More Leaders pt 4 - German

 Last of the leadership review was the Germans. As older figures originally based for tactical games they were short of higher HQs, but I had plenty of decent individual junior leader and officer figures already.

This was a much more minimal effort than the British, Russians and French. I just re-based some existing figures.

This early war battalion HQ is just a pair of individual figures re-purposed. A kneeling PSC NCO (I think he is probably a gunner) and a QRF officer in a cap from the German WW2 personality set. I've no idea who he is supposed to represent as it is an awful figure, but he is fine as a generic officer (despite his Generals red stripes on his breeches!).

These are my late war Germans, of a similar vintage to my British, all Peter Pig. They had too many (two figure) battalion HQs and no (three figure) Regimental HQ, so I just prised off the figure with the pistol and based him individually, then added an officer in a helmet with binoculars. The third figure on the RHQ base is one of those wierd dismounted tank crewmen figures Battlefront liked to supply in days past (presumably to indicate bailed status).

Most of these figures were painted when my eyesight was much better, I've apparently managed to do Peadot camo by hand. Well, well.

The back of the RHQ stand so you can see the crewman a bit better. I didn't bother repainting him despite his black panzer trousers. He isn't waving a gun around so better suited to a higher HQ stand, perhaps he is kneeling down looking for the COs cigars or something.

More useful additions, and no painting required. When I was putting these in their respective boxes I realised I'd got mixed up with these too, the early war Germans had the correct number of HQs already, it was the Russians still missing one. Put it down to a senior moment.

Gembloux Gap 1940

 More Dominion of the Blitzkrieg, this time the Low Countries in May 1940. This scenario is billed as the Battle of Gembloux Gap on 13/14 May 1940, but looking at the composition of forces, it bears more resemblance to the Battle of Hannut which took place two days earlier as 2nd and 3rd DLM covered the deployment of 1st Army and were engaged by 3rd and 4th Panzer Divisions. Anyway, historical account here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gembloux_(1940)

And here we are, Gembloux is the centre bottom of the map, Hannut at the mid top, the River Sambre is on the right and the Dyle on the left. The open ground between the two rivers being the 'gap'. It is a popular place for battles as Wavre is on the left, and Waterloo a few miles further west.

The pre-war Allied plan involved moving into Belgium and building a defence line along the Dyle river, the Wavre-Gembloux-Sambre line was the eastern extension of that. The 'Dyle Plan' absorbed almost the entire French mobile reserve, leading to Churchills lament later in the campaign Ou est le mass de manouvre?

Anyway, here are the baddies, 3rd and 4th Panzer Divisions, 20th Motorised Division and 35th Infantry Division of XVI Panzer Corps. Although both panzer divisions had numerous vehicles (over 300 tanks each in four battalions), these were not first rate divisions and they were mainly equipped with Pz I and Pz II as was 9th Panzer Division in the Netherlands. All these formations task was to attract the Allies attention and keep them pinned. The Germans lost around 150 tanks at Hannut but repaired two thirds of them.

In the front line we have two tank units (3rd Panzer, 4th Panzer) and an infantry unit (20th Mot). In reserve is another nameless tank unit, 35th Infantry Division and a unit of bombers. All these units are average.

The French have 2nd and 3rd Light Mechanised Divisions (DLM), somewhat battered after two days of fighting at Hannut, but equipped with a far higher proportion of gun armed tanks (Somuas and H39s) than the Germans and with thicker armour too. The French also lost around 150 tanks at Hannut but were forced to abandon most of them, so here the units are just rated as regular tank units. III Motorised Corps had the 1st Moroccan Division (DM) and 15th Motorised Infantry Division (15 DIM), both first rate formations.

So here we have 1 DM dug in and modelled as disciplined infantry with AT guns, in the centre 2nd DLM (tanks) and on the right 15 DIM, also disciplined infantry.

In reserve are 3rd DLM (tanks) and the Corps artillery - a regular artillery piece with two fire missions. I used a Chinellette carrier to represent the ammo state for the artillery.  The Somuas and H39s are all QRF as are the Pz I, while the Pz II are Peter Pig. 

Things kick off with Stukas inffectively attacking 2nd DLM in the centre, but 1 DM on the left managed to fluff it and are overrun by 3rd Panzer Division! The French artillery fired on the tanks needing a 3+ and missed, then the AT guns fired needing 5+ to hit and missed then finally the tanks hit on a 6. You can work out the odds. 

