Japan '46 Operation Coronet Allied AAR

[ComradeP]

After completing our Scheldt '44 Market Garden expanded game, Elxaime and I decided to try Japan '46.

The lack of progress in the opening days nearly led me to surrender, but in the end I wanted to see how the game would end up.

Having said that, I am firmly of the opinion that the overall balance favours the Japanese.

I'll upload a bunch of turn screenshots first and will add detailed commentary later.

There are no Dawn/Dusk turns. I'll post turn screenshots for the 04:00 and 14:00 turn of each game day. With the exception of the first day, to show the results of the turn 1 landings.

[ComradeP]

The planning maps with initial Japanese positions, as well as an indication of when and where the US corps will land.

Opening the images in a separate tab should increase the size so you can read the notes.

The southern part of the map:



The central part of the map:



The northern part of the map:

[ComradeP]

The optional rules. Default+Programmed Weather. I'm not sure why that is off by default.



The initial landings were not that rough. You can launch "phased" landings in the sense that you don't have to place all the reinforcements at once, so you don't end up with big vulnerable stacks on beach hexes.

The starting situation without any units on the beaches. The ships closest to shore are LCI ® single use rocket units.



Two X Corps divisions, the 24th ID on the left with a dark blue divisional colour and the 31st ID with a turquoise (of sorts) divisional colour on the right land on North Lamour Beach with Corps engineer/tank units in between and face the B quality 84th Division. The going here will be tough.

Two XIV Corps Divisions, the 6th ID with a light purple divisional colour on the left and the 32nd ID on the right with a dark blue divisional colour, face the 140th Division which is large but luckily C quality. Corps engineer and armour units land in between the two divisions and to the right of 32nd ID. The main problem here will be the A quality Naval Landing units coming in from the east.

As in Operation Olympic, the US once again decide to land units on opposite banks of a major river and a large city, though this time there are two divisions on each side.



Two III Marine Amphibious Corps divisions, 1st Marine Division with a green-ish divisional colour on the left/southern flank and 4th Marine Division with a purple divisional colour on the right flank at Katakai, will land together with various Corps units and face the 3rd Imperial Guards, a C quality 1st Line division. As the Marines are nearly all B quality, the going here will be fairly rapid. The LVT's that land in the first wave will get shot up badly as they're frail.

Two XXIV Corps divisions, the 7th ID with a light purple divisional colour on the left/in the south and 27th ID on the right/in the north with a pink divisional colour land together with various Corps units and face the 147th Division, a large C quality 2nd Line formation.

[ComradeP]

1st of March 1946, 06:00. Soft Conditions. Turn 2.

US forces invade Honshu in an effort to knock Japan out of the war through capturing Tokyo and the Kanto Plain.

As always with beach landings, I switched Clear Mines/Rubble off for the engineer units and launched assaults on turn 1 to clear some of the initial defences.

That leaves the minefields on the beaches intact, but casualties from artillery and direct fire when making an observed beach landing are much higher than those from the density 1 minefields on the beaches.

The first wave consists of an engineers in all beach hexes in a landing zone and a tank/LVT company/platoon in most beach hexes. In other words: in most hexes, an engineer/tank stack will land.

As in Japan '45, a good part of the initial landing depends on chance in terms of whether your units disrupt as neither the divisional engineer units or the corps engineer units have an on-map HQ and will thus recover more slowly when Disrupted. Adding floating HQ's that withdraw when the "real" HQ arrives would help.

Unlike in Japan '45, the fleet never withdraws.

Aside from 1 division that arrives in late March on the western edge of the map, all Japanese units also start on-map.

Turn 2 start:



X Corps captured 3 hexes, XIV captured one and the Japanese vacated two other hexes.



The Marines captured 2 hexes, the Japanese vacated one more hex.

XXIV Corps captured two hexes, the Japanese vacated another hex.

Considering that only engineers have landed, losing over 1000 men in a single turn is quite steep. That's why you want to get off the beaches.

I think one of the LCI ®'s was knocked out by artillery fire prior to withdrawing, as I didn't actually lose a naval unit otherwise.

In the opening stages, Japanese coastal batteries knocked out a number of turrets of the naval units. After that, I tended to stay 11 hexes away from the nearest Japanese unit so they couldn't spot the ship stacks through the counterbattery feature. That's also explains the curious lineups of naval vessels you'll see later.

[ComradeP]

1st of March 1946 14:00 Turn 6



Progress in the west is decent, but we won't be able to clear Fujisawa before the Naval Landing units reinforce the city.

That's a problem because follow-up units use the same landing beaches as the initial XIV Corps landings. That means some units won't be able to land.



Solid progress in the east.

The beach area is mostly held by Japanese units in trenches, but there are some bunkers as well. As Japanese units are Fanatical, they won't be bumped out of a bunker hex if you assault them when they're Disrupted, nor will they take additional losses when they can't retreat. That means killing Japanese units can take a loooong time.

At the time of writing this, we're at turn 151 and I have only destroyed maybe 3 battalions of regular Japanese infantry units thus far.

