Bakudan o otosu!

 Or "Bombs Away!". Tim put on trial game of his VCOW offering, covering Japanese air raids on Wake Island in December 1941. This is of the one player = one bomber crew variety.

We had a good turnout for this one, seven crews. Historically the raids involved 20-30 aircraft at a time. For each plane we had to allocate ourselves and people we knew to the various crew positions, and in a Misubishi G3M, there are quite a few. Two pilots, three gunners plus a bomb aimer and navigator.

The mighty Nell. Tim produced a plastic model of one and waved it around but I failed to take a photo. The raids were conducted over stupendous distances (well over 700 miles), which naturally meant swapping bombs for fuel.

I was designated as flight leader, having once owned a Mitsubishi Lancer (acquired from my father in law).

Wake Island is that tiny blob in the middle of the Pacific, we were flying out missions from the northern Marshall Islands, northwest of Australia.

We flew a series of missions, each one involved taking off, forming up, finding the target, evading the defences, dropping bombs, finding the way home and finally landing unscathed. The success, or otherwise, of each stage was determined by card draws and sometimes a poor result could be avoided by making a 'manouvre test' - which involved throwing a pencil into the air and catching it.

I had a bit of a wobble on takeoff but managed to avoid crashing with a successful manouvre test.

The actual loss rate on the raids was fairly low, in line with the historical averages. The defences downed relatively few aircraft but damaged quite a few.

After three missions I had to duck out, but by that time we'd managed to actually get bombs on target from ten sorties, had three aircraft damaged and one shot down. Casualties were 2 WIA and 8 KIA (almost all from the downed aircraft).

That was lots of fun and there was much whooping and groaning as various good and bad things happened. 

 

I have been to.... Japan

 We've recently returned from a 3 week trip to Japan, which I have to say was absolutely amazing. We arrived in mid March, and travelled to the very tip of Honshu and (briefly) to Kyushu, although most of the places we visited were in the centre of the country. Everything from blizzards, through howling gales, rain and blazing sunshine.

Anyway, as ever I'll put up a few pictures of historical/military interest. First up though, a few touristy pictures.

Tokyo Tower. Mt Fuji dimly visible in the distance in the morning sun (this was actually the view from our hotel in Tokyo, Park Hotel in Shiodome, highly recommended).

The frozen north! This is near Akita iirc.

Cherry blossoms in the centre/South and the traditional picnics underneath them.

Mt Fuji looking pretty good across the bay.

OK, enough of that, lets have some Samurai stuff.

We visited a few Samurai houses, this was the largest, but they all had a similar layout essentially being a walled building complex. This one was big enough to host a number of farm buildings and various crops and animal enclosures.

Inside was much as you'd expect  - lots of wood and paper sliding doors etc and tatami mats on the floor.

This was a much smaller house, albeit still with a decent walled garden. This one featured its own moat!

Nice set of armour.

And a couple of Katana blades. They looked absolutely razor sharp.

One of the internal gardens. I gather there are six desirable characteristics of Japanese gardens which include water, plants, a vista and some other things I can't recall.

Tokugawa Armour (reproduction!). This was at the Tokagawa Shrine and tomb beneath Mount Fuji. 

This fine chap is outside the Imperial Palace and was one of the 13th Century Emperors most loyal retainers. Now he is on permanent guard outside the remains of Edo Castle. 

Speaking of castles, we also visited several of these, although they were all built towards the end of the Sengoku period and saw very little (or no) actual use in warfare. They all had a similar construction, but some were (much) bigger than others.

This is the main keep of Matsue Castle, one of only 12 surviving original castles, the rest having been destroyed accidentally or deliberately, although many have been rebuilt in modern times. Unlike Medieval European castles, they aren't designed to be permanently occupied.

The interior construction is very similar to an eighteenth century Man of War! The whole wooden structure rests on a massive stone base.

Outside the main keep is a system of moats, walls and smaller towers. This is a watchtower at Kanazawa Castle, the construction is similar to the main keep but much smaller.

And there are usually secondary moats inside the defensive works too.

This bridge leads to the island with the main keep on it. You can also see how sturdy the walls are, and how imposing the moats are.

The final castle we visited was Edo Castle in Tokyo, now the Imperial Palace. Compared to the others, it is absolutely vast. This is one of the huge secondary moats and a watch tower.

One of the inner fortifications. The amount of stonework in general was very impressive.

