Another Silly After Action Report

Of all the various weapons, vehicles and aircraft that littered the Second World War one of the most iconic is surely the German tiger tank.  This isn't something that developed later either, it grabbed that cachet at the time and has held it ever since.  To the allied infantrymen who faced it every German tank was a tiger despite the statistical improbability involved.

This isn't particularly surprising.  Perhaps nothing ever built before or since has looked so appropriate to its purpose as the tiger tank.  If you ask a six year old child to draw a tank, they will draw a tiger.  There are other famous tanks from the era, arguably some of them are actually better tanks but nothing quite matches the sheer presence of a tiger.  If an alien were to come to earth they could look at a sherman tank or even the magnificent Soviet T-34 and perhaps for a brief second be unsure as to their purpose.  This couldn't possibly happen with a tiger.  The thing looks like a fist on tracks.  German tank designers would prove that they were no strangers to aesthetics and even elegance with some of their other designs but with the tiger they just thought, "Bugger it!  Let's make it brutal."  A tiger is a massive steel box with another somewhat smaller steel box set on top of it out of which protrudes a ridiculously long gun.  "Sloping armour is for wimps.  We'll make it all right angles and simply slather on the steel to compensate."

The result was a huge, hulking somewhat ponderous monster.  Sixty tonnes of self propelled armourplate carrying a gun which could quite literally kill anything that moved.  If you wanted to outgun a tiger you would be wise to bring a battleship.

A box on a box and a massive great gun

The deep impression the tiger had on the soldiers who opposed it, however, was as nothing to the impression it appears to have had on the scenario designers of the wargame I play.  Every possible opportunity to work a tiger into a scenario is snatched at with childlike enthusiasm.  Scenario titles are littered with references to tiger bodyparts.  "Eye of the Tiger", "Paw of the Tiger", "Fangs of the Tiger".  The "Dangling Genitalia of the Tiger" is in playtesting as we speak.

With that as a backdrop I sat down to play one such scenario with David Wilson.  I believe it was the Fangs of the Tiger; ASL Scenario SP87.  In this scenario a bunch of German infantry supported by four tigers attempt to push past a Soviet blocking force (including five T-43 tanks) and cross a bridge to safety.  Snow covers the ground and the stream was frozen (but not solidly enough to support a tiger).  Dave took the Germans (and thus the mighty tigers) while I commanded the Soviets.

I'm not going to bother going into the order of battle in detail.  It all stood or fell by the tanks.  The Germans needed to get a number of units across the bridge and off the board.  At least one of those units had to be a tiger.  The Soviets had to stop them and furthermore have one of their own tanks on or near the exit road at the end.  The Germans entered the board from the top of the picture below and were headed towards the bottom.

The beginning and pretty much the end

The truth is I made a bad botch of this scenario as a result of insufficient research.  The T-43 (essentially a fatter, less reliable T-34) is quite well armoured and carries a reasonably impressive 76mm cannon.  While they weren't a match for the tigers in a straightforward slugging contest I did think that with the opportunity to shoot first I might be able to inflict sufficient damage to make David struggle.  I expected to lose all my tanks but I had two more coming on as reinforcements to fulfill my victory condition.  If I had checked I would have noticed that while the tiger's gun can penetrate the frontal armour of a T-43 (albeit with a little difficulty) the T-43's 76mm has almost no chance of penetrating the tiger.

I would have done better to set up as far to the rear as possible off to the flanks in the hope of getting a side shot or two.  As it was my plan to delay him worked admirably for two turns.  He couldn't really just trundle past my tanks and expose his flanks and rear to them.  Unfortunately two turns was all he needed to pound every one of my tanks to scrap metal without a single scratch on him in return.  His only tank casualty came as a result of bad luck.  He broke the coaxial machine gun, then the main armament then completely destroyed it while attempting a repair.  The resultant recall reduced Dave to three tigers which as it turned out was two more than he needed.

I had a little better luck with his infantry.  One of my tanks, sensibly picking a target it could actually hurt, reduced an entire squad to little more than a red stain on the road and Dave himself killed one of his half squads by accident when it attempted to dismount from the tiger it was riding and boxcarred the morale check.  In return another of his halfsquads proved to be more than capable of killing one of my squads in close combat and the slaughter of my armour went on.

With my onboard tanks destroyed David sent a tiger down deep into my territory to await my reinforcements.  Which almost turned out to be awkward for him as I brought them on behind him.  With two tanks sneaking up behind a tiger you might have thought I had a chance for a little revenge.  Sadly not, Dave rotated the entire tank and killed both of them in the same firephase before they could fire a shot.  That was a little unlucky but in reality didn't affect the result at all apart from giving me a plausible sense of grievance.  With all my tanks destroyed I couldn't win and surrendered in shame only halfway through the game.

Possibly anticipating my tank fighting abilities David brought another scenario with him to fill in the rest of the day.  I lost that one halfway through as well and I'm not even going to bother writing about it.