8/8/42
The landings start.
He opens with a massive battleship barrage on my positions on Guadalcanal, doing about 90 odd casualties. B-17s hit several places on both Guadalcanal and Tulagi. My Betties sortie against the landing fleet but fail to register a hit on the juicy troop ships and I lose 7 Zeros to a stout CAP. No torpedoes were carried by the Betties. I don't know why. They have been ordered to go in lower and also told to try a night attack in the hope of missing the pulverising waves of Wildcats.
On PNG, several raids by A-20 Havoc hit the runway at Buna but I have no aircraft there so it doesn't matter for the time being.
These early exchanges are usually in the Allies favour (so different from the grand campaign,) and all I can do is withstand the initial batterings. It's about ten days until the first of my carriers arrive and less than a week until the first substantial arrival of bomber reinforcements. By then he'll be running low on carrier sorties and will have to think about returning to port. That will be my first real window of opportunity. For the time being, I'll concentate on getting the Betties to do something useful. I'm quite surprised they didn't all die in the raid like they are wont to do.
Subs are all at sea and transiting to their patrol zones. In a couple of days I'll be ready to sting him if he stands still.
Supply ships leave Truk for Rabaul and my fast transport TF should reach Tassaforonga tonight if everything goes according to plan, which it rarely does.