Chapter Four, Part Four: Sino-Japanese War / Japanese-American War
Sep 1941 - Nov 1941
Previously in the Influence Wars...
The USA captured Saipan, but the IJN dealt the US Navy a massive blow and began the blockade of the island. In China, progress was slow and the battles were very bloody.
And now, the conclusion...
The Liberation of Saipan
Unsurprisingly, the main focus of attention of the Imperial General Headquarters was Saipan. It was Japanese territory, so the island needed to be liberated as soon as possible. Preparations took some time and in the meantime, the Japanese CTF engaged several US submarine flotillas. The results were encouraging - the Americans lost 4 submarine flotillas and the Japanese task force did not lose a single ship.
The Japanese counter-attack started in the first week of October. Four marine divisions advanced from the sea and one marine division advanced from Tinian. The weather and terrain were unfavourable for the liberators, but massive barrages from Japanese battleships and cruisers evened the odds. Despite the perditions of some the Japanese Admirals, the Americans opposed us in the air and several fierce air battles took place.
The Americans were desperately looking for effective ways of escaping the besieged island. After it became apparent that it would be impossible to remain undetected using large ship concentrations, they tried to sneak out using smaller groups of ships. To the best of our knowledge, all attempts were unsuccessful.
In one of these attempts the last US carrier docked at Saipan's port was sunk.
The battle for Saipan raged for more than a week, but after losing more than 4 thousand soldiers, the enemy surrendered. Broken and under-supplied, the American soldiers were a poor sight for our troops, but in some way the victory was very satisfying.
With Saipan's port in Japanese hands, the Americans had no choice but to make a last ditch attempt at breaking through our blockade. It was a slaughter. Countless American ships were sunk and the ones which managed to escape were severely damaged. We lost no ships during that engagement, but several of our vessels received damage.
Just when we thought that the enemy was totally beaten, he made a surprising attack on our transport fleet. Neither side lost any ships, but several of our cruisers were considerably damaged and had to withdraw to Guam (and later to Japan) for repairs.
The Battle of Agana Bay and the Marianas Pursuit
However, the biggest surprise struck us in the second half October. The waters around Saipan and Guam were frequently patrolled and it was presumed that the enemy's forces were reorganising somewhere far away, so few expected that a full US surface group would enter the Agana Bay. The enemy engaged 3 of our damaged cruisers which were to be escorted by one of our patrol groups back to Japan and before our main battlefleet arrived, the Americans managed to sink 2 of our cruisers. Unfortunately, our fleet did not manage to save the third cruiser, either.
This could not have gone unpunished. Soon enough, all our fleets available in the area started pursuing the American task force. The following engagements became known as the Marianas Pursuit and the enemy's fleet was eventually annihilated, although we lost 2 additional cruisers in the process and both our ships and our CAGs became damaged, in some cases quite severely.
Conquest of the Wake Island
After Saipan, Agna Bay and the Marianas Pursuit the important question was whether to advance further or wait in order to ensure that most of our important ships were batte-worthy. It was presumed that the enemy had much bigger problems than we did, so a decision was made to reorganise our fleets as quickly as possible and advance with whatever we had at our disposal. Therefore, during the battle of the Wake Island most of our battleships were unavailable and not all of our CAGs were at full strength. Despite this, the Wake Island was conquered very quickly and our marines suffered surprisingly low casualties.
When the Wake Island's port was overrun by our forces, the enemy's ships were forced to engage our fleets and another naval slaughter took place. Finally, the battleships USS California was sunk, which was greeted with wild cheers by our sailors. This dreaded piece of scrap metal had eluded us for far too long.
The enemy lost so many ships that the Administration experienced much difficulty with counting them. Nonetheless, a list of all confirmed US ship losses was compiled and the message is rather clear - the US Navy is getting badly beaten by vastly superior Imperial Japanese Navy. Thanks to the bravery and skill of our sailors and the quality of our ships, we are winning the Pacific War.
Our submariners report that no ships are stationed at Midway and Pearl Harbour, which most likely means that the US Navy is now hiding in the ports of the US West Coast.
However, despite all our impressive victories at sea we suffered some losses of our own. The enemy hit our cruisers especially hard. Moreover, many of our ships are heavily damaged and our aircraft losses have been extremely high. IJN Zuiho's CAG was almost completely annihilated during the last engagement.
War in China
Unlike quick and decisive victories in the Pacific Theatre, progress in China has been agonisingly slow. Our soldiers are becoming frustrated with the Chinese and China in general and the exaggerated rumours about "thousands" of sunk American ships and a supposedly planned invasion of the US mainland (the common saying is "San Francisco by December 1941, Washington DC by December 1942") are increasing the soldiers' anger even further. While the sailors are scoring victory after victory and will soon become legendary, the average Japanese soldier is cursing bad weather, bad food and bad terrain.
Still, we managed to reconquer some lost gains in the South and we captured Tianshui in the North. Our southern armies received the well-needed boost when the troops from the Philippines were finally transported to China and we even managed to take Bose, although the enemy is currently trying very hard to retake it. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, Wanxian is still in enemy's hands.
Overviews
Other matters
Infrastructure development program is nearing completion in areas which we control. Now a decision will have to made whether to continue to improve infrastructure in China or wait before we control more of the country.
Additionally, advanced radars have been built in several places - they should aid our patrol groups in submarine hunting.
The Administration is worried about the Empire's resource situation. US Pacific holdings are not resource-rich and while our conquests in China practically solved our rare material shortages, there is not enough coal and metal there in order to solve our shortages of these resources. According to the Administration's calculations, our metal stockpiles will be depleted within a year. Obviously, further economic mobilisation will also become impossible.
The Sleeping Giant?
We have recently received a top-secret report about the capabilities of the US economy and the actions of the US government. Apparently, our victories at sea caused so much concern in America that the number of government's orders for new ships completely overloaded the American shipyards. The US government is doing everything it can to mobilise the full potential of the US economy. Self-defence courses became obligatory in US schools and while the men are joining the military en masse, the American women (!!!) are flooding the factories. In US media, the Japanese are presented as barbaric beasts with distorted faces and claws instead of hands.
Initially the Americans were shocked by Japanese successes and disheartened by lack of success of their own, but now patriotism is slowly replacing fear. The country is clearly preparing for total war.
List of researched techs:
Light Bomb, Communication Line Interdiction, Battleship Taskforce Doctrine, Small Warship Radar
