship it out would have cost to many valuable ships.





The Indomitable has made Colombo, and has linked up with the Cruisers Exeter, Enterprise, Glasgow, Caledon and the destroyer Tjerk Hiddes – these ships will now head to Soreabaja to improve our defences there.

I know that the ground troops in Java will have no chance of holding off the might of the Japanese Army, but if we can sink the troop transports before they land, then we have a chance of holding the area.