9 May 1942
Best Girl Fubuki trashes the Warspite surface combat task force
Fiji
Overnight our amphibious task force continued to unload while taking fire from the USMC coastal batteries. Two cargo ships succumbed to the damage by the end of the day, I scuttled a third that I considered hopeless. One more cargo ship and an LSD have damage accumulating. A Dutch sub tried to add to the carnage, but was spotted, depth charged, and driven off.
As I had been concerned about, the HMS Warspite's group charged. Honestly, a bad move, because even if they'd been successful, the KB would have wiped them out afterwards. But, my plan worked as good as it possibly could have. The Yubari's light task force ambushed them in a night battle, firing a volley of long lances at them before they had detected us, and pressing the attack to 3,000 yards while continuing to fire torpedoes. Warspite was hit with 5 torpedoes, and Chester with 3--both ships sunk. The Vincennes and the APD Gilmer were peppered with gunfire and withdrew with blazing fires and major damage. As for my task force, all three Fubukis had taken a single hit, all from relatively low caliber guns, causing damage ranging from light to inconsequential. The withdrawing Vincennes was then set upon by the I-3, which administered a coup de grace with 2 torpedo hits. The APD was not seen in company with the Vincennes and was not spotted by the KBs patrol aircraft in the morning, so we can say with some confidence she sank shortly after disengaging.
The KB did spot the AKL that was shot up by our sub yesterday, and finished it off with a Val strike.
The enemy tried for some payback at daybreak with an air strike of 32 dive bombers escorted by 18 P-40s targeting our phibs (arriving in 4 separate waves, which decreased their effectiveness significantly). The KB contributed 11 Zeroes to defending the ships, and with the cost of just one of those Zeroes we shot down 4 P-40s and 8 SBDs. The remaining bombers missed their targets. I attribute the scattering of the enemy airstrike to the significant damage the airbase has sustained from repeated bombardments.
Arabian Sea
The I-28 took out an AKL off the Indian coast with gunfire.
Burma
My plan to move my main force towards Rangoon hit a bit of a snag--the move from Pegu to the enemy force guarding the river crossing from Moulmein was itself also a river crossing. It just didn't display on the WITP map. So I still had to cross a river and shock attack either way, so I just did so with the main force instead of the troops we landed. We easily overwhelmed the defenders--a brigade and a battalion--forcing them to surrender. We lost only 1 combat squad.