Bulge 16.01s alt

[Plain Ian]

Turn 69 Dec 23rd 4pm Dusk - weather Mud - Chession - Samree



9th SS tanks continue to batter the 30th at Grandmenil. His 116th Pz armour force is hidden by dusk but is out there. He has used Pioneers to push me back at Chession and has moved up a Peiper Panther unit as a roadblock at Stoumont. 

I'm happy to hold in front of the Werbomont Manhay road at the moment. 43rd fed in to relive 7th Armoured and 75th also pushed forward to help 30th and also extend flank south. 
There has been heavy fighting at Bra.

53rd Welsh is milling about in rear at moment. I'm thinking of attaching to XVIII Corps and sending south to Bastogne. Roads are awful and its difficult to deply things in this area.

[Plain Ian]

Sorry on holiday and no laptop to play turn or do maps. Cesar has sent me Turn 70 and it sounds bad. 

Attacks at Spa and south of Bra. 

Hollange area under attack. 2nd SS from north, Fuhrer Greñadier Bde from west and Pz Lehr pushing from Bigonville area. Things not good and I could lose whole units. Clear terrain and river at my back. 

Plus he says he has used 800 points of air attacks? Night 23rd Dec and he is doing large air attacks? This is not how I thought a Bulge game would be? I did have air but 50% of my air was intercepted and because most of my air is Carpet bombing I am averaging one successful attack per turn. Any non Carpet bomb attacks seem to suffer from A/A as Germans have plenty of these and Cesar keeps them on front line.....and no it is not easy to attack small A/A units with ground fire. 

Pretty frustrating playing and Im glad that the game has British reinforcements a week early or else my lines would havecollapsed completely.

[Plain Ian]

Turn 70 Dec 23rd 6pm 

Victory Points and losses below -


I think there is a mistake in spreadsheet with Turn 68/69. Will check and fix. The trend seems to be that VP's have plateaued but I'm not convinced and I think they may be about to swing up again.

Turn Losses -


A pretty bloody turn in terms of losses in men. I managed to 'dish out' as much as i took in my turn, apart from tank losses as probably only 4-5 of his vehicle losses were tanks and pretty much all my losses were tanks or armoured cars.

[Plain Ian]

Turn 70 Dec 23rd 6pm - the north



A high level view of things after allied turn 70. 

Not much happening at Elsenborn. Both resting. 99th Div are D rated units so I'm not going to repostion them at night. 
I did make an assault with 324th CE this turn against his 326th and gained the hex. It cost me 30 engineers and pushed them to 150 Morale. I expect him to assault back as its revealed two more 326th VGD units.

Cesar still occupies the VP city hex of Spa [C] and I still have the other two hexes of this multi hex city. His 3rd FJD still provide flank support to the south despite being easily disrupted. 
He has finally brought up his 12th SS armoured units [A] and is now battling it out with my armour. I have 3 x M4 Bn's here. 743rs (30th Div) 746th (9th Div) 1-33rd (3rd Arm) with an average strength of 30 and B/C morale. Its difficult to assess his strength but I think his XX units are not small.
I'll post a more detailed map of this area next. 

[Plain Ian]

Turn 70 Dec 23rd 6pm - Spa



Situation at Spa. I've been feeding in units as best as possible. 29th Rgt at Spa and 60th Rgt (9th Div) north east of Spa. 

105th CE were disrupted and I pulled them back and moved the 2-29th in....and they disrupted because of night movement. (C class unit) 

I also moved the 823rd TD south east away from his 12SS stack and again they disrupted. I didn't want to leave them adjacent because he would definitely target them because of their poor defense strength. (10) Its the curse of US tank destroyers. Great attack strength but poor defensive strength. So if he spots any not dug in Woods he hits them with artillery and easily kills 1 with every shot.

I really don't understand why he can continue to fight here? Secondary road as supply source? I guess I should be gathering everything I can and sending it against Franchorchamps but I'm not playing a novice and I think Cesar has all of 12th SS infantry sitting down there dug in. 

One thing I've learned in PzC is not to start a fight you are not prepared for. 

[Plain Ian]

Turn 70 Dec 23rd 6pm - Chession



Not much to see. The 34th Tank Bde were sent here to cover the gap but I don't think he has any intentions of advancing. His commandos have caused quite a bit of disruption on the Bde. I sent the 4th Cav Gp here as well (4th/24th Cav) but I may pull them out. He definitely has a Panther force [XX] here. Its like a mobile PILLBOX. I can't touch or hurt it as MC Hammer says. I guess all he needs to do is stick it out front and hide everything else behind it.

The 43th Woosy Div...sorry Wessex Div is now deployed. Class D so not much use offensively. I know Cesar wasn't happy that I have British units earlier than historically and I am able to use them in areas where they never went (east of the Meuse0 but a D British Division is pretty woeful at best. The ony good thing is the 72 x 24 pounders.

[Plain Ian]

I'll post more maps tomorrow. Hopefully Cesar will not post his turn back tomorrow.

[Plain Ian]

Turn 70 Dec 23rd 6pm - Rarmont - Samree



I am still holding on to the main road south from Manhay. The two Tnk Bn's from 7th Armoured (17th/40th) have really been a lifesaver. Both have about 30 tanks and are in reasonable condition. He has most of 18th VGD in this area plus infantry support from 116th Pz. I've fed in a Bde from the 43rd Wessex Div and the 2nd Fife and Forfarshire Yeomanry have been sent down to help. (29th Arm Bde) 

I lost the 771st Tnk Bn (84th Div) when it was Broken after an assault. The 750th Tnk Bn (75th Div) has arrived to replace it though. 

The rest of 75th Division is almost in place and starting to take up the strain.

84th Division still holding south of Grandmenil against 9th SS armour. I'm keeping my tanks away at moment at Odeigne. (814th TD (M36) from 7th Armoured and 638th TD (M18) from 84th Div both having just over 20 tanks each)

He brought up 2nd Panzer armour from Bertogne/Bastogne to block the Baraque road. Panthers...........

All I can do at the moment is keep chipping away at his 18th VGD and watch my infantry losses. There are 6 Bn's of 9th SS infantry in those woods so no time to think of trying anything fancy.

[Don Czirr]

Great AAR - thanks for posting all of this.

When you have a chance, could you post an image of the jump-map ?

I'd like to see the high level view.

[Plain Ian]

Great AAR - thanks for posting all of this.

When you have a chance, could you post an image of the jump-map ?

I'd like to see the high level view.

Sure. Here is the north map.



V Corps has 4 Divisions crammed into the Hoes Venn area. Its an incredible waste of resources which I'll fix tomorrow on the 24th. 2nd Division just about recovered and able to move at night as its B morale. 99th Division is D morale so best not moving and its still resting anyway. 2 Regiments of 9th here also resting but I've got one its Rgt's on a road ready to move at daylight.

VII Corps I've talked about already at Spa and south to Manhay. Again this needs sorting. 30 Corps HQ is moving up so I will insert it at Werbomont.

53rd Welsh is part of VII Corps but I will assaign to XVIII Corps at Bastogne. 

I'll post a map of the south in half an hour after dog walking.