Campaign Start and Early Turns

The refight of Guadalcanal has kicked off.

Here is a summary of the first few turns

The Japanese base force starts on Guadalcanal in their 3 bases, The total strength of this force is a battalion. They also have 16 sea planes with them. They are diamond 1, circle 1 is a Japanese sub circle 2 is a Japanese sub

The US fleet starts on the east side. They are given the numbers 1 for Air Support Force, 2 for Task Unit from old TF 16, 3 for Task Unit under Rear Adm. Noyes and 4 for Task force 62 South Pacific Amphibious Force and escort.

To save time i will not include all early map images.

Day 1 Day phase

weather is good

2 Japanese subs move on in patrol and the US task force travels towards the islands. All aircraft are out of range.

Day 1 night Phase

the weather is cloudy

The US task force continues its journey and the subs move on patrol, one heads south while the other goes towards the islands. They move into range of long range scout planes from the islands.  Luckily the clouds and darkness of night help obscure the ships and all parts of the task force are missed.

Day 2 Day phase

The weather is fine.

The US ships continue their journey towards the islands, almost within range to launch air strikes

Making up for the previous failure the Japanese pilots spot 2 elements of the task force, 1 and 4 (the air support force and the Amphibious Force).

The flying boat reports the position of element 1 and is not intercepted by the CAP. After reporting the position of element 4 the flying boat is intercepted laying the ground for the first battle of the campaign.

The flying boat is on its way back to the island so the American fighters will start behind it. The flying boat has an average ranked pilot while the 3 American pilots 1 is a rookie and 2 average skilled pilots. (I forgot to take photos of this small combat  for which i apologise)

In the first round the American fighters move up and the lead fighter lets off a mid distance burst, which only dose superficial damage to the flying boat. The flying boat returns fire from its turrets but only does superficial damage to the lead fighter. In the next turn the American fighters move up to almost point blank range and open fire. First the leader fires and causes significant wing damage and kills the tail gunner. Next the average skilled wingman opens fire. His bust is very effective and causes the flying boat to violently explode in the sky, killing all its crew.

However, the explosion is so violent it causes all 3 fighters to loose control. The fighter which shot down the flying boat (A. Morgan) recovers almost immediately, and the flight leader regains control after descending from height band 5 to 3. The rookie of the squad has no such luck. Still struggling with his plane he gives up and attempts to bail out. He manages this just before the plane hits the sea. The pilot (R. Collins) is uninjured and is soon picked up by a destroyer and returned to his carrier.

Not a great start to his combat career.

The result of the first battle is one of the 16 or so flying boats based around Guadalcanal has been lost with all of its crew, the second carrier (Wasp) has been forced to use one of its replacement planes but its pilot survived.

These reports also mean the subs will head in that direction, and leave the base commander with a difficult choice. The American carriers will be in range to strike his base in a few hours and his light AA defence and uncovered planes will be very venerable. He could order them off the island to a safer base away from the carriers but he may face criticism for his choice. Another option is to order them to strike at the Americans. The slow and lumbering flying boats will be very venerable to any CAP but they may do some damage before they are all shot down.

In the end, unwilling to face criticism from his superiors he orders all the remaining flying boats to attack at dawn.

Day 2 Night

The weather is windy and cloudy

The American task force continues to move towards Guadalcanal, all the Japanese forces there can do is wait and prepare. Meanwhile the local naval forces are beginning to gather to resist the attack. Soon a small force under Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa will be ready.

Day 3 Day

The weather is windy

The flight of flying boats takes off from Talugi and heads out to hunt for ships, meanwhile the first bomber wings and their escorts take off from their air fields and head for the air base.

12 Flying boats manage to take off in 4 wings of 3 planes each head out. They soon spot the 1^st Task force element in the area and approach. They are intercepted by 3 wings of fighters (maybe the rest are escorting the bombers) at a distance of 16000 yards from the fleet.

 The next blog post will show the resolution of the flying boat attack. as well as the bombing effects.

