Jobu and MrYormsha 1941

[Jobu88]

MrYormsha ( hereafter: Mr Y) wanted to study the very early stages of Barbarossa with a maximum of 5% rarity to get a feel for what the Russians were up against, so we agreed to play a couple games. This is the fourth. June 1941, 1500 points, 5 % rarity, German attack.

Mr Y indicated that he would set up a concurrent DAR from his point of view; but seeing as he has a wife and a mother in law to contend with, he may post updates intermittently. That's OK.

So, without further eloquence:

What we have here is a small map with sparse cover, and three large flags conveniently centered on the small village. One large flag off to the right, and a small flag off to the left.




Given my limited forces, I am going to try to hold the three central flags come Hell or Herman Hoth, make an effort to slow down Mr Y's approach to the large flag over on the right, and ignore the small flag. I have two 1941 Rifle Companies, and in expectation of Mr Y's kit of a German panzer grenadier battalion, I purchased two companies of tanks, 5 each of BT-7 and T-26. They are hidden behind a nice hill on my end of the map.

Given the lack of any real cover on the map, I expect Mr Y's approach to go like this:



So, in order to keep his advance under observation and possibly spring an ambush ( a suicidal ambush, admittedly) I have two squads in the wheatfield with a 3-man HQ, and I have mined the exit from the only real piece of cover on the whole map, the clump of woods on my left. Thus my basic plan looks like this. Two hmg's, in a trench behind a wall, are all I have to delay his approach to the large flag on the right. Everyone else is dug in, or in a building, in the center.

[Jobu88]

On the first turn my observers spot the hated invader exactly where I thought he'd be: over on my left, the only part of the map with anything that resembles cover. They advance fairly predictably, and by the end of the second turn this is what I'm looking at. Did I say panzer grenadier battalion? Looks more like Army Group Center..



The panzers all appear to have passengers, and they apparently don't have any Feldgendarmerie to direct traffic as they're in a bit of a stau at the moment. I contemplate using some of my mortars to give Mr Y's boys a headache. I have a clear LOS from the spotter HQ on the hill, and nothing says "mortar attack" like a dense clump of Germans like the one I can see. 50mm mortars don't pack the same wallop as 81's, but you fight with what you got, so I'll start dropping shells on the Germans next turn.

[Copper]

Good show M8! I enjoy reading it already! Keep up the good work!

Cheers!

Leto

[Jobu88]

My "artillery support" - 6 50mm mortars, set behind the crest of the hill with an HQ to spot for them. If the hill wasn't part of this map I'd be in a lot worse shape.

The good news: each of them has 65 rounds to drop on the Germans!! 390 rounds total & I plan to use it all, brother. The semi-good news: each 50mm can pump out 12 rounds per turn, so any Krauts under accurate fire will break pretty quickly. The semi-bad news: 12 rounds per turn can burn up the 65-round ammo load in a hurry, so I will need to plan carefully.

[McIvan]

Looking forward to the "death by a thousand sky-toothpicks" approach results :)

[Jobu88]

Sigh.....50mm mortars just don't do the kind of damage I was hoping for.....but there's no crying in baseball, so on with the fight.

I'm out of town & using my sister's laptop, so image uploads will have to wait for Monday, but here's the latest SitRep:

Mr Y's panzers and their riders moved up only about 50-60 meters, and remain tightly bunched. Don't believe I forced any infantry to dismount with my mortars. So I will continue to blast away at them with three of my 50mm peashooters and hope for the best. I also have LOS to Mr Y's right-most infantry formation ( on the far left from my point of view) and I will treat them to a barrage as well. My mortars actually have direct LOS so I could use "target" for specific squads, but I have generally had better luck against moving infantry by using a target location that I expect his boys to march through, so that's what I'm doing here. Targets are about 15-20 meters ahead of where his squads are presently located, hoping that the timing will be such that my mortars will have corrected after the first shots and be hitting the target just as his men reach it.

I have also set both of my hmg's on the hill ( located to the left and right of my HQ mortar spotter) to cover arc the area where I have mined the exit from the woods. Hoping to catch some of his infantry scouts in the mines and spray them with lead. And the good news, most of MrY's panzers are out of LOS to my hmg's due to the intervening buildings, so they shouldn't get too much in the way of immediate return fire.

Finally, I will position my BT-7 platoon just behind the crest of the hill behind the mortar spotter, so that they can open fire when the time is right. Looking at the armor ratings for the BT-7, the German 20mm on the Pz II can penetrate their front armor. That ain't good. My 45mm can only penetrate their front armor with a lucky shot. Also not good. Hopefully his panzers will turn aus lenks and I'll get a side shot.

[herroberst]

Consider smoking the Germans and then using your BT's speed in a fast end run to get behind the Germans. As the Germans turn, then send in your T-26 which are slower to engage them in cross fire... or hope they turn side on to you but I doubt they will.

[Jobu88]

Discovered the magic of Adobe Photoshop & can post images without waiting until Monday.

After another turn of 50mm rain, I see some concrete results. At least one dead mortar, a dead crew that I hope is from a different mortar, and one pinned and crawling squad. I also sent all 3 squads and their HQ to ground with the 50mm barrage farther back and on my left, they all switched to German icons by 0:30 and didn't pop back up. At least one round landed directly on top of each German icon after they went to ground, so hopefully they are good and pinned. I will shift three of my 50mm slightly to a spot where there is a clump of tanks with riders still visible, I will keep one 50mm blasting the infantry farther back on my left, and I will save ammo and hide the remaining 2 50mm mortars this turn.



Mr Y has sent a flanking group of light tanks around towards my left, at least two of them have what appear to be MG riders. Hopefully my 2-squad ambush in the wheatfield will eliminate the MGs before being sent to the Communist Heroes Camp in the sky.



Finally, I have determined to my satisfaction that Mr Y is not sending any significant force along my right flank. I haven't spotted so much as a squad over there. So I will send my T-26 platoon around to the right, and hopefully I will be able to force Mr Y's panzers to present a side shot to one or the other of my tank platoons. I am taking a slightly long and laborious route in order to remain out of LOS as long as possible, otherwise I would probably lose most of my tanks en route to accurate german guns.

Also the red / yellow lines from my BT-7 on the left are residue from the previous turn, the LOS of each is blocked by the hill at the beginning of this turn. My heroic tank crew shrugged off three penetrations by 20mm hits with a slug of vodka and some beef jerky, and they will hunt forward about 10 meters and hopefully drill one of Mr Y's flanking group.

[Jobu88]

Please let me know if the images appear dark / blurred /etc. using my sister's computer, some of the images I had posted previously now appear dark, but these new ones appear nice and clean.

[Jobu88]

Mother x:censored: !!!...... as if to prove my theory of accurate German guns, this T-26 was killed by 20mm fire while trying to dash forward to a covered spot behind a building. To add insult to self-inflicted injury, this was the HQ for the T-26 platoon!! :censored: !! :censored: !!!




I chose him to dash forward, instead of going with the rest of the platoon around to the right, simply because he was the left-most tank and was already on the road and pointed in the right direction. Didn't notice that he was the HQ. He had no command modifiers of any kind, but now all 4 of the other T-26s will be out of command the rest of the game. :hissy::censored::hissy: No wonder the Russians got their asses kicked in 1941, doing stupid stuff like that.