Northern Burma 44

Marauders' Triumph

Northern Burma 44 - small map in JPG format (123 kB)

Northern Burma 44 - large map in JPG format (767 kB)

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Burma 44 - prelude

Interesting scenario, with combined American-Chinese forces attacking Japanese, late in the war, with purpose of capturing Myitkyina, only all-seasons airfield in this part of Burma (country is today officially called Myanmar, if anyone's interested). Allied forces consist of three divisions - two infantry, and one mountain infantry: infantry divisions are very strong, but mountain division is Allied "elite" in this scenario, although it's considerably smaller then those two infantry divisions. The mountain division (5307 Composite - it's official designation) are well known Merill's Marauders, it has high proficiency and is capable of crossing mountain terrain with ease, and is in fact only mixed American-Chinese division in this battle. Other two divisions - 22nd and 38th - are made only of Chinese, and are regular, if strong, infantry divisions, reinforced by a company of M3 Stuart light tanks each.

Both infantry divisions have rather large artillery sections, mountain infantry has, of course, much less artillery...

Japanese forces defending approaches to Myitkyina are demoralised, badly equipped and ill supplied infantry regiments of 18th division, plus the weak Myitkyina garrison itself, with some additional forces arriving later on.

Before proceeding, I would like to add that following text contains some spoilers. Rather minor spoilers, but... If you like to try new scenarios completely "on the blind", without knowing "what happens" - stop reading now. On the other hand - this scenario is so one sided, and unsuitable for PBEM, and I believe those spoilers are not important really, because everyone leaving this site is supposed not to play Northern Burma against human opponent anyway :o) Against PO - spoilers like these don't really matter... If you hate spoilers - what are you doing reading the AAR, anyway? It's "after action report", remember? :o)

Allied initial plan

Playing as Allied, I had no special initial plan other than to attack and advance to the south :o) This is simple scenario.

Knowing there will be some rather important objectives cca halfway to Myitkyina, and knowing how easy it is to hide units in the surrounding jungle, I decided in advance to garrison each objective taken en route. Not that there are lot of them - whole scenarios has 50 points worth of objectives, in five locations.

The battle

This is the most one-sided battle I have ever played (although Sidi Barrani comes close, and there I was on the receiving end). The battle itself had only one phase - Allied attack and advance towards all of the assigned objectives, while destroying any and every Japanese unit(s) they encountered.

Interesting - Japanese actually deploy more units than Allies in this battle, but their units have lower proficiency, worse equipment, lower supply, and - most importantly - they use their units piecemeal (one regiment at a time). In overall course of the battle - it's three regiments (plus some additional units) of Japanese, against three divisions of Chinese and Americans. Taken together - Japanese forces are good match for Allies, but Japanese problem is that they never have all of their forces available at the same time. Also - Japanese units are very prone to evaporation (low proficiency?).

First, there is 55th regiment, that is about to be cut to pieces by far superior forces in first 2-3 turns. As Allied troops advance to the south - there appears second Japanese regiment, and is - most probably - also cut to pieces. By the time the third Japanese regiment arrives - Allies are sitting on most or all of their objectives, refitted again up to their maximum strength, with high readiness and supply, and more than ready to give this regiment same kind of treatment the prevoius two received.

As for the air campaign, in the first turn my small, but rather effective air arm attacked Japanese only air unit on Myitkyina airfield, and destroyed it, effectivelly gaining me air superiority to the end of the campaign. Not that Allied airforce is especially strong here - two fighter units and one bomber - but comes handy...

Beginning of Turn 2 - ...and the town of Walabum is already firmly in Allied hands... Japanese troops from 55. Regiment, 18. Division, have nowhere to retreat, and are soon going to be chewed up by overwhelming Allied superiority...

In the light of the above, I attacked aggressively from the very beginning. Japanese units are awaiting first turn on positions in the jungle, and their best chance of escaping encirclement and destruction is to try to reach the road to the south via town of Walabum, to the east. The problem is... town is easily occupied by Allies in the very first turn (see picture above).

By the turns 3 and 4, some units of Japanese 56. Regiment started to arrive - by then 55. Regiment was all but destroyed - and tried in vain to stop Allied advance to the south...