First Campaign - Guadalcanal

The First Solo campaign – Guadalcanal

For my first solo wargaming campaign I have decided to start big. My original plan was a small size campaign, perhaps one of the pint sized campaigns from Too Fat Lardies for Chain of command. However as I read more I was increasingly inspired, especially by the campaigns on the blogs “Grid based wargaming” and “Grymauch's wargaming blog”.

https://gridbasedwargaming.blogspot.com/2019/01/ecw-campaign-game-14-setup-and-report.html

http://grymauch.blogspot.com/

So I have decided to go all out and after thinking about it, I chose Guadalcanal. There are a few reasons for this. The main reason is that it has air, sea and land actions for both sides at a relatively balanced level. Most other campaigns don't have all this elements involved to the same extent. I also love carriers.

I have done a fair bit of research and have produced for myself; a list of notable personalities, a list of all the land and sea forces and the formations they are in as well as their entry into the campaign and a list of the air wings aboard the carriers.

Rules

My ideas for rules are based off of the ideas used in “ Grymauch's wargaming blog” for his ww2 Mediterranean campaign. As such I will use “Bag the Hun” by Too Fat Lardies for the air campaign. General Quarters 3 for the naval campaign and Blitzkrieg Commander for the land campaign. As this is a solo campaign I will make small rule changes when I need to to help everything flow.

As for the strategic rules I have made a few charts for spotting and movement based on the campaign section in GQ3. Both sides will try to follow their general doctrines for the time but I have also made a few crude charts to act as a kind of A.I. For the sides so I don't control all their actions. This should make the campaign more fun and surprising. These rolls will also be influenced by the personality of the commander giving the orders.

I have made a large size strategic map for the naval side of the campaign and a smaller one for the land conflict on the islands.

Miniatures and scenery

I have ordered the air forces in 1/600 scale from tumbling dice. The ships are in 1/3000 from Navwar and the land forces are in 6mm scale from Heroics and Ross. I have ordered a bit of scenery from Time cast and a load of trees and plant life from china. This is my first foray into the small scales in wargaming and the prices are very agreeable compared to the larger scales.

The rest of the scenery I will make myself. I will also make a board which will have sea scape on one side and land on the other.

Historical overview.

The Guadalcanal campaign took place approximately 2 months after the battle of Midway with the landings starting on August 07 1942. Despite their heavy carrier losses at Midway the Imperial Japanese forces had yet to adapt their strategy to a defensively minded one. The construction of an airfield on an Island next to Guadalcanal threatened the sea link between Australian and the US. This lead the US to put together a Task force to take the airfield and nearby islands to fortify this link and lead to its island hopping campaign to win the war.

The unseen arrival of the American task force would allow them to take the airfield quickly. Over the months that followed a long attritional campaign would continue on land air and sea. The Japanese land forces would suffer terribly. The naval forces would do much better than their land counterparts but would later suffer heavy losses. The Air forces would also have some successes but this campaign would see the losses of many of their experiences air crews who could not easily be replaced.

The American forces would see fewer losses, especially on land. However some mistakes and poor choices would cause losses at sea early on.

As time went buy the American positions became stronger and the position of Talugi airfield would prove critical and would allow the US forces to reinforce and resupply the islands easily compared to the desperate night time resupplies by the Japanese navy.

The Japanese forces would decide to withdraw from the islands by the end of December 1942.

We will see if anything will change during the re-fight.

I leave you with a map of Guadalcanal

Brief Introduction

Hello,

Thanks for reading.

My name is Matt, i live in a rural (but not too rural) part of Japan in Fukui Prefecture. Originaly from the UK, I've lived in japan for about 5 years. I've been painting and playing with tiny toy soldiers since i was 13 (about 17 years). However, since i came to Japan, the playing side has really dropped off and this blog is an attempt to correct that.

Japan does have a small wargaming scene, largely driven by expats. This does not really extend much into the rural areas and is centered around the big cities. As such i fear this blog may mostly be solo wargaming, but having read other blogs which feature solo wargaming heavily, I'm beginning to like the idea.

Previously I played mostly Games workshop's Warhammer fantasy as well as 40k. As I grew older I dabbled in flames of war and once GW killed off fantasy I completely moved over to other companies. As such i have a full 28mm scale Napolionic British army and a small french one. A large force for both the UCM and Scourge for dropzone and dropfleet commander, and small amounts of loads of other stuff.

At the moment im working on Japanese and American land, sea and air forces for WW2 in 6mm scale, 1-600 scale and 1-3000 scale respectivly. The plan is to do a complete refight of the Guadacanal campaign which should he the first major theam of this blog.

Thats about it for now, the next post should contain some photos of my prep and an over view of the campaign, which reminds me, i need to get a better camera.