Last Thursday saw the endgame of the Japanese incursion into Milne Bay. As you may recall, General Maku Sakaspiro had lost some of his original force walking down from KB Mission and was held up by the Australians straddling the river (although he'd managed to sneak some forces through the jungle at the end of the road leading to the airfield).
As night fell, the Japs landed their other battalion on the beach (down the road from the Australians who were hunkered down in their positions, by the side of the road and in the small town. As it was night, the Australians knew nothing about it and had to wait for dawn before they could react.
However, the American submarine made another attempt to get at the transports. However, my crappy dice rolling meant the fish missed and the sub was soon sunk by the destroyers in the bay.
The Japanese made good going with the landings and set themselves up for an assault. Luckily for the Australians, the dawn also brought the remnants of the air cover who (thanks to Russ' spectacular dice rolling) took out 3 units straight away!
As the Japanese contacted the Australians, they also called down fire from the destroyers in the bay - and pummelled the town (luckily not doing much in the way of inflicting casualties). As they surrounded the town, we decided to get the Aussies out of the trenches and into combat - but again our crap dice against Mark's suspect dice throwing (aka 'The 1" Drop') made a big difference and one battalion of green Australians soon high-tailed it into the jungle.
Incidentally, the American Air Force made a brief appearance. A flight of B-17's appeared over Milne Bay, hit nothing, then flew home.
Talking of brief appearances, the Japanese Air Force did a brief fly-past, flew CAP over their troops then flew off.
The remaining Australian battalion gave a good account of themselves and came within a breath of breaking through to the airfield and safety, but lost one base too many and also routed.
However, these two green units (with the air cover) had pretty much decimated the Japanese forces. The Japs had to abandon much of their artillery and use the crews as makeshift infantry - showing how bad things had got. It didn't help that Russ again plastered them with the air force and took a few more bases of the dwindling infantry.
Night was now approaching and the Japanese decided to assault the airfield under cover of darkness.
Unknown to them, we'd bolstered to airfield defence with 2 battalions of regular troops as well as two 25lb guns. These were dug in all along the airstrip. As the Japanese approached they were allowed banzai charges (giving them +2 on the dice BUT meaning they would die if they lost the dice-off). This was referred to as the Banzai Bollocks as the remaining veterans went through the Australians like a knife through butter - losing a couple of units but taking out several Australian units in turn.
However, with dawn's early light came a change in fortune - the big guns could now bring fire onto the Japanese. Very soon the veterans were reduced to nothing and with it the slim chance of victory.
Final Results
Japanese losses - 2 cruisers, 1 destroyer, 1 tank, 1 anti-tank gun, 2 battalions of Marines KIA (and we assume some abandoned artillery)
Australian Losses - 2 Battalions of Militia routed, 2 flights of Kittyhawks.
Summary
The final result, we found out, was unlikely to lead to Japanese victory. They had too few land forces to make much headway against increasing numbers of Australian battalions coming into the battle. Their only chance was for us to string out the Australians and have them unsupported (so they could be destroyed in turn). However, we'd already determined that we couldn't defend all areas of the map so concentrated on the most likely route to the most obvious target (the road from KB Station to the first airfield).
There were some unlucky incidents - the Japanese getting round the back of our defensive line. There was also some inspired stuff (like the beach landing cutting our green troops off from the airfield). The airforce was superb - destroying supplies, taking out 2 cruisers and 6 units of troops (indeed, with hindsight we might have just kept them over the Japanese advance and let them wear the opposition down further - but then the cruiser guns would have been devastating.
Interestingly, we both played our forces pretty much as the battle had really been fought. The Japanese came the same way and the Australians defended in a similar manner.
I enjoyed the campaign. It certainly made us think more 'in advance' and gave a real feel for not knowing what was out there and where it would hit. The only criticism is the deployment of troops before spotting - although this sped play up it did detract a bit from the realistic element as we were adjusting to troop placement despite them not being spotted. The battle for the airstrip was (for me) much better as the Japanese had to contact the troops before spotting (and had moved 50% of their force to their left to protect the flank from a non-exisitent enemy).
Ian should be congratulated for a well-run campaign, and we look forward to the next chapter.