Poles vs Slovaks -- S45 Contested Settlement

In my spare time, which believe me is very limited these days, I found time to play one of the bonus pack starter kit scenarios for advance squad leader. I'm still keen on getting back in the swing of things with ASL and that means lots of ordnance these days. I still have yet to fully master the vehicle rules, but those will come soon. Probably after this summer when my schedule gets a little more sane.

For this AAR though, I pick up a real treat: a battle between Polish and Slovakian units.

I have been in awe of Slovakian history during WW2 since the 5th Grade. In fact, when I was in middle school, I put together my first blog (WW2 Chronicles). It's been lost to the ages, but in it, I put together a newspaper about the opening days of the invasion of Poland, including a special feature on the Slovak participation in that invasion.

The only book I ever bothered to purchase, and which I still own, on the subject was Mark Axworthy's Axis Slovakia: Hitler's Slavic Wedge, 1938-1945. I cannot recommend this book enough. Slovakia's participation in the invasion was limited, but there were clashes between the several divisions of the Slovak military and the defending units of the Polish Karpaty (Carpathian) Army. 

ASL's S45 Contested Settlement models one of those clashes. Oddly enough for this scenario, the role of attacker and defender is reversed. After the initial invasion, Slovakian forces secured a polish town across the border and in S45, Polish army and mountain forces are tasked with taking it back. That's just the sort of scenario I like to see. I've got Slovak forces on the field and Polish units on the offensive. What more could I ask for?

The first several turns looked unfavorable for the Poles, and I almost gave up right then and there. The above image was taken too late to be of real use, but the main Slovakian defensive line held the tree line running top to bottom in that image. A medium machine gun section held the northern anchor while a kill stack and heavy mortar covered the middle ground. To win, the Poles have to control at least one multi-hex building by scenario end.

The Poles tried to skirt around the top edge of the photo and overwhelm the Slovakian defenders' machine guns, but for three turns those plans failed. The northern anchor held the line without loss. Then entered the mountain troops behind the Slovakian lines. The Slovakians peeled off troops to deal with the intruders and in the process weakened the heavy mortar kill stack. On a lucky mortar exchange, the Poles managed to break the southern group of Slovakians and close with the position.

The Slovakians fought a grueling battle to eliminate the marauding mountain troops, but at the expense of their defensive line along the woods. With their troops rallied, the Poles skirted round the Slovakian's top flank, secured a second building, and hunkered down the weather the final counter attack. When all was said and done, the Slovakians had successfully eliminated the first group of attackers to secure a house on the south edge of the board, but their luck ran out while attempting to again reduce an entrenched group of Poles holed up in a multi-hex building. 

The result was a narrow and hard-fought Polish victory. 

The Mighty Endeavor

In my time playing war games, I've only played a handful of wargames. Truly not very many: Normandy '44, the Dark Summer, and (if this counts as a wargame) Memoir '44. That's it. I have a long list of Normandy games that I'd like to play one day, including the Killing Ground, the Longest Day, and GMT's The Battle of Normandy. I can now add The Mighty Endeavor to this series of games on Normandy, though and the great appeal of The Gamer's SCS game on the invasion of France is that the Allied player can select any of the beaches in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands to invade. The Allies get six invasion beaches and a host of suitable options to pick from. 

The endeavor to liberate France and cross into Germany started with the invasion of beaches west of Bordeaux. The beaches were big enough to permit a landing of two armies, the British 2nd Army and the American 1st. The benefit of landing in Bordeaux was there are suitable beaches to support a major landing and fewer mechanized forces within immediate reach of the beachheads. The port of Bordeaux is also big enough to accommodate landbased routes of supply for Allied armies in France. 

The only problem that I encountered with landing in southern France was that once I had a taken Bordeaux (and significantly reduced the 2nd British Army's fighting force for the month of June), I did not have enough trucks on the continent to race for Paris. That was the benefit to making a landing in Normandy: the proximity to coastal ports like Cherbourg, Le Havre, Boulogne-sur-Mer, Antwerp, etc. 