To add insult to injury the 3rd DLM in reserve failed to move leaving an open flank.

Fierce fighting in the centre as 2nd DLM was destroyed by Stukas, but their place was taken by 3rd DLM bravely driving through the bombs and forestalling 4th Panzer. 

3rd DLM kept going, supported by the French artillery and routed 4th Panzer. Ouch!

In the centre fresh panzer reserves moved up. Lack of French air power made this 'anything but a 1'. The dice decreed the German right would attack, and 20th Mot duly bounced off 15 DIM.

The dice decreed more fighting on the right and this time the Germans came out on top, rather against the odds.

With 3rd DLM committed, the French gunners suddenly found themselves firing over open sights. No reinforcement roll here as the Germans were using infantry.

3rd DLM and the new panzers suffered mutual annihilation, but the German still had more reserves to throw in and 35th Infantry Div took over in the centre.

The French gunners were assaulted by 20th Mot but easily repelled them. Reduced to just one unit however, it was all over for 1st Army. That was actually a pretty historical result as both sides suffered heavy but fairly similar armour losses and eventually the French were forced back.

Time for another run as these rules are pretty random and the Germans were very fortunate at times in that one.

This one opened in much the same way with an ineffective bombing attack on 2nd DLM, and  a French attack by 1 DM on the left. This time the odds told and 3rd Panzer was routed by the French AT guns, 35th Infantry moving up to take their place who could fight the French on equal terms (both needing 6 to hit!).

More ineffective bombing on 2nd DLM, but 20th Mot was routed by the 15 DIM on the right. Reserve panzers moved up to take their place.

The dice decreed combat on the left, and both sides managed to roll a 6. Mutual annihilation!

3rd DLM moved up into the gap easily as there was no German armour opposing them. All the Germans could do was commit the Luftwaffe to try and interdict the gap, which also precluded their offensive bombing operations.

The Germans attacked 15 DIM on the right, and the French fired their artillery in support and managing to throw a miserable 1. The attack failed in any case (the tanks now needed a 6 to hit the entrenched infantry).

3rd DLM advanced on the left...

And broke through the bombing! The German right flank was now in the air.

And it was over pretty quickly after that as 2nd and 3rd DLM crushed 4th Panzer between them. Which just goes to show the Germans don't have it all their own way in 1940.

That was a very enjoyable scenario, and as usual I enjoyed looking up historical stuff up about it. I ran a Hannut game a few years ago using NATO Brigade Commander but it strikes me as an obvious candidate for One Hour WW2.

I felt much more confident with the nuances of the Blitzkrieg rules, and I think I've got the hang of rolling for reserves to arrive. I may have made a few mistakes, but if I did, they didn't show and the narrative of both battles was very convincing. One thing this set does quite well is capture the knife edge which 'Blitzkrieg' style armoured operations work on, if it goes well it goes very well, but once the combined arms machine starts to unravel, it all goes horribly wrong very quickly. Air support is absolutely critical as without it, things devolve into a low odds slugging match.

Amerika Bomber

 Another delightfully tasteful game, "Amerika Bomber" from Compass Games. This is designed as a solo game but we ran it as one of our online team efforts. I gather it has a very short print run and is virtually unobtainable, but Tim obtained one.

A cover worthy of Airfix Magazine, I think those are Me 264s.. The game background is an alt-hist 1947 situation - Germany has conquered Europe but the war with the USA continues, including long range bombing raids mounted from the Azores. This is basically an excuse to field various experimental aircraft (Hortens and such-like), fly them to the US, and bomb stuff. 

Its a classic bomber management game, like B17 and so on, but the detail is delightful. This is the template for an Me 364, a six engined upgrade to the Me 264, featuring such jollity as remote turrets. This is essentially a German B29/B36.  The boxes mark all the various aircraft systems, as well as airframe and wing integrity. Losing these impedes mission success or might result in the loss of the plane.

Our first missions would be in one of these, and if the crew did well, we might be allowed more advanced aircraft. The plane mainly carries conventional bombs, but has space in the bomb bay for an Atomic Bomb, should the Fuhrer grace us with one of those.

Everyone went overboard in the hat front. Jim even managed to fashion an ersatz Luftwaffe uniform with a printed out chest eagle and yellow post-it notes for Luftwaffe collar tabs. I was a lowly Feldwebel (electronic warfare and bombardier!) so just wore my Luftwaffe side cap.

