Saipan: The Beginning of the End

Hello and welcome back folks for another Forgotten Hope news update. This week's update is about a completely new Pacific map, based on the battle of Saipan Our new map was made by Real-BadSeed, with a little help from Dime a Dozen and Lobo.

By mid-1944, Allied forces in the Pacific had driven Japanese forces back to the main line of defense for the home islands. If the Marianas fell, the newly introduced B-29 Superfortresses that could base there would be within range to strike directly at Tokyo, making Saipan--the largest Island in the northern Marianas--a position that Japan could not afford to lose.

U.S. Marines began landing on June 15th, gained a thin foothold after a day and a night of bloody fightiing, and were reinforced the next day by Army units from the 27th Infantry Division. An attempt within a few days by Japanese naval forces to counterattack resulted in the Battle of the Phillipines Sea, which ended a disastrous loss for Japan by the 20th. Without hope of reinforcement or resupply, Saipan's defenders held out for almost three more weeks, most of the last remaining forces perishing in a suicidal charge on July 7th.

As a last bit of eye candy we want to highlight a couple of items that were made especially for this map by Rad. Neither have any place on a North Africa map, but they will be returning in FH2 on Pacific maps in the future. First we have a beautiful wood and reed hut.

And, in keeping with Rad's tradition of making extremely slow-moving, unarmed vehicles, we have the Harbor Sampan.

That's all for today folks. We hope you enjoyed the update and would like to invite you to visit our public forums to discuss this or other Forgotten Hope news.