#0709_08s: Two Crucial Days at DIME Beach (H2H)

[Mr Grumpy]

#0709_08s: Two Crucial Days at DIME Beach (H2H)

Gela, Sicily, late in the evening of July 9th 1943: The II Corps landing at the Gulf of Gela saw some of the heaviest fighting of the early days of the campaign. As fate would have it, a large part of the Herman Goering Division was stationed some 25 km in from the beachhead; it was to be the cause of some very tense moments for the Americans. D-Day as well as D+1 proved to be both crucial days on the beachhead and this scenario covers the action over the longer two day period with different victory levels assigned.
The US player must hold a bridgehead at the conclusion to achieve a victory, the Axis player must prevent this.
*I recommend the use of the default rules plus and Recon spotting*

Explicit supply can be used for those who like the rule

Designer notes
Version 2.0

At the time of writing this scenario had the unhappy Blitz stats of 24 games, 24 Axis victories and in my opinion did not reflect the historical situation in that the Axis did not have to defeat the US landings to achieve a major victory.

Units
Only the quality of the Herman Goring Div (HG) has been at altered as I felt A quality was just to high for a untested unit so I reduced various components of the unit to B quality and the two KG HQ’s to D quality to reflect the total confusion that the HG suffered that morning and the HG releases at 8am to further reflect their slow start that morning, also the Livorno Div starts out further from the beach head to reflect that apart from one battalion no other units where committed on the first day.

Map
The main changes on the map are the extra VP locations both on the beaches and at the Piano Lupo bunker complex, the scenario now requires the Axis player to capture some or all of these hex’s to achieve a victory.

Strategy
As Axis you must decide how to best utilise the HG which represents your most powerful formation, you can send the whole Div towards the main Gela landing areas or contain the landing while striking at Biscari and the Scoglitti beaches or try both!!
As the US player you will have to react to the Axis strategy, in early testing the effective use of the Para’s often had a huge bearing on the game result, any Para’s in front of the Gela landing beaches must delay the HG even at the expense of their destruction, while Para’s landing East of the Acale river must quickly converge to resist any advance in that area and secure the various VP locations in that area, the US forces landing must push in land with all speed to gain space for the follow up waves and prepare for the HG counterattack.

Rules
This scenario should be played with the default rules plus Recon spotting. Explicit supply is also possible and should be used, but can be ignored for players who dislike this rule.

Conclusion
I hope this scenario will now be an improved recreation of the events of those two critical days and will provide a greater challenge for both players.

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