Aerial Resupply - An Idea for a Chindits Scenario

[Chief Rudiger]

I have been reading Bernard Ferguson and Mike Calvert's accounts of the Chindit operations in Burma. At one point Ferguson was having trouble orientating himself on the map as they were in dense jungle with no discernable geographical features to indicate which part of the "valley" they were in. Wingate rode up (yes, they took horses on the Chindit operations!) and said they must be in such and such a place because of the minute slope of the ground. The maps included in the books show some areas as having hardly any contours, only "jungle", "paddy" or "village", which makes for pretty easy map making!

While i'm not sure whether this game is really suited to modelling, rewardingly, the tactical level of Jungle operations, i thought that if you took the platoon, or chindit equivalent, as the basic tactical unit, rather than the company, then it might be alright. The scale of both Chindit operations is not so large that the sheer number of platoon units would overburden people's computers, especially as only a fraction of the Special Force would be present on any one map/scenario, ditto for the Japanese.

The other problem i thought of was resupply. The first chindits expedition recieved supplies via airdrop and then man/mule huled them around or depot'ed them for emergencies. The second chindit expedition, which i am still reading about, being a bigger affair, prepared landing strips at their jungle strongholds to fly reinforcements too, then were supplied by paradrop, into their strongholds, or into clearings for the dispatched raiding columns, just like the first chindits.

The former method, stronghold landing/airdrop is perhaps pretty easy to model, using the Supply Entry Point "air supply" option, where the drawing base unit has to dispatch vehicles to pick supply up from the SEP, rather than the normal delivery of supply FROM the SEP, by "ghost" trucks, automatically to the base unit. With the "air supply" SEP the chindit stronghold base unit would only be able to draw supplies from the Dakota landing strip when the route there is safe. Japanese infiltration parties would therefore have to be cleared from the SEP/landing strip before A/C could "land" and "unloaded".

If this landing strip was denied then a similar, but lower value SEP could be positionned over the stronghold itself, so that the defenders get a trickle of supply from "airdrop". Were the enemy to position heavy weapons, i.e. flak, near enough the stronghold SEP then this would prevent the Stronghold base dispatching supply columns to the SEP, simulating A/C being detered by AA fire more than the supply "gatherers" being prevented from collecting the supplies. Such a scenario unfolded when the "Aberdeen" stronghold, i think, was set up too near to the Japanese main force at Myitkyina, who struck the new "stronghold" before the Chindits had time to properly establish themselves.

For the mobile columns, they could rely on a scattering of air drop SEP's accross the map. Each raiding column might have a small base unit with mule 'vehicles'. The unit might take a long time to deploy like a day, to simulate the delay between radio request and suitable weather for the A/C to fly and the delay in supply collection/mule loading. This might reduce the frequency of the base unit sending supply columns to distant SEPs. When it did, the time taken for the transport column to get there and back would be pretty long. If minimal 'transport', i.e. mules were allocated to it then hardly any supply would be recieved in this way. The base and its supplied sub units would virtually have to sit on top of the SEP so that many small trips could be made.

The 'mule column' base unit might have a high supply carrying capacity so that once stocked, either at the stronghold, or from an air drop, it would be able to supply its sub units from its reserve for quite some time. All it would have to do to begin distributing supplies to its sub-units would be to deploy. As long as the base prioritised supplying its sub units from its reserve rather than resrocking this reserve and sedning its limited transport assests off accross the map then this might work. It would simular a 'rest day'.

If the fighting sub units had high ammo/supply capacity themselves then they would not have to draw supplies during any engagement lasting more than a day, so the long deploy time of the base would not be much of a handicap, but would encourage more realistic hit-and-run attacks.

Once i've finished the scenario and map i'm working on at the moment will try creating a basic "white city" scenario where a stronghold is established accross the Japanses North South railway communications in the North of Burma. They built a Dakota strip, and once the Japanese attacked to clear the railway, mobile columns were sent out to attack the communications of the besiegers. I might also experiment with small units of Burman villagers/intelligence network/sabateours with high recon values in all villages so that the allied player knows whats going on in the jungle unless the Japanese attack the units, which, given their size would be easily destroyed, and not distrubt the Japanese AI overly.