Christening the Panzers - Mokre 1939

 Having painted up a load of new early war panzers (or repainted some older ones) I wanted to get them on the table, so broke out one of the Dominion of the Blitzkrieg scenarios. This one was Mokre in September 1939, which we've already done with both Megablitz and NATO Brigade Commander, and there is a huge Mokre scenario in the Command Decision 'Birth of the Blitzkrieg' book which I have yet to convert to One Hour WW2.

Anyway, Mokre featured 4th Panzer Divisions rather shambolic attack on the Volhynian Cavalry Brigade near the straggling town of Mokre. The Polish cavalry were amply equipped with anti-tank guns and supported by an armoured train!

Battlefield from the east. There is a north-south railway line running behind the Polish front line, Mokre itself straggles along the railway line amongst wooded country. There is another village further south whose name escapes me (Kokrum?) held by a Polish infantry Regiment. I went for a 2' x 2' cloth for this one, which may have been  a bit big.

Here are the Poles. A normal infantry unit on the left, in the centre are entrenched anti-tank tanks (Polish cavalry units had a lot of towed 37mm AT guns) and on the right is another cavalry unit (19th Uhlans I think).  In reserve is another cavalry unit and the mighty armoured train, which is rated as an elite artillery unit, so gets three fire missions as long as it stays in reserve. Polish cavalry 'briagdes' were quite big, more like small divisions and the elite of the Polish army. This formation also included around a company of light armoured vehicles (tankettes and armoured cars) but I didn't represent these.

The figures are mostly from my WW1 and SCW collections as the hats and uniform colours are very similar to Polish ones. The '37mm Bofors' AT guns are Republican SCW AT guns with crews in Adrian helmets. 

The train is converted from one of those 'train in a box' gifts. The engine is rather on the big side, but I do have a spare so I might cut it right down and fit armoured plate all over it to reduce the profile. The real train mounted turreted 75mm guns so I've put a T34 turret on the armoured box car. 

4th Panzer assembles. It consists of three tank units (one is elite), two infantry units and an unreliable Stuka. The Stukas are unreliable as the dawn bombing attack was very ineffective, but its presence in reserve will still hamper Polish movement. The elite tank is on the right where it conducted a wide outflanking move irl.

In 1939 4th Panzer had over 320 tanks organised into four battalions of three light companies each. The vast majority were Panzer I and Panzer II with no Panzer III at all and only twelve Panzer IVs in the entire division. The division only had a single Motorised Infantry Regiment with two battalions of infantry, so it was pretty tank heavy.

For the tank mix I used five Panzer Is and four Panzer IIs, all the stuff I've been painting recently. These guys in the centre have the Poland era solid markings on the Panzer Is. Most of them are grey and brown camo but there are plain grey ones too to make up the numbers.

The infantry battalions have a couple of infantry bases each and a Horch heavy car.  

The action opened with a Stuka raid on the right. I want to blast a path for the elite panzers to make an outflanking attack. Naturally the Germans failed their reliability roll so the attack failed and the Stukas were removed. They will still count towards air interdiction of Polish reserve movement in future turns as they were present at the start of the game,despite being removed now. 

The Poles got to choose the combat sector on turn 1, and went for the AT guns in the centre. Both sides missed.

The Germans then attacked on the right again with their elite amour. I remembered to fire the armoured train this time (I should have done that on the first turn) but very luckily for the Germans it missed (3+ needed to hit). With the barrage ineffective, both sides fought another round of combat which the Germans won. The Poles were able to bring up their reserve cavalry to fill the gap though.

The Poless attacked in the centre and the train guns roared out once more...

And this time they hit something! The panzers were destroyed and their place taken by a reserve infantry unit. It seemed silly to put tanks up against entrenched AT guns.

Quite a  busy next turn. The Germans attacked on the right and finally routed the Polish cavalry on the flank. Due to the Stuka/tank combo the Poles were unable to fill the gap so the panzers were in a position to conduct outflanking attacks on future turns.

