Part 63: Operational Report: 07/02/42

The Japanese Carriers have avoided us, moving down to the south of Java rather than up towards where our fleets are, they run into a unarmed convoy, but the ships, many of which are still burning, do not engage our ships.



There are two missing carriers from that group though, the Hiryu and the Ryujo are no longer to be seen, have they sunk, or have they moved off one their own?
To make matters worse, we have radio messages from the Repulse saying that some of the temporary floatation has failed, how bad this is we cannot tell yet.

There are some more enemy carrier based craft to the north, but they are to far away to be the ships engaged yesterday.



A strike at Tjidatjap hit some troop transports stationed there.



There are also reports of a battleship at Batavia, could this be a prelude to the invasion of Java?

The carriers on the far side of Java launch a strike at Pamekasan, hitting a couple of freighters.



Their main attack, however, is unsurprisingly at Soerabaja.



They wreck several ships in harbour and take down several of the defending fighters.
Another attack on our Task force scores some hits on one of the cruisers.



Another wave hits the Cornwall twice with torpedoes.

Our own planes, lacking any carrier targets, hit the retreating troop convoy.



The Hermes's Swordfish manage to finish the job on this ship, sending it to the bottom.

The afternoon brings more waves of aircraft, and this time the Indomitable comes under attack.



One of the attacks hits the Indomitable's ammunition store, and a great explosion wrack's the ship. One of this hits is a dud, but that does not help the crew of the now stricken crew. A second wave does no damage as the CAP manages to shoot down two of the planes.

An attack on those suspected battleships near Batavia confirms their presence, but fails to inflict any damage on them.



Then TF110 gets hit once more, this time the enemy claim a kill, sinking the Mauritius.








Off Seattle, one of our tenders is torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese sub.







The Permit continues to be fouled by our terrible torpedoes.



Pucheng continues to be a death trap for the Imperial Army.







The bombing of Bataan begins again today, striking at the already heavily damaged port and airfields.



The battle for Manilla has become very bloody, our men are out of supplies, and are being killed or captured in large numbers by the Japanese army.







Luganville continues to be a battlefield. We're losing more men than the enemy, but then again, they have five times as many troops as we do, we desperately need more troops in the area.







Well, things continue to go from bad to worse.



we lost a whole load of planes in the air, and the ship page is positively painful.



A cruiser, a destroyer and a large number of other ships.







That carrier shift really took us by surprise, I never expected them to go that way, and now we have a lot of damaged ships to worry about.



The Indomitable tops the list, while she is not on fire, she is in danger of sinking from her wounds. She has also lost most of her aircraft capacity.

Beyond that, we can do little beyond cower in Soreabaja, all ships will return to port and hope the combined Flack can protect our ships.