26th Nov

We conducted recon by fire on the defenders at Milne:

Given these figures, I've given the go ahead for a deliberate attack tomorrow. I'm unsure about the fort level but we'll find out soon enough.

Yamato and her cronies have rearmed and are steaming back to the Coral sea where they will provide insurance. With a bit of luck, at the very least, they will draw way some of the seemingly endless bomber attacks on our shipping and give space for others to operate. I've ordered the carriers a bit further north where they can better intercept Allied shipping. It looks like there is a single light cruiser making a run into Moresby, which seems strange. it's possibly an oversight, or a mis reported sighting from one of my float planes.

Admiral Yamamoto was kept up half the night because of several tiny raids over Rabaul. In discussing my rotten pilot pool with CCIP i mentioned that I thought one of the main problems in terms of in-game performance, is the grinder type effect of his bombers on my CAP. A lot of the time, even if my fighters aren't shot down, they end up damaged and crashing on landing. Tied in with their appalling performance on several occasions (the turkey shoot, for example,) this has led to my present predicament.

No sign of any counter attack at the moment, but I'm keeping my eyes open. I've also had to reduce the range of my naval attack betties as I lost another gang of them this round. Put it this way, the only group to fly in the direction I wanted them to fly tried to torpedo some PT boats. Well, that dog just ain't gonna bark. :wah:

Probably my last turn tonight. I agreed to start work at 5.30 am tomorrow because there are some people needing entry to the museum for some reason or other. I'm not even sure what 5.30 AM means....I don't think my alarm clock can be set that early. :DL

27th Nov

what a lovely day for Japan. Milne fell, but when the odds were so heavily stacked in my favour it's hardly surprising.

The two infantry regiments will begin prepping for other targets, one of which will be Moresby although I already have a lot ready for there.

My carriers also did nicely today, CCIP attempted to move all his shipping out of Moresby and back to Australia. I don' think he had any option to be honest, but it sure was lovely to have my strike aircraft do what they are paid to do for a change.

An attack later in the day on another task force did less but still hit a destroyer.

Although there were several attacks from his 4e lads on my fleet, none got through and, for the first time in living memory, the aircraft that had the highest A2A losses at the end of the day was the B17e. Nice. Even Yamamoto was happy:

http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/5356/glesgayama.jpg

28th Nov

Today was a day of what felt like endless airstrikes against the carriers and the Yamato group but, at the end of it, we came out unscathed and lost only a handful of fighters. CCIP lost a lot of dive bombers and fighters - about 60 in total. I lost a few Betties as well, when they flew ground attack missions and found CAP over PNG but, all in all, not too bad. Even better is the fact that the last few days of operations have seen a rise in the skills and experience of pilots across the board. A lot of them are still, well, awful, but at least they're going in the right direction.

Operation November Rain is over and all ships are withdrawing to friendly ports. The exception is the Yamato group who will conduct a bombardment run against Moresby before heading home. Now, this could turn out to be a mistake but I feel reasonably confident that any losses will be offset by the psychological impact of my big bruiser turning up in his back yard. I toyed very briefly with the idea of raiding one of the Australian ports but intel suggested that there might be up to 100 bombers around Townsville and I feared that a good proportion of them were dive and torpedo bombers.

Now I can concentrate on closing down Morseby. It looks like CCIP might have actually doubled the garrison there (intel says the better part of 30000 men - I have no way of knowing how many are auxiliary troops - so denying them more supply and reinforcement becomes the priority. fighters are already operating out of Milne and my next move will be to get dive bombers in there too. I actually have an acute shortage of aviation support so I'm not sure where I'm going to scrounge enough from to load enough up. Perhaps Shortlands, now that the focus has shifted.

29th Nov

I think I've found a new hobby: Anyone doubting the power of a fully tooled up Yamato and friends check this out..

I would have preferred a few more frames destroyed outright, but even taking FOW into account, the boys done good.

Wasn't all plain sailing today, though. An S-class put a torp into the side of CA Aoba as she escorted the transports home. She's pretty beat up but in no danger of sinking. This has been my only casualty of the operation so I really can't complain too much. She can still make over 20 knots so she should be able to get back to port before heading out to Osaka.

I'd love to have kept Yamato at Moresby for another day but she seems to eat her ammo a lot quicker than the other ships do. They are now on their way home.

