27 October 1942
A return to air-to-air parity?
Solomons Area
21 Oscars swept Roussel Island. We have P-40Ks based there now, all 25 got into the fight. We lost 5 while shooting down 7 of the Oscars. I note that as air-to-air combat starts making a slow comeback, the results are much more even now. So he's probably concentrating the competent pilots he has in a small number of units and trying to keep everyone else out of combat.
I had B-25s and B-26s from Port Morseby try to hit enemy patrol ships near Rabaul. We lost 5 B-25s and 1 B-26 to the Nicks on CAP and didn't hit anything. I've revised the orders of these squadrons to shorten the range at which they'll attack naval targets to exclude Rabaul. And I'm going to sweep Rabaul with P-38s tomorrow to see how they match up against the Nicks.
Banda Sea
24 Sallies hit Babar, we only had 3 P-38s defending; we shot down 3.
Burma
Another huge air raid on our forces camped outside of Tavoy, over 100 bombers and 100 escorts. Still quite ineffective.
China
We had a bit of a scare when a pair of Oscars tried to intercept Lysanders at Amoy, but were too late. I'll start sending Chinese P-40s here to clear them out.
Otherwise, all three threat armies still remain on station and all took significant damage from our bombers.
Reinforcements
No.149 Sqn RCAF arrives at Victoria (fully restricted, partial strength Beaufort torpedo bombers -- a curious arrival because it looks like it's going to be the only Canadian torpedo bomber squadron I'll ever get, unless we count the Shark floatplanes. As a fully restricted unit it will only ever be a training squadron--but training to be assigned to what unit?)
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