Scheldt '44 Market Garden (expanded) Allied AAR - settled for a Draw turn 69

[ComradeP]

It's been a busy month at work. I'll try to make more regular updates instead of posting a number of turn overviews on the same day with gaps in between updates.

Turn 27, 05:00 Dawn September 20th 1944. Normal Conditions.

Now that link-up is a matter constructing a bridge across the Meuse, it's time to turn my attention to securing the flanks.



1st Airborne is slowly moving across the river. What helps is that the road at Opheusden isn't ZOC-blocked. I can draw fire from the German unit next to itwith the 82nd Airborne units and move 1st Airborne units along the road. There are AT guns firing from across the river, but they don't do much damage.

I'm trying to keep about a 2000 men lead in losses inflicted.

82nd Airborne is maintaining two bridgeheads across the Maas-Waalkanaal until Guards Armoured can get there. One battalion is being ferried across the Meuse at Nitrijk.



A lot of the variability in the scenario comes from which wired bridges blow up and when engineers can construct a bridge. The Guards engineers are not in any kind of hurry, which leads to delays. Admittedly, there's only a company at both locations. Nederasselt and Nitrijk. As you'll see later, on turn 48 the unit building a bridge at Nederasselt still hasn't succeeded in constructing one...

The Welsh (light blue) are moving north. They'll be moved across the Waal to support 1st Airborne and 82nd Airborne. In the next few days, 101st Airborne will be relieved by other formations and move to the northern side of the Zuid-Willemsvaart so it can advance north-west towards 's Hertogenbosch.



The 3rd Infantry Division is arriving in bits and pieces, it's still split in two parts at the moment. One brigade at Valkenswaard and one at Best. The third brigade is approaching the bridges across the Bocholt-Heerentalskanaal in the south. The divisional engineer units have outperformed their counterparts thus far. Recently, a bridge in Eindhoven to move around the Congestion hex in the city center has been completed so units can move across the river without having to spend several turns moving through the Congestion hex.

11th Armoured Division (orange) will start to put some pressure on Division Erdmann and other German forces west of the Zuid-Willemsvaart.

The idea is to "leapfrog" the 11th and later 7th Armoured Divisions and the 4th Armoured Brigade across the canals to the east, putting operational pressure in each sector to force a withdrawal in another due to the threat of flanking German positions. This would work very well as you'll see later.

Detailed status overviews per battalion turned out to be a lot of work, so I'll just post strength dialog updates for now. There will be a full status overview for turn 47.

I'm still trying to find corps assignments that work in changing battlefield situations. They'll be ironed out by turn 37.