Silly After Action Report - Thrilla in Manila

 Corporal Horii Kawasaki pulled the fronds from a blasted palm tree a little further over his head.

"Join the navy they said.  See the world they said.  So far all I've seen is a low rent section of Manila."

"Stop whining," muttered his comrade I couldn't be bothered giving a name to.  "at the moment most of the navy is seeing the bottom of Leyte Gulf.  And this is actually a high rent section of Manila."

"You mean there are worse parts?" said Kawasaki in horror.

"Most of it actually.  Now share the palm fronds around we don't want to be hit by artillery fire."

"Isn't it the army's job to defend cities?"

"The army didn't want to, they've buggered off for the hills."

"I should have joined the army."

Kawasaki's companion was about to make a scathing comment about the Imperial Japanese Army in general and the portion of it currently based in the Philippines in particular when a sudden noise caught his attention.  He peered out over the wall and cursed softly.

"What is it?" demanded Kawasaki.

"Get back to the CO and tell him that half the American army is just about to cross the street."

"Why me?"

"I'm busy making bunkers out of palm fronds.  Come on Kawasaki, on your bike."

Kawasaki rolled his eyes, "was that joke really worth all of the build up?"

"Probably not," replied his companion, "but it's too late now.  Help yourself to a palm frond on your way out."

It is 1945 and Manila is about to be liberated MacArthur style ie the place is about to be razed to the ground.  It is possible that Hiroshima was "liberated" less thoroughly than Manila.  It shouldn't have happened like that.  The Japanese army commander in the Philippines suffered from a malady rare in the Japanese army; common sense.  He took one look at the city, realised it would be a deathtrap for any soldiers based there once the Americans brought up their firepower and declared Manila an open city while decamping with his troops for the mountains.  Unfortunately the Japanese navy attempted to compensate for mindless stupidity with more mindless stupidity.  They garrisoned Manila with their own troops and declared the city closed again.

We are playing scenario BFP-60 - Thrilla in Manila.  I shall command the soldiers (sailors?) of the 5th Naval battalion as they attempt to prove that drowning is only one of the mortality options the Japanese navy provided to its recruits.  I have to defend the Bureau of Agriculture and Commerce from the predatory grasp of the American 1st Cavalry division.  Despite the name I would like to assure readers that no horses were harmed in the making of this blog entry.

To defend said building I have thirteen squads ranging from elite (six) through first line (four) to second line (three).  I also have seven crews to man the spectacular plethora of support weapons available.  It has to be admitted the navy did its troops proud when it came to support.  I have a pair of 12.7mm twin barrelled anti aircraft guns, a .50cal machine gun, a heavy machine gun, two medium machine guns, three light machine guns, two demo charges and a 75mm gun.  I also get the option to fortify about half of Metro Manila. In addition to the fortified building locations I have a couple of wire hexes, two pillboxes, twenty four factors of mines and four factors of antitank mines.  Pretty impressive you might think.  You would be wrong.

Commanding the cavalry was Dave Wilson.  Dave has three elite squads and sixteen first line.  These guys have a pair of .50cal machine guns, two medium machine guns, two flamethrowers and four demo charges.  Lest this seem inadequate to the task at hand let us review the support available to our horse fondlers.  Two 155mm artillery pieces, two M4A1 Sherman tanks, two M-10 self propelled guns and a Sherman tank with added flamethrower.  I'm not surprised Manila was destroyed, I am surprised that the entire Philippines didn't sink into the sea.  

It's all about the Agriculture and Commerce Bureau.  Dave wins by controlling the building.  I win if by some miracle he falls short.  Below is the at start positions.  I have fortified the crap out of everything possible and while I have a fair few troops in the victory building I also have some squirreled away in flanking buildings hoping to spring a trap or two.  I left a set DC in the street in the hopes that a tank would drive over it.  Sadly by the time one did its owner was dead.

At start positions

 As can be seen from the above picture Dave didn't exactly go for subtlety.  Instead he just parked his entire force as close to me as humanly possible.  The red circle marks where a pillbox with one of my 12.7mm AA guns sits hidden.  Notice the three huge stacks of US troops hanging around in the open nearby.  Given the possibility for carnage inherent in that particular set up the results were somewhat disappointing for me.  Nevertheless the first turn was definitely my best.  Rate of fire was something that my troops had apparently never heard of but my 12.7mm did chop up a decent amount of Dave's infantry and send them fleeing for the woods.  Elsewhere Dave heaved an immense amount of high explosive and smoke in my direction with mixed results.