And this is the remaining base of the keep at Edo which was four times the size of any others we saw.

Along with castles there were various nautical encounters.

A Coastguard ship, we saw quite a few of these in various sizes but no proper Japanese Navy ships.

I rather liked this tugboat with its dayglo mast. This was in Aomori at the very tip of Honshu. The snow covered mountains of Hokkaido were just visible on the horizon.

Also in Aomori was this excellent museum ship covering the old rail ferries which ran from Aomori to Hokkaido. The rails are mounted on a sort of retractable crane thing so they move up and down with the tide. 

Now there is an undersea tunnel(!) going to Hokkaido, one of the longest in the world, which has reduced the demand for ferry services.

The preserved ferry from the side. Aomori was attacked in August 1945 by B29s and all six of the original wartime ferries were sunk or damaged by US carrier planes in various attacks.

Another Coastguard ship moored near the ferry.

Even more coastguard ships. These were on the Sea of Japan, I can't recall exactly where.

Shipping on the the strait between Honshu and Kyushu. It was incredibly busy, as the strait links the Pacific with the Sea of Japan and all those busy factories on Korea and China. At the narrowest section (just visible) there is a road bridge and tunnel. 

There was at least one traditional Japanese ship doing pleasure cruises.

This tug boat, named "Yamato" apparently has ideas above its station! I later discovered that Yamato is actually quite a common name for things in Japan.

It wouldn't be a trip to Japan without a trip to Hiroshima.

The famous nuclear dome building. Ground zero was 150m east of here, so I'm astonished it is still standing.

The cenotaph, memorial park and eternal flame were all very well done.

We did visit the museum, but it was very busy. The 'human shadow' steps have bene moved inside here now. I didn't take any photos inside apart form this one as it seemed rather distasteful. 

Under this dome are the ashes of 70,000 people, which is rather sobering.

This shrine is to the memorialise the school students who were in the city at the time.

Three of the original tramcars survived the atomic attack and are still running. We were fortunate enough to see one. The rest of the trams are much more modern.

That was a great trip, very enjoyable, with everything from BladeRunner to Japanese social realist cinema and taking in a big dollop of Shogun and The Last Samurai on the way. Great stuff and highly recommended for a visit. Even if you don't speak Japanese, Google Translate is very helpful!

 

14th Army in Burma

John was keen to try out his nice new 14th Army and Japanese figures, so he put on this game set in Burma in early 1945. It was taken from a training scenario on Jungle Warfare, and the idea was to try out the approved drill. The game was run using Blitzspiel using 15mm figures. The ground scale was around 6" to 100 yards, which funnily enough was also the maximum visibility in the dense forest.

The battlefield from the British side. I contributed a few palm trees but they were mainly Johns. It looked pretty jungle-like I think.

The British objective was this village, down at the far end of the track. 

On came the leading platoon, ably led by Graham. The Japanese presence (or not) was indicated by inverted playing cards. The dense undergrowth made the going very slow, but lining up in a big column on the track just seemed to be asking for trouble

After a while some of the suspicious looking cards turned out to be real Japanese troops.

A section of the were lurking in the trees, covering the track.

Their opening shots were ineffective and fairly soon the Brens had them pinned down.

Then it was time for right flanking and clearing the position with bayonet and grenade, covered by the Brens. Just like the manual.

As the Japanese were pinned by fire, they were easily eliminated.

On up the track we went until another lot opened fire. They pinned the leading rifle group.

While all this excitement was going on, the Company command group came on, along with the MFC and other platoon commanders. Runners went back and forth but the Grahams chaps were doing fine.

The lead platoon fanned out,  but the Japanese melted back into the jungle as the rest of the company began marching on.

Things started getting a bit sticky when this nasty MG opened up down the road, pinning the leading section.

Then this sniper started shooting from behind a tree and another Japanese section opened fire.

Time for a spot of smoke to cover the pinned troops on the road.

The leading platoon had another section pinned by the Japanese fire, at which point it was thoroughly bogged own and time to commit the rest of the company against what was obviously a strong position (it turned out there were two other Japanese sections as well).

At that point it was time to call it a day, we'd pushed a fair way up the track but time had run out. The attack never really developed into a company attack as the dense jungle precluded a rapid flanking manouvre. Instead it was a platoon fight and Graham managed to get a long way on his own. It was a shame we didn't manage to do the full company attack but perhaps we were a bit too tentative in our advance.