I cant recall who everyone was, I think John was the pilot, Jim the co-pilot, Jerry was a gunner, perhaps Terry was the navigator? The plane had quite a big crew so many people doubled up.

The game runs very much like the solo submarine games - we roll up a mission, then have to navigate to a target and do stuff to it, and then get home. Unlike the submarine games, we aren't looking for things to attack, but trying to avoid enemy fighters and AA. Generally the missions are bombing, but can include stuff like leaflet drops, inserting an agent etc.

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Our first mission was to bomb the Bethlehem Steel Works in Pennsylvania. We had loads of air contacts in and out, carrier launched Bearcats and no less than four P-80 Shooting Stars. Contacts are resolved n the chart above - the attacking planes are assigned to one of the approaches (yellow is vertical, either climb or dive) and the turrets can only hit certain arcs so you need to assign them correctly. 

We managed to down three of the fighters and took moderate damage but made it to the target OK, hit it successfully (30% accuracy) and made it home OK. Somewhere along the way we lost our upper turret but fortunately werent bounced from that direction.

Mission two was to bomb the Big Inch Pipeline Company in Illinois, but we'd only flown two zones over the Atlantic before the plane suffered a total electrical failure and we lost all our electronic systems. We had to abort and return to base, fortunately the weather wasn't too bad so we didn't need the blind landing radar and we got down OK.

Mission three was to attack Camp LeJeune in North Carolina, again we got bounced by P80s but managed to bomb the target and return to base successfully. Our pilot (John) now qualified for a 2nd Class Iron Cross.

The following three missions were in a similar vein, although on mission five we (I) managed to miss the target completely! Sadly on mission six we were turning for home after a successful bomb run and were hit in the wing by P80s (naturally) and one of the fuel tanks caught fire! This wasn't surviveable damage but we were still over land so made an emergency landing near Boston, which was a bit bumpy but we survived. We were all then taken prisoner, for us the war was over.

That was a great game, very enjoyable and worked extremely well as a team game. It was also very timely getting shot down ten minutes before time to pack up, so if/when we do it again we can start with a fresh crew. It rattled along much faster than the U-Boat games as there were fewer contacts to resolve and the fighter and AA engagements were generally fairly short.

Panzer replacements - 1st Company

 I've occasionally ruminated in previous posts about replacing some of my older vehicles with more modern models. Replacing them means it wont take up any more storage space as I'll dispose of the old ones, but I'll have the fun of painting more tanks. As regular readers may have gathered, I like painting tanks.

I finally got around to doing something about it, and ordered some more toys, vaguely structured as an early war panzer battalion in Command Decision terms, even though I rarely play 1 base = 1 platoon games any more. It is just an easy organisation system and scales up and down fine for operational and tactical games. Essentially they are one for one replacements of the existing models I bought decades ago though. 

So here is the '1st Light Company', a platoon of Panzer IIs and two platoons of Panzer IIIs. I've got some old Panzer Is too but I'm not replacing those yet.  Early war panzer battalions had two or three light companies with a mix of Pz I, II and III, plus a medium company. These are all resin 3D prints from Battlefield 3D, and I endured the usual six week long wait from order to delivery, but it is always worth the wait as the models are exquisite.

First up is a Panzer II F. A lovely crisp little model, and sized well. It is a similar size to my old Peter Pig Panzer IIs and somewhat bigger than my Zvezda ones which are notoriously undersized.

It is a two piece print, just the hull and turret and very little clean up required, just a few stray support struts. I was a bit anxious about the 20mm cannon and coax MG as they are quite thin. The resin is fairly springy, but I stiffened them up with some PVA which didn't noticeably thicken them.

Lovely crisp detail on the engine deck. I ran some pinwash into the air grilles after the main paint job. As it is first company they all have similar numbers - red outlined in white. For some variety I just put 131 on the turret bin for this one. I also added a rolled tarp on one of the stowage boxes (from the Skytrex vehicle stowage pack).

Otherwise it is pretty plain although the tracks contrast pleasingly with the hull colour, just like the Bovingdon one. I did paint all the tyres, and although it is hard to see, it lifts the model considerably. That balkan cross behind the aerial rail was an absolute pig to stick on. Once of the nice things about resin print is the level of physical detail, but they do make some modelling jobs hard. 

Next up is this lovely Pz IIIe. It is beautifully modelled and has managed to capture that rather fragile pre-war look. This model had separate tracks and turret,and  I went for an open turret hatch option. the commander is a spare PSC one. Well, it was supposed to be a platoon commanders tank irl.

