Took the Marines in Saipan Scenario #1, against Gary Christianson (we did a coin flip to see which side we each were.)  It was an unexpected bloodbath.

The opening bombardment gave the defenders a lot of morale trouble to recover from, and I landed my Marines in two main waves. But judicious placement of the defenses led me to, perhaps, jump into Assaults too quickly - perhaps I should have spent some time adjacent, with multiple-hex fire groups, before going in.  But most of my assault groups were strengths of 24 to over 30; I figured by jumping in early (and keeping reinforcements handy) I'd have time to do the gradual grinding that most assaults become. However, with the "first fire" for entrenched and heavy jungle positions, those overpowering forces were often partially compromised before they had a chance to roll their attacks (and a mid-game streat of 8 to 10 assault rolls on the 13 to 30 columns that produced no step losses didn't help.) Meanwhile the powerful Japanese artillery took its toll, as did the (mostly weak) AT guns on the thin-skinned LVT's. The Japanese tank unit spent 2/3 of the game recovering from the initial pre-landing bombardment, then was taken out in assault before it coudl do any damage.

I did gradually clear much of the 28 x 4 area required, though by this time (thanks to extensive losses) all I could do was try to salvage a draw.  No such luck.  Going into the last few turns the Japanese still had four hard knots of resistance in the required area, all under heavy assault, and in the final turn the Japanese snuck a few more units into the area.  When the four-hour (16-turn) ordeal ended, the Marines had a good foothold, especially on the right half of the attack - but at a cost of 55 steps and 4 leaders, as opposed to 17 steps and three leaders for the Japanese. It was a stunning loss for the Marines.