[Molon Labe]

19 March 1942
Not much hope left for Oahu, failure of reconnaissance at Luganville

Java
With the KB apparently gone and few air strikes targeting ships, this seemed like a good time to evacuate some ships from Batavia. Specifically, 3 minelayers and a sub tender. I gave the tender a minesweeper as an ASW escort, and one of the CMs had ASW capability, so that was their escort. The same sub attacked both task forces, sinking the sub tender and one of the minelayers. It evaded ASW counterattack both times. It even made a 2rd attack on the stricken minelayer just to make sure it went down, and once again, slipped away.

Two light cruisers bombarded Batavia, causing moderate facility damage, destroying a P-400, and disabling at least 25 more planes.

At Surabaya, they switched back to sweeps instead of bomber raids. We held our ground, 2 P-40s down vs 4 Zeroes, and we actually outnumbered them 28 to 26. Signs they're getting stretched thin?

Our Surabaya-based bombers tried to hit their first landing force at the central base of Soerakarta. Thanks to the constant bombing of the base, we only managed to get 3 139Ws and 2 B-17s in the air for this. 2 Oscars went down trying to get to them. The terrain and our numbers hampered our effectiveness though, it doesn't appear our bombs did any real damage.

Celebes Sea
It's been awhile since my subs did anything, so I was happy that a Dutch sub scored a hit on a cargo ship here today. But it wasn't that badly damaged, the ship slipped away and will be repaired some day.

Thailand
Another ****ty day for AVG-1 with 3 P-40s shot down by Oscars over Tavoy and no kills by the Adam&Eves. Hurricanes retaliated and got 5 Oscars with just 1 Hurricane shot down. Come on, Pappy, show the boys how it's done before it's your ass shot down!

Near Rahang, 4 Oscars got themselves shot down to get 1 Blenheim. And once again, we hit their disorganized, retreating troops hard.
Our northern group of troops has captured Uttaradit, a small base adjacent to Raheng, through which their supply line to the northwest runs. This will cut off any supply to their westernmost base Chaing Mai, which is not being targeted by this operation. It's also going to cut off supply to any armies he might have advancing into Burma that I don't know about yet, which at this point is pretty unlikely but I never stopped worrying about it.

New Hebrides
We started landing troops at Luganville, and found 2 enemy marine groups waiting for us. So much for a token force. So even though I picked this fight, it looks like we're significantly outnumbered. As some consolation, these enemy marines are not at full strength, they're probably low on supply, and I've been bombing them daily for at least a week so their morale probably sucks. New rules: don't rely on PBY pilots that aren't trained in recon to give accurate reports, and always land with at least a regiment even if it doesn't look like there's a lot there. Not like I'm going to be doing a lot of amphibious ops this early anyway.

Hawaii
Enemy troops on Oahu made another push, dropping our fortifications down to level 1. That basically means we have a few sandbag-protected machine gun nests, the combat engineers have brought down anything bigger. This fight looks hopeless, they could overrun the base with one more push. Casualties were 3700 to 770 favoring us, but again, those numbers will get worse with each decrease in fortifications. And an overrun will mean a mass surrender.