I added a couple of jerry cans on the rear engine deck and highlighted the tow cable with Boltgun Metal and Nuln Oil. Fairly obviously I've also done this one grey and brown camo! This was the official scheme from July 1937 to July 1940 but it persisted into the Russian campaign as older vehicles were only generally repainted when refurbished. I wanted to do a few of my early war vehicles in this scheme as even the Bovingdon Pz II is in grey and brown now. Because both tones are very similar, it doesn't show up well in black and white photos.

Turret number 113 for this one, still red and white.

Finally we have a Pz III H, a much more business like looking vehicle. This has got more modern drive and idler wheels than the Pz IIIe, it also has spare track slung on the lower front hull and very obviously applique armour on the hull front and mantlet as well as a turret bin. It is armed with a 50L42 gun, but with the fine detail 3D print it is very hard to distinguish from the 37mm gun on the E.

The engine deck is different to the E and it has wider tracks and spare wheels mounted on the fenders. I added the oil drum.

I did this one in overall panzer grey, turret number 124. The base colour for all the vehicles was similar - undercoat black, spray the upper surfaces white then a base coat of either Humbrol Sea Grey or Coat D'Arms Uniform Grey followed by a heavy wash of Vallejo Panzer Grey diluted to various thicknesses to vary the coverage and overall tone. I was after a range of greys, which I did achieve, but the weathering tended to blend them all back into a more uniform tone.

This is what they are replacing, my old Peter Pig Pz III and Pz IIs. Perfectly fine models in their time (I bought these in the late 90s when metal 15mm tanks were £3.50!), but just a bit crude compared to modern ones, particularly the running gear. They have seen long and sterling service, but time for an upgrade.

Sizewise they all match nicely.

I'm very pleased with those and I'm looking forward to getting them into action soon. More replacements to follow!

Panzer Battles with Panzerblitz

 My good gaming pal Russell has a thing about playing old SPI games, including such gems as 'Dallas'. Recently he's been on a bit of a kick with Panzer Battles, published in Strategy and Tactics in 1979. Like many of the SPI tactical games like Firefight, Mechwar 77 etc, it rather passed me by at the time as I was very happy with Panzerblitz, Panzer Leader and Squad Leader (although I still have a copy of Sniper). Panzer Battles is a similar level as Panzer Leader with 200m hexes, 5 minute turns and platoon sized units, but puts much more of an emphasis on command and control, doctrine etc and has a much more detailed (almost Tobruk level) combat system.

The BGG entry is here: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/7556/panzer-battles-tactical-armored-warfare-in-world-w

Anyway, Russell has been plugging through the scenarios, in particular one covering 4th Armoured Brigade at Gazala (which fitted in nicely with our recent desert outings) and another featuring a battalion of Panthers taking on a Soviet tank brigade in March 1945 on the road to Berlin.

Just for a laugh, I thought I'd set up the 1945 scenario using Panzerblitz and see how it pans out.

The Panzer Battles battlefield is quite empty, with a main road down the centre and a town in the rear corner. There are a few patches of cover though, so the open Panzerblitz board was the obvious choice. In scale terms the Panzer Battles board is quite small compared to Panzerblitz so I'm just using this one as far as the stream at the top (with the lake on it) . The Germans get points for killing Russian units and the Russians for killing German units and getting them off the top edge of the board (or over the stream in this case).

I've no idea which units the real ones are supposed to be, although I'd guess the Germans are from Panzer Division Muncheberg (which had a battalion of Panthers and a Tiger II company) . In the Panzer Battles scenario the Russians have three battalions of T34/85, each with six platoons of three tanks each. Panzerblitz of course famously models the Soviet C3 limitations by modelling each company as a single counter, so the 18 T34 counters in the original become six T34/85 companies in Panzerblitz. 

The Panzerblitz T34s have a slightly worse gun than the Panthers (15 AF vs 16 AF with an inferior range 10 vs 12), weaker armour (10 vs 12) but are slightly faster (11 vs 10). All those differences combine to make the Panther rather more dangerous in armoured combat - at close range in the open one Panther Platoon vs one T34 has a 100% chance of a suppression and a 50% chance of a kill, whereas in the reverse situation, the T34 has an 87% chance of suppression and only a 17% chance of a kill. The Russians need to gang up on the Germans big time and expect to take some losses.

