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Hi all,

This is a question about the w ay the scenario is set up. If the German plan was to a track and seize these objectives, and the time-table was tight, then why does one one of the arty units have any ammo until a few hours in?

Do most people attack straight off, or wait a few hours until. Sme for the. Arty ammo has been mreceived by the units?

The way the s Demario is designed, it. Leave me with the impression that the German attack was implemented in haste, so that got me curious as to what the real situation was.

The artillery has supposedly just finished a long(ish) preparatory bombardment - without good fire direction most of it was fairly harmless (not untypical - large volumes of fire, but not all of it did any good, and mostly fires are only neutralising - with time the affected unit(s) will recover almost completely). This is a common theme with O-Tag scenarios as well (this is just prior to the Bulge proper - or at least that is my dim recollection).

I feel that they should have fired off ammunition received for that purpose, and retained at least minimal stocks on the pieces, rather than fire off all the on-hand ammunition and then receive the rounds from stocks, but ultimately it doesn't matter too much - by the time a decent attack has formed up and is ready, the artillery is becoming on-call again from base stocks... Only when these too are depleted does ammunition supply become a gnawing issue.

Operationally this is a hastily implemented attack - over half the Division is busy elsewhere/still en-route at the H-hour, and some of it never arrives in the Division sector. Tactically, they were doing the best with very limited resources.

From an operational and tactical standpoint the whole Ardennes Offensive could be considered a hasty attack. For security purposes most of the front line troops had less than 24 hours briefing before the attack began and very few divisions started the attack from positions held for more than a few hours prior to the offensive.

Not helped by still being in the process of extracting various units from Hurtgen Forest area - many didn't close up completely for 2-3 days, and some never saw some portions of their nominal forces earmarked for the Ardennes.