The Germans retreated from Bordeaux toward the Loire and the mountains in Southern France. The 9th Army landed in the Riviera (Operation Dragoon) to augment 1st Army's forces and bring the French onto the field. The Germans kept both armies at bay in the mountains and fell back on their river lines. Only the lack of trucks slowed the Americans and French down. Then the Canadians and more American troops landed at Normandy. That rended the German river line useless. Caught between the Commonwealth troops in the north and the Americans and French in the south, the Germans fell back on the Franco-German Border and the river lines in the low countries.

The British troops landed at Normandy made the thrust across the Seine to take Paris. After that, it was helter skelter for the Germans back to the rear. The organized retreat turned into a rout. With enough trucks to keep up with the front, the American 9th and 3rd Armies managed to isolate a several pockets of retreating German infantry and armor. The Germans still had enough troops to man the West Wall, but once the front stabilized and the Americans landed the bulk of their armor, even the toughest sections fell to repeated attacks.

By the end of the year, the Germans had fallen back to their side of the Rhine and the concentration of the best SS and armored units in the Ruhr still couldn't hold back the Allied armor. On top of that, the 1st Army was in position to break out of Arnhem. Given the forces they had left, there was no way to prevent the Allies from achieving total victory.

And that was it. Total defeat for the Nazis. As it should always be.

Advanced Squad Leader -- A Three Piece AAR

I decided to take a break from the back-breaking monster games that I've been a fan of lately. To switch things up, I thought I'd give my old friend ASL a visit again. I spent a whole weekend reorganizing my whole collection this winter and found some renewed energy to play a few scenarios again. 

I recently purchased Red Barricades and hope to give that a go sometime soon. I have Decision at Elst on my plate first, and a host of other games coming before that, so who knows when I'll actually get around to the Red Barricades campaigns, but at any rate, I have three quick AARs to get to.

Get ready for some heavy artillery.

The first game was S5 -- Clearing Colleville. The Americans have the offensive and the Germans have to retain control of an entire section of the board.

The open ground and the high die rolls were the greatest enemy to the American attackers in this scenario. I've never played S5 before, but I've played on this map board before, and without question, this was the worst fiasco I've suffered to date as the attacker. The image to the left shows the high watermark for the American attack. Excluding a handful of half squads that helped the Americans outnumber the German defenders, an overwhelming majority of the American infantry on the field spent more time broken than they did in Good Order. American reinforcements offered no relief. Even as the reinforcing squads advanced from the top edge of the board, German reinforcements arrived from the SE and opened a defensive lane of fire right where the defensive perimeter had been weakest.

With little hope of victory, the Americans threw in the towel on the final turn.

In the next game, S11 -- A Long Way to Go, the roles were reversed. The American paratroopers and GIs in Sicily held a thin line of defense against what felt like an overwhelming group of grenadiers from the Hermann Goering Panzer Division. 

The Germans advanced in two main groups, with a heavy weapons fire group in the middle. The southern group took out a squad of paratroopers in close combat, but the 60mm mortar landed some tight rounds, broke the majority of the group, and then the remaining squad of paratroopers, with their 9-1 Leader, snuck through under cover of mortar fire and eliminated the southern group. The northern group of Germans suffered a similar fate, only instead of closing with the defenders, they broke to a man in front of them and fell back broken. Before the advance could continue, however, the German casualty points had thrown the victory to the Americans.

For the third and final scenario, the Americans were again on the defensive against the Germans. This tine, it was a battle of the bulge scenario: S12 -- Over Open Sights.

Of the three scenarios I played, this was the best one without question. There were six (or seven, I lost count) leader's created in this game! And five (or six) of them were German! Talk about hot dice! I'd never seen so many snake eyes in my life. Too bad there was a sniper on the board.

