Hey Designers : How About BIG Battles

[waynebaumber]

I like them big and meaty...er am I on the right web site..

[vince hughes]

LOL -

Strangely enough Wayne, just the other day, Alan and I were exchanging emails over length versus girth !

Subject matter I leave to you ....... But DO keep it clean :-)

[Matt W]

Working on Brody/Dubno, 1941. At this point at least two scenarios, one with two Soviet divisions (one Tank and one motorized infantry) against composite troops of the 11th and 16th Panzer totalling about 1 division but scattered and uncoordinated. The second with one tank division (Popel's Group) facing two infantry and one Panzer division. Each scenario is on 16-20 mapboards.

This sound about right for size?

[vince hughes]

Good grief ! That is big.

Are you planning these as a daily content entry.

[Matt W]

No idea at this point. Just getting the darn things together is taking some time. I am working off of Ryabashev's narrative of the 8th Mechanized Corps attack. The difficulty is that huge numbers of Soviet tanks broke down enroute to the battlefield so that the strength of these untis was far more defined by the distance travelled than by the resistance encountered. Although there were 5-6 mechanized corps ordered to attack only the 8th actually formed up in time to attack in any meaningful way. Rokossovsky, in effective command of the 9th and 19th basically threw his orders out. The 15th did attack but ran into much stronger resistance as the German infantry had been able to get in its way along with the 16th Panzer. Other commands were too far away from the area to have much of an impact.

The 8th Mechanized formed up near Brody and attacked northwesterly until reaching the Svir, using the 12th Motorized Division to obtain crossings at two smaller rivers. The attack hit at a hinge between the trailing elements of the 11th Panzer which had already reached Dubno, about 35 miles northeast of Brody and the advance elements of the 16th Panzer which had already been in contact with the 15th Mechanized Corps. At that point orders changed and the 8th Mechanized Corps was ordered to attack towards Dubno to stop the 11th Panzer in its tracks and force it to turn. The 34th Tank Division spearheaded this effort and ultimately became separated from the rest of the Corps. Under the command of the Kommisar Popel this division fought against several infantry divisions as well as the 16th Panzer and elements of the 11th Panzer (the remainder of which was the force giving Rokossovsky his heartburn). Surrounded, Popel was forced to abandon all of his tanks and the 34th Tank Division was essentially destroyed.

I may hold off on final design on these as the area is relatively flat and featureless. On the Der Weltkrieg maps it doesn't even register as broken terrain, this is "clear" for all purposes. As mentioned there are a few rivers meandering about but they only affect the first scenario and in that case there is only one river to cross as bridges were easily secured for the crossings in other circumstances. With the map "library, likely to increase by a substantial amount over the next several months I expect that there will be several in the new mix which may help better portray the area.

I expect to use some of Ottavio's rules for the urban hexes from Little Saturn as the current map mix results in a bit of overpopulation of the area. Deemphasizing the impact of these villages will result in a more reasonable result. Hills and forests are also a bit too prevalent in the current map mix, something that should definitely be addressed in several of the new map sets (not the hills but at least the forests...).

As far as counters go, I haven't compared the inventory to the needs yet. The 8th Mechanized Corps mustered over 900 tanks including over 170 KV-1s and T-34As on 22 June but according to Ryabashev suffered breakdowns of half of their older (mostly BT series, T-26 and T-28) tanks before reaching Brody. Still the Corps at Brody carries about 500 tanks (over 100 platoons). Consider the plight of the Germans facing this force. Their antitank forces are mostly limited to 37mm guns with some 50mm guns mixed in. Their tanks are mostly PzIIs and PzIIIFs with a few PzIVEs thrown in. One can make an argument that the German forces didn't even fight against the 8th Mechanized but merely contained them and waited until they had advanced sufficiently in other areas to threaten or cut off the fuel supply thus stranding the vehicles and rendering them harmless. Indeed, the 8th Mechanized Corps attack covered 35 miles in a few days and while able to move experienced little effective resistance. They simply were unable to hold the ground as other Soviet forces to the north and south were disrupted and retreated.

