oriskany
You guys are machines! Yeah, it’s been a helluva weekend. Finish the Omaha megagame, post edit, sound-mix, and post the P3 of the Vietnam between Gianna and I, design and run a very large Darkstar game with players / spectators in Australia, UK, and Canada, design and run another Panzer Leader game with players / spectators in the UK and Kansas, put the battle report up for the Darkstar game …
I swear sometimes I come to work on Monday just to relax.
It would be good for him to see the British operating as a division and brigades. Okay, quick word of warning, we were “intentionally inaccurate” in two small ways.
One, we broke the Fireflies out in their own tank troops, rather than the traditional British tank troop of three Shermans and one Firefly.
Two, we “left out” the infantry assault (147th Brigade, 49th West Riding Division) against the German infantry (26th SS Panzergrenadiers / 12th SS HJ). We just described these units as “fighting on the same battlefield, between and among us.” Relegated them to “background noise.” trying to put whole brigades of infantry on the table is definitely the complete and realistic way to do this, but we were trying to avoid another 9.5-hour game like we saw on Gold Beach, or 25-hour game like that Omaha beach assault.
This was all tanks. 90 Shermans, 30 Fireflies, 20 M10 Achilles/17lbr, 30 Panthers, 40 PzKpfw IVs, a handful of JgPz IV/48s, some gun halftracks and flak halftracks, Pumas and other armored cars, even 10 Tigers from 101 SS sPzAbtg. A hide-and-seek game from hell in the dense hedgerow terrain, the ultimate “third-person cover-based shooter.” 😀 The game took four hours, I think we spent three of them measuring line of sight. As soon as someone finally DID get LOS on someone else, the range was so short it was: Bang, you’re dead.” That, and the swarm of rocket-armed Typhoons overhead didn’t help things (at least for me).
From what I have read the Hitler Youth and the Viking divisions were standout divisions in even the SS for the unnecessary horrendous casualties they took. – yeah, and warcrimes, too. I mean none of the Waffen SS units were good in this regard, but these guys were among the worst of the worst.
… as STuGs were by far the most numerous at Normandy followed by Pz-4s with Panthers and Tigers in the minority. I would completely agree with that statement. What’s odd is that in this particular scenario there are no StG-IIIs. Just a weird case where the research shows that these two particular divisions didn’t have that particular equipment on this particular field. And we have about a 40%/60% mix of Panthers and PzKpfw IV, but again that’s more of an exception, borne out by these two particular divisions (12th SS HJ and Panzer Lehr). Although German panzer divisions were going for a 50-50 between PzKpfw V and IV, almost none of them attained it while most fell far, far short.
I was unaware on just how many large ships were lost in the first month of Normandy. Yeah, a lot of those were from those Channel storms that wrecked the Mulberry harbors 2-3 weeks after D-Day. The Mulberry at Omaha was completely smashed up. Also, a lot of ships were sunk intentionally as breakwaters. But also, there were serious shipping losses on D-Day to German AT and howitzer fire.
Would tanks have really made a difference? Something to look at in a what if game. Ha! look no further than that Omaha Beach Megagame. With some merciful dice, I was able to get most of 741st Tank Battalion ashore on Easy Red (as did NOT happen historically), and even a reasonable fraction of the 743rd TB over on Dog White and Dog Green. So by Turn 3 we had about 40 tanks across 5 miles of beach.
What difference would they have made? I found it was a compounding “statistical cascade.” More Shermans on the beach means more cover fire for the infantry = more infantry making it ashore, to the shingle, and up the bluffs. More infantry in the draws means the German wiederstandnester are now fighting to protect their wings (they’re too far apart for mutual support) and not sweeping the beach, which of course means MORE infantry ashore on Waves 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and so on. Safer beaches means more engineers lading with their equipment, so more gaps blown in beach obstacles, and faster. This means MORE tanks make it ashore easier in later LST waves (doesn’t really help the DDs), but also more SP artillery and even towed artillery at the end of the game. The SP artillery (62nd and 58th SP Armored Field Artillery Battalions – M7 Priests) really made a monster difference.
This is part of what turned the tail end of that Omaha Beach game into something of a rout. 16th and 116th RCTs more or less achieved V Corps phase line objectives by mid-day. 😐 I won’t say it was ALL because of the tanks, but they were definitely a contributing factor.
