Quite some
time ago, I was inspired to start collecting figures to play something World
War II, a little bit different from the fairly standard fare of NW Europe. Back
in 2018, The Tactical Painter was running a series of After Action reports on a
campaign from Too Fat Lardies 2015 Christmas Special - covering the Malaya
Campaign 1942 that ultimately resulted in Singapore being captured. I
coincidentally picked up a Kindle copy of the 'The War Against Japan, the Loss
of Singapore, Volume I' by S Woodburn Kirby.
Reading
through even the official account, it was a litany of poor decision making, underestimation
of the opponent, inadequate forces, poor organisation and lack of training, and
of Japanese planning, leadership and flexibility. On the Empire side, with few
exceptions, the leadership from Whitehall to battalion level was diabolical.
Empire troops were thrown into line unsupported, ill-equipped, with virtually
no training (some of the recently raised Indian battalions had almost never
fired a rifle).
Leadership
paralysis in Singapore saw a resort to the tactics of poor management since
time immemorial, reorganisation. Battalions seemed to fall under half a dozen
different command structures during the brief campaign. reassignment and poor
communication saw troops being pulled out of prepared positions leaving
neighbouring flanks hanging. Overall, it was a pretty object lesson in what not
to do.
The few
high spots for the Empire troops were the courage of individual battalions and
officers, in particular some Indian units, an Australian formation and the 2nd
Battalion Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders. (In an interesting aside, when
the surviving Argylls reformed in Singapore, they were combined with Royal
Naval Marines and nicknamed the 'Plymouth Argyll' after the well known football
team.)
A regular army battalion, the Colonel of the 2nd A&S was considered
a bit odd by his fellow British officers for his insistence on jungle training
his men. Conventional wisdom was that it was impossible to fight or move in force
in the jungle and no opponent could conceivably mount a jungle campaign.
Whether that was the difference or not, the Highlanders seem to have been used
as a fire brigade in the latter stages of the campaign, and were the last
battalion to withdraw over the Causeway into Singapore, pipes playing.
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| Imperial War Museum via Wikipedia |
Part of the
appeal of this period is also the necessarily primitive equipment, so that
materiel considered obsolete was often reassigned to Malaya and other secondary
theatres. (One can only imagine the dismay of RAF and RAAF pilots, outnumbered
and facing Zeros in Buffaloes and Beauforts.) So the 2nd A&S managed to
acquire 5 obsolete Lanchester armoured cars, and possibly some Marmon
Herringtons. Facing them the Japanese forces would make considerable use of
their Ha-Go light tanks, relying on the lack of Anti-Tank capabilities to
charge through roadblocks, and attack Empire formations with virtual
invulnerability.
So having
done some serious terrain modelling -
I had a jungle, a couple of jungle huts,
roads etc could be repurposed, and at a pinch I even had railway track
that would serve. I had a start made on the 2A&S, so it was time to work on
their opponents. An anonymous Japanese army platoon, organised into 3 squads of
12 men and a corporal, a knee mortar squad of three mortar teams under a
corporal, and the senior leaders, a sergeant and a lieutenant.
The core
infantry plus an anti-tank team came from the Warlord Games Plastic Japanese.
Supports came from 'The Assault Group' in the form of snipers, flamethrowers
and a fixed mount Medium Machine Gun, Chi-Ha or Type 97 tanks from Warlord
Games, (one resin, one plastic) and two Ha-Go Light Tanks, resin prints from
'Paint & Glue'.
So firstly,
when I had a look at the plastic infantry on the sprue, I found them a little underwhelming.
The poses looked a little 'overactive', and I also felt that there was a degree
of stereotyping with some of the heads having prominent 'buck teeth' while
there were also quite a few sprues with spectacles. (Ironically, replicating
the views of many British Officers in Singapore who were very dismissive about
their opponents!)
Once
assembled though, and taking some care with the selection of arms and
equipment, I think they build up into some very active and attractive figures.
There is a nice mix of heads, some with bare helmets, some with mesh, and some
in the cap. I was a bit disappointed that none came with the tropical flaps
that attached to the cap, but those would be easy enough to add if you wanted
to.
I had to
fiddle a bit to get the numbers and poses sorted out, and rather than purchase
an additional sprue to get more riflemen, I used some artistic license and used
the 'flag' arms to creates some banner bearers. The Warlord box comes with
three flags for the banners, but note that one of these is the naval flag,
which is identifiable as the rising sun is offset from the centre of the flag.
The easy fix is to trim one edge of the flag to centre it. It does end up
slightly smaller but quite acceptable.
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| Three squads, the Knee Mortar squad is the thirteen men on the right. Supports at the back. |
Still not
sure whether I am happy with the basing. These are the Warlord bases glued to
coins, then coated with a coloured 'goop' (a mix of paint and adhesive grout),
then white glue (PVA) and 'Herb d' Provence' - a big bag of this will last for
ever, and costs next to nothing. I feel like they need some more jungle.
But they
are done, they can expect to face the Argylls when we can get back to FtF
gaming, and eventually, I will get round to painting a US Marine Corps platoon
so they can appear in an island-hopping game.
The
painting was very simple, Vallejo unless otherwise stated, undercoated
with black car primer, airbrushed with Tamiya Dark Yellow, Helmets English
Uniform, (Mesh dry-brushed German Camo Beige), green equipment is Russian Uniform, waterbottles, Chocolate, rifles Mahogany Brown, boots and leather
equipment Leather Brown. The flesh is Flat Flesh, washed with GW Seraphim
Sepia. I then went back and applied Coat d' Arms Dark Brown Super Shader over
everything other than the flesh, matt varnished, and added back in the Dark Yellow as a
uniform highlight.
Now.. on to their opponents.. unless I get distracted by something else.. oops.. shiny!
