"Tarawa game" Topic

This is a 6 foot by 4-foot four-piece "island" or Tarawa (Betio) I built.

The "island" is pink foam. I printed a map of the island on a sheet of graph paper and then marked off the squares with a chalk line on the pink foam to get an accurate representation of the island and cut it out. I painted it with white glue and then spread sand over it. The base is plywood mounted on a 2x2 wood frame. The bunkers are scratch built using DAS clay and sand glued on it. The palm trees are 1/4" thick solder wire painted. The palm fronds reflect the damage and "trimming" from the naval barrage. They are palm fronds are from a railroad model kit hot glued to the top of the solder wire. The base of the palm trees is a heavy metal washer with DAS clay over it with sand glued on top of it.

I wrote to some people on Kiribati (Tarawa) to get them to send me some sand from the beach to use but I could not get any takers.

The figures are Airfix 1/72 scale I painted. I didn't need many Japanese figures as they rarely came out.

The LVT amtracks are thin sheets of balsa I pasted a printed LVT view from above. Cheap but effective with good waterline view.

The rules were fairly simple. There was an AM, PM and night turn. The Marine figures represent a platoon. Each attack they made was countered with a Japanese counterattack. So combat and movement are somewhat abstracted. As the battle progresses over the 3 days the counterattacks became fewer and were based on historical occurrences from the book.

The Marine player attacked as much as he wanted but gained "friction" which slowed him down and made him weaker against counter-attacks. He had to fight to get to his objective but if pressed too hard he might not defend well against counterattacks. He could also run low on ammo on the first day.

Each Platoon had 9 points (one for each fireteam) plus a CP of an LT and Platoon Sergeant. At the Company level was the Weapons Platoon of LMG's, Combat Engineers, and flamethrowers. No bazookas at Tarawa but they did have M1 Garands and each Platoon had Grenade Launchers.

Casualties were represented as KIA, WIA or WW (walking wounded). The Marine player could keep the walking wounded with the platoon but could only be used to defend, not attack. He could send the walking wounded to an aid station and in the next AM turn, they could recover and come back as reinforcements. WIA's needed to be evacuated. This could be done right away by using another point (team) to evacuate them further decreasing his platoon strength or wait for a recovery team. Each turn a WIA needs to wait to be evacuated is a chance they'll die. Corpsman can help keep them alive.

I find it hard to believe how few games have corpsman/medics. Corpsman have a chance of converting a WIA to a WW but have to take a causality check.

The first two days the Marines were short of ammo and no flamethrowers on the first day as they got too wet. Supply depots were set up on the beach to draw from.

The Amtracks could make multiple trips but when damaged might sink on any turn. The Higgins Boats offloaded the infantry at the reef that needed to wade into the beach or seek cover at the pier. An officer needed to rally them to get them to the beach. Historically, this is where Major Jim Crow walked under the pier with a 12 gauge shotgun sticking it in the face of guys to "motivate" them to get to the beach.

Each turn started off with the naval and air bombardment This suppressed the defenders making attacks easier for the rest of the turn. Suppressed defenders automatically recovered at the end of a turn.

Attacks were normally suppressive fire from the rifle teams and a 2-3 man team assault with flamethrowers, demo charges, grenades or whatever they had. If successful the attack on the bunker was done. If the attack was repulsed there may have been causalities and the Platoon needed to try again. They could attack as many times as they wanted but thy'd get a lttle weaker in each attack. In dire situations a rifle team would assault with rifles and grenades. That happens a lot on the first day. WP grenades work great!

Random actions were sniper attacks, knee mortar barrages, and small scale counter attacks. Officers and NCO's (E-5 and E6), especially the "Gunny" were force multipliers and could make heroic assaults on their own.

Wolfhag

What a labor of love, thanks for sharing. I definitely would love to have played this one.

Very cool thanks for sharing this.

Nice project Wolfhag, and it looks great too!

That is something I would have loved to participate in.

That is awesome! Covering it in sand from the island would have been a great touch, too bad that fell through.

I love how you incorporated medics and dealing with wounded into the decision making.

This is too awesome for words.

If you're still in central California, Wolfhag, this game needs to come to an SBGC meeting and/or Pacificon. Maybe annually.

- Ix

Wolfhag,

The board is awesome. Great photo shots, and my favorite is the one showing all the LVTs and LCPs approaching the island.
Game sounded great and your rules and aar seemed to cover all the bases. Sure would love to have played it. Nice Work

Semper Fi

Sam

Wow, thanks guys. This was actually my first attempt at building something like this other than some structures for my son's WH 40K games. I'm nowhere as good as most of you guys.

