10 December 1942
Kido Butai returns to Arafura Sea--looks to be challenging Lexington and Saratoga to a brawl. Midway liberated, Magwe captured.
CENTPAC
Midway fell to my marines with barely a whimper from the enemy. The battleship New Mexico and cruiser Pensacola bombarded the shores overnight, and the Marines hit the beaches right after that, supported by suppressive fire from the Nevada. The enemy garrison was wiped out--the 42nd Naval Guard Unit and 28th JNAF Unit, about 3000 enemy troops. We had 393 casualties. There was an enemy midget sub or two here but they failed to make any attacks.
Burma and Thailand
Both of us poured bombers into Magwe to try to influence the ground battle there. That cost 3 Zeroes and 1 Hurricane. As hard as we hit the tanks with B-24s and B-25s, it wasn't enough, Magwe was overrun; casualties 1951 to 179 favoring them. I foolishly thought we'd last one more turn after the relatively modest set of losses yesterday, so I hadn't pulled my Hurricane squadrons out, resulting in the loss of 8 aircraft and several pilots when the base was overrun.
Babar Island and the 3 Seas Around It
Betties attacked Babar in two waves--the first probably going after a pair of minelayers I sent there. The first wave of 7 Betties and 9 Zeroes was routed with just one Betty shot down before they turned around. The second wave was 33 Zeroes and 18 Betties, this group pressed and paid the price for it--7 Zeroes and 18 Betties shot down, no Allied losses. 3 Betties made it through to the base and dropped a few bombs on our ground forces--nothing they couldn't handle.
As the Lex and Sara took a sort of meandering path southeast to avoid the enemy subs, VT-2 and VT-3 were still finding plenty of them even if they weren't directly in our path. They reported SIX bomb hits on surfaced subs. SIX!!!
An enemy convoy was detected on the coast of Timor, with the enemy carriers apparently gone I had decided the environment was non-threatening enough to allow the Beaufighters to resume operations, so this contact was referred to them. They strafed 4 cargo ships while getting 3 bomb hits each on two of them; the two hit by bombs we believe sank.
EDIT: I left out the most important part! We reacquired the KB on the east side of the Timor Sea, close enough to our carriers that it's a bit surprising we didn't already start slinging planes at each other. He's too far away to get any help from Koepang. I'll be headed southeast to make it easier for the P-38s at Horn Island to help, I should get a little help from P-38s from Darwin as well.
