Reconnaissance In Force

Schmidthof 13th September 1944

Scenario completed : 23rd April 2010

Due to inter-Allied politics, 3rd Armor Division’s attack on the Siegfried Line was officially listed as a reconnaissance in force. But privately, Task Force Doan was instructed to breach the line at any cost. Around Schmidthof they found out what that meant.

This was a prime example of Patton’s ‘Rock Soup’ theory, and the Americans advanced to the German positions backed by armour and a preponderance of M3 half-tracks. Facing them was an array of defensive obstacles. Wire, mines, AT ditches and pill-boxes galore. The defenders were also determined that the ‘Amis’ would not get an easy ‘pass’. The same kind of defiance could be expected here at Schmidthof as had been shown earlier in the day some miles further north outside Aachen (see AAR for A Bitter Irony – battle fought on the same date in 1944 but earlier in the day) where US troops from the 1st Infantry Division had been held up on their advance towards the Old Roman Spa City.

On this section of the Schmidthof encounter, there were around 56 US Tanks and no less than around 100 M3 half-tracks backing up some 700 foot soldiers. To the American’s front-left was a long line of deep AT ditches impassable to the AFV’s, and to their front-right a continuous line of minefields. Behind this formidable sounding defence was around 600 German grenadiers ensconced in entrenchments, pill-boxes, towns and woods accompanied by attendant AT guns, mortars and HMG’s accounting for another 200 men. The American commander was bold however. At 1400 hours he sent forward his engineers and M3’s, he had the sappers attempt to fill-in an AT ditch under fire, clear through mines and get volunteer M3 crews drive through in an attempt to find a path. This initially led to an I+R platoon taking some losses as well as a good number of the M3’s either becoming unstuck in the mines or being taken out by AT guns sighted to stop them. Nonetheless, the American engineers braved the incoming fire and worked feverishly on an AT ditch and helped find a way through a wide section of the minefield though the M3’s suffered losses . At the same time, US artillery was called in to pound the defenders. In little under 2 hours, small breaches were being made and US forces began trickling through. On the American right just behind the minefields, the first German entrenchments were reached and, even though the defenders were vastly outnumbered, they still surprisingly fell very easily to a textbook combined arms assault ? To balance this, in the centre, one staunch German 50mm AT gun platoon that had survived the heavy bombardments took a severe toll on the allied units as they attempted to advance through the gaps. Knocking out some 6 tanks and 15 half-tracks, sometimes at 1.5km range, the platoon eventually fell silent when a direct hit from the omnipotent US artillery finally found them !

But still the Yanks pushed on their right and towards the 2nd line of entrenchments populating the all encompassing wooded areas. This turned out to be far more of a proposition than the first line. This time, the enemy grenadiers fought both courageously and fanatically against the invaders that were armed with engineers and numerous tanks. What also made it difficult for the defenders was the aggressive use of the vast number of M3’s that were giving an overwhelming fire support on all combats. This did mean that they were targeted by AP shots as well as close-range infantry fire in order to knock the more than useful .50cal MG’s upon them. As the Germans held up the advance, 12 StuG’s and a company of German infantry arrived to the US left at 1600 hours. This would mean the American armour would no longer have free reign on an enemy composed at present entirely of infantry. The battle was becoming a slow but advancing toil for the Americans. Gaining ground they were, and very methodically too, but their AFV inventory was taking the brunt of the defenders fury. The Germans however were losing far too many soldiers and their situation was slowly crumbling. The defence was costing them a high price in human sacrifice too. Around 300 of them or more had lost their lives in the defence of Schmidthof by 1700 hours.

As the 2nd line of entrenchments on the right was finally taken, the battle became a form of stalemate. The Americans were trying to regroup their disrupted and sometimes not surprisingly, demoralized infantry, and the Germans holding their line, with the assault guns placed to inhibit American movement. German losses amounted to around a startling 575 soldiers by 1815 hrs and Doan had to make a stark choice. Either, camp down for the night and await more troops on the morrow (much against Patton’s desire) or get on with it and to hell with the losses. With the pressure of his senior’s wishes to get things moving against the Siegfried Line, Doan reluctantly chose the latter and ordered what was nothing more than a 50/50 gamble. His M4’s would attack the StuG’s positioned in the Schmidthof’s farming area. They were busy holding off American infantry attacks. If they spotted the tank attack before it got near enough, the M4’s would probably be turned into scrap metal. To assist the attack, 2 platoons of M5’s would press behind the StuG’s.

The sixteen M4’s took off forward with their target the eight assault guns. The M4’s sped into the farmland area with the M5’s rounding the rear of the enemy AFV’s. As they reached 200m distant, cries from StuG tank commanders could be heard frantically shouting “Achtung Panzer, feind am recht! ” (or words similar to). The StuG’s began to pivot right to face their enemy. Tank crews of both sides loaded their AP shells and attempted to zero in on their target. With 75mm & 76mm guns facing each other, it was the American commanders that first shouted the order to ”Fire” and it was the US tank crews that had readied fastest.Out screeched the metal projectiles from the 16 Shermans towards the enemy assault guns, and through the skins of six of the behemoths ripped the US shells. The gamble appeared to pay off as the M5’s finished off the remaining two StuG’s. In a counterblow by the one remaining StuG platoon positioned further back, the M5’s reaped the enemy anger as they were all blown away in an instant soon afterwards. But the move had been pivotal. German defenders could see there was little else to fight for around the town and they began to leave hastily or simply throw in the towel. Victory was the Americans. But how bloody and hard gained it had been? For the Germans, the loss in lives had been high over the 5 ½ hour battle. 857 soldiers had fallen, been wounded or were missing along with 8 StuGs destroyed. Doan’s task force, with far lesser men killed, had been severely blunted with its equipment lost. 180 men killed, but this did not include the crews of the 22 tanks, 4 armoured cars and 60+ M3’s wiped out! Nonetheless, by breaching this part of the line and inflicting this many losses, Doan could count this as a major victory.