Regarding the rules, I'm not a game designer so I just read accounts of the battle and determined the best way to portray them. I did have some board games of the battle but I felt they didn't capture the flavor of the battle, tactics and decisions that had to be made.

Yellow Admiral,
I'm still in Contra Costa County and did play this at Pacificon in 2007 or 2008. However, I'll be in the Chattanooga area in the Spring 2021. I've been to Pacificon since about 2003, I'm sure I've met you. I gamed mostly with Rick Schult who has moved to SD and the guys from the South Bay Club in SJ. I've known Mark Ruggerio for decades.

I think the best way to play the game is as a collaborative effort between 3-9 Marine players. With three players each commands a Regiment of 27 platoons and nine players each commands a Battalion of 9 platoons. You really need to use the Marine tactic of having two Platoons on line and one in the rear recovering and rotating them around with a fresh one coming in every day or when you need to pull one out of the line. That's left up to the player to manage his personnel and take care of them. If not, there is a good chance the advance will grind to a halt. The multiple Marine players get to argue over who will get reinforcements, naval and air support, etc. That can get pretty intense and comical. The GM can play the Japs and roll on the chart whenever a Marine unit moves or attacks. The night belongs to the Japanese but the Marine player determines which units and supplies are landed.

Since the Maries are playing as a team, they all conduct their movement and attacks during an AM or PM turn at the same time but need to coordinate with the unit on their flanks. That means they may need to slow down or speed up to hit their objectives. Platoons can attack as often as they like during an AM or PM turn but most likey they'll stop after 2-4 attacks because of friction, causalities, etc. The Marine players can attack with their platoons in any sequence they like. During an AM or PM turn, they could attack with one platoon, switch to others and than come back to the original one. This enables him to slowly open up a gap to create flank attacks with another fesh platoon. Be creative. At the end of the PM turn the players need to link up to make sure they can stop infiltrators which will come during the night. If they get through they can cause havoc on aid stations, rear area HQ's and supply depots.

One problem the Marines have is they can only advance as fast as the slowest platoon. Any gaps in the line are infiltrated by the Japs at night. The slow ones need to be reinforced by 75mm Pack Howitzers providing direct fire into the bunkers. The 37mm anti-tank guns are great at suppressing bunkers by firing HE rounds through the loop holes.

It's interesting to see how players react and handle their WW and WIA's. Too many causalities means you have to pull them out of the line to rest and refit. Small Arms fire from the Japanese, when effective, has a 20% chance of a KIA, 40% chance of WIA and 40% chance of a WW and can be modified by the Corpsman by converting a KIA to a WIA but there is a 10% chance he'll get nailed by a sniper when he does. Artillery and mortars is 10%, 40% and 50%. There is always a chance of a team suffering from battle fatigue and heat strokes becoming a WW. WIA's can die if not evacuated right away.

There was a small supply dump inland between Red 1 and 2. When a Marine Platoon gets to it there is a chance they find a Saki cache intact and one of their squads will take advantage of it and not be able to attack for the rest of the AM or PM turn as they become a DD causality (drunk and disorderly).

To keep the game simple, any Marine units not moving or attacking are assumed to be Hunkered Down and safe from direct fire weapons except near the big bunker by the end of the pier on Red 3 which will make things very difficult for 2/8 forcing them to hide behind the sea wall most of the first and second day. Any unit can be hit at any time by mortars, snipers and infiltrators.

For shorter games you could just play Red Beach 1 or Red Beach 3. I've made charts for the Japanese counterattacks for whenever the Marines want to move or attack that is somewhat historical and would work for a solitare game too. The Japanese do get to Banzai on the second night.

As the Marine player, you can't hold back. Historically, the Navy needed to land the Marines and take the island within a few days or the Japanese could sortie a naval task force from Rabaul and they were not ready for a fleet battle as they had WWI battleships. There were Jap subs in the area and one did sink the carrier USS Liscome Bay with about 900 causalities.

Ideally, I'd like to use a three figure stand for platoons in 10mm or 15mm. It would make it easier to mark KIA, WIA and WW.

Bismarck,
I'm glad you like it. I'll put the latrines in next. I have a detachable pier too where LT Hawkins and the Scout Sniper Platoon start off the attack. The US intel was able to accurately determine the enemy strength by counting the latrines.

