S3 Series

10 December, 1941

To all Japanese Air Forces, Malaya:

Congratulations on a battle well fought. the Emperor is proud of your achievements.
We have control of the city of Kota Bharu. No longer with it be ruled by Westerners.

We have just received a report from Submarine I-58 operating in the South China Sea. A British task force is steaming toward the North East coastline of Malaya.

Submarine report:

9 December, 1941:
2 British Battleships and probable 4 destroyers spotted
Location: 9.8.X
Heading: 345
Speed: 28 knots
Time: T minus 45

Intel suggests the ships may be the HMS Battleship Prince of Wales, the HMS Battlecruiser Repulse, and several destroyers.

Mission Orders:

All available aircraft are ordered to find and sink this task force.

ganbatte kudasai - Stay Strong

I suggest pilots practice torpedo runs in either of the airframes that carry them. We will need atleast 70% of pilots carrying torps or with bombs; with more torp carrying planes than bombs, but either will suffice. Ack will be hard and singles will probably not make it to a drop. If you insist one being a loner, then set your ai in front of you so ack will target it and pick on the outside fringe ships of the group first. It would be nice if someone would pick up the ball and make some orders.

I'm the caretaker of Splt and my Mother (95 YO), so don't expect me to run any frames in the near future even though I'm now retired.

<S>

Grump

--
Bumping and agreeing

Drop torps and bombs for practice.
Lets try to all go at once and not have any one or squad hung out to much on purpose (others who go alone up to them)

Juice

Agreed... Torpedo use is paramount in my opinion, as well as mass concentration of airframes.

IF we manage to destroy the fleet we can get 5 points each for closing F11 the closest and/or F28 .

The downside is we can't lose any airframes doing so or the effort is futile, point wise it seems. There
are also a fair number of targets at both.

Upside is that there are only 3 guns at each I believe.

F28 has one 20mm and 2 mg.
F11 has two 20 mm and 1 mg.

Gotta go
<S>

Important Question: Do the Brits know that we know where their fleet is located?

Since we know where they are located, we ought to do what the Americans did at Midway; 2-3 groups ingress to the ships from 2-3 different directions at nearly the same time. Have some dive bombers come in high and have the torpedo (some bombs) planes come in low from different directions at the same time.

We need to have much better communication between the COs of each squad during this run. We will need to know EXACTLY where each of us is located at all times. Timing is of the essence. If we can arrive with fighters high over head, I think we can devastate the battle group.

What are your thoughts?

Darryl <S>

I wish you would have posted a few days earlier to give us time to chew this over and plan.
However, I believe with the planes they have we don't need to separate our forces too much. We could all go together and then separate one sector or so away for differing angles. If we go lowish with the torps and with somewhat higher fighters we should be good. If they grab a lot of altitude then we would arrive at the same time as they do. They have no carriers from what I understand. Gotta go right now. Be online a bit earlier for the frame.
<S>

The 4 -.50's in the buffalo will do a number on the betties. FWIW