Panzer Campaigns teaser guessing thread

[ComradeP]

Strela/David posted a picture of a by (pre-war) European standards large city.



It's not Kiev, though it shares some characteristic features with it.

It's an important road/rail hub, the rail lines in particular are numerous. Note the two rail lines heading north next to the river.

The island on the other bank should make it easier to identify. Also note the near complete lack of suburbs or industrial zones on the other bank. That's uncommon, particularly considering the infrastructure.

What does or doesn't constitute a full hex river in PzC is a bit vague, it doesn't have to be a truly wide river like the Dnepr or Volga. The Rhine and the Waal and Nederrijn it splits into in The Netherlands are full hex rivers in France '40.

The city is too big for Gomel, aside from other details not matching.

It also doesn't match Zaporozhye 180 degrees rotated (as in: the top of the screenshot facing south). A bit far-fetched, but I thought Strela might try something clever like that.

It's not Narva or Stettin (sorry Xaver, it's not PzC Berlin '45 by the looks of it).

Cities like Vienna, Riga and Warsaw are located on both banks of the major river running through them.

Normally I'm pretty good at finding the city that fits the image, but this is a tricky one. I've checked every larger East Front city that I could think of that isn't already in a PzC game and came up empty. I've checked cities in Western and Central Europe, as well as cities in Asia, without result either.

The questions are: what city is this and what future PzC title would feature it?

[am10]

It seems Kiev. Maybe Bucarest?

[phoenix]

Maybe he turned the map and top isn't north. Would that change anything, Comrade P?

And, was Vienna on both banks during WW2? It's got that little loop of river to the east that Vienna has - the Alte Donau.

Aerial recon photo of the eastern bank of Vienna during WW2. I guess it looks pretty built up. So not Vienna, maybe...



Image copyright - NCAP

[ComradeP]

Bucharest doesn't fit, there's no forest west of it (supposing the image was turned), there's also no large island across the various bodies of water running through the city.



Vienna does have a forest west of it, but both banks of the Danube were urbanized during the war, like your aerial recon photo also shows. The island between the Danube and the old Danube was also urbanized.

Vienna conveniently ended up on the edges of three different AMS 1:100.000 maps.

[Strela]

Well, hasn't this been a fun little discussion :)

And I have to reveal where it is and now adjust as well (already)!!!

Yes it's Wien/Vienna!




This has been done with a 1:500,000 overlay map (see above) which we had found is not as cluttered as the 1:250,000 source maps. That said, i obviously have a fidelity issue here as the far bank show the hex we have as village is more urbanised.

Here is the applicable 1:250,000 map;


Note there is at least some town and a few more villages etc at this scale.

It's very interesting to see the 1:100,000 maps. They grey it all like its urban and we have used the green at the higher scale for forest. I'll have to go back and decide what to correct etc. Please note this is a first pass of this particular map, so happy to have a little more info...

Now for the conjecture on why Vienna might be on a map!!!  

David

[Plain Ian]

Strela/David posted a picture of a by (pre-war) European standards large city.



It's an important road/rail hub, the rail lines in particular are numerous. Note the two rail lines heading north next to the river.

I assume you've looked at rail maps to narrow things down? It looks like a large rail hub? Its difficult to comapre but the city looks to be about 1/3rd to 1/2th the size of Moscow?

[phoenix]

Oh. I was right. Do I get a prize?

I took my war time aeriel recon photo from NCAP, David - the UK's museum for aerial recon images, all mainly from WW2. There were many of that part of the river opposite Vienna, and all showed up as in the image I posted above, which is actually pretty densely urbanised, more so than shows up on your maps, I think.

NCAP is a great site, though to view zoomable images you have to pay a small fee - £20 a year, I think.

Here's the other side of the alte donau loop. This was taken 13 April 1944. There's a park there - the donau park, I think, but it's not forest. 



Image copyright - NCAP

[ComradeP]

There were a surprising amount of candidates, with at least some similarities to the city shown in Strela's screenshot. You would think it's a pretty unique geographical situation, with that small island in the river.

The 1:100.000 AMS maps can be found here: http://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/maps/ams/middle_danube/

The maps are Sastin, Wien and Wiener Neustadt.


It's possible your map shows the areas between Danube and old Danube and the area above the old Danube as wooded due to the many parks, public gardens and open spaces. Urban expansion in that area was still in its early stages in the 1930's.

These maps from the Viennese archive show war damage in Vienna with various colours using urban maps as a base.

https://www.wien.gv.at/actaproweb2/benut...0651m08alt

An "Öffentlicher Platz" is a public/open space and there are lots of them north of the Danube, the numerous parks and gardens can also be seen.

[phoenix]

Nice map sites, ComradeP!! Thanks.

[KAreil]

Coming late to the party I would have guessed it's Wien!

But only because I'm right now playing Campaign Wagram and it is on the map there and looks very similar.