|
Again this is a battle of two halves. The
relief forces are doing well, advancing slowly but surely and
with acceptable losses whilst the troops of Kampfgruppe Student
are under intense machinegun, tank, artillery and rifle fire and
suffering more casualties every turn. Slowly but surely the force
is being whittled down.
Kampfgruppe Carius:
Click on Image to Enlarge
I am reaching the conclusion that there are
very few forces on my northern flank. It appears that the
American commander has NOT elected to try to stop my advances
along forest trails with strong, short-range anti-tank ambushes.
I’m absolutely certain that there will be some form of anti-tank
and anti-infantry ambush along this route but I do not think it
will be a platoon strength ambush as I had previously felt.
Probably the American commander decided to use the platoon he
could have allocated here to stretch my forces in the village
even further. Damn !!! I want to try and destroy his forces
ANYWHERE except in the village.
My StuG is still in position in the road and
has taken some of the American infantry on the opposite side of
the river under fire. Hopefully this sort of harrassing fire will
encourage the Americans to advance rather than sitting still and
taking casualty after casualty. If it does encourage them to
advance I will happily slaughter them with short-range
submachinegun fire ;-).
Kampfgruppe Eberbach:
Click on Image to Enlarge
The picture above shows the results at the end
of this turn. As you can see I have moved my half-tracks and StuG
to the very edge of the clearing and, next turn, as my infantry
continue to advance and clear the entire next leg of the road I
will begin moving my HTs to the next bend in the road…
It’s all going quite well right now and I
confidently expect to have the forest path cleared and my
infantry mounted in SPW 251/1s by turn 10 ready to burst forth
and advance towards whichever enemy positions are under attack on
my southern flank by that stage.
Of interest to my future plans is the fact that
that enemy unit I saw advancing, which I felt might be advancing
towards the forest to help bolster defences there, has turned out
to be a bazooka team and was, almost certainly, merely advancing
into a better shooting position to kill my SPW 251/1s. It
succeeded in this although I was fortunate and, apart from the
crew, only one mounted Panzergrenadier was killed by the blast.
The mounted Panzergrenadiers had, under the control of the
tactical AI, decided to dismount the instant the HT came under
machinegun and rifle fire a few seconds before the bazooka was
fired and owe their lives to the proper functioning of the
tactical AI.
Click on Image to Enlarge
This shot is taken from the American
perspective. There are some things to note here. One: The
American unit is shown firing a RIFLE… Is this a bug? No…
Quite simply put while I knew there was an enemy unit there I
hadn’t got a close enough look at it to identify it as a
bazooka unit so the first I knew of it being a bazooka team was
when it fired and a bazooka snaked towards me. FOW indeed ;-).
Point two: You can see the Panzergrenadiers who bailed out of the
SPW 251/1 even before it was fired on.
Click on Image to Enlarge
And the end result is 2 dead crew, a dead
Panzergrenadier and a funeral pyre announcing my flanking
manoeuvre to the world.
Kampfgruppe von Kelly:
My Panther is halted in the middle of the main
road as I want it to be able to cover the advance of the SPW 251/1s.
Thus, I have had to plot detours around the Panther and the
effects can be seen below.… It’s really great to see
half-tracks in motion during the turn playback BTW.
Click on Image to Enlarge
At the end of the turn an entire mixed platoon
is en route to the same location as the burning half-track. Once
there the infantry will dismount and I will make a platoon-sized
assault on the enemy positions surrounding the knocked out
Sherman.
Click on Image to Enlarge
As you can see 3 Volksgrenadier squads and
one Panzergrenadier squad are quickly advancing across the open
terrain. Unfortunately the HT carrying their platoon leader has
been held up so the assault will have to be delayed somewhat
until his half-track catches up.
Follow-up units will begin advancing through
the bottleneck within the next minute.
Kampfgruppe Student:
Just when you thought it was bad you realise
that things CAN get worse.. I almost threw away an entire company
this turn and only sheer luck has saved me from total
annihilation.
I want to show you a picture I title "Shortest
Offensive Ever !!!".
Click on Image to Enlarge
In this picture you can see two
fallschirmjaeger squads and the platoon leader advancing towards
the enemy infantry positions. Of course, as soon as they began to
advance I noticed that there was at least another platoon in the
woods I was advancing towards. So now, outnumbered by close to 3
to one instead of 1.5 to one I watched in dread as my units
advanced. Thankfully casualties have been relatively light and I
intend to withdraw them all as quickly as possible. No more grand
gestures.. There are far too many Americans surrounding my
position.
My only hope is that this piece of utter
stupidity and folly will make the American commander so nervous
that he will become afraid to press his advance. Looking at it
from his position he only knows that many infantry units are
deploying to new positions in the town and that I have just
launched an attack on his southern flank. Surely I must have
strong forces at my disposal if I am able to mount a platoon-sized
attack he will think. Little does he know it was just more
evidence of a miscalculation..
The American commander is moving FAR more
slowly than I would so perhaps he is very afraid that I have
large forces at hand in the town. This can work to my advantage
since if I keep moving around I can convince him that I am far
more numerous than I really am. If this forces him to call in
more and more artillery then it will, in effect, delay his
infantry assault and the longer it is the delayed the closer my
relieving force will get.
Click on Image to Enlarge
This is a top-down view of the area in which
Schreiber’s squad died. As you can see there are at least 12
x 81mm mortar? craters (plus more inside the house) and 10 larger
craters (155mm artillery? ) scattered within 25 metres of the
house. I think several of those larger craters have been caused
by direct fire tank rounds so perhaps the tank which has been
firing directly at Schreiber is not a Sherman as I had first
thought but a Priest or some other such self-propelled anti-personnel
gun. This is encouraging since if it is correct it means that
when my Panther advances and the last Sherman sandwiched between
two houses is destroyed I might only be facing a Priest (which
won’t pose much of a threat). Actually, the more I think
about this the more I come to the conclusion that a platoon of
Shermans + 1 Priest is a more likely force than 5 Shermans. 4
tanks is a platoon of tanks whilst 5 would leave one tank extra…
On the other hand if the tank firing on the
town is a Sherman than I’d expect that the rest of that
platoon (3 tanks) would show up soon in roughly that location.
That would be excellent for me since my men will definitely spot
any tanks arriving in that position as soon as they arrive and
this will allow me to manouevre my Panther and StuGs to destroy
them as they advance. Either way this will work out well for me I
think.
Click on Image to Enlarge
This shot illustrates, yet again, the
devastating effects of artillery. This shot is taken from the
vantage point of one of my fallschirmjaeger squads in the town
centre. It shows the house in front of it which has just burst
into flames following a direct hit… Not only is the house on
fire BUT my last flamethrower team is in there. They are SO going
to die ;-). The little green rectangle marks where my FT team has
just hit the dirt in the middle of the fire. OUCH !
So, I can now definitely lay the deaths of two
squads and one FT team at the door of the artillery barrage.
Whilst neither squad was totally destroyed by artillery it caused
them to break cover and thus become easy pickings for the enemy
direct fire.
Conclusion:
Artillery, artillery, artillery.. The Americans
are literally blasting my positions and formations apart using
artillery. I daren’t concentrate Kampfgruppe Student for a
strong defence in case his artillery hits it and destroys it but
until I concentrate it I am vulnerable to his infantry if they
assault. That they haven’t assaulted yet is a piece of blind
luck.
Carius and Eberbach…. SPEED UP !!!
Kampfgruppe von Kelly: Clear the bottleneck and
begin picking up the speed of advance.
|