Turn 7 - halfway to Myitkyina, and only a handful of Japanese units surviving - notice Shaduzup and Nphum Ga objectives, within easy reach of Allies...

By the turns 8-10, battle was all but over - only sporadical fighting and mopping up actions of the Allies occured. Allies captured Shaduzup and Nphum Ga - two, out of five objectives: together with Walabum, taken ih the very first turn, they were worth 27 points, out of 50 in all - at the moment, Allies were in the "area" of marginal victory. What was more important - road to Myitkyina was wide open, and only visible enemy troops af any significance were almost immobile infantry units defending Myitkyina itself...

Allies advanced without meeting any significant opposition, and Myitkyina - defended by weak garrison - fell at the end of turn 12. (Minor spoiler follows!) My opponent received some reinforcements around that time, but they arrived too far, NW of Shaduzup, and were immediately rendered unusable by my garrison and "half-garrison" troops stationed nearby, and "road patrols", units watching the roads from possible Japanese surpise intrusion. I wasn't sure that some Japanese stragglers weren't hidden in the jungle, and Japanese guerillas were active in the rear areas, too - thus the need for garrisoning troops and "road patrols".

With his turn 14, my opponent sent me his unconditional surrender. The campaign was over. He actually made a clever decision, because some more (minor) Japanese reinforcements were scheduled to arrive. Given the situation on the battlefield - they would be slaughtered, so I guess it's better to call them off and save them to fight another day. Tha war is not over yet for the Empire of the Rising Sun...

Allies won an overwhelming victory, with all five objectives in their hands: 50 points for Allies against 0 for Japanese player. Losses: Allies 0, Japanese 11. Total result: +61, overwhelming victory.

Turn 12 - and Myitkyina is about to fall to the Allies...

Analysis/Commentary

The battle was fun, but only for me, and only up to a point…

My opponent - an experienced wargamer - was sometimes so helpless, that oftenly during replays of his turns I got the message "1 events to playback". He later said to me that most of the time - he had simply nothing to do, because all of his units were either evaporated, or routed, or retreated, or reorganizing.

As for the advices... Playing as Allies, you have to watch your back, and to garrison every objective you take. This shouldn't be a hard task, since your forces are numerous, and can very quickly and easily commute back and forth, once you get to control the roads.

Japanese player - if anyone wants to try this as Japanese at all - should retreat very carefully, destroying bridges, and maybe should try to "hide" some units in the jungle, to try to surprise Allies from behind, or to try to capture Allies supply points. Playing against PO as Japanese after this game, I actually managed to score overwhelming victory, but I believe this was due to badly assigned objectives to PO. My favorite tactic was capturing unguarded objectives in Allied rear (armored car units are especially well suited for this) and watching the PO rushing with whole divisions from the front to the back to recapture them. Of course - this tactic is useless against experienced human player.

Japanese player's most important objective in the game should be saving enough of his starting units to fight together with reinforcements, once they arrive. If you accept the fight in the first few turns, and thus allow Allied player to destroy your first regiment before second one arrives, and to destroy second regiment before the rest of the forces arrive - you are lost. The task of preserving the forces, to fight in (still) infavorable conditions, will be extremely hard, if not impossible, against all but beginners among human opponents.

(Minor spoiler follows!) Bad news for the Japanese is the point where most of the reinforcements arrive - in the middle of the jungle, in the (supposedly) Allied back. This, for me, is somewhat bad scenario design (how did they get there?? - obviously scenario designer assumed more than he's entitled to assume), and may be a "mixed blessing" to Japanese player. From this unexpected positions - Japanese may cause havoc in Allied rear areas, but if Allied player prevented this by garrisoning them - there's no real danger, and those "jungle born" reinforcements are bound to be destroyed by quick reaction by Allies, as they were in this game I played. Units in this battle have high movement rates, and it's no problem to get to deal with problems in the back fairly quickly by removing units from the "front" (what front? :o)).

One last remark. Usually I'm into "playing to the last drop of binary blood" stuff, and don't like surrendering in the middle of the PBEM game. In fact - I HATE this, and am not willing to accept a surrender, or to be forced into one. I regard playing scenarios to the (bitter) end a matter of honor. Well... not always :o) This Burma thing was really a hopeless situation for Japanese player, and insisting on playing for the next 8 or 10 turns made no sense at all...

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