The Poles were forced to fight in the centre and the German infantry overran the AT guns. Things not looking so good for the Poles now.

The train failed to move up and plug the gap due to interdiction , so both the centre and right flank are open now.

Good news for the Poles on the left. The German infantry attacked and were defeated by the Polish infantry.

The last Panzer reserve moved into the gap.

The Panzers made an unsuccessful flank attack on the right, which allowed the train to make another reserve roll and it moved over to the right flank.

Sadly the German infantry in the centre made an outflanking attack on the train and destroyed it.

So at game end a very battered 4th Panzer has finally made a breakthrough. There was some pretty extreme dice rolling in that which perhaps skewed the result, but it was a fun ride. I ran it a few more times to check the play balance.

It looks a bit better with a lower camera angle.

In this iteration the Polish train starting shelling on the first turn, spreading death and destruction among the massed German armour.

In short order all the German tanks were routed! The Luftwaffe naturally failed to turn up too. German infantry was more successful and the train ended up having to hold the left flank on its own.

It looked like the Poles were onto a winner but it wasn't to be as the Germans on the left overran the train.

But the Poles snatched victory from the jaws of defeat as the cavalry on the right outflanked and destroyed the German centre. A Polish win.

In this next iteration the Luftwaffe actually passed their reliability roll, and I remembered that bombers can attack ANY unit, so naturally it bombed the train. The train promptly blew up and it was pretty much game over at that point.

The Stukas could range at will and the panzer/stuka combo proved as deadly as ever in the absence of any Polish artillery fire.

Pretty soon their were panzers rampaging all over the Polish rear and it was game over with no German losses at all.

However in this last run, the Luftwaffe didn't turn up at all and the armoured train destroyed all three German front line units in quick succession. The Germans never really recovered and the Poles ended up winning with no losses. A complete wipeout.

That was a fun scenario, but although it ended up being honours even, I think the outcome very much rests on the performance of two key units - the Stuka and the train. If the Stuka makes its reliability roll, that is an advanatge to the Germans, and if it manages to knock the train out before it has fired of all its ammo, that will virtually guarantee a German win. Conversely, the train can win the game on its own, as long as it manages to roll a 3 or more on its three fire missions. It was great to get the new tanks out though, and I think it was a decent outing for them.

Westerplatte, September 1939

 Another Friday outing to Tapton and this time Tim laid on the Battle of Westerplatte, the first significant engagement of WW2 in September 1939 when the Germans occupied Danzig and attacked the Polish naval depot just outside the city. We've actually done this a couple of times before using the excellent Postcard Game of the battle, but this time it was the full monty in 54mm.

The field of operations. The Westerplatte peninsular is the cloth bits, the Danzig canal and basin is delineated by the white masking tape (and has a big battleship floating in it) while the Baltic is on the far side of the peninsular.

The Schleswig Holstein, which had the distinction of firing the first shots of of WW2, if you don't count the prisoners murdered by the Germans to manufacture a border incident. This is a plastic kit acquired for the princely sum of £1 on a Bring and Buy.

And the destroyer G196 which is floating around the Baltic. This is mainly made of balsa wood with various bits from the spares box.

The German attack was made from the east, so this was our baseline. The Germans were Lloyd (commanding the SS militia), Mark (commanding the warships), John (commanding an Army assault pioneer battalion), Pete (commanding the Army heavy artillery, Luftwaffe and logistics) and myself playing Oberleutnant Henningson, commanding a battalion of Marine infantry.

Naturally there were lots of big toys in play. A fleet of Stukas flying over the assault pioneers (Britains Deetal figures). The Stukas are Airfix and Revell.

Here is my Marine Shock Battalion, three rifle companies, a heavy weapons company and battalion HQ. G196 parked alongside for scale. A mixture of plastic figures from various manufacturers in jazzy naval infantry colours.

Tim briefs the assembled multitude. The Poles were commanded by Simon and Stuart, and their forces all deployed hidden.

