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Campaign Overview
After Action Report: Solomon Islands…
(Text in Italics is from the Japanese player side, regular Text is from the US player side)
Overview
The Solomon Islands campaign began with the shore assault of US Marines on Guadalcanal in August of 1942. The US “Cactus Air Force” was able to begin flying missions from Henderson airstrip later that year. During 1943, the US slowly worked its way westward along the chain of islands until only Rabaul remained in Japanese control. 1943 saw many pitched air battles as the American and Japanese air forces battled for control of the Solomon Islands.As I stand staring at the huge map of the Solomons hanging on the wall, I wonder once again whom I upset enough to be sent here. Short of everything, especially pilots and aircrew, I’ve been ordered to destroy Japanese forces in the area, while simultaneously defending the meager Allied assets. The up side is that the fighters I’ve been issued consist of the new F4U Corsairs, and the available pilots are highly trained and aggressive. The down side is that the Japanese have based some of their best pilots in the area, and there are sure to be many of the agile and deadly Zero fighters about.
Command has just issued orders for an all out push, and intelligence has also reported the Japanese are preparing for one of their own. This will probably make for a very fluid battle, and I can see the initiative changing several times. My worthy opponent once again is the eeeevil game designer Dan Verssen, and I’m sure he’ll be looking forward to my demise and embarrassment in this campaign. Hopefully my superior strategic planning and tactical skill (read: luck) will win the day once again.
Finally, a chance to redeem myself after the treacherous Harv shot down both of my top pilots in our ‘best of the best’ dogfight. The Solomon Islands campaign involves both sides flying both attack and defense mission on most campaign turns. It is an excellent test of skill.
In this campaign I will be commanding the Imperial Japanese forces, while Harv commands the US forces. Harv has the advantage of superior aircraft. His F4Us are more than a match for my assortment of A6M2s, Tonys, and Oscars. I do have an element of the newer A6M5s, but they must be used on only the most critical missions, or they will soon get fatigued. Harv also has access to a flight of B-17 Flying Fortresses. These bombers are more than capable of leveling any of my targets, and bring them down will be very tough.
In DIF, bombers operate differently than fighters in that they do not take a turn, they only respond when attacked. When a bomber is attacked it draws a hand of cards in which to shoot back and/or cancel the cards played against it by the attacking fighter. When the bomber shoots back at a fighter, the fighter can respond as normal in order to avoid getting hit.
A damaged bomber is assumed to be out of formation and no longer benefits from the turret support of the other bombers. As you can imagine, a damaged bomber often becomes the focus of the enemy fighter attacks.
On the positive side, I have more aircraft to allocate to missions. On the down side, in general my aircraft don’t take damage very well. If I’m not careful, my numerical advantage will quickly disappear.
Day 1
The first day’s tasking looks to consist of strike missions for the most part, while defending our troops on Guadalcanal from the almost daily Japanese attack. There is a supply dump at Rabaul worth 6 points that I’ll definitely be sending the Fortresses after. An airfield on Bougainville will have the B-25’s attacking it with a Corsair escort, and I’ll send both flights of SBD’s after a troop formation on Santa Isabel.
As I’m now out of bombers and I think I’ll need to husband my fighters for Turn 2, I’ll forfeit the other areas to Dan. The other 3 flights of F4U’s will stand down to ensure I’ll have them fresh for the Japanese attacks that are sure to come, and for further escort duty. This plan will strain my bomber crews if I’m ordered to mount a strike on Turn 2 due to fatigue, but if all attacks are successful I will have garnered 14 points to the enemy’s possible 5 (assuming he attacks Guadalcanal and defends the shipping over Munda) plus have most of my fighters ready for defensive missions.
My decisions made, I click the Execute button to assign my aircraft and see what the match-ups between our forces will be…
Rough target selection. I have a fair number of Kates and Bettys, and most of these missions have me defending.
I’ve got to defend the big supply depot on Rabaul. My best shot at doing that is to commit my only element of A6M5s and an element of A6M2s. The bombing mission against his troops on Guadalcanal looks good, but it depends on his air cover. I’ll send a flight of Bettys and some escorting A6M2s. To defend the Santa Isabel troops, I’ll send 2 elements of Oscars and hope for the best. To defend my airfield on Bougainville, I’ll send 2 elements of A6M2s. I’ll ignore Munda, too few points and I’ve run out of aircraft.
It looks like Dan has quite an effective fighter force at hand, and has risen to intercept all of my attacks. He has sent a bomber force of some sort to bomb my positions on Guadalcanal, which he scored 4 points for, but he also ignored the small convoy in the Munda zone which means neither of us will get any points. It looks like things might be a bit dicey for my unescorted bombers in Rabaul and Santa Isabel though…hopefully I haven’t made a big error this early in the game.
As the tactical (or dogfight) portion of the game has been covered thoroughly in our previous AAR, I’ll just summarize the battle results and emphasize the strategic decision-making.
Battle 1 – Bougainville – 2x B-25C, 2x Corsair vs 4x A6M2
It was a bloody first fight over Bougainville, with my valiant fighters doing their best to protect the bombers. Dan sent some of Japan’s best to do battle, and even though both Japanese leaders were shot down, the enemy were able to destroy a Corsair and a bomber and keep me from inflicting significant damage on the airfield. At least the pilots were picked up by Search and Rescue right away, and although tired, they’ll be able to fly next turn if necessary. Net result: Nothing.
Battle 2 – Santa Isabel - 4x Dauntless vs 2x Oscar
This mission proves the folly of sending unescorted light bombers into enemy territory. Even against relatively weak Oscars the Dauntlesses were totally outmatched. Within minutes, one element was destroyed, the leader to a lucky shot which must have detonated the bomb load. The enemy pilots were unrelenting in their attacks, and at the end of the battle only one SBD was left to drop his bombs, which wasn’t enough to do more than lightly damage the target. Net result: Still nothing.
Battle 3 – Rabaul – 2x B-17F vs 2x A6M5, 2x A6M2
Hoping the B-17’s will fare better without an escort, they fly into the hornet’s nest known as Rabaul. Some of Japan’s best fighters and pilots are based here, and they leave no doubt as to why the escort fighter was deemed essential. Even with the impressive airframe strength and defensive firepower of the B-17, the 4 Zeros were able to destroy one and damage the other. The Fortresses gave as good as they got however, shooting down one element of defending aircraft, and neither pilot was seen to bail out. The target received very little damage though, for a net result of no points again.
So after the first round of battles, I managed to score exactly 0 points, and give up 4 to Dan by not defending the troops on Guadalcanal. This isn’t really going to plan so far, but I’ve destroyed 4 of his Zero fighters with 2 irreplaceable pilots killed, while all of my downed aircrew have returned to base.
Not a bad first turn. Having a couple of my pilot permanently killed was bad, but on the other hand, Harv’s pilots racke dup a lot of Fatigue Points. His bombers especially got pretty worn out. On Day 2 he will be forced to either rest them, or send them into battle with reduced skills.
The only points scored were the 4 I managed to steal with that under-powered raid on Guadalcanal.
