16 November 1942
Supply route through Raheng isn't severed, but it's not enough
Battle of Rangoon
The army poised to take back Moulmien has less supplies today than it did yesterday, which means whatever supplies are working their way from northern Burma and China, through the mountain trails, through Raheng and finally to my combat units isn't enough to keep pace with daily non-combat expenditures. Which means it's go-time. No waiting to consolidate. But good news: even more enemy units have left Moulmein. Looks like we'll get it pretty quickly.
The ordered sweeps of Rangoon from Raheng didn't happen. Not sure why, maybe my pilots don't want to get into a fight with a numerically superior enemy at extended range without drop tanks? Also no strikes by the Vengeances, if this keeps up I'm not even going to give them the option of naval strikes, we need to hit the enemy army approaching the bridges to Raheng. The enemy is starting to sweep Raheng, though. 1 Oscar and 1 Hurricane down today.
The B-24s seem to be getting the job done but losses are mounting. We lost 4 more today; 3 to fighters 1 to flak. They took 1 Zero down with them. The enemy is only using bombardment attacks on Rangoon which is probably because they're too disrupted from the bombing for a real attack.
Banda Sea
The PT raid on Babar was spotted and intercepted by a surface combat task force of 1 CL and 9 DDs. Two PTs were sunk before they were able to abort and break off. Would be nice if I had more strike aircraft that could reach these boats.
I made a really dumb mistake here--I hadn't checked my Beaufighter pilots before picking this fight. They're only partly trained. And they're the only ones getting results! I have a second Beaufighter squadron that's been training while these guys were on the frontlines, and I had meant to swap their pilots when the trainees graduated. Well, now I've done that. Let's see if it makes a difference tomorrow.
We got 4 Oscars without losing any of our own fighters. Weather caused disruptions to our Beaufighters, they got split up and only 2 arrived at the target, not hitting anything. The Aussie Hudsons did their low-level attack and also missed. So they're back to land attack tomorrow.
Solomons Area
Lost a P-40 to Oscar sweeps at Rossel. Time to stop resting the P-38s. Other than that it's just supply and troop movements here. Luganvile now has 2 SBD squadrons and the local AirHQ is being airlifted there to support the growing numbers, and to supply torpedoes to the Avengers that are in transit. It's been awhile since surface ships visited Rossel--looks like my minefield is having a deterrent effect.
China
I finally attacked the surrounded enemy in Foochow again. Casualties were nominally worse for me at 1500 to 1000, but we had few squads destroyed instead of disabled, while his squads were split 50-50 between destroyed and disabled. It may be awhile before I can finish these guys off--supply has become a major problem throughout China thanks to the lack of deliveries at Rangoon since Port Blair was taken. The enemy offensives that we fought off in the preceding weeks have pretty much burned through what we stored up before then.
Reinforcements
258th USAAF Base Force arrives at Tillamook
43rd USN Naval Construction Battalion arrives at Port Hueneme
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