Panzerblitz again - Buchach scenario

 After playing the Panzerblitz partisan mini scenario, I had a hankering to re-visit some of my favourite old scenarios. One of these was scenario Number 11, which covered the relief of Hubes encircled panzer army by IInd SS Panzer Corps in April 1944. This battle is also covered in the Cross of Iron supplement for Squad Leader, albeit at a tactical level. 

The Russians are defending with 20th Guards Mechanised Brigade and 9th SS Panzer Regiment has to break through. 20th Guards aren't strong enough to defend in depth, but the Germans have to maintain a corridor right across the board, so the trick for the Russians is to delay the Germans then counterattack to cut the corridor late in the game. Conversely the Germans need to carve out and then defend a corridor with lots of tanks and not much infantry, which makes this a fabulous mobile battle and both sides have to attack and defend all at once.

The Russian OB isn't bad,  a full mechanised brigade with an integral tank regiment. The Russian infantry are powerful, but their armour is completely outmatched. The SS are a panzer fetishists dream though, two full strength panzer battalions with twelve(!) platoons of tanks each, including a dozen Panther platoons, a full Stug battalion and a battalion of armoured Panzergrenadiers. More on that later.

The Russian 20th Mech Brigade, with three motorised Rifle Battalions, a Tank Regiment, Mortar Battalion, Artillery Battalion, Recce Co and various bits and pieces. I modified the OB from the PB standard one to better fit a historical OB, but there weren't many changes.

The teeth arms. I replaced the scenario T34/85s with T34/76, Mech Brigade tank regiments just weren't a priority for T34/85s especially in April 1944, and an awful lot of them had Shermans anyway.

Each Motorised Rifle Battalion has three Guards Rifle companies, a mortar company and a towed 45mm AT company. As before, I'll triple the firepower of the mortars to better reflect their real effects. A couple of anomalies show up here, according to the designers notes the mortar and 45mm companies include trucks, yet four 45mm AT guns mysteriously require a whole additional truck company stand to tow them. I guess the game designers couldn't figure out how to model integral transport within the unit counter model and in the counters had added all sorts of spurious stuff to justify the Russians only being able to stack two units per hex and the Germans three. I'm going to use separate trucks for the rifle companies but just use the trucks as markers for the mortars and AT guns, but it would have been far more sensible to stick with constant company sized stands for the Russians (so some sort of motorised weapons company stand). 

Brigade assets. The recce company I did as two mechanised recce platoons - the halftracks represent a mix of different vehicles which is why their defence is only 2. There aren't any Russian light tanks or armoured cars in the counter mix, which is a curious omission. If there weren't so many (spurious) truck and wagon counters, they could have put some light vehicles in the mix.

The SMG, Engineer and AA companies are all represented as individual stands with trucks to carry them (although the AA company should be Quad Maxims mounted in Gaz AA).

The mortar battalion has a company of 120s and two companies of 82mm mortars. These suffer the same problem as their 45mm pals, the counter info says they include trucks, but to actually move they require separate truck stands. I'm just going to use some wagons to show they are mounted. The firepower of the 120s is sensible, but I'll triple the firepower of the 82s. I've included a CP to spot for them, which I will assume is vehicle mounted, despite the game errata saying they need yet another entire truck company to move six guys and a radio around. Jeez.

Finally the 76mm artillery battalion. Well, because some of the Russian 76mm guns at the Aberdeen Proving Ground are listed as AT guns, AHGC decided to make all Russian 76.2mm guns into AT guns, even when they weren't. They only way to fix this is to double the firepower of the guns, make them H class and not A class, and quadruple their range - this makes them into relatively bad field guns (24H range 20 hexes or 5km, compared to 40H and range 32 for the German 105), but maintains their AT value. Like the other towed guns, they also supposedly have integral trucks on the counter, yet mysteriously require a separate truck stand to move, so once again I'm just going to use wagons to show if they are limbered or not. As with the mortars, I've added a motorised CP stand to spot for them.

OK, that is the Russians sorted.

The revised German OB, 9th SS Panzer Regiment, an armoured Panzergrenadier battalion and an armoured panzer artillery battalion. I did a fair bit of research as to what 9th SS Panzer Div actually had in April 1944.

The armoured PG battalion. The game OB includes all sorts of extra mortars and wierd bits which aren't standard at all. I've modelled this on an actual 1944 PG battalion, which for the 9th SS was at full strength in April as this was their first action after finishing divisional training. Three mechanised PG companies and a mechanised heavy company with a platoon each of 120mm mortars, Pak 40s and Engineers. Ideally the PG platoons would have a bit more firepower, but I wasn't going to start fiddling with the infantry counters. The battalion is also completely missing the twelve Sdkfz 251/9 'Stummel' SP 75mm guns it is supposed to have, no counters for these are included.

I added in a couple of the Regimental support platoons to beef them up a bit, the Flak platoon is fairly obvious, but for bizarre reasons the 150mm 'Grille' platoon is modelled as a 2 vehicle sections, which makes it almost useless. At least in Panzer Leader you get three of these for the whole platoon, but not PB. This unit will have its firepower tripled.  

I seriously thought about adding the 'Maultier' unit to model the missing Stummels, as a dozen 75mm infantry guns should have a firepower of around 20H, but in the end decided against it.

The Panzer Regiment. Where have all the Panthers gone? Well, 9th SS Panzer Div did have a Panther Battalion, but it didn't arrive until June, and even by late June wasn't combat ready as it was missing its workshop company. It finally saw action in Normandy during Operation Epsom.

In April 1944, 9th SS PR had a single battalion of four companies, each on the 17 vehicle organisation, two of Panzer IV and two of Stugs, exactly the same organisation as 10th SS PR in fact, and which 10th SS used in Normandy. The division didn't have a separate Stug battalion either, they were all in the panzer 'regiment' .

So, I gave them six Pz IV and six Stugs. There aren't enough Stug counters, so Hetzers are close enough. I won't even start on why Stugs have the same defence value as Tigers because they are in platoons of six. Panzer Leader tied itself into even bigger knots over platoon sizes, with multiple different Panther and Sherman counters. Just stick to one vehicle platoon counter = five combat vehicles guys, it is much easier.  

The regiment did have a Flak platoon with Flakpanzer 38s, the closest thing in the box was a Wirblewind counter, that will do. The Panzer Artillery Battalion was quite easy too, a Hummel and two Wespe platoons, and I gave them a motorised CP as well.

So there we have it for 9th SS Panzer Div, not quite the armoured behemoth in the original scenario! It will still give an interesting mobile game though.

Despite the moaning, I actually enjoyed this exercise quite a lot. I like researching OBs and figuring out how to model them in game terms. What it mainly highlighted for me was how much more we know about the Eastern Front now than in the early 1970s, and how simulation techniques have evolved in leaps and bounds over the decades. Sadly what it also highlighted are the limitations of the Panzerblitz game model, and having done my best to model the correct OBs within the constraints of the game system, I had no great desire to actually play the scenario. Yes, I could write a load of rules mods, and make up my own counters to cover missing units types, with transport indicated, modified combat factors, maybe  even separate soft and armoured attack factors, but life is too short.

Ah well, nostalgia isn't all it is cracked up to be sometimes, but it was an interesting exercise. Back in the loft it goes.