Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Hyo]

Eh, I'm assuming that's quite a good kill count for one raid, right? Still, too bad there wasn't anything bigger than light cruisers for you to target; it would've been nice if we could've had taken out a couple of BBs on the way there too.

But strangely, the bombings seem to grow /worse/ when done in daylight, while it was so accurate in the night...

[Erkki]

Eh, I'm assuming that's quite a good kill count for one raid, right? Still, too bad there wasn't anything bigger than light cruisers for you to target; it would've been nice if we could've had taken out a couple of BBs on the way there too.

But strangely, the bombings seem to grow /worse/ when done in daylight, while it was so accurate in the night...

Those 10,000+ ton tankers are fairly important ships, I must have been just a day or 2 late of catching all of them in full fuel load: they'd have burned up nice after just a few bombs.

Those Allied night raids were done at nearly NOE altitude with fully armored 4 engine bombers. Yeah, might work IRL, except 50%+ would crash on everything from hills and mountains to power lines and buildings. These strikes have been against fairly heavy AAA @ 9000ft, and D3A1 carries just one bomb, B5N2 either 2 250kg or 1 800kg too. An individual ship is also a harder to hit target than a city or airfield...

I now made a small mistake in that I decided to refuel(even the fuel loads, actually) the ships before leaving the area, so we'll be in range of Colombo even tomorrow afternoon. 6th strike it is then... Shouldnt be more than 15-16 P-40s defending any more unless he moves in more.

[Erkki]

June 5th

Bay of Bengal: As expected, the enemy attacks our carriers!

Wave 1: 12 x Fulmar II fighter-bombers. The Zero-CAP shoots down every each of them, confirming 4 kills and at least damaging all of the rest.

Wave 2: Against 72 Zeroes come 22 x Hurricane IIb, 5 x Blenheim and 7 Wellingtons. All Hurricanes are shot down or hit ( 9 confirmed ), 4 Blenheims and 4 Wellingtons press through the Zeros heavily damaged, at 1,000ft. AAA fire from the carriers shoots down 2 of them damaging all of the rest. Bombs all miss. The Zeros then annihilate the survivors.

Wave 3: 21 P-40Es escort 7 Wellingtons. 14 P-40s are shot down or hit ( 4 confirmed ), 3 more Wellingtons are confirmed down(they miss their bombs) and the surviving 4 at least damaged.

SignCorps estimates enemy losses to be 13(/14) Wellingtons, 5(/5) Blenheims, 12(/21) Hurricanes, 6(/12) Fulmars and 4(/21) P-40s. The long range and fighting over Japanese fleet far from land hurt them.

The cost to the Japanese is 6 Zeros: 3 written off, 3 shot down, 1 pilot KIA. Enemy losses are 18 medium bombers, 6 fighter-bombers and 16 fighters, at least, with 90%+ getting downed 120 nautical miles+ from land, over Japanese ships, so they're all MIA and KIA. Banzai!


Some enemy shipping tries to escape Colombo, but submarine I-6 finishes off a damaged destroyer and turns back a tanker. On the afternoon, 15 D3A1s find these ships near Colombo, hitting 2 tankers. We will now retire our carriers from the area...

[Hyo]

Hoh? Failed raid, indeed! It sucks for the Zero pilot KIA, since pilot kills are always sad, but other than that, that's more or less a result in your favour, heh.

Any damage on ships?

[Erkki]

Hoh? Failed raid, indeed! It sucks for the Zero pilot KIA, since pilot kills are always sad, but other than that, that's more or less a result in your favour, heh.

Any damage on ships?

Someone needs to clean the guns and carry empty shells away... Nasty job that. 

[Erkki]

Also, our hero Pilot Officer 2nd class Saburo Kanda in Hosho-1 aboard CVE Taiyo scored his 4th kill: a Wellington. He has now flown 47 combat sorties and is, on a shared position, the 2nd top scoring pilot of the squadron, right after commander Sasai at 6 kills. Kanda has now risen from unknown replacement pilot,a greentag he was 5 months ago, to a respected fighter pilot, one of the best.

His tally is now

2 x Albacore (at Andamans Sea, those Albacores hurt CVE Hosho, Kanda was the only Zero pilot to shoot down an attacker).
1 x Blenheim (near Rangoon, Blenheims attacked en masse and put 2 bombs on CV Kaga(minor damage) - over 25 Blenheims were shot down that day)
1 x Wellington near Ceylon

[Sheb]

Must be a blow to his self-confidance. Those planes flew from Ceylan, right? Well, sucks you now have to depart to let them bring back more reinforcement and planes.

[Erkki]

Must be a blow to his self-confidance. Those planes flew from Ceylan, right? Well, sucks you now have to depart to let them bring back more reinforcement and planes.

I dont know what he was expecting...  The first strike to Colombo had 102 strike planes - he must have presumed me to use 10% to naval search, and me to have at least 1/3 of plane strength in fighters... 102/0.9 = 113 strike aircraft and thus at least 56 Zeros. In actual, the CarDiv II and III had 93 Zeros + 20 more in reserve... If even 60-70% of them manage to make contact with the incoming raid, how could he expect just 20 bombers and "30" fighters to be able to get through and do any damage? The fact that they hit nothing also suspects, to me, that they have 0 training in naval bombing or skip bombing...

He used unsuitable planes(as in short range fighters, non-torpedo non-diving bombers) with untrained(for that kind of role) aircrew, at extreme range(P-40s flew from Colombo, they were just in range and suffered, at least Wellingtons flew even further from Tricolamee), against easily outnumbering Zeros(over 90 of them, at all times there was minimum 30 engaged with the Allied raids) piloted by my best fighter pilots, targeting war ships with massive AAA protection? Madness! 

