Reply To: Continued Explorations of Normandy Wargaming

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@jamesevans140 – I finally have the time required to give this post the reply it deserves.  😀

Yes, we’ve had good luck lately with Panzer Leader.  Two games have come down to the last turn,  although the game before this one (my Germans vs. @brucelea ‘s Soviets during Manstein’s Backhand Blow Feb-March ’43) might have been even closer because I only had ONE last-ditch attack that HAD to succeed, not three.

“JIG” was just the “J” alpha code for this assault sector.  For the Omaha game we’re doing (naturally) DOG, EASY, and a little of “FOX” – albeit by accident as happened historically.  😀  The “Q” sector was QUEEN I think, down on Sword Beach.

Interesting notes about the releases of DD tanks.  I would agree the disasters like we saw with the ill-fated 743rd Tank Battalion going in with 29th Infantry it wasn’t the crews’ fault.  Two companies of 16 tanks each (Baker and Charlie Companies) were going in AHEAD of George and Able Company of the 116th Regimental Combat Team on Dog White and Dog Green beaches, respectively.  So that’s 32 tanks, basically none of them made it.  A/743rd did a little better, landing from with wading trunks as seen in Sicily, from LCTs on Dog Red and Easy Green.  Even these didn’t do that great, they landed late when the tide was deeper and losses were heavy due to surf, beach obstacles, and German fire from strongpoints still not cleared (most especially, Wiederstandnester 62, overlooking Easy Red, near where the American cemetery is located today).

That eastward current was terrible.  As we saw in the Gold Beach game, whole battalions wound up almost a complete kilometer east of where they were supposed to be.

A big point that hurt the American DDs was that the commanders simply didn’t trust them, and didn’t trust British advice on how they should be used.  V Corps commander (Lt. General Gerow) outright opposed their use.  So the compromise was to land some of the tanks with DD and some with wading trunks from LCTs as had been proven in Sicily.  The problem is, the point of DD tanks is so you can land them FIRST, and the guns can suppress German defences for the first wave of infantry.  LCT tanks have to land AFTER, those ships are just too vulnerable to German artillery fire.  So the American tanks land divided, with the Germans able to focus fire in one wave and then a second wave later.

And releasing them so far out meant that they had to fight the current “sideways” as you mention, where the British were able to aim right at the beach points with a much shorter swim.  Even this didn’t really work, for example the two squadrons of Sherwood Rangers were supposed to land at H-Hour-5 on Gold/Jig instead landed H+30 or +45.

Indeed the fate of 743rd Tank Battalion is tragic, and not just for them.  Again, there were supposed to be 32 tanks on the beach five minutes BEFORE the first Higgins Boat threw down its ramp.  Able Company / 116th Rgt lost 95% of their men in about 30 seconds, three Virginia towns lost their male population of that generation pretty much right then and there.  Just two or three HE-FRAG rounds from some Shermans could have take out or at least suppressed / blinded those MG-42s that were absolutely butchering the men trying to “clear those murder holes.”  If even half of B and C/743rd had made it ashore, the horrific fate of A/116 and G/116 (on neighboring Dog White) could have been largely avoided or at least greatly mitigated.

That full invasion game of SPI sounds amazing.  SPI didn’t play around, that’s for sure.  I’ve done so far Omaha a few times in Panzer Leader (never the full thing at once in full detail like the game I have coming up), ALL of Juno (that game took about 12-14 hours), and Gold (9.5 hours).  If this Omaha experiment goes well I might set up Sword and eventually Utah (although there I have Gliders, C-47s, and paras for airborne games of the 82nd and 101st).  That will  mean I have done the complete invasion, albeit it pieces.  Maybe smaller actions like Pegasus Bridge, Merville Battery, and Pointe du Hoc can be tackled with Valor & Victory if people are interested.

That is absolutely correct about Utah.  Had Utah landed in the “right place” (we’re talking about 4th US Infantry) it would have been a lot worse.  I don’t know if it would have been QUITE as bad as Omaha.  Utah has no big bluffs behind it and the German units (709th) defending it were much weaker than the hardened 352nd at Omaha (all these Normandy divisions that begun with “7” are “coastal” infantry divisions, not even really Germans largely, but “volunteer” conscripts from the East).  But the Americans could have had a MUCH tougher fight if they hadn’t hit a basically unoccupied beach, since again, their tanks were doing terribly due to poor decisions by their commanders.

“After this it is of to Rzhev.”  Oof, you’re not playing around.  That’s a very serious battle, one that is too often overlooked because it was happening more or less in tandem with Stalingrad.  And then Kursk.  Damn, NOTHING’s small about that battle.  I set up ALL of Prokhorovka … yes, ALL … it’s a lot bigger than just 5th Guards Tank Army which was already crazy-reinforced … in Panzer Leader once, the map and counters took two days to build and NO, I did not play it.  A single turn would take a day.  There comes a time when even Panzer Leader is broken.  😀

Yeah, we’ve been chipping away at “perfecting” playing wargames in spreadsheets for easy play with friends around the world via the web.  Darkstar, Valor & Victory, and Panzer Leader are the favorites, although we’ve also done AirWar C21 and Naval Command during our Falklands run.

I will send you the graphic of the explosion and some other similar materials we find useful.  The format is .png since we need it with transparent background.

Thanks again for the great post!