MAIN EVENT VI! Red Devil vs. [hirr]Leto

[Der Kuenstler]

Thanks Willow! It's always nice to hear from who's reading.

Now we can see the result of the armoured exchange in the East. Red Devil's Stuarts just kept bouncing their shells off of Leto's curved turreted "little tiger." The green PzIIIJ's regular quality "wingman" popped up during this minute and then the battle became two against two. At the end of the minute there were two dead Honeys with no losses to the IIIJ(late)s.



To the South, things went no better for RD'd Brits. Here he hope's his gun damaged Crusader has backed far enough out of trouble - but no - Leto's 75mm ATG in the rocks can still see his turret and gets him. To add to the trouble, the tremendous explosion kills the commander of RD's last good Crusader and sends the crew into shock.



An interesting struggle is going on with Red Devil's 25 pdr Howitzer - he has it area firing Leto's offending 75mm gun, but the gun is shielded by a ridge and in rough terrain, so it survives. In response, Leto is using either his 81mm mortar or one of his tanks to smoke out the LOS of the 25 pdr. RD will likely fail to get the gun this way as he is down to only 2 HE shells.



This seems to be a charmed minute for Leto - pretty much everything goes his way. Here in the West, Leto decides to send his green IIIJ(short) on "Fast" past RD's holding town. Look - he barely missed going through Randy's AT mines. Randy's burning Crusader can be seen circled in the background.



In this shot from the South, RD has two more Stewarts and an M3 Grant engaged against five PzIIIJs in the distance. Not all of these are the late versions - most have 50mm turret armor, but it is still curved. The Brit shells are breaking up or bouncing off as in the East. After what happened there, I would think surely RD should pull these tanks back out of harms way and try a different approach. As we have seen, going toe to toe with German armour at long range usually doesn't pay.



Now Randy has lost three Stuarts and a Crusader. Another Crusader is gun damaged. Fortunately he still has his vet Crusader, but it lost it's commander so will be buttoned the rest of the battle. Leto has lost just the two Marders. The pressure mounts on the Allied commander. We can see the concern on Prime Minister Churchill's face.