Kampfgruppe Heller: Battle 14, Poland

Next battle in the Kampfgruppe Heller campaign, which re-creates Just Jack's KG von Klink campaign, is a purely armoured clash between Polish and German tank forces. The Polish Army is at the culmination point of its resistance and it is mainly fighting to avoid encirclements and forced mass surrenders by this point. Here KG von Klink has sent an improvised Panzer company group to stop a Polish armoured breakout.

The Forces:

KG Heller:

1 x Coy Comd group

2 x PzIV

4 x PzIII

2 x PzII

1 x Sd221

1 x Sd231

Polish Forces:

1 x Coy Comd group

5 x 7TP

2 x Vickers

1 x wz34

1 x TKS20

The Battle:

Somehow I can't find the photos of the set-up, and some are also missing from the end of the battle. In any case the Poles are advancing from the West (left), the German from the East (right). From top-to-bottom, the Poles have their tankette and armoured car, then the five 7TPs, then the two Vickers. From top-to-bottom, the Germans have their armoured cars, then two mixed platoons of 2 x PzIII, 1 x PzIV, then the pair of PzII at the bottom. So far, the PzII and 7TP have advanced. The Vickers tried, but one tank was forced back by fire from one of the PzIII/IV platoons.

First blood to Poland: a 7TP brews up a PzII.

One of the mixed Pz platoons has advanced to the base of the central wood, whilst the other remains in support. The remaining PzII has moved to a better firing position (bottom-right).

Fire from the Polish light armour (left) has forced back the German light armour (top-right)

And then everything happened all at once! The Germans felt that they weren't getting anywhere fast with long range shooting, so attacked. But the Poles simply outshot their German opponents, first destroying the lead Pz platoon (burning, centre), and then the remaining PzII from that platoon (bottom). The German light armour still cannot get forward (top).

Lanchester's square law in action??

Not much actually happened after this - worried about being outflanked locally in the centre, the Germans withdrew, and then withdrew some more, feeling that any further panzer losses would be pretty pointless.

Game Notes:

It has been noted by others here that more or less pure armoured clashes in WW2 games are somewhat rarer than might be imagined: I don't think this is my first exactly, but I haven't played many at all. This was my first time doing it with John's rules for certain. In any case, the main feature for me in actually playing this was how ineffective early tank fire actually was, until the range was pretty close! Its main effect in practice seemed to be to 'persuade' advancing tanks to pull back into cover. So the action didn't really hot up until the first tank was destroyed, which started to shift the firepower advantage, which persuaded the German commander to try and get his tanks into really effective range. But the Poles always had superiority of fire at the point of action, and it counted. The rules do allow for some of the shoot-and-scoot skirmish tactics, but they just seemed to make the fire even more ineffective. What worked was a larger number of stationary tanks on watch-and-shoot, and hoping someone got moderately lucky...

Anyway, I apologize for the lack of photos for this game so I haven't done it real justice, but it was a lot of fun, and very interesting! Models all by H&R this time (have I mentioned how much I like the camo patterns for both sides?)