9 March 1943
Male captured
Indian Ocean
Tons of troops from the Imperial Guards Division and 4th Division came ashore at Male and captured it. The silver lining was the unloading was a disaster for them, using non-military merchant ships as troop transports resulted in some sort of mishap that cost them 9 infantry squads. Let's call it a capsized landing craft. The KB supported the landings with a massive airstrike (A6M2 Zero x 88, B5N2 Kate x 86, D3A1 Val x 14, D3A2 Val x 119)
Burma
The Japanese army took about 2000 casualties trying to attack my retreating armies near Lashio with 1 armor regiment and 1 infantry regiment. We had about 60,000 troops against their 2800, so we pretty much slaughtered them even though we are desperately short on supplies.
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10 March 1943
IJN Hiryu sunk off Male
Solomons
In a rather pathetic and unfortunate incident, an enemy sub hit a mine trying to get to our supply and transport fleets at Shortlands. Apparently that drew the attention of nearby destroyers, creating an "ASW Attack" event against the sub. Despite being severely damaged, the game gave the destroyer the usual low-percentage defensive torpedo shot before it goes fully evasive... and it hit the DMS Southard, sinking it almost instantly. I don't have that many destroyer-minesweepers, so that actually hurts. Two destroyers pummeled the already-mortally wounded sub, sending her on eternal patrol.
Indian Ocean
I'd been shadowing the enemy fleets in the Maldives with two subs, hoping they'd stay still long enough to allow an attack. I got quite lucky as today, the KB didn't even move from its location yesterday before the Scamp was able to get to them. As already mentioned, Scamp scored 3 hits on the Hiryu, all of which detonated, resulting in a secondary fuel explosion that almost certainly sank the ship (the flooding alone from 3 torpedoes probably would have been enough). Scamp was mobbed by destroyers afterwards and was unable to escape.
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