Nice results from the invasion and the bombardment but LMAOROTFL at the battle damage assessment:

124 Catalinas damaged :D

i was wondering, this game does have the possibility to capture enemy units, and perhaps let you use them?

I know..:)..Japanese intel gathering at it's wild-eyed best once again. I'd love to see an option added in a patch for you to choose what facility to bombard because taking out the air strip is the the most important thing here even though Moresby has been ineffective in this role over the last few days.

No, it doesn't. Ships either escape or are scuttled and aircraft...well, I think my pilots have enough problems without figuring out the English language manuals too. I think it's possible to capture fuel and supplies when you take a base but I'm not entirely sure.

30th Nov

Everthing is right back to where it should be. I've set a whole bunch of Betties (that's a technical term, I think) to attack Moresby whilst the airfield is still a mess. Should be plenty of escorts but one doesn't like to predict what will happen when it's Betties we're discussing.

Looking at my figures for the Moresby invasion, I have 832 AV prepped right now with about another 250 of recent arrivals also prepping. At a push I could probably scrounge up another 250-350 but their prep levels are going to be fairly low. I'm guessing the 30000 troops at Moresby are heavy with base units and air support, rather than just infantry. Probably some coastal defence there are well. I wonder if he's crowed the base out with Australian militia units, rather than US troops. The militia are not bad but shouldn't be a match for my men. I'm thinking of another raid by Yamato to further annoy him.

I still have a few troops to arrive:

http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/8118/nappo.jpg

That's quite a bit of infantry. Of particular interest to me is the 6th Air HQ which arrive at Wewak and carries with it 120 Aviation Support, making the single biggest AS unit on the map. Once that arrives I'm going to move a lot of bombers there. Over the next few turns I'm going to start trying to massively expand that base. I really wish I could start a unit prepping before it arrives on-map but I expect this is a feature that would be prone to massive misuse.

Betties flew in number with escorts to Moresby and found the base unprotected by any CAP whatsoever. They promptly managed to foul up by doing no damage to the port or airfield at all but did confirm what I thought might be true - CCIP has either pulled back a lot of aircraft or the airstrip is far too badly damaged to support flight ops. I've set all available bombers to hit the airfield again tomorrow. The exception will be the Lillys who are ordered to hit the Aussie troops on the Kokoda trail.

We also had our first surface action of the game when US PT boats tangled with IJN destroyers on their supply run to Tassafaronga. We sank 4 or five of them without any damage in return.

I'm mulling running Yamato around to Moresby again to try and further disrupt his troops there but I expect he will be wise to it and have a substantial number of bombers set to naval strike.

Perhaps send a diversionary force away to Guadalcanal and the other to Moresby?

That's an idea. The only problem is that he seems to have every dive bomber in the South Pacific on Guadalcanal and is using it as a dirt carrier. I'm sending the carriers back to Rabaul first in any event because there is no fuel at Keveing and they could do with some fresh aircraft. I'm interested in whether he's baiting me at Moresby and whether a huge CAP trap will be awaiting me tomorrow.

I don't overly fear his 4es in naval attack role - they're pretty lousy at that - but all those aircraft have gone somewhere...probably Townsville where they can be brought forward again quickly.

2nd Dec

Betties and Nells pound the airstrip at Moresby, taking out some aircraft on the ramp and doing a bit more damage to the field itself.

In comparison, CCIP's night raids over Rabaul seem to be getting smaller and smaller, averaging 3 Liberators a strike now. Perhaps his squadrons are hurting, as they sure must if they are flying night after night. The fatigue levels must be crawling up there.

Elsewhere, I-10 becomes the latest casualty of the brutally one sided sub war. She took several bad hits off the coast of Bundaberg and is now making her way back to Truk before returning to Osaka. My sub losses are unsustainable.

Yamato will head back towards Moresby tonight, taking advantage of the lack of any air cover there for the time being.

MOAR AKTION!!

:D

CCIP has been a bit busy with work over the last few days but I'll hopefully get his turn back soon. For my part I've just got my hands on some digital Djing gear and have mostly been pretending to be 21 again. I want to see what Yamato achieves on her next run, though. Think CCIP has been trying to catch up on his AAR as well.

Soon, though. Soon.