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Section Leaders:
Your one stop shop for Combat Mission Scenarios and Operations
Tactical
Allied Tips For
the American player this scenario is an exercise in maximizing the
lethality of its weapons systems, proper target allocation AND using
positioning to overcome a somewhat superior enemy. In
this case the American player has 4
x M4A3 (76) W's 1
x M10 ( 76mm gun) 2
x Stuarts ( 37mm gun) The
American player thus has 5 weapons platforms with excellent long-range
killing abilities. Basically the M4s and M10 can kill penetrate any
StuG or Pz Ivs frontal armour. The 76mm gun is marginally effective
against the frontal armour of the Panther, Tiger I and Tiger II and the
Jagdpanther, Jagdpanzer IV and Hetzer but flank shots are preferred. So,
by extension, the perfect position for our 76mm-armed Shermans is one
from which they can bring medium and short-range fire to bear on the
flanks of their opponents from hull-down positions. With
these three criteria in mind I approached the map to scout out likely
avenues of German advance. I have drawn in the two most likely main
avenues of approach along with paths through bottlenecks. Once this was
drawn I merely looked for locations which gave the Shermans hull-down
positions. Preference was given to those locations which would result
in flank shots on the Germans.
Position
1 has limited line of sight but
the beauty of the areas it DOES cover is that any German AFV moving
through these areas will almost certainly present its flank to any
vehicle in position 1. Even a Tiger would probably be killed by ambush
if it tried to move through this area if this area was covered by a
76mm-armed Sherman. Position
2 is the central position. It should be held by at least 2 Sherman 76s
with a view to: a)
preventing German movement down the dirt track on the way to the
second VL. b)
preventing the Germans from easily and quickly moving forces to
reinforce their right flank after that flank runs into the 76mm ambush
in Position 1. Positions
3 and 4 are sub-optimal positions in which to place Shermans due to
their extremely limited lines of sight BUT the limited areas they do
cover are valuable since German tanks traversing these areas will have
their attention focused elsewhere AND present their flanks to American
vehicles in these positions. I would advocate that positions 3 and 4
NOT be occupied immediately but be fully scouted so that the reserve
M10 can quickly scoot into position in either Position 3 or Position 4
as the German advance dictates. Position
5 is a great position from which to ambush a German player who becomes
VL-focused and forgets that the key to war is NOT occupying some
mythically important flag-marked land but actually converting the
enemy’s vehicles into wrecks and his men into corpses. So, Position 1 has 1 x Sherman 76 and Position 2 has 2 x Sherman 76s.
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