18th Nov
The carriers arrived back at Truk during the night and were disbanded into anchorage. The on site engineers tutted and hummed at Ryujo for a while before deciding she wouldn't be much use in any forthcoming surface actions, and the difficult decision was taken to send her back to Japan for repairs. With an expected return time of 288 days she is out of the campaign.
Likewise, they went over Zuikaku with a fine tooth comb and declared her seaworthy - but only just. Given that her return time from Japan was 388 days, Combined Fleet decided it just wouldn't be terribly Samurai to let a bit of flooding get into the way of sinking things so we'll keep her around. In terms of operational problems, she's lost about 3 knots off her top speed but flight ops should be ok. Truk has two repair ships but no floating dry dock so I can't really fix the flooding. She seems stable enough, though, but at the first sign of any trouble I'll get her to a port ASAP.
Wewak plays home to my first Sendai (See? I'm learning the terms!) of medium bombers - Lillies in this case. Brilliantly, I have no air support at this base aside from a float plane tender. I can't remember whether or not tenders lend their support to land based units or not but I'll keep them here for a day or two with orders to bomb the airfield at Moresby.
All the shipping which i scrambled to Wewak (including all the APs) are on their way to Kaveing. It's time to get moving on the invasion.
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