The Germans in the original have two companies of Panthers with 23 vehicles spread over five platoons. Given they already have a 2:1 combat advantage just based on numbers of vehicles per counter, I rounded that down to four platoons of five Panthers each. Panzerblitz has no concept of command and control, units just ramble over the map at random.

The German defensive task looks easy but in fact is unenviable. There is no opportunity fire in Panzerblitz and units in concealing cover (woods, towns) are invisible unless an enemy unit is adjacent. So units dash from one patch of cover to another, trying to gain local fire superiority, and given the open nature of the terrain, the German need to be very careful to avoid the Russians simply dashing from bush to bush and off the edge of the map. 

The defence above blocks the easy road via the town and has outposts in the two patches of woods, which are in range of the Panthers long reaching guns (a ridiculous 3000m, although they are much more effective at 1500m).

I did  consider a hull down position on the hill to the left, but the T34s are so fast they could actually mount an overrun attack against it on their opening move - hilltops count as open terrain against overruns. The whole 'chess with tanks' thing is what I used to love about Panzerblitz. It does involve an awful lot of counting hexes and movement points to optimise unit placement though.

The Russians swarm the Panthers on the left anyway. Four of them are in the cover of the woods and two of them are on the slope below the hill - it doesn't provide protection against the adjacent Panthers but provides hull down cover against fire from further away.

Oops.I forgot quite how deadly tank combat at short range is. The Panthers in the town are within 1500m of the wood so pour a devastating fire into the T34s. Panzerblitz has quite eccentric target priority rules when firing at a stack so this is a simple 4:1 attack by all the three Panther platoons in range and a whole battalion of T34s go up in flames.

This is doubly unfortunate as it also fills the hex with wrecks, and the larger Russian units can only stack two units in a hex, so they are now barred from the hex. That is a real shame as that hex is just within maximum T34 movement distance of the handy ridge northwest of the town, but that route is now closed off. Someone on Jim Dunnigans team thought really hard about the design of these geomorphic boards.

The remaining T34s fry the Panthers in the woods (the Panthers could have chosen to not shoot and run instead, but that would have reduced the attack from the others to 3:1 and only a 33% chance of a kill against the T34s in woods). The Panther platoon on the right falls back to the town to prevent easy access from the T34 swarm. I do like the high mobility of these units.

Their advance west of the town thwarted, the Russians dash over to the ridge on the right. They are hull down here so a harder prospect for the Panthers. They also just have enough movement from here to make it into the gully east of the pond, but not cross it. Units in gullies are invisible at ground level.

Aware of the threat, two of the Panthers in the town take a 3:1 shot against one of the hull down T34s (the Panther are doubled for close range but halved for fire vs hull down armour).

The third Panther platoon moves back to the ridge northwest of the town. From here it can see down into the gully behind the town.

One company of T34s are suppressed by the Panthers, the other three dash for the gully and spread out. I cant risk the Panthers on the ridge suppressing a whole battalion as it leaves them vulnerable to the other Panthers ganging up them on subsequent turns.

The Panthers on the ridge manage to knock out one of the T34s in the gully. They are joined by another Panther platoon to discourage the Russians from hanging around. If those two companies cross the stream, that will be even VPs (Germans 3 for kills, Russians 2 for units exited and 1 for kills).

With the gully locked down, the lead T34s cross the gully and hide in the woods on the far side. The lagging T34 company heads into the village, shielded from the hill. Mano a mano with the Panthers in the streets of the village! it can spot for the T34s up north if needs be.

With hindsight, that was a really stupid move as of course the Panthers in the town blow the T34s apart at point blank range, while the other Panthers scurry off the hill and back into the town. What I should have done  was try to suppress the Panthers on the hill with the T34s north of the gully and THEN think about moving. But I didn't, so that is four German VP to three Russian and a well earned German victory. One battalion of Russians has broken through, but there are lots of German over their LOC, so that seems fair enough.

I didn't feel any great inclination to do that again, but it was a fun little game with lots and lots to think about, a real Panzerblitz knife fight with lots of hard decisions and rapid manouvre. I made a couple of stupid mistakes, which I wouldn't have done if I'd played it again. I cant believe I used to confidently play all the supplied Panzerblitz scenarios which have scores of units in them, my brain was obviously a lot bigger then.

I did vaguely think of setting up the same battle with Command Decision and Spearhead, but then realised I couldn't be bothered.