Aggressive Delay (Part 2)

We ran this scenario on June 5th at Sheffield Wargames Socieity. As usual, John donned his DPM and took the British while Tim led the heroic defenders of the motherland westwards. Scenario briefing was published in Part 1.

The area of operations from the SE.

BAOR battlegroups and TF assets line up.

61st GTR assembles.

Soviets advance behind a rocket barrage, the southern bridge is passable but unfortunately the northern one is heavily damaged.

Fitterburg is plastered with missile fire and set ablaze. Scimitars of the southern BG approach cautiously, northern BG can be seen in the distance.

Div forward detachment advances ot the southern bridge. The rest of the regiment masses at the northern bridge while the engineers effect hasty repairs. RHQ and AA company park up SW of GruBendorf.

Northern BG bypasses Wesendorf. The woods have been set on fire by missile strikes.

The leading tank battalions of 61st GTR advancing through the polder eye up northern BG across the Aller.

Sovs occupying a bridghead over the canal, the Scimitars have fallen back in disarry. Combat teams occupy Fitterburg.

Fire is exchanged in the south, some T64s are knocked out and the Soviets become disordered.

More firing in the north, more T64s go up in flames.

The first British assault on the bridghehead is repulsed, leaving several burning Chieftans behind.

Sovs hang on to their bridghead despite heavy losses. The air assault battalion is flown in to reinforce, but Rapiers shoot down half the battalion. RHQ arrives to sort out the mess.

Heavy exchanges of fire in the north. 'T64 wood' is packed with tanks as artillery fire rains down and one of the British combat teams suffers heavy losses.

The Soviet attack is halted in the north,  but the British will have to come and dig them out of their wood.

In the south the  main Soviet force falls back over the canal while a British combat team pushes up the road, observed by the recce troops.

This battle was one of those rare things, a meeting engagement, and I was interested to see how it would play out. The forces were fairly balanced, the Sovs with eight tank companies and four infantry vs NATO with four tank and six infantry companies respectively, the latter with an edge in troop and equipment quality.

As the narrative above indicates, the Soviet advance ground to a halt after crossing the first water obstacle and NATO was inflicting roughly a 3:1 loss ratio. Rather than play it out to the bitter end we extrapolated the  likely result as the entire Task Force pressed home its attack on 'T64 wood'. It seemed most probably that all Warpac elements west of the canal would be eliminated,  but at the expense of roughly 50% losses for Task Force Golf.

That effectively means the first echelon of 10th GTD has now been destroyed and NATO have retained control of the canal line in this sector, but TF Golf will need significant reorganisation and re-equipment overnight. A tactical victory for NATO then,  a reasonable return for their major effort here, but at the expense of leaving other areas of the front much weaker.