EDIT:

The Fulmar unit I havent seen before, but the Hurricane unit(which took heavy losses) was most probably the same boys who I have fought with over Burma before. The P-40 unit must have been transferred from Burma too, but it probably wasnt an AVG group as they fought rather poorly... Most of the good pre-war AVG pilots must be dead already but I'd still expect them to do better than that.

Where the rest of the British Blenheims are, and where their torpedo bombers are, I have no idea. From Colombo, our carriers were in range of both Albacore and Swordfish(though not Wildebeest), they are crap planes but having more attacking planes would have allowed more to get through as shooting them down takes time and ammunition...

EDIT2:

Fulmars are actually carrier capable aircraft. I dont know if the British have any land based units of them/units that can fly them. And if they do, why arent they used on the carriers instead? Was the Fulmar squadron actually transferred FROM a carrier to use those aircraft without risking the carrier itself?

[Sheb]

So the carrier may be around?

[Erkki]

So the carrier may be around?

Those Fulmars definately flew from land base, so I suppose he wants to keep his CVs hidden. No way to chase it down even if there was fuel and theres no guarantees of it being in the vicinity, so I'm keeping the Zero-CAP up but we're going home now - but not through Andamans where there seem to be some Brit subs lurking, but around Sumatra.

[Erkki]

June 6th

Only action today are the bomber raids in China and New Guinea, and US submarines sinking 2 merchantmen... Japanese aircraft losses are 0 and theres no reason to presume the enemy to have lost a plane either. 0-0.

I'm preparing to land Feli Island in New Britain to build another supporting air base behind Rabaul. Also moving some ships around in preparations of securing what is left of Dutch East Indies...

CV Hiyo completed in 10 days! She'll rise Kido Butai's fleet carrier strength to 8.

[Zrk2]

Someone needs to clean the guns and carry empty shells away... Nasty job that. 

Ah, I love the smell of victory in the morning.

[Erkki]

June 7th

Another silent day... We keep bombing the huge Chinese troop concentration that is now moving back the route it just advanced... Over 250 bomber sorties flown against it today. This is by far the best way to kill the Chinese troops: they have no AAA protection whatsoever, so in clear terrain they take massive losses by our low flying bombers.

In New Britain, the Allies keep bombing Medang and Woodlark Island. I have ordered an LRCAP-trap over Woodlark tomorrow, it includes 2 groups of Zeros(should be circa 70 planes) and some Ki-45s(5 or 6 at least...). They havent escorted those raids so we should be able to bag some B-26s and/or Hudsons tomorrow. 

CV Zuikaku arrives to Kobe, is drydocked and starts her upgrade. She will receive a radar set(type 21 radar) and 4 new triple-25mm AAA gun stations, 2 to each side of the ship. Upgrade + refitting takes a full month, so shes back in action within 35 to 40 days! Once she returns to the CarDiv I strength its Shokaku's turn, then Akagi's

[Erkki]

June 8th

Excellent day to the IJNAF! 

The day begins when the weather over New Britain finally clears and our ASW G3M2s get airborne. They find 6 Allied submarines in the nearby waters, attack 4, and score 2 confirmed hits! Its a long way home they have! 

Then come the Allied air raids. First is 9 x Vindicator dive bombers to Woodlark Island - we will never know what they were ordered to target, as Zeros wiped out the whole unit without a sweat. 

Second raid is 9 B-16 bombers. They come at the deck and fly below most of our fighters, so only 2 of them are shot down, many more damaged.

Third raid to Woodlark Island is 17 B-26s. Of these, only two(2!!!) make it to bomb, and both of those were damaged by our AAA!

Then the enemy attacks our unloading ships at Lihir, 32(!) Hudsons and 31 B-17s approach at the deck... Of these, at least 16 Hudsons and 1 B-17 are shot down, and the bombers only score a single 250lbs bomb hit. Again unsuitable untrained bomber attacks at low altitude!

On the afternoon the strikes are more spread out to various Japanese naval targets around the area, and only 3 Hudsons are caught by Zeros near Rabaul. None of the afternoon raids score hits, other than anti-aircraft fire on the bombers themselves...

All in all today we get 19 confirmed Hudsons(+ about 15-16 more at least damaged?!?), 1 B-17 (about 10 damaged), 9 Vindicators and 16 B-26s (4-5 more damaged). The cost to the IJNAF is 7 Zeroes(4 shot down by gunners/went down after gunner hits, 3 OPS) and 1 Ki-45(an OPS). We lose 2 bad Zero pilots as KIA and a 3rd as MIA.

Pilots Endo and Sato score 3 kills today. The current top ace situation is as below:

Spoiler: Top pilots (click to show/hide)

In other news, the AMC raider that had been picketing/scouting the area between Gilberts and Truk is tracked, hunt down and sunk by my sweeps today. A DD scores the slowing torpedo hit, and cruiser CA Mikuma finishes off the poor Monowai that tried to escape...

[Erkki]

Spoiler: Reports... (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

Japanese aircraft
      A6M2 Zero x 28
      Ki-45 KAIa Nick x 2

vs.
 
Allied aircraft
      SB2U-3 Vindicator x 9


Japanese aircraft
      A6M2 Zero x 28
      Ki-45 KAIa Nick x 2
 
vs.
 
Allied aircraft
      B-26 Marauder x 6


Japanese aircraft
      A6M2 Zero x 38
      A6M2-N Rufe x 1
      Ki-45 KAIa Nick x 1
 
vs.
 
Allied aircraft
      Hudson III (LR) x 32



Hehheh....