The Americans set up with their artillery in open ground and the Germans can enter from anywhere off the edges of the map board. I deployed the Americans as best I could, with open lanes of fire on the left for the MMG group and harassing fire positions on the right ideally suited for the small mortar group. 

The Germans entered from the south edge of the map in a pincer, with roughly 40% of their strength on the left and the remaining 60%, or so, on the right. The right group, with their 50mm mortar, would split in two, with one section holding in the woods to give covering fire and take on the US mortar unit while the other section would go for the guns. 

Upon entry, the larger of the two German groups ran into trouble with the US mortar unit. The mortar infantry and compliment turned back the first assault on their positions, before the big guns could fire. The Germans on the right had an 8-1 and a quickly reduced 7-0 become a 6+1; that officer remained down and out for the duration of the scenario, sucking up an entire platoon of broken troops with his low morale. On the left, the volksgrenadiers fared no better; the first attempt to close with the MMG failed. They did however put fire on the nearest 105 and manage to break its crew, though.

Then the big guns came into action. Both left and right, the Americans poured highly accurate fire into the trees. And the US mortar made good use of its rate of fire. Luckily, though, the German morale check die rolls ran low. Scary low. 8-0 and 8-1 Sergeants started popping up out of nowhere. Leader creation saved the day, and worked its magic on the left. While the Germans on the right were mostly pinned and only a platoon had scratched its way forward under heavy fire, the Germans on the left applied pressure on the MMG group and they managed to close with and capture the first gun. 

Amidst the turmoil of battle, the American reinforcements came in to apply pressure on the captured gun. It backfired. A sergeant-manned MMG for the Germans went on a rate of fire tear that broke two of the reinforcing squad and set the way for the forward platoon on the right flank (out in the open and under heavy fire) to make a break for the second 105. They got close, but the 105 poured heavy fire that kept the German platoon exposed in the open.

On the right, the mortars engaged in a duel that eventually favored the Americans. The 60mm rounds broke scores of Germans in the woods on the right flank and all further attempts to disrupt the Americans there, and thus relieve pressure on the assaulting squad in the open, failed. Almost two platoons remained broken from group right, despite a preponderance of leaders. 

The break for the Germans came of turn six. Harried on either side, the defending gunners of the sole 155mm gun had to continually shift their field of fire as the German pincer inched closer on both the left and then right. In turn struck by the 105 rounds captured by a German half-squad, the 155 crew was first pinned, then assaulted, and then wiped out in short order. Group Left (the weaker of the two) had greater success to that point.

Despite fire from one captured gun and a last ditch effort to swarm the position, the second 105 gun crew, the one that had been pouring fire into the German group on the right for the duration of the game, managed to keep the HE shells coming. It was a narrow end, but one that came down for the Americans.

Out of the three, this was definitely the scenario that had me gripped to my chair. Not necessarily nail biting as it was phenomenal entertainment.

Anyway, that's it for those three scenarios and this AAR. Three games, three defender victories (two for the Americans and one for the Germans). 

The next one will feature something a little different: Brits, Greeks, and Fallschirmjaegers! 

The seventh and final turn hinged on that group of assaulting volksgrenadiers, still stuck out in the open. (With grain not in season, routing was almost entirely out of the question.)

Operazione 'E' - What if Italy Invaded Egypt Early?

The Italian 10th Army invaded British Egypt in September 1940 from their holdings in Libya. They advanced as far as Sidi Barrani on the coast, stopped there, and established a series of bases and camps to defend what they had taken. The British counterattacked in October (Operation Compass). They succeeded in turning the Italians back, chased them into Libya, and destroyed them in due course. 

That is, at least, what happened in September and October in 1940. What were to happen, though, if the Italians went in early in 1940? The Europa module War in the Desert makes an early invasion of Egypt possible. 

I purchased War in the Desert last year and I added it to my ever-growing collection of Europa games. I was checking the blog earlier today and I realized that of all three games I have played on here to date that take place in 1940, each of them has been a Europa game. First was Norway, then Greece, and now Egypt. I suppose I ought to get a France game in soon. War in the Desert comes with OOB set ups for the Axis and Allies in April of 1940, so I used those positions and reinforcement schedules for an early start to the Italian 'Operation E', the invasion of Egypt.