Its not often in life and even more rare in wargaming that a plan works well. You often have to rethink or tweak as you go along. In this scenario everything for me sort of fell into place. My German foe had gone for a very liner defence with a line of minefields covered by strong points, entrenchments and wire. I had decided to use enginneers to help get units thru the minefields if possible and use M3 halftrack as sacrficial minefield finders. This they duly did and I got through the vaunted West Wall in short time. I then had to wrinkle the Germans out of the entrenchments and also deal with his Stugs. Here I had some luck winning the iniative just at the right time so I could move my armour around to deal with those pesky SPGs. I think this was my best win ever and also a most enjoyable game played in the right spirit against a good friend. Just why I started this mad hobby of ours.

I played trombone as a child. It permitted me to spit in a school sanctioned event. Heck, I was able to spit so much they put something called a "spit valve right on the trombone. Plus, you could make sounds like a passing plane with a trombone, something you couldn't do with any other wind instrument (I suppose you could do it with strings but without a big hunk of metal making the sound it just didn't seem right...).

After a year of learning "positions" and scales, etc. it became apparent that the purpose of a trombone was to make purposeful sounds along with other instruments and thus to create "music", although anyone who has heard and suvived a grade school band concert would be hard pressed to identify the "music" from the concert. In any event, my parents thought I had talent (don't all parents?) and paid for private trombone lessons for me. In those lessons I was introduced to a metronome. A metronome is a longish metal rod sitting vertically in a wooden box. Attached to the rod is a weight which, when set correctly, will enable the metronome to swing from side to side in the exact tempo desired by a composer. In that way, the practicing student can measure exactly how badly they missed their cue or, far more rarely, hit the note on the correct beat.

Lessons were often an hour long and the metronome would be ticking back and forth nearly the entire time.

The metronome, however, was a mechanical device and would, on occassion, stop. My teacher, who was also the junior high band director, would have me play out the phrase and then try to fix the metronome. One unexpected aspect of the metronome, however, is that we would both swing from side to side in unison with the metronome as I practiced my pieces. As I looked at the swings in this scenario I was reminded of exactly that and how we would both stick on either the right or left side whenever the metronome "broke".

Obviously with such an intro, there had to be swings in this play.

As others have indicated, the Americans are tasked with piercing a highly developed fortified belt and push on to capture some town hexes in the rear of the belt. They have substantial armor, sufficient engineer support and a ton of APC support fire. The Germans in the meantime, have a minebelt, wire, AT ditches, strongpoints and some nasty AT weapons to hide in plentiful entrenchments.

The German plan was to force the American infantry wide and the armor to funnel towards the middle of the map where the AT guns could have a field day. Through the first hour this approach seemed to work as the infantry took some heavy losses from the minefield (a particulary rude "3" mine caused two step losses on one turn).

Tick, the Germans gain the immediate ascendancy (7-2 in losses at Turn 4).

The Americans, however had noticed a potential flaw in the German setup. Once the fortified belt was breached in the south, the Americans could use the light woods along the southern edge of the battlefield to approach the towns and avoid a couple turns of getting shot in the open. The Americans begin to take advantage of this by focusing nearly their entire force in the south and overrunning the fortifications there. The Germans noticed and moved some of their AT guns from the front line and pulled them back to defend the towns.

Tock, the Americans break through the fortified zone and approach the towns such that by Turn 12 the score is 37-34 Germany with the Americans clearly able to begin mopping up some of the entrenchments.

Of course, there is the matter of the German reinforcements, 3 StuG platoons and GREN platoons which took the overconfident and exposed Shermans in flank, destroying 8 armor steps in 2 turns.

Tick, at the end of Turn 16 the score was 57-46 Germans with a chance to hammer it home depending on the initiative in the following turn as the Americans had advanced what armor and infantry that was not tied up in assaults to an adjacent position.

The Americans got the initiative and were able to hit both remaining StuG platoons and get either disruptions or demoralizations and before the shellshocked panzertruppen could recover the American infantry had jumped in to provide the coup de grace. At the same time the 75mm AT gun which had been making mincemeat of the supporting APCs and tank destroyers was walloped by the American OBA.

Tock, at the end of turn 18 the score had flipped to 61-60 Americans.

At this point the metronome broke. In two more turns the score was 70-58 Americans and the Germans were out of answers. Both dead piles were massive but the Germans simply had no other answers. They were going to lose at least one more entrenchment and probably their towns as they had no remaining AT capability (a 75mm Inf gun wasn't going to do it).

This one was the first I had played with substantial field fortifications. It was a blast. I also learned to expect that my line would be pierced and where to defend if it does get pierced. I believe that the Americans have the ability to win most of the time due to their massive firepower through the 21 M3s provided in the scenario. I can only imagine the recovery after this action. I give it a "4".

The hardest part of this one was finding a weaker section of the front to concentrate one's forces upon. This proved to be the Southern portion of the line, in the hills. The Americans concentrated on that portion of the line and forced a quick breakthrough (Turn 10) there. After that, the Germans set up a temporary line along the gap between the hills on the South of Boards 22 and 25, but had too few forces left to hold for long. The North part of the line was swept up once the Germans pulled most of their forces from it in an attempt to bolster the town hexes as a last ditch effort. The Americans had enough points by then to call the battle with eight turns to go.