Wolfhag

Very nice setup. Tarawa (Betio) was a knife fight where the Marines learned many lessons the hard way.

Well done Wolfhag, we'll worth the effort you have put in!

A lot of thought and work went into this project. Very nice, thanks for posting.

Thanks again guys.

Reading books on the battle convinced me to find a way to include chances for unusual results, bad luck, and SNAFU's as there were a few interesting ones during the battle.

There was one tank-tank engagement. A Japanese tank with a 37mm gun (Chi-Ha?) and Marine Sherman. They fired almost simutaneously. The Jap tank was destroyed and the 37mm round went down the Sherman barrel and knocked out the breech block. At night someone went out to a Sherman that had bogged down on the way to the beach and recovered a new one. The 75mm gun was back in action in the morning.

Tarawa was the first attack on a defended beach and the Navy thought their 14" gun bombardment would sink the island. However, they fired low trajectory from close range and most of the shells ricoched off and exploded over the water on the other side of the island so it was faily ineffective.

The Japanese 8" guns did get some shots off the first morning but were quickly silenced. They did have some close misses on troop transports that had to take evasive action. A single 8" hit on a troop transport could have changed the entire battle.

A squadron of Army B-24's were supposed to take off and drop 2000lb bombs the morning of the invasion. However, the first one that took off crashed and they decided to scrap the mission but forgot to tell the Navy. The US found out after the battle only 2000lb bomb direct hit would knock out some of the bunkers as the coconut logs gave unusually good blast protection because of their spongy makeup.

There were some Jap tanks buried as bunkers. A Marine was able to get close enough to drop a grenade down the hatch and sat on it until the grenade exploded.

The big command bunker near the pier on Red 3 took multiple direct hits from battleships but failed to knock it out. A Marine 81mm mortar barrage round just happened drop through a machine gun opening on the top of the bunker exploding the ammo inside and suppressed it enough the Marines could attack with flamethrowers and demo charges. A Sherman tank got around to the rear of the bunker just as the steel doors opened and dozens of Japanese tried to flee. They were cut down by 75mm canister rounds.

On the first day a lookout on a Navy DD saw a group of Japanese moving across the island and quickly called in 5" gunfire with air bursts. It killed the entire group. They did not find out until after the battle that this was the entire Jap cadre and their CO who were most likely going to lead a counterattack. It was felt that their elimination was the reason there was no Jap counterattack the first night that could have easily overcome the Marines who were mostly hunkered down by the seawall.

The Amtracks were supposed to drop the Marines off inland but they could not get over the seawall.

There were several friendly fire incidents from aircraft strafing.

A Navy DD did get in a shootout with a Jap 75mm shore gun and took a hit just below the waterline. A sailor stuck his butt in the hole to stop the leak until a damage control team could ge there. I think he got a Navy Cross.

On the first day only one radio got ashore that worked, the others were waterlogged. Then they lost contact with the USS Maryland command ship so no one knew what was happening with the landing for most of the first day.

The Amtracks had no overhead cover and the Japanese 75mm guns were firing airbursts that exploded over the exposed Marines that could have been deadly. However, the 75mm shell casings were too light and the Marines described it like getting hit by hot sand. At the sea wall the Japs threw grenades into the LVT's of which many were thrown back. One Marine threw back 6 before one blew up in his hand.

The Japs expected the Marines to land on the sea side of Betio and had their troops deployed to defend there and that's where most of the beach was mined. However, the Marines surprised them decided to land on the lagoon side. The Jap troops were pinned down by the pre-assault barrage and could not deploy to the lagoon side until the bombardment lifted. This allowed the first few waves of Amtracks to get ashore with very light causalities.

I wrote this from memory so fell free to make corrections. Here is a good account of the battle. The link downloads a PDF: link

Wolfhag

I've always thought that the problem with playing the Pacific island campaign is that there is not enough for the Japanese player to do once the initial defence is set. From a gaming point of view all the fun and action is playing the Marines and I suspect that's one reason the PTO is less popular with gamers than other theatres.

I like the direction you have gone here. I suspect the solution lies with both players acting cooperatively to control the Marines against some sort of programmed Japanese defence. In other words a set of solo type rules. Given the fixed nature of Japanese defences, concealed positions and the limited number of possible Japanese responses I imagine this may not be too difficult to achieve.

Great work and some great ideas.