The battle for the Gifu range was fought from December 1942 until January 22, 1943 on the island of Guadalcanal. It was part of the United States Army's plan to finally push the Japanese off of the island. The Army had recently arrived on Guadalcanal and took over for 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions that had been on there since August, 1942 when Operation Shoestring began. The Gifu, named after a prefecture in Japan, was a hilltop that dominated the local terrain. The Japanese meant to hold it until the last man and constructed bunkers and entrenchments everywhere. Inside the complex were about 4,000 battle-hardened men under the command of Colonel Oka.
The Army, after it discovered the Gifu, attempted to match Oka with the 132nd Infantry Regiment in December, but the green 132nd had no support and was fighting an enemy that had become experts in using the jungles of Guadalcanal. After the 132nd had had enough, the Army committed most of the 35th Infantry Regiment in January. Colonel Oka, however, made no attempt to withdraw in spite of his victory. He was instead hoping to buy more time so all Japanese forces could withdraw back to Rabaul, the main Japanese base in the Solomon island chain. Oka was highly successful for it took the US Army until the 22nd of January to finally eliminate his command. The Japanese thanks to Oka, used his sacrifice to effectively withdraw their entire army from Guadalcanal one month later in February. Once the US Army approached Tassafronga Point, they found only open beaches and a few stragglers. Almost six months to the day, Japan had finally conceded that Guadalcanal had been lost.
After reading the account to take the Gifu, I knew that it would be a perfect scenario to use with my World War II skirmish rules, Combat Command. It had everything that the rules stressed: Troop qualities, hidden placement, tough defenders, tanks and a lot of troops. It does not get any better than this! I researched the battle further and started sketching out a map and Order of Battle. This is where the rules come in very handy as there are only 18 pages of core rules written in an easy to read style that allows you to quickly get through them and get on with the game. The remaining 140 pages of the rulebook are Organizational data for most divisional and corps formations or support all the way down to the individual squad or sections, including interesting notes and information on how to use them in the game for the eight largest participants in the Second World War: the Commonwealth countries, France, Italy, Germany (including the Fallschirmjager and the SS), Japan, the Soviet Union, the US Army and US Marines. It was my goal to not only make Combat Command a great game, but a useable reference source for those nations as well.
As I read that Oka's command was veteran troops and the majority of the US Army were green, I was further intrigued because we rarely see those kinds of match-ups in a scenario. Combat Command handles troop type differences by recognizing there are essentially three categories of soldiers: Green, Veteran, and Elite. The rules do not always refer to them by those names because I wanted to use as much of the host nation language as possible, but the idea of those troop types go across all nations. So in the case of the Gifu, I had green US soldiers taking on Nitto-Hei, or veteran Japanese. I quickly worked up a ratio of men and found out that Colonel Oka was not as outnumbered as we first thought, so I pared down the scenario to cover just one of the US companies attacks on the outer perimeter of the Gifu.
The one nice aspect of using combat command is that it is a game that flows well if you have 10 troops or 100 troops on the table. It was very rare that one or two squads would operate on their own like they were in a vacuum as most armies fought with at least two platoons in line. I wanted to simulate the same, but not get so bogged down that it would take days to play. To help, I wrote the rules to be simple to learn, but have nothing that could not be resolved with a die roll or common sense. In play test over the last few years, we have successfully pushed entire companies over both sides of the table and still walked away in four hours or less.
One of the reasons that Combat Command can get away with such a large amount of metal on the table is the emphasis of the game on leaders or small unit leadership. Leaders are very important to the game, perhaps more so than any other. There are four types of leaders_ Sergeants, Lieutenants, Captains, and Colonels. Every leader is also slightly different for each of the eight armies present in the rulebook, but all of them have certain attributes they are proficient in.
For example, the Sergeant represents everything from a natural leader in the enlisted ranks to the exceptional platoon or company sergeant. The Sergeant is also great at small unit tactics. He allows any squad on the table to divide up into as many parts as tactically necessary. The down side to that is now the sergeant must remain with part of the squad and help direct it. That in turn deprives the player the use of the sergeant elsewhere. Leaders are also necessary to keep your advance moving or troops together. Every squad or section within 6" of a leader gets to move in both the first and second movement phases of their turn. If they are not within 6" of a leader, they must roll equal to or below their training to act on their own. If they fail, they cannot move at all. This goes a long way into simulating the uncertainty of war. Your troops will not always do what you want when you want it. Also, not all of the possible unit or section leaders in a formation are represented in the game. Instead the rules focus on the small amounts of key individuals that make a difference. There is a lot more to leaders in the rules such as their ability to command vehicles and personally direct fire, but you get the picture Great commanders always find a way to win with what they have and now, so do you!
Now that I have given you an idea of what Combat Command is about, its time to talk about the Gifu! This refight concentrated on the final US assault on the 22nd of January 1943. There, elements of the 2°a Battalion, 35th Regiment came up to finish off Oka once and for all To help them out, the Marines loaned them three M3 Stuarts, to which the army added their own tankers. The acceptance of the Stuarts told a lot more than meets the eye, as when the Army first landed on the island, they refused all attempts of the Marines to aid them in fighting the Japanese Now that their offensive that started in November was fast approaching the end of January, Army General Alexander Patch might have been feeling the heat to get something done. Even with the help, it was a near run thing and only after the lone surviving Stuart shot up several bunkers at point blank range did the real battle finally sway in favor of the US.
By this point in the fight, the Army had finally massed numerical superiority over Oka's command and this is reflected in the scenario. The US starts the game with nine green squads of infantry, three green .30cal machine gun teams and three M3 tanks. They are led by two Lieutenants and three Sergeants. In the game, every officer leader can add support staffs dependent on their rank, so each of the LTs have their platoon HQ section with them as well. Within the platoon HQ, one man carried a radio for calling in support and another was equipped as a guide. Now the guide was supposed to be a squad level asset until 1944 when the position was officially done away with, but what I found was that the average squad did not have a guide and some units had one per platoon or company. so one per platoon is what is represented in the game.
As such, a man from each of the platoon HQs were now equipped as guides with the M1903A4 Springfield sniper rifle. This allowed them to target any figure on the table within sight, just like a sniper. Not only do Lieutenants bring all kinds of goodies to the fight, they also have one very important function in the game in that they allow any two hurt squads to combine together into a new squad and get them back into the action. Lastly, Marine Air Support from Henderson field was available in the form of an F4F Wildcat and a SBD Dauntless. The Dauntless carried one, 1000 lb. Bomb.
Combat Command: Assault on the Gifu! December 1942 - January 22, 1943
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© Copyright 2002 Hal Thinglum
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