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:
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| 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. |
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| First blood to Poland: a 7TP brews up a PzII. |
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| 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). |
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| Fire from the Polish light armour (left) has forced back the German light armour (top-right) |
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| 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). |
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| Lanchester's square law in action?? |
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?)
I recall from the original WRG rules that getting in the first shot at under 500m range was critical in tank fights. We used to end up just parked along tree lines waiting for the other side to do something, and in one game I even moved one tank out into the open. The enemy took the bait, and then the whole battlefield erupted into tanks firing at each other at close range. Carnage!
ReplyDeleteYes, I remember something like that myself. There is probably something sensible to write about how wargames tank combat is an order of magnitude more Lanchesterian than real tank combat, and what the implications of that are...
DeletePhil Sabin wrote a lengthy piece on that in "Simulating War". Any situation where unit A shoots at unit B as a single action in a discrete time period is perfectly Lanchester, as most Wargames rules are. Irl fire is invariably area fire, and one tank in the right place can knock out half a dozen etc, and warfare is a series of miniature massacres, the very opposite of Lanchester.
DeleteI will have to re-read that it. It does some familiar, now you mention it
DeleteNice to see a tank-on-tank game, something I keep meaning to do, but fail all the time, probably as I need to paint up some more German tanks to make a fist of it. I think you can see why the Germans used the Pak front, especially in the Western Desert, retreating through this line to allow the ATG's to do the real damage to the advancing tanks. It looks like if you can get some early fire superiority here, then it is hard to the other side to come back into the game, but then that tended to be true historically.
ReplyDeleteThanks Steve, and yes agreed on all points (I think most of them flitted through my mind playing the game). I will say that the observation rules in this set make that even more true (anti-tank guns are distinctly harder to spot than tanks, and it makes a difference). How many German tanks do you have? You might not need so many
DeleteI did my first ww2 tank only game only last year. I too found it interesting playing one like you did above.
ReplyDeleteI had to look up Lanchester. Most interesting, a bit of military theory that has somehow passed me by until now!
Thanks Shaun. It is quite interesting although the devil is always in the environmental constraints (which Martin was alluding to), which mean that it hardly ever actually shows up.
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