20 November 1942
Lexington and Saratoga bomb an empty port; weather foils strike on suspected amphibious group approaching Rossel
Makassar Strait
The enemy cleared out a sub-laid minefield near Balikpapan, but it cost them a PB.
Japan
Near Kyushu, USS Kingfish raked an AKL with machinegun fire and a few deck gun hits, leaving it to burn and likely sink.
Banda Sea
Night raids took out another 3 P-39s on the ground. They're getting better. I may have to just divide my squadron and put a third up at night. But if they aren't going to attack my troops this is all for nothing.
We bombarded the enemy positions with 3 heavy cruisers from two task forces.
Lex and Sara didn't have any surface contacts (their priority target), so they flew their secondary mission, a port strike on Ambon. Turned out to be a waste, there were a few cargo ships in port--we damaged two--but the port was mostly empty. These guys will hit the enemy on Babar one more time as they withdraw back towards Port Moresby.
Burma and Thailand
Our retreating forces (from Rangoon) took over 200 casualties from Sally and Helen bombers, then another 240 from the tanks chasing them. Sweeps at Raheng resulted in 2 Oscars and 1 P-40 downed. Vengeance raids caused over 200 enemy casualties at Pisanoulke. A third of a Royal Thai Army division tried to cross the brides from Pisanoulke to Raheng and were wiped out to the last man-1312 men--by our defending forces that were waiting for them.
Another enemy division, the 33rd, has landed just north of Moulmein.
Solomon Sea
The P-38 sweep at Shortlands had no joy; the enemy CVBG moved on. We don't know where to--weather was apparently awful in the area. The strikes on Rabaul were scrubbed (probably a good thing, reports are there are now 40 fighters there). We also detected an enemy task force approaching Rossel Island, and one of the SBD squadrons went after it, but failed to find the target. Classification of this group is 4 DDs or APDs, so it looks like a fast transport group or a bombardment group. Rossel is more prepared for this than Babar was; the garrison is a little better, they have a minefield, and they have 2 squadrons of PT boats. I'm hoping between the minefield and PTs, even if its a bombardment group, they get too tangled up to vacate the area before the morning and we get a 2nd chance at an airstrike.
Reinforcements
No.5 Sqn RAAF arrives at Cairns
224th USN Base Force arrives at San Francisco
__________________
|