The Destruction of Army Group Centre was an unimaginative but completely accurate description for what the Wehrmacht found itself facing over on the less publicised eastern front. Having spent three years sowing the wind the Germans now reaped a shitstorm. With their front dissolving like wet cardboard German countermeasures were reduced to attempting to stick fingers in a dyke once the dyke itself had been washed away. Near the village of Krupki the 5th Panzer division was the designated finger. This is ASL Scenario SP174, Krupki Station. Here my (increasingly desperate) reconnaissance elements of the 5th Panzer (with Tiger tanks in tow) will attempt to defend a collection of small buildings against Nemesis in the form of Richard Weilly's hard driving 3rd Guards Tank Corps.
To make his modest contribution to the inevitable triumph of the Communist Supermen over the Fascist Beast Richard has seventeen squads more or less evenly divided between elite and first line. Commanding them are four officers of reasonable quality, for equipment they have a heavy machine gun, three light machine guns, two anti tank rifles and a partridge in a pear tree. Sorry, I mean a demolition charge. Providing armoured support are six lend lease Sherman tanks mounting 76mm guns and carrying enough smoke to give everyone cancer. To defend I have ten first line squads, three officers of equivalent mediocrity to their Soviet counterparts, a heavy machine gun, medium machine gun, light machine gun and a panzerschreck. For armoured support I have three half tracks; one mounting an 81mm mortar, a second toting a 75mm gun and the third with a mere machine gun looking sad and useless by comparison. Oh yes and three PzVI E(L) or Tiger tanks as I believe they are also known.
There were fifteen small buildings scattered across the objective area. Richard's task was to capture at least eleven of them, I would win by denying him. As I gazed at the map I must confess I felt a little daunted. All the buildings were small and unconnected which made it difficult to set up a solid fortress region which might be able to hold off an attack for any time. There were essentially two options; scatter my forces across the board and risk Richard simply beating them up bit by bit or select an area and place the bulk of my forces around a designated set of buildings sufficient to deny Richard the victory and let the rest of them go to hell. The trouble with this is it allows Richard to seize all the remaining buildings without effort and concentrate all his forces on smashing that one position. I chose option two which I still think is the correct one, unfortunately I didn't choose it well enough.
As you can see from the photo above I chose the north west corner (north is at the top) and it's associated buildings as my bastion. A scattering of squads were based further forward in the hopes of imposing some sort of a delay on Richard's forces before they arrived. The mortar half track is up on the hill to the southwest along with a half squad with the heavy machine gun. The 75mm half track and a tiger are lurking in the northwest to add some much needed firepower to the defenders, the other two tigers are further forward hoping to pick off an onrushing sherman or two (failed).
Richard divided his forces more or less in half and based them at the north and south so they could avoid the centre entirely and drive forward along the edges of the board. With my dispositions made I sat back and waited. I didn't have to wait too long. There was a brief hiccough as Richard discovered that one of his shermans had left all of its smoke rounds at home but then the remainder were off and racing, or rather strolling.
Richard didn't hurry, there were no dramatic advances. Rather his attack was a gradual but continual and relentless push forward. Moving behind liberal amounts of smoke his tanks pushed forward where my tigers weren't and shepherded his infantry up to the line in relative safety. Here was where my decision to base a few stay behind squads up front backfired on me. They perhaps delayed Richard for half a turn, he lost a half squad to close combat and of course he had to adjust his attack to take account of them but for all that it swiftly became apparent that I had sacrificed at least three squads for little in the way of advantage. Richard rolled around and over them. Things were made worse when I attempted (foolishly) to reinforce what was only ever intended to be a delaying position by moving forward my tiger nestling in the northwest to menace his oncoming hordes. I'm not very good at using tanks and I proved this by driving my tiger past one of his shermans who said "thanks very much" and drilled an armour piercing round through the tiger's vulnerable side armour. One tiger down, I would end the game with none. Thus not only did I waste a tiger but I removed a significant weapon from what I had intended to be my main redoubt.
The other two tigers didn't do very much. Richard avoided them for the most part. There were a couple of occasions when either careless or hopeful he pushed a squad in harms way and on both occasions my tigers cheerfully smashed them but aside from that he settled for guarding their movement paths with a tank of their own and then ignored them, a tactic that worked depressingly well. Delayed more by the forest than my defence Richard pushed forward in the north and was soon approaching my redoubt. I hadn't been completely idle, seeing the line of his attack I had moved squads from the centre to help bolster the defence but they came a little too late and Richard was able to tear them apart piecemeal.
In the south the story was the same with a couple of minor exceptions. Above you can see his southern troops moving forward having dispersed or brutalised my defenders. Richard took his only tank casualty of the game when he took on a more formidable opponent than me; marshy ground. He first bogged, then mired, then immobilised a sherman. Meanwhile with Soviet infantry infiltrating behind my southernmost tiger I started it up and roared towards the enemy. OK, I should have stopped and machine gunned them. I know that but come on, the overrun was a 16+1 attack surely I would get a result. I didn't and wound up in close combat with a Soviet squad. Which allowed another Soviet squad toting a demolition charge to come up behind me. Also, just for overkill, he drove a sherman up behind my tank as well. It was fortunate for him that he did so because in one of the few bright moments for me his squad wound up completely botching the demo charge attack and blowing itself up. My smile was removed a second later when Richard pumped a 76mm shell into the rear of my tiger. Boom!
That pretty much sums up the entire game. Richard defeated me in detail and easily gained the necessary buildings to win. I surrendered with two turns to go as there was little point in going on. Richard played with skill and I really did not. At the end of it I was feeling a little embarrassed that I hadn't been able to give him a more challenging game. Still much thanks to Richard for the lesson in humility and if we play at CanCon I shall take my revenge (possibly by slipping something into his drink).
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