East Sector, Pilar, January 17-22, 1942 (turns 9-14)
Turning our focus back to the East sector, the US/PH forces crossed the river in good order and took their positions on a new defensive line.
As they start to settle the vanguard of the JP forces in the form of two 9-strength Infantries attempt to ford the river and attack 1/D and 1/C Coy at Pilar itself. They suffer 5 and 4 damage respectively (inserts with green borders) and each will take a further 3 damage from the vigorous US counterattack and retreat into the FoW.
In the process 1/C Coy took 3 damage and I realize that for whatever reason the Pilar bunker did not engage the closest Infantry prior to 1/C Coy's attack, that might have spared some casualties to our unit.
The Fortress Battery fires on a (heavily damaged) Infantry occupying the airfield without discernible damage other than a 20/100 drop in efficiency.
The B5N2 tactical bomber returned after repairs and set its sights on 1/C Coy. Defensive fire from both AA Bty is slight but not negligible and will be further compounded when both units really tune in their aim. The JP bomber is once again in need of major repairs (Figure 1).
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| Figure 1 - Pilar, Turn 9 |
Three turns later and the defense again merits a pictorial report. Figure 2 is rather busy so I'll attempt to unpack it.
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| Figure 2 - Pilar, Turn 12 |
From left to right the Fortress Battery targets a JP Infantry at 7-strength that ended its turn on the river North of Cav/C Sqdn and inflicts 2 damage. Cav/C Sqdn follows suit expecting to destroy the pesky JP but they retreat into the FoW with 1-strength remaining.
Pilar bunker targets the 6-strength Heavy Infantry to its North and inflicts the predicted single casualty. 1/C Coy follows suit inflicting the predicted 3-damage and prompting the Heavy Infantry to retreat onto the airfield.
At Pilar VP proper 1/D Coy targets the 5-strength JP Type 95 Ha-Go to its North and inflicts 2 damage and 3/10 efficiency loss causing it to retreat. Our unit takes one point of damage in return.
The vignettes on the right refer to the JP turn preceding the situation in Figure 2. From top to bottom: the Type 95 Ha-Go attacked 1/D Coy that had 14th "Punaluu" in support, not a wise course of action; the Engineer also attacked 1/D Coy and lost 4 out of its 5-strength; the Heavy Infantry attacked 1/C Coy and takes 2 damage; two Infantries attack PH/D Coy and take 2 damage each (at this point PH/D Coy and Cav/C Sqdn's positions were reversed and both were deeply entrenched). The last vignette is deceptive: the JP Infantry attacked at 2-strength and took 2 damage i.e. it was destroyed; the screenshot must have been taken before the death animation triggered.
One and a half turns later (because Figure 3 depicts the situation at the start of the US/PH turn) and a pictorial report is indeed in order.
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| Figure 3 - Pilar, Turn 14 |
On the left flank the defenders have mostly disengaged. Cav/C Sqdn is providing cover for the withdrawal as it has plenty of movement and will dispatch the 1-strength Infantry to its North.
On the right flank the US units are showing the strain of combat and the JP units across the river are fresh and fully over-strength (these are units that haven't been engaged yet as the JP doesn't appear to be able to repair above 10-strength).
1/B Coy replaced 1/D Coy at Pilar proper in the previous turn and as there were two JP tanks in position to attack 5th "Hickam" and 14th "Punaluu" took supporting positions in Anti-Tank mode. Both JP tanks did attack to spectacular outcomes as both disappeared in fiery balls of fuel and debris. The full-strength Infantry that followed lost its over-strength but 1/C Coy was left at little more than half-strength.
On the 14th turn I decided to take a look at the blown bridges and check if the AI was set to build pontoon bridges. It's more complicated than that because I had to juggle 2-D and 3-D and FoW-enabled and FoW disabled save files so I had to defer the doing to Turn 15. So Turn 15 starts normally in 2-D, I exit to Menu, change the display options to 3-D and load the "auto-save"... and after closing the Turn Overview the "Captured Equipment" event is triggered. I don't know if my copy of OOB or of the US Pacific campaign is somehow corrupted but I had been worrying about the delay in this event as in Mr. Abernethy's playthrough it happened as early as Turn 10 (Figure 4).
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| Figure 4 - Recycling |
As the Aircraft and Armament Evaluation Establishment is located half a planet away, has a substantially different technical expertise and belongs to a different nation, the understrength Type 95 Ha-Go light tank is assigned to the Foreign Equipment and Ammunition Evaluation Establishment (Figure 5). It will come in handy albeit rather briefly but that will have to wait until the next post as this one's image weight budget is nearly exhausted.
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| Figure 5 - FEAEE report |
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