23 September 1942
Parrying
Solomons and Espiritu Santo Islands
With a little help from the CL Leander and a few destroyers, the Marines on Ndeni finished off the enemy garrison.
Meanwhile, the last two damaged ships from the western amphibious task force succumbed to the damage they took yesterday, and a B-17 was lost to flak over Guadalcanal.
I've cleared my base forces to land on Roussel--this task force has a DMS and a DM in addition to the pair of AMs that proved inadequate yesterday. Not exactly robust, but enough to turn away their ace destroyer if it comes back.
Partly because Ndeni seems to have been a bit too far for the P-38s to patrol efficiently, I'm going to head back to Luganville, and quickly. The engineers and base forces intended to land on Ndeni immediately after the Marine's success are being unloaded instead of transported. Those ships are going to load up more Marines... and tanks. Lots of tanks. Hopefully between better air support, better recon, and the results of several months of near-continuous bombing, the result will be better than our first attempt. The Kates are going to have a much tougher time getting through my fighters around Luganville than they did around Ndeni.
Also, the squadron of A-20s based in Efate has upgraded to the A-20A1. These aircraft are armed with 4 forward firing 50-cals and are considered "attack bombers". They're coded to aggressively strafe and skip bomb at low altitude--I'm actually assigning fighter pilots to fly them since bomber pilots don't train the strafing skill. This should be the most effective low-altitude unit on the board, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what they can do.
Burma
The enemy attacked our armies at Tavoy with Betties, we shot down 4 Zeroes and lost 1 Hurricane trying to get to them. I've converted a 2nd squadron of Rangoon's Blenheims to Vengeances--but we don't have qualified pilots for them yet. Both dive bomber squadrons will be sitting in the rear getting replenished and trained, for now.
Bay of Bengal
The enemy swept Trincomalee with Zeroes then followed up with a Val raid; Colombo's Martlets were there to greet them. We got 2 Zeroes and lost a Martlet--the Vals sank the port's minesweeper. They also sent some Kates after a pair of destroyers that had just returned to Colombo after escorting a pair of cruisers to Bombay for upgrades. We traded 2 Marlets for 2 Zeroes here, and the Kates all missed.
China
Another shock attack at Chengchow--probably triggered by reinforcements arriving while crossing the river. Our forts are now down to Level 2, which is concerning. Casualties were 14875 to 7819 favoring us. Even though I might ultimately lose here, I really think this ongoing battle is to my benefit. He's taking such heavy losses, and his troops are much more valuable and also needed elsewhere. On my end, if there's one thing I have in abundant supply, it's Chinese soldiers, so I really don't mind losing them if they're taking enemies with them. He's also burning a ton of supply, and I can tell his supply needs in China are going unmet because of how low the stockpiles were at the coastal bases I seized.
Reinforcements
One of the B-24 squadrons that departed from the east coast has arrived in Capetown, South Africa. Next step for them will be slow boats to India.
AM Vireo taken out of commission to begin refit at Pearl Harbor
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