View Single Post
Old 12-23-22, 11:04 AM   #680
Molon Labe
Silent Hunter
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: Along the Watchtower
Posts: 3,810
Downloads: 27
Uploads: 5
Default

22 September 1943

Solomons and New Britain
The destroyer USS Jenkins detected an enemy submarine at Rabaul and depth charged it for significant damage. Shortly after, the minesweepers on patrol started finding mines and got straight to work. The minefield laid by the sub was cleared by day's end.

New Mexico and Arizona shelled the enemy garrison at Guadalcanal again as our armor joined our infantry in preparation to begin a decisive assault on the enemy garrison.

Enemy troops at Guadalcanal attempted to shell our troops, but the enemy garrison estimated to be at 20,000 in strength only managed to get 10 artillery guns online for this attack, underscoring just how out of supplies they are.

The enemy ships being hunted by my CVBG appear to have settled in at Ponape for now. The carriers finished the turn in range but didn't launch a strike. Here we go again...


Burma
A few days ago I noticed a sub that had been detected near the landing site our phibs we were using hadn't moved. A quick peek "under the hood" for the reader's benefit--when a unit is detected, it gets a "detection level", the higher the DL the easier it is to attack; DL goes down with movement. So, leaving a detected sub in place was keeping its DL high, creating a target of opportunity. I detached 2 depth-charge-equipped PGs from the phibs that were now returning to Calcutta to go after the sub. I should have picked better ships--the PGs were immediately ambushed when they arrived by a second sub that hadn't been detected; one PG was sunk.

P-47s swept over enemy ground forces near Prome, shooting down 2 Zeroes and a George, but one of the Georges got a P-47 too. Despite the sweeps, there were still enemy fighters around to oppose bomber raids, and escorts were spotty. We lost 3 Vengeances to the enemy CAP, while escorting fighters added 1 Nick to today's air-to-air kills.

An enemy amphibious landing was reported further south down the coast from Pegu. I've ordered a pair of nearby British subs to check it out.

An unforced error on my part--a combat engineer unit I landed on the coast and ordered to Prome arrived at Prome; I forgot to cancel this movement when the enemy retook it. So they made an automatic shock attack crossing the river with no hope of overcoming the enemy garrison. We got away with it, for now. Casualties 33 to 52 favoring them. I'm ordering the engineers to fall back.


China
P-40 sweeps over Nanchang got a Tony and kept the skies clear enough to prevent bomber losses.


Reinforcements
30th BG/819th BS arrives at Eastern USA (full squadron of shiny new B-24Js)
8th Marine Regiment arrives at San Francisco (empty unit being reformed)
45th Aviation Base Force arrives at March Field (full strength)
-I'll be moving a large group of troops to Australia soon as many reformed/newly arrived units are nearing full strength.
__________________

Last edited by Molon Labe; 12-23-22 at 12:38 PM.
Molon Labe is offline   Reply With Quote