Part 82: Operational Report: 26/02/42

The shipping around Australia is still being hunted by Japanese subs.







The S-36 is hunting their ships off Celebes.



At Batavia, the enemy sail two battleships into the harbour and the Patrol Boats there have no chance to do anything to stop this display of military might.



A raid at Soerabaja is stopped by our P-400's, who manage to get two kills.



The even hold their own when the Zero's arrive later on in the day. Even if the De Ruyter does take another hit. She is to badly damaged to move safely, so her sinking is inevitable at this stage.



Our own 139's do poorly attacking some transports, with twenty four planes unable to get a single hit on the enemy.








In what seems to be the day for sailing Battleships into our harbours, two more are seen at Wake, the damaged New Mexico is no match for the two ships, but manages to get underway. We do lose two ships, but they are mostly empty.



These ships then bombard the defenders of the island.



The Imperial Navy raids our forces at Kwajalein with another destroyer, and we lose another troop ships and many more lives.



While on the ground, scattered fighting continues.



While near Eniwetok, our forces run into a couple of transports and sink them.



This is a covering force for us however, as our troops storm ashore at Eniwetok, taking the defenders by surprise and overwhelming their beach defences.



Our forces outnumber the defenders after just one day of putting troops ashore, and the next days reinforcements should allow us to overwhelm the enemy and force them to surrender.

Another air strike at the Lexington is beaten off, but six planes do get through to make a unsuccessful run at the carrier.



There is a bigger raid on the Yorktown to the north, but this one does not even get to see its target, and we trade one of our planes for 11 of theirs.
A later raid does make an actual attack on the ship, but gets no hits.



Our own planes are trying to take out the airfields on Wotje.







The KXVII continues to hit the enemy shipping off Vietnam, getting another good hit today on a minelayer.



The scale of the fighting around Sinyang is hard to comprehend – there are 120,000 men fighting in the area, and for now, we are managing to hold our ground.



On the Indochina border, a battle that has been raging now for months is finally resolved with a surprise attack by the Japanese.



Our southern offensive continues, and we drive the enemy back towards Hangchow.







The Japanese army pushes hard at Rangoon, and pushes our forces back at the cost of huge casualties.








The enemy storm forward today, following the the wake of yesterdays attacks and fresh bombing runs today, they finally break the defenders of Bataan.



The defenders surrender en-mass. And our last stronghold in the Philippines falls.







The fall of Bataan is a expected blow, we could not supply the defenders, so it was inevitable that they would be forced to surrender. In fact, its a miracle that they have managed to hold out for so long.

The enemy took hideous losses in the air today, with 35 planes being shot down over the course of the day, but ship losses for us have been heavy.



The New Mexico has sunk from damage inflicted by those two battleships earlier today.
Also on that list is the KXVI – the leader in kills for the first month of the war, we have heard nothing from her in the last two, and even today I saw no messages about her being under attack. But now she is listed as sunk, losing us a valuable captain, one of the victims of the battleships that sailed into Batavia harbour today, sunk while resupplying.

To combat these ships, I've ordered the carriers up towards Wake to try and hunt down the killers of the New Mexico, but I think that they will not arrive in time to catch the now fleeing battleships.