3 August 1942
No, don't be more aggressive! USS Pollack severely damaged off Johnston
CENTPAC
Overnight at Johnston, the USS Pollack got caught snooping around for transports and suffered serious damaged in a shallow water depth charge attack. The CO didn't think it was all that bad and stayed on station. So, it was located and attacked again in the afternoon. It's a miracle it wasn't sunk then and there. Even after the 2nd attack, the CO kept the boat on station and I had to manually order it to return to Pearl. Between the flooding and engine damage it will probably take about 10 days to make the short trip--if it makes it at all, which is unlikely.
Luzon Strait
USS Searaven encountered two cargo ships in the shallows near Bataan Island. It failed to get any detonating Mk14 hits and didn't want to close to engage with its gun. But, the important result is that it looks like the enemy is hugging the coasts of the small islands to try to avoid my blue-water sub patrols. The Searaven was assigned here to see if that was the case, so I'm going to adjust a few more patrol areas to try to catch them leaving the coastlines--maybe plant a few minefields, too.
Sumatra
Another great day for the Brit & Kiwi pilots defending Palembang -- they got 6 Zeroes and 12 Sallies with just 2 Hurricanes shot down. AA added another 3 Sallies. The Sallies are getting lower and more accurate though, we lost 4 planes on the ground from the bombing.
The enemy army attacked Palembang, bringing forts down to level 3, casualties 4454 to 1614 favoring me. Short of receiving major reinforcements, he can't win this way, a starving us out is his only hope and that could take months.
Hawaii
A Kingfisher bombed an any sub near Pearl. Pearl is inside a soft blockade right now, it looks like there are about 10 enemy subs playing hide and seek with my patrol aircraft. It's a shame the KB destroyed those 3 subchasers a few days ago. But, my ASW pilot training is paying off, I've assigned some of my best to the Kingfishers and Catalinas here and they're getting results.
Reinforcements and Refits
AM Starling arrives at Alameda
No.457 Sqn RAF arrives at Melbourne - 2 Spitfire prototypes - it's going to be awhile before these go into production for us to fill out the squadron.
19th Canadian Brigade arrives at Vancouver (restricted)
Vengeance dive bombers are now in production for the UK. I should have enough to fill a squadron before the end of the month.
Strategic Outlook
I'm starting to feel pretty optimistic that we might have turned the tide. The enemy's withdrawal from Hawaii was a huge defeat for them, and it looks like it cost them 2 divisions of troops. They're "getting back" 3 divisions from this operation, but they've lost so much ground by having them here for the war so far, they should have had Singapore and Palembang months ago.
Help may be on the way for Singapore, but I still don't know if I can actually take Bangkok to make that possible, and the troops pulled out of CENTPAC might be headed here to assure a Japanese victory in Malaya. I still think my best chance to hold Singapore is to have my armies try to break out. I'm just trying to give them a little time to plan since that river crossing is going to result in disorganization and high casualties.
I enjoyed taking Palmyra back so much I'll probably keep doing that all over CENTPAC. What I'd like to do is assign a bunch of subs to be tattletails and send them out in front of two sets of islands at a time. The KB will probably only respond to one invasion at a time, so when the subs spot them (or start getting overflown by Kates) we pull that invasion back, so hopefully 1 out of the 2 succeeds for each iteration. It's even possible we might be able to bait enemy carriers into a losing battle. I don't think any of them have had their June upgrades yet--Akagi is probably getting its upgrade now while it's under repair--but that's 3 weeks of downtime for the rest of them. So he either keeps putting that off or has to reduce the size of the KB to cycle them through. Combine that with his pilot quality dropping off and I may get an opportunity.
I can't help but notice that I'm not seeing a whole lot of naval activity from him. Other than the evacuation of Hawaii, it's really just been the brief CVBG deployment to the Bay of Bengal and a few ASW patrols. Maybe the lack of fuel is finally catching up with him? If my adjusted sub patrols start finding tanker routes that he's been able to get away with using, then at least we'll know he's been able to get some benefit from taking Borneo and Java. But so far, I'm maintaining constant sub presence near the oil ports, near Japan, and in all the choke points in between, and I'm only rarely spotting tankers, so for now it looks like my subs are deterring him from attempting to transport fuel/oil. I just had an evil thought--if he's not using his tankers, there's a good chance they're just sitting in ports in China or Indochina. His fighters are stretched thin at the moment so those ports might not have a lot of protection, and most of those bases are within range heavy bombers--if I deploy the heavies there. So maybe I'll do that.
China is looking like a complete stalemate right now.
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