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Old October 19th, 2012, 12:05 AM

Firestorm Firestorm is offline
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Default Re: Oh how I hate the Aleutians

So I decided to look into this a bit. I'm playing the the first battle of the US long campaign, Aleutian Islands, and it ain't been too bad so far. I may be getting lucky though; they're sending hordes of those little things they call tanks at me, which must mean fewer points for infantry, and I haven't seen any enemy airplanes despite buying up some pretty significant anti-air assets (eight .50 Cal AAMGs, two 40mm AAs, one .30 Cal AAMGs).

Apart from those. My core is a force of two "Co Team 42" companies, one "Co Team 42 (2)" company, one "Bn Wpns Co 30", four snipers, an engineer platoon, a patrol of two scout teems. I generally picked the cheapest/worst units available (M6 Fargo tank destroyers) and I chopped out their off-map artillery batteries in favour of on-map M1897 field guns.

For support, I took a spotter plane and four P-40 Warhawks, two T-16 light tanks, five halftracks, a "Cav team 42" (motor recce), a Dsmtd Cav Pl+ (horse cavalry) and a Cav Transport team (so a short company of semi-motorized cavalry). That many horses in Alaska is probably unrealistic (mules somewhat less so), but they make excellent transport in that kind of terrain and are nice to have when the MG teams start falling behind. Also good for typical cavalry stuff: following those little creeks and ravines and sneaking a force of dismounts into the back with the artillery park.

The Aleutian Island Campaign really was pretty hellish: 5,537 casualties out of 144,000 participants. Over three hundred died at Kiska and they didn't even fight anyone. Attu had the worst casualty ratio of any US battle except Iwo Jima if you include the weather-related ones. So in that regard, it seems the biggest problem might be that the game's being too realistic.
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