Much of the hype about the Brody/Dubno fight uses the fact that, in engaged armor, this battle rivals or exceeds the number of AFVs at Kursk. The difference is that at Kursk the vehicles actually fought and were destroyed by enemy action. At Brody/Dubno the forces rarely came into direct contact (the operational area would be a square roughly 30 miles by 30 miles occupied by three Soviet and parts of two German divisions for the first battle and four and a half German divisions in the later battle). Add to that the fact that, as Ryabashev points out, the older tanks, which represented the vast majority of the tanks in service, were prone to breakdown at catastrophic rates and supply, not combat, resulted in most losses from engaged units (those Pz747s at Kursk, which are captured T-34As, had to come from somewhere).

[waynebaumber]

Matt, you should take up writing military history as I am enjoyed reading your last post, for maps for the above monster scenario may I suggest the desert maps could be used. I often thought AP's desert maps were an excellent solution to problem with desert terrain being too bland. The use of simple markers on differing coloured terrain is an excellent work around.
I have to say a 16 mapper does boggle my imagination somewhat but would love to play such a scenario (once I retire and have won the lottery)

[Poor Yorek]

Matt,

You may find the following data useful if you don't already have them. Source: Panzertruppen Vol 1 1933-42, Thomas L. Jentz, Ed., Schiffer Military History, pp. 190-206.

11th Panzer Division (Pz. Rgt. 15)
22 June 1941: 44 PzII; 24 PzIII(37); 47 PzIII(50); 20 PzIV; 8 PzBef
5 Sept 1941 (operational): 18 PzII; 21 PzIII (all); 4 PzIV; 15 PzBef

16th Panzer Division (Pz. Rgt. 2)
22 June 1941: 45 PzII; 23 PzIII(37); 48 PzIII(50); 20 PzIV; 10 PzBef
22 August 1941 (operational): 18 PzII; 26 PzIII(all); 9 PzIV; 4 PzBef

Note that these two divisions had a preponderance of PzIII armed with the 5 cm Kw.K.L/42 guns.

[Matt W]

Thanks!!

[Matt W]

Wayne,

Thanks for your comment. I have to admit a fatal weakness in my ability to write historical pieces. I simply haven't had enough experience reading other languages. As a good American citizen my foreign language of choice is Spanish, useful for the Western Hemisphere but hardly useful for European military history after the 19th century except briefly and catastrophically in the late 30's. While I have tried to piece together an idea of how to play through the Spanish Civil War I have found it difficult to appropriately portray the large number of political factions on each side and each faction's "victory condition".

PG is easy because everyone on one side typically is fighting together for a goal. This wasn't really the case for the Spanish Civil War. How to tactically show the disdain of the Soviet tankers for the International Brigades? How to model an anarcho-syndicalist leader structure? etc., etc.

But back to history. I am in awe of people like Chris Bellamy who can read Russian and have seen the RKKA archives. I only saw the maps concerning Brody and had to take several days to be sure that I knew which Cyrillic characters spelled "Brody" let alone that 8 MK was the 8th Mechanized Corps composed of 12md, 34md and some other division whose number and name escapes me now and that the nd's were infantry divisions and those damn backwards r's and things that look like the Greek letter pi but were really m's... Arrrgh!

I am, however, thinking of moving on to Avalanche and Anzio for some more large scenarios. The ground is open and the contending forces well defined. I might also look at Sicily, especially the American sector for some battles. Certainly there are a ton of possibilities in Russia but getting good information on battlefield strength requires too much reading in languages beyond my ability, regretfully.

[Airlifter]

  Goodwood Map-Custom.pdf (Size: 1.06 MB / Downloads: 17)
  Charge of the Bull OOB.pdf (Size: 317.6 KB / Downloads: 18)
  Charge_of_the_Bull-Macro Game.pdf (Size: 347.54 KB / Downloads: 18) Okay boys, here's a big battle for you to play with. Charge of the Bull--Operation Goodwood. Everything you need for a 12 map extravaganza! First file is the scenario, second is the OB, third is a custom map I designed but will take a plotter printer or an expensive trip to Kinko's. However, it's described in the scenario for play using 12 standard boards. Most counters can be found in Beyond Normandy but you'll have to scrounge elsewhere for a few extras. And Bulge and East Front boards are required. I'd love to read some battle reports. I know how our convention game went.
Cheers.
John Stafford