The real Italian invasion principally concentrated on the efforts of four regular divisions and a host of supporting artillery, mobile, and black shirt forces. The OOB set up for the Italians in April has these same forces ready in the field, and that's not including the two divisions assigned to garrison duties. While the British OOB in Egypt and the Middle East may differ between April and September 1940, there's no difference for the Italians.

In the air, the Italians are entirely dominant in 1940. In raw numbers, the Italians have 3 fighters for every British 1 in Egypt and they have 7-8 bombers for every 3 that the British can bring into the theater. This is according to the OOB. Mersa Matruh (far to the east of Sidi Barrani), however, is the key the Italians need to leverage their superiority in the air. The range of the Italian fighters and the lack of suitable bases to get them close to the British possessions deeper in Egypt hinges on possession of the airfield at Mersa Matruh. 

The four divisions of the Italian 10th Army launched Operation E against the British in Egypt with support from the two Blackshirt divisions and a sizeable complement of the Libyan Divisions Group. Facing their advance: a smattering of independent British infantry brigades, the 7th Support Group in Sidi Barrani, and the British 7th Armoured. 

The Italian's first strike at Sidi Barrani failed to take the town. By a stroke of luck, the British retained control just long enough to keep the Italians from moving down the coast. In response, the British railed in reinforcements to Mersa Metruh, at the cost of leaving any garrisons in Palestine. 

Even so, the Libyan mobile forces held the coast road and by the second Italian turn, had cut off the British in Sidi Barrani. Lacking speed, the Italians made their first sidle to turn the British flank. To do this, they stretched their line. In turn, the British concentrated a force to break out the defenders and succeeded in driving back the Italians and reestablished a steady line of supply.

All the while, bombers controlled the skies overhead. Italian fighters had blasted the British fighters out of the Western desert, but they could not penetrate British airspace far enough to reach the bomber bases in Cairo. As a result, the rate of close air support available to both sides was remarkably high.

With their first sidle overcome, the Italians tried to cut off the frontline defenders again. This time, they cut off a significant force after consolidating their gains at Sidi Barrani. Only the 1st Cavalry Division out of Palestine, the 7th Armoured Division and the 4th Indian Division at the far edge of the line kept the Libyans at bay. While the British garrison units assigned to Egypt held their ground, even though isolated, the British mobile units gave the Libyans a bloody nose and again broke through the Italian cordon.

Not content to be so set back, the Italian offensive tactics resorted to yet another sidle and encirclement. This time, the Italians circled wide of Mersa Matruh. They overran the 4th Indian Division's HQ and they isolated the majority of the British forces lock, stock, and barrel. Only the Indians and Australians remained uncaught by the slow-moving Italian wheel. 

If the Italians could capture the forces holdimg Mersa Matruh, all that would stand in the Italian's way would be the Australian and Indian divisions. While the offensive power of the 10th Army is still insufficient to overwhelm the Australians and Indians in direct combat, their wheeling sidle tactics would certainly be sufficient, once the British were out of the picture.

In any case, the Italians failed to achieve their short term objective at Mersa Matruh, let alone reach the Nile Delta and bring the Egyptian Army into play. As with the other times before, the Italian cordon failed to hold. A combined relief force, including a fresh Australian division, sent the Italian flanking forces reeling back for good. With that, Operation E had reached it zenith.

I find it remarkable how slow the Italian 10th Army is, and how poorly defended Egypt was in 1940. It is only the reinforcements in Palestine that saved the British in this game. If the axis could tie down the forces in Palestine with a diversionary operation, perhaps on the part of the Vichy forces based out of Beirut and Damascus, then just maybe the Italian 10th Army might reach the delta. 

Oh, and with that, a happy new year one and all!