5 September 1943
Guadalcanal landings underway, assault on Rangoon begins
Solomons
A minesweeper on ASW duty found a japanese sub and lightly damaged it before it slipped away.
Burma
An enemy bombardment task force (1CA, 1CL, 6DD) made a surprise attack on Pegu. Damage was light thanks to there only being 1 heavy cruiser--several aircraft damaged but not destroyed, light airbase damage. The task force was gone by sunrise. I assume they came from Port Blair. This is not the same task force hit by Beaufighters yesterday.
Deciding I needed more air support with the enemy moving troops out of Rangoon, I got the Vengeance dive bombers involved in ground attack. We ran into Tonies protecting the troops, which shot down 2 escorting Hurricanes and 1 bomber. We didn't get any of them.
Our main force is now at Rangoon and has carried out a preliminary bombardment attack just to try to confirm that we have what we need. The good news is we outmatch them about 4-to-1 in assault strength. The bad news is our supply lines are so attenuated that the bombardment attack actually cost us a substantial amount of supplies. Oops.
China
Somehow I forgot to make sure our Luzon-strait-covering Beaufighters wouldn't attack near Wuchang... so they did their thing again attacking ships that had come upriver. Fortunately we only lost 2 and took 1 Tony with us.
Celebes Sea
B-25Gs flying out of the new-ish base at Beola came all the way up to the eastern edge of the Celebes to attack an ASW group, sinking a PB with a bomb hit and damaging a subchaser with strafing runs.
SouthPAC
USS Scorpion torpedoed and sank a light cargo ship near Truk.
We're landing on troops on the empty western side of Guadalcanal. This avoids a contested amphibious assault and lets us set up a supply base of our own. I expect to find the enemy troops essentially broken after months of being cut off and bombed daily.
DEI
The severely damaged USS Pike is being given one more chance to make it to Darwin. She tried to make the trip there from Saumlaki but suffered additional flooding almost immediately and aborted, automatically docking at Babar. If she needs to abort again, in recognition that this sub needs to be withdrawn soon and is already going to end up costing me political points to keep "in service" long enough to repair her to get her out of theatre, I'm going to need to scuttle her.
Reinforcements
DD Burns arrives at Balboa
VP-62 arrives at Oak Harbor
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