Armchair Dragoons Forums
Wargaming => The Modern World => Topic started by: Putraack on September 22, 2023, 06:09:19 PM
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I got bit by the "let's research something obscure for a few days" bug, and now I'm looking for stuff on this island fight in the summer of '43. It looks like it was initially badly handled by the US, who then recovered, but not before the Japanese did a lot to slow them up and tie them down.
As the second opposed landing by the South Pacific theater, I have questions about how it was planned. A game with a good map might help with that.
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Looks like there's The Last Hundred Yards: Volume 3 – The Solomon Islands (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/316494/last-hundred-yards-volume-3-solomon-islands), which includes action on New Georgia. That's a tactical game though so it might not be as high-level as you want.
Memoir '44 has a Munda 1943 scenario as well (based on the Battle of Munda Point), but again, tactical, and more generalized since it's Memoir '44.
Devil Boats: PT Boats in the Solomons has New Georgia on the map, though this is not concerned at all with the land campaign.
That's all I can think of or find, offhand.
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I know of the scenarios in the HOB ASL scenario pack for the 37th Infantry Div include some New Georgia scenarios
Really strikes me as something that might've been in an S&T magazine along the way. Maybe in ATO?
I haven't gone thru the game list for S&T or W@W to check though
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Bloody Buna: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/8245/bloody-buna
Bolt Action has a New Guinea Campaign: https://store.warlordgames.com/products/bolt-action-campaign-new-guinea
C3i did Breaking The Bismark Barrier: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/213648/south-pacific-breaking-bismarck-barrier-1942-1943
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I've got "Breaking the Bismarck Barrier", as well as "Devil boats" and "Operation Cartwheel". The first is too high-level for what I want, the 2nd is naval and the 3rd is air-naval.
I hadn't thought about the ASL scenario pack. I'm not an ASLer, but I have off & on looked into the 37th ID as an Ohioan, so I'll probably try to get that one of these years.
Reading what I have on it, I'm wondering about something with battalion or company counters, perhaps daily turns. Something that would show off the difficulties of jungle fighting and logistics.
I did find a book on Gen. Beightler, the 37th Division's CG, and the Army's longest-serving division commander in the war, as well as one of very few National Guard generals to keep his division into combat and after.
Anyway, the question that continues to bug me: the initial landings were done in 5 separate locations around the island(s), resulting in two land drives against Munda airfield, neither of which had the strength (or organization) to push through without reinforcements. Even then, those reinforcements were taken from different divisions and ad-hoc-ed together. Who planned that initial dispersion and such? Was it a Navy plan, without strong input from an Army staff?
Then, I thought, "this looks like any number of Japanese early-war operations": land here and there, and rely on surprise and fast-moving light infantry to disrupt an unprepared defender. It doesn't work too well when the enemy has a combination of hard fortifications and his own fast-moving light infantry to infiltrate your lines of communications, and isn't surprised.
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For theater operations, you should check out John Prados' book "Islands of Destiny."
The main objective was to threaten the Japanese air bases at Vila and Munda.
"When the first three battalions assaulted New Georgia, they only landed five miles from Munda... Terrain proved so difficult that six weeks of mud and misery would sap the energy and consume the strength of the GIs to cover those five short miles."
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From S.E. Morison's Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier: "The strategy and tactics of the New Georgia campaign were among the least successful of any Allied campaign in the Pacific."
Munda airfield may have been the primary objective, but flinging widely separated landing forces, none of them strong enough to march the distances required, doesn't seem optimal.