Breakout at Kirovograd - The Matrix Games version of East Front II

Lelekovka, near Kirovograd, 240km SSE of Kiev: [Best played as Axis] As the Red Army advanced west with the 2nd Ukrainian Front in early 1944, four German divisions were trapped at Kirovograd. Among them was the 3rd Panzer Division commanded by General Bayerlein, formerly Rommel's chief of staff. He had only been on the Eastern Front for ten weeks thus he did not suffer from the trauma of Russian numbers or the Russian winter. The other division commanders were content to sit in their fortified positions and follow the Fuhrer's strict orders to hold the town at all costs. However, Bayerlein knew from his experiences under Guderian and Rommel that the purpose of a panzer division was mobile warfare, not sitting in defense of a fortified locality and Kirovograd looked to much like Stalingrad! On January 7, with darkness closing in, the 3rd Panzer Division formed into Combat Groups and attacked to the north-west against elements of the Soviet 47th Mechanized Brigade and the 14th Heavy Tank Regiment.