End of US turn 1.  Things look deceptively good so far

 

Apparently Dave's tankers and artillery support had doubled down on the HE shells at the price of leaving all of their smoke and WP rounds back in Hawaii.  Some smoke was brought down in that first turn but for the most part Dave was entitled to be disappointed with the results as weapon after weapon turned out to be smoke bereft.

Despite the lack of comforting billows of cover Dave moved forward on the left.  I had a hidden mmg team waiting for him to cross the open ground.  Cross the open ground Dave's troops did whereupon I cut loose with an 8-2 shot that did absolutely nothing.  Dave then advanced in, ambushed the Japanese and wiped them out.  If you want to stop reading now that is pretty much a description of the entire game.

In the centre I had a concealed squad and lmg team lurking in the palm debris behind a wall.  Next to them was a dummy stack sitting on a minefield.  The dummy stack was swept away by fire but the lmg squad was incremented down over a couple of turns, I think it was a conscript halfsquad when it took the fatal shots.

One turn in and I was in trouble on the left but I wasn't too worried as I had a pillbox with the other 12.7mm sighted down the street, a pair of elite squads in the rowhouse behind and a crew and .50cal guided by my best leader nestling in a fortified building location.  All seemed good.  It wasn't.

On the left Dave managed to sneak concealed troops up next to my pillbox.  Even with a concealed target a pointblank shot was a 12+2 or, to put it another way, not good enough.  I can't recall whether Dave blew up the crew with a DC or killed them in close combat but it has to be said they contributed nothing to the Japanese defence. My .50cal revealed itself, apparently for the specific purpose of demonstrating how useless a .50cal machine gun is under the direction of a 10-1 leader.  In the course of the game they fired three shots the lowest of which was an eight and one of which was boxcars.  Eventually Dave got tired of laughing at them and hit them with a critical hit from an M-10.

Things are bad and about to get worse

Things were slower in the centre and on the right as Dave needed to rally the troops mangled in the first turn which took a couple of turns.  The pillbox he dealt with by firing first a 75mm round through the entrance and following that up with a flamethrower attack.  The crew manning that gun gave up life's weary burden and my outer defences were gone.  Then he built up and rallied his forces.  I lost my other hmg when it unwisely fired on an American squad dashing across the street.  I say unwisely because with its presence revealed Dave parked his flamethrowing Sherman next to it and incinerated everything in the hex.

This was pretty much standard for the remainder of the game.  If I shot at anything Dave would simply retaliate with enough fire to wipe me out.  During slow periods his guns and tanks resumed their pounding of the victory building slowly but eventually getting the results that striped and then killed the occupants.  By the time turn four rolled around the only Japanese troops that survived were those that hadn't done anything yet and Dave's forces were monstering me on all sides.  

Things are not looking good

 

Rather to my surprise my 75mm gun did manage to immobilise a Sherman while it was in bypass in my hex, sadly the crew didn't abandon the tank with the result that my gun couldn't shoot at anything else.I really had a choice, I could hide under concealment counters and at least force Dave to go through the slow process of pounding me to nothing or I could shoot at the Americans and be killed instantly.  Dave knew the end was near and started moving his forces forward without fear.  I unveiled my last mmg and took a 4-3 shot at some Americans troops in the open.  I rolled an eleven and conceded on the spot.  This game is rated 9-7 to the Japanese on ROAR, I can only assume the people who took the Japanese were somewhat more skilled than I am (in fairness not difficult to imagine).  Dave quite literally dismantled me in about four turns.  The only Japanese left at the end were those who had spent the entire game under concealment counters.  Congratulations to Dave on the win, he went hard and early and it paid off big time.

The end, I have precisely three squads and two crews left

 

Corporal Kawasaki pushed a palm frond out of his eyes and looked around.  There didn't appear to be anyone left alive.  Correction, he thought.  There didn't appear to be any Japanese left alive.  Burrowing down amongst the rubble Kawasaki fished a recruiting poster out of his pocket.  The air force was looking for keen young men and you didn't even have to fly too well.  That was the life decided Kawasaki; smart uniform, beautiful women, stationed behind the front lines, perfect.  He hastily filled out the application and looked around for a post box.  As he did so he wondered vaguely why they'd decided to call the new air units Kamikaze.