[ComradeP]

2nd of March 1946. 04:00 Normal conditions. Turn 11.



In the Eighth Army sector, the initial goal is to advance north a bit in order to outflank defences in Hiratsuka and Fujisawa. Unfortunately, the swift arrival of Naval Landing forces would leave the Japanese in control of Fujisawa.



In the First Army sector, both corps will initially head west.

I intended to ignore the Boso Peninsula entirely initially by threatening to isolating the Japanese defenders there through holding a frontline from the initial landing beaches to Tokyo Bay.

As you can see, and as could be expected, the loss ratio is poor for the Allies at the moment due to all the losses from landing and (in)direct fire on 200% firepower modifier Beach hexes.

[ComradeP]

2nd of March 1946 14:00 Turn 16



The frustrating part of this campaign becomes most clear in the Eighth Army sector.

C quality US forces can't sustain an offensive.

The downside of the "lean and mean" US battalions is that their fairly small size, compared to Japanese units, means even modest losses quickly result in high Fatigue gain and Disruptions. We're playing with Higher Fatigue Recovery on, which is a blessing for both sides probably given the sometimes extreme casualties (both from alt indirect/direct fire and the brutal nature of combat).

The Japanese also have the best all-round infantry in any PzC title in terms of stats. The high terrain/fortification firepower modifiers also make it difficult to outgun Japanese units with regular infantry units even though their base SA value is higher.

X Corps is slowly gaining ground on the 84th Division, but it's a slow and costly process.

Progress in the XIV Corps sector is better, but I have to keep a large number of units west of Fujisawa in case the Naval Landing units want to try to throw the Corps into the Pacific. At this point, I had lost my first unit: one of the 105mm Sherman HQ platoons that each Army tank battalion has was knocked out during an assault.

The US get 12 minesweeper units. I moved them towards Tokyo Bay on turn 1, staying out of LOS of coastal guns and observers. They've nearly reached the minefields blocking passage to the bay. I'll use them for counterbattery spotting and to observe units moving along the coastal roads later on.

Generally, when I know units will be using coastal roads, I try to move ships close to those roads at night in order to spot units on the first daylight turn. This worked well on a number of days, with costly Japanese losses as a result of naval bombardment and carpet bombing.



The Marines are making good progress, but they don't really have an enticing objective directly in front of them. The short term goal is to clear the north-south highway directly in front of the landing beaches.

Japanese engineers have constructed a bunker east of Togane whilst Fixed, which makes taking the town impossible for the moment.

XXIV Corps is making modest, but important progress. The short-term goal is to clear Mobara.

[ComradeP]

3rd of March 1946 04:00 Mud conditions Turn 21



X Corps does its best to clear Hiratsuka without turning it into a big pile of rubble.

Fujisawa on the other hand will be turned into a pile of rubble to complicate Japanese troop movement.



Poor weather conditions will limit gains in the First Army sector as moving through Field hexes is a 1 hex at a time process in Mud conditions.

The first Japanese reinforcements have reached the frontline, as the 354th Division arrives at Mobara.

The first spike in Japanese losses comes from carpet bombing reinforcements as they move along the primary roads in T-mode. A battalion can lose hundreds of men that way. It made my opponent switch to mostly moving units in T-mode at night.

I also focused on trying to hit units in urban hexes, to create rubble in order to slow down troops further down the road.

[ComradeP]

3rd of March 1946 14:00 Turn 26



Hiratsuka's city center was cleared by Corps engineer battalions and only a few hexes were turned to rubble.



III Marine Amphibious Corps will slowly shift the focus of its assaults further south, not that it's clear that Togane will be difficult to clear. The numerous Field hexes with firepower bonuses for units firing into them make a frontal attack too costly.

XXIV Corps has reached the outskirts of Mobara.

The USAAF is pounding a large number of Japanese battalions moving towards the front. It can't destroy them, but will make sure they require a few days of R&R before they can be used at the frontline.

The fleet is repositioning as the frontline moves away from the coast in order to be able to fire in support. I've also started creating stacks of ships in order to maximize the firepower of a single volley (higher losses=higher chance of Disruption)

[ComradeP]

4th of March 1946 04:00 Soft Conditions Turn 31



As you can see, the somewhat chaotic nature of the opening days and the need to keep pushing has created a patchwork of units from different divisions. That will be rationalized in the next few days.

Hiratsuka has been cleared. Engineers get to work on clearing rubble. Units from X Corps and XIV Corps can shake hands.

It's important to clear rubble in order to be able to use roads, be able to employ an interior line advantage and for supply purposes. US Corps don't exactly have a shortage of engineers, which is why you see piles of them in some hexes. Cleaning up the rear area has a higher priority than using them at the frontline in most cases. Bridge engineers don't have much else to do at the moment so they're all clearing rubble.



The 200 point objective north of Mobara is a coastal artillery bunker that will take some time to clear, which is why I'm outflanking Mobara from the southeast.

Over the next few days, 7th ID will stretch its frontline west. They won't be moving much further south for the moment.