We each had individual briefings with specific personal objectives which introduced a role playing element. We were allocated two objectives and had to come up with a third one ourselves. Mine were:

1.Ensure Westerplatte is rapidly captured

2.Die heroically leading your men(!)

3.And I added, lead at least one close assault, which I thought tied in well with the second one.

We had a bit of a team planning session, and broadly I was the left flank, the SS the right flank and the engineers followed up the SS. The intention was that I'd tie up the defenders frontally while the SS and engineers tried to punch through on the right flank. Well lets see how that went.

I put my guys on a in a wedge across the road, with one company leading. Each company was allocated one of the battalion MG platoons and the mortar platoon followed up waiting to deploy. Naturally I accompanied the lead company, given my personal objectives.

The SS went in a tight formation up the other road. I hope the Poles don't have any artillery! They also had an armoured car company attached, with jazzy Steyr 8 wheeler armoured cars plastered in SS insignia. Both custom 3D print jobs. The armoured cars went tearing off up the road, typical early war SS lunacy.

The appearance of the armoured cars prompted a battery of Polish 37mm AT guns to open fire. This in turn prompted a response from the Schleswig Holstein, who found the short range flat trajectory firing quite hard. Matchsticks ended up scattered all over the table, except in the offending battery position.

The Luftwaffe also had a go, to little effect. It was quite a small target. Having knocked out one of the armoured cars, the AT gun switched its attention to the Schleswig! it scored some hits but the shells just bounced off the 8" belt armour.

The Army pioneers had a few failed command rolls so their advance was a bit tentative. They followed the SS up the road.

General view after a few turns. Both the Marines and SS are well up with one of the armoured cars visibly burning on the road. So far we've located the AT gun and a rifle company and AT rifle in the wood just next to the railway. My heavy weapons company is hosing them down to cover the infantry advance. 

The Stukas finally scored a direct hit on the AT guns!

This was followed up by a heroic close assault to clear the position, led by the Oberleutnant. Well that is one objective anyway. Hilariously the men on each side of him were shot down in the attack, but the Lt survived. You can just see a few Poles running away in the woods ahead, while a strong position has popped up in the sandbag line. 

One of my MG platoons (you can see the white trousers of the crew) has lagged behind providing covering fire. The Ambulance is dealing with some of the casualties. Tim borrowed my casevac/resupply mechanism from One Hour WW2 as it is fun but simple addition and an excuse to field some ambulances.

The assault company reorganised on the objective and the Lt led another fresh company off down the railway line. Mortar and MG fire had whittled away the central defences, knocking out the Polish heavy MGs, but annoyingly the Poles in the woods ran away again before we could attack them.

The SS were meanwhile trying to repair the damaged armoured cars and get them going again and the Army engineers caught up with them while dong this. The SS infantry went right flanking along the beach and lost a few men to long range Polish fire.

The main bunker line was now in view, but a series of lucky artillery, air, naval gunfire and mortar strikes seriously weakened the defenders. My guys had made it to the first of the railway warehouses and outflanked the central redoubt.

The engineers were now pushing up the railway line supported by the SS armoured cars and the SS infantry had made it to the buildings behind the flank of the bunker line. Faced with the position collapsing on both flanks, the Polish commander decided to surrender to avoid further bloodshed.

And with that, the game was over, Westerplatte had fallen!

We totted up the objective points, and as might be expected, I came fairly low down the pecking order. I'd singularly failed to get myself killed, despite try and ng very hard. The surprise winner was the SS Sturmbahnfuhrer who had wisely tagged a film crew along with his SS militia rabble, and naturally they siezed all the glory.

That was really good fun, the RPG lite elements really added to the game, and we got to both play with Tims lovely 54mm toys and fire lots and lots of matchsticks.

 

 

CALF 2024 continued, Brochow 1939

 I've run quite a few remote games of my latest iteration of One Hour WW2, and the general consensus of the regular players was that it would make a good COW session. I thought I'd run it at the recent CALF at Tapton too.

