21 December 1942
KB covers heavy surface task forces back to Koepang, Shokaku hit in sacrifice by USS Porpoise, Babar supplies nearly exhausted
Burma, India, Thailand
Yesterday I noticed that there was a task force near Rangoon along the coast, my guess was they were going to bombard Chittagong, where most of my medium bombers are based. So I pulled them back to Calcutta. My read was correct, they bombarded Chittagong with a force including Hiei and Haruna. They still caused significant troop casualties and some facility damage, but we didn't lose any planes. One of their destroyers also took a pretty bad hit from a coastal defense battery.
A second task force landed a small number of troops at Cox's Bazaar, but I don't know if they're done landing. The rebased medium bombers tried to attack these ships but failed completely--at least 33 bombers participated. The troops are the 65th Brigade, or at least part of it. They were last seen in Tavoy, which probably means they were the garrison we kicked out, so they might only be at partial strength.
I suppose they might be looking into continuing into India after they finish off Burma. But I think it's more likely bait for the British fleet to head into the Bay of Bengal and get trapped between the coast and the KB-West.
In Thailand, we suffered another attack at Uttaradit, which went even worse for the enemy than the last one as they are now also suffering supply shortages. Casualties 149 to 2019.
Babar and surrounding seas
The Yamato and Kongo's task force shelled Babar, disabling about 10 planes, damaging runways, and once again hitting our very limited supply stores. On their way out, we had plenty of subs waiting. Greenling made a run on the Yamato's group but was spotted and driven off. Next was the Porpoise, with the result I reported early: it managed 4 torpedo shots at the Shokaku, getting one hit which appeared to cause serious damage. Three escorts broke off to pursue the Porpoise, at least one of which was armed with the deep-reaching depth charges that Japanese ships often don't have, and it was quite accurate. Porpoise took at least 3 solid pattern hits, plus several damaging near misses, and was forced to surface, where all three prosecuting destroyers opened fire on it. Spearfish and Finback were next, both were spotted and prosecuted by the same 3 destroyers that killed Porpoise. Fortunately they were not as accurate this time, Finback was lightly damaged and Spearfish got away clean.
IJN Hiyo is reported to be with the KB now, so that's a transfer from the Indian Ocean fleet.
Solomons and New Britain
We did P-38 sweeps on Rabaul and Guadalcanal. No one came out to play at Rabaul; at Guadalcanal we shot down 5 Zeroes and 1 Tojo without loss. B-17s followed up the Rabaul sweep and inflicted heavy damage on the airbase.
China
We'd been bombing a unit near the river crossing south of Keifeng daily for probably the last 3 months. For the first time since then, he put a CAP up to defend them, which cost us 3 SB-III bombers and a P-40 escorting them. It'll just be sweeps for awhile.
There's also a convoy in Hong Kong now, not yet sure if he's reinforcing or if he's dropping off supplies and/or loading resources to take back to Japan.
In response to the reinforcement of Wenchow, I'm making a move to engage the army sitting outside Chusein. I'm going to defeat them before they have an opportunity to form a larger force with them. I started making this move 2 days ago I think; today we noticed troop movements from Shanghai headed west towards this location. So probably a good thing I ordered this right away.
Refits and Reinforcements
SS Plunger begins refit while under repair at Brisbane
SS S-23 taken out of commission to begin refit at Brisbane
40th Coast AA Regiment arrives at Anchorage (restricted)
2/9th Field Regiment arrives at Sydney (empty unit, no guns in pool)
1st Indian Heavy AA Regiment arrives at Karachi (empty unit, few guns in pool)
111th RAF Base Force arrives at Aden (empty unit, needs to get in line)
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