Japan '45 Historical Plan/Placement Olympic

[ComradeP]

It's been a while since I wrote/completed an AAR, and the release of Japan '45 seemed like a good time for a new attempt at doing so.

I'm playing a slightly modified version of the Olympic HP scenario against Sgt Jasper (from now on: John). The modification consists of a supply source on Shima Jima. It has no effect on gameplay other than to stop the Japanese units on Shima Jima from appearing in the Isolated units part of the command report each turn. For all other intents and purposes, it's the regular Historical Plan/Placement version of Olympic.

The main difference between Olympic and HP Olympic, aside from Japanese positions being slightly different, is that I Corps and XI Corps drop 2 divisions on the beaches each in the HP variant, but the full corps in the regular variant.

As I wanted to try the historical plan and John was fine with that, we picked the HP variant.

There will be all sorts of random musings about mechanics and the like in the AAR, so I apologize in advance if the narrative trails off from time to time.

It's difficult to estimate how tight victory points are going to be, as most points tend to come from losses in campaign games. It's worth noting that, though a campaign game, unit count is not very high as the US only have about 12 divisions and the Japanese 20 or so divisions/divisional equivalents.

The Japanese also need to move a lot of tiny heavy/support weapons units around so have more units to move, but it's still quite manageable compared to the bigger PzC campaign games out there like Moscow '42 and France '40.

First, we'll take a look at the island we're fighting on/for: Kyushu. The US goal is to occupy most of the southern half of the island. The Japanese player wants to prevent that.

The screenshot below comes from the one of the planning maps, with information that I've added to show where US forces come ashore.



As you can see, US forces arrive at three corners of southern Kyushu.

The good: it forces the Japanese to split up their forces.
The bad: each corps is too weak to accomplish much by itself, artillery/air/naval support isn't concentrated, each advance can be contained if there is no simultaneous progress elsewhere.
The ugly: The Japanese can Tennōheika Banzai! I Corps off the beach.

What makes little sense to me is why US planners wanted to stage a landing on an island roughly the size of Indiana as if it was just another island in the Pacific. The lack of any real concentration of force and firepower is a big problem and I Corps is in serious risk of being destroyed. Two landings with 2 corps each, either at two opposite locations or in Shibushi Bay and the Miyazaki area seem more logical, but this might be one of those plans that could've worked in real life but don't work well in a game.

Reinforcements, consisting of 3 additional divisions, arrive after a few days through a strategy choice. 2 divisions can land in any sector.

The 98th can land behind the USMC or at Shibushi Bay. It can also stage its own landing on the south-western tip of the island. As it's my only C quality division, that would be like throwing an egg at a wall and hoping the wall breaks instead of the egg.