Battlefield from the north. A brief reminder, the German Army has advanced out of Silesia to Warsaw, and the Army Poznan has made a counterattack into their northern flank. The Germans are hastily sending forces westwards to halt and encircle the Poles. So the Poles are to the right (west) and the Germans to left (east). This is one of those unusual events, a real life encounter battle.

There are six objectives on the table: four villages, the southern road/rail junction and the southern bridge. Winner is the side left holding four of them, otherwise it is a draw.

 

The German northern column are those charming chaps, SS Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler (SSLAH), led by the equally charming Sepp Dietrich. They have a 105mm artillery battalion, two motorised infantry battalions and a motorised recce battalion. The SS infantry are poorly trained at this stage of the war so only have 5 hits, but the recce battalion has six hits, and one of the armoured cars is driven by no less than Micheal Wittmann.

Ian Drury commanded these.

The southern column is 35th Panzer Regiment, 4th Panzer Div. They have two battalions of tanks (Pz I and Pz II), the divisional towed AT battalion and another battalion of 105mm guns. Chris Ager commanded these.

The Brigade commander was Russell, who looked after the supply and maintenance columns and the Luftwaffe Stukas. The first outing for my Bergepanzer III conversion.

The Poles had three Regiments of cavalry, each of which was a large formation with five squadrons and well equipped with AT rifles and 37mm AT guns.  I represented each Regiment as two units.

Terry commanded the northern column, which was a single regiment.

The southern column was another cavalry regiment, plus the Polish 'tank' battalion - a mixture of Armoured Cars and TKS Tankettes. Lloyd took these.

In the centre was another cavalry Regiment and the brigade towed 75mm guns. These guns required a dedicated spotter, unlike the Germans and the Poles only had a single supply column, due to German air interdiction.

Chris K of NQM fame was brigade commander and also took these units.

The Germans advanced aggressively in the south and cautiously in the north, while the Polish cavalry dashed forwards and occupied a number of objectives. Irl an Italian film crew was accompanying the SSLAH recce unit.

Fighting erupts at Brochow! Lloyds cavaly take the bridge, and come under fire from the 37mm guns in Brochow. The Germans throw in all their artillery and air power, which causes heavy losses among the cavalry and they become disorganised.

The rest of the Poles are content to hang onto their gains and dig in along the line. The panzers and SS infantry and concentrate at Brochow.

Heavy fighting continues in and around Brochow. The town and bridge are attracting all the German units towards them, but they are hampered by the stream which is impassable to wheeled vehicles. The Polish armour is in position just behind the bridge now. Both sides are rotating damaged units out of combat by now to reorganise them.

Fighting rages. The SS take heavy losses and become disorganised. The Germans are extending along the river. I found out after the game that Chris didn't realise his tanks could simply drive over the river!

With all the Germans concentrated in the south, Terry sends his cavalry over the northern bridge, heading for the rail junction. The battered SS recce are in the way.

The SS cross the river in the far south supported by artillery fire, but the Polish line is looking formidable.

The Polish efforts at cycliung units are more successful. While Lloyds battered cavalry reorganise in the rear, concentrated fire destroys one panzer battalion and sends the other reeling to rear with six hits on it, only saved by its 'veteran' status.

The Polish cavalry and SS recce exchange fire near the rail junction, but the Polish cavalry charge is repulsed, filmed by the Italians (as happened irl and became the Cavalry vs Tanks myth).

The Germans respond violently to the Polish incursion, but the Poles hang on in the shelter of the dense, swampy forest.

At game end the Germans are in disarray and the Poles hold the majority of objectives, so it is a definitive win for Poland. Hurrah!

That went well, the players seemed to enjoy themselves and the game moved along quickly. Including briefings we managed to play and wrap the whole thing up in one hour 40 minutes. So not exactly 'One Hour WW2, but close enough. It plays much faster f2f than it does remotely as they players can move their own stuff, roll their own dice etc rather than me doing it. It is also an interesting scenario as the forces are quite asymmetrical, whereas Leshnov, which I ran before, is a more conventional infantry/armour battle. Looking good for COW at any rate.