Russian Artillery Batteries

 A Russian heavy artillery battery with 12blr cannon and heavy licorne

and a Russian light artillery battery with 6lbr and light licorne

Russian Infantry Units

 Two Russian infantry units ready to fight.  Still need to add flags but these are the Odessa and Simbirsk regiments from the 27th Division.  The 27th fought at the Fleches at Borodino.  Normally not a problem with AB miniatures, but the advancing pose figures have fragile bayonets, so a drop of glue was added to the bayonet to hopefully help hold them on.

Second Volume in Ian Toll's Pacific War Trilogy

Another excellent read in the Pacific War Trilogy.  Toll describes the actions of the US and Japanese commands from Guadalcanal to the Marianas Islands.  At 500 pages, he covers a lot of ground, well mostly sea, without skipping much detail.  He also includes extensive coverage of the Japanese Homefront and politics which is critical in understanding the Japanese way of war. Though by 1944 there is little the Japanese commanders can do to stave off the impending catastrophe.  Pushed by ideology, unable to escape by political means, and limited by a collapsing industry and economy, the Japanese struggle on. 

Toll also writes about the American service rivalry (MacArthur vs. Nimitz), the two-prong strategy and Admiral King's pushing for Central Pacific thrust.  Working for 33 years for the Navy, I particularly enjoyed Toll's inclusion of the intra-service rivalry between black shoes (ship drivers) and brown shoes (aviators) and how they fought (personal rivalry to constructive arguments)  to shape the carrier war doctrine.   This rivalry still exists today in the Navy.

Alien Extermination

 The ship's damage control party was armed as they advanced into the caustic fog left by the invading alien creatures . . . 

Book Recommendations on WWII Pacific Campaign

H.P. Willmott's "Empires in Balance" (1982) is an excellent book, easy to read and includes detail of both the early war Allied and Japanese strategies and operational moves.  It focuses on pre-war Japan, conflict with China, political strategies vis a vis the West, and a quick study on resources of the Japanese Empire.  It begins military operation in detail starting from the 7/8 December Japanese strikes, campaigns in Indonesia and Philippines and continues to April 1942.  Pretty much a season of disaster for Allied forces.

Empires in the Balance

The other recommendation is Ian W. Toll's "Pacific Crucible" (2011).  A very engrossing read, the author keeps the reader in the story.  This is book 1 in his Pacific War trilogy but each volume can stand by itself.  Similar in scope to "Empires in Balance", the volume does provide more focus on Japanese politics, inter-service rivalry, and social contexts leading up and during WWII by using numerous Japanese sources, a rare thing in western writings.  Unlike Willmott's book, "Pacific Crucible"  takes the reader through the early US strikes and the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway.  For me at least, the volume also provided new perspectives on Admiral King, the powerful figure at the head of the US wartime navy. 

Pacific Crucible