5 May 1942
Bogey approaching Pago from the North, evidence of sub activity in Pacific and Indian Ocean shipping lanes
Sumatra
Oosthaven was bombarded again. There's not much here and the airbase is already neutralized so this is almost a non-event.
Falcons and B-25s took a run at the mine-damaged Kumano but missed.
Malaya
The Oscars at Mersing took care of business today, shooting down one of my Buffalos, 2 Martlets, and 3 Wirraways with no losses.
Java Sea
Denpasar (small island across the Java Sea from the Makassar Strait) has been captured. This is a nice little seaplane base.
Ceram Sea
A pair of P-39s strafed and bombed a troop carrying cargo ship offloading troops at Pantar. A trio of Falcon bombers followed that up, hitting the ship with bombs, probably finishing it off.
Hawaii
Several AKLs approached the coast and got completely nuked by my artillery. I assume this was a supply run.
So much for 40 days--supply is becoming an issue again. The bombings have stepped up and it's burning through my stores.
Thailand
Status quo is holding. We lost one Hurricane to a sweep over Tavoy.
Troop and supply convoys are reporting being snooped by floatplanes between Calcutta and Rangoon. Subs.
Line Islands
The Japanese thought it would be a good idea to attack Christmas Island with Mavis patrol aircraft. The first wave of 4 was routed with all 4 shot full of holes by USMC Wildcats. The second wave was just 1, and it was shot down.
A PBY bombed a submarine near Christmas Island, the second such hit in recent days.
Further south, one of my tanker convoys was snooped by a floatplane--I'm sure it came from a sub.
SouthPAC
We have a single unidentified contact approaching Pago from the North. There's no reason to send a civilian convoy this way so I'm assuming this is a warship, which makes me wonder what it's doing here or where its friends are. The Hornet and Enterprise are nearby, but I'm not tasking them to this yet. I have a cruiser-destroyer group very close by, I'm going to station them at the edge of Pago's fighter's coverage range and see if the PBYs can get us better info. Pago hosts some Helldivers too, so if they get too close we'll hopefully soften whatever it/they are up before our skimmers get involved.
Reinforcements
Repairs completed on CA Northampton at Sydney, ship returned to service (repaired torpedo damage)
No.20 Sqn RAF arrives at Jamshedpur (bomber training squadron)
139th USA Base Force arrives at Fort Ord (full strength, unrestricted)
33rd Aviation Base Force arrives at Eastern USA (full strength, unrestricted)
I'm starting to reorganize my destroyers. I'm swapping old ones for modern ones whenever a convoy pulls in near a naval fleet so that the old guys hopefully don't face anything scarier than a submarine. Also, recently upgraded DDs are meeting up with task forces so that DDs in need of upgrades can rotate back to the shipyards.