The Long Night - Czechoslovakian Grognard Marginal Victory

[GeorgeCostanza]

Wow, certainly my favourite scenario of the game so far. This divisional action certainly gave me a great deal of challenge as the CZ forces, it took two whole IRL days of planning and playing to execute my play for this one.

When setting up I really had to think hard about how I was going to play this out. I knew that by far the tougher opponent was going to be the Americans. One look at the unit compendium showed me the heaviest piece of equipment the Germans had was the 1A5s from the engagements at Windischeshenbach a few scenarios ago. Looking at the intelligence from divisional G2 showed me that what was left of the Panzergrenadiers intended to strike at my southern flank while I pushed west on the B22 per HQ orders.

I decided I had two options. The first was to setup a defensive barrier to protect the MSR as the rest of the division pushes west into the American advanced forces reaching Kemnath and beyond. However I didnt find that any elements of the two regiments at my disposal were well suited for static defence, and I also noted that the hostile force was going to have significant artillery support at it's disposal so sitting and waiting might lead to being blown to smithereens. Worse was that until the DANAs arrived, i'd be at a 5km artillery range disparity compared to the Paladin's the Americans would be fielding, so my counter artillery capabilities would be curtailed.

This led to considering, and adopting, option two (pictured as setup). This consisted of cautiously driving the 67th Mechanized Regiment along two axis's, the first being a very cautious advance to Waldeck (500 point obj) to make intial contact with where I thought advanced US elements would be. The armoured battalion of T55s attached to the 67th would travel along the east bank of the Fichtelnaab river to and cross with the aid of the bridging unit north of this advance so as to avoid being caught in any intial engagements, I wanted them to swing around and strike at any forward US elements in the denser terrain north of Schonreuth. The second axis would push through the densely wooded terrain that sat between Erbendorf and Pressath, to meet any possible German/US flanking attacks and should they meet no resistance, push onwards to Pressath.

What this cautious advance of the 67th would allow me to do is take the entire 11th Tank Regiment and drive it into the expected German battalion's attack. I wanted to overrun the germans and use the gap in this would produce to circumnavigate the large wooded areas and turn northwest into the US rear lines and hopefully envelop and destroy the US battalion. The recon company would stay ahead of all axis's of advance. I set the intial offensive targets for the tank regiment within 2-3 kilometres as I had no idea how close the Panzergrenadiers would be, I also thought that 50-70% of the enemy forces reported Tank strength would be situated in the Leopard 1A5s. I was expecting a brutal fight.

So how did things play out? In the first hour, the 67th met no resistance, they were able to advance to all positions without delay, and the 2nd battalion moved on to capture Schoneruth before finally making contact with forward US cavarly elements. At the same time, the 11th Tank Regiment was able to continue advancing south until it made contact with Marders Leopards across the line. With remarkably low casualties, all Panzer and Panzergrenadier platoons were rolled over and the T55s were able to rush through to the German rear lines and overrun their artillery and rear assets. No sooner was this being carried out that the main American force began to crash into 2/67th's defences at Schonreuth. They were not able to put up much of a fight. Divisional artillery was able to savage the US mechanized advanced but the M1A1s and Infantry savaged the 2nd Battalion. They did not, however, roll over. They were able to hold onto their positions and took out anybody who got too close with RPGs. Long enough to allow the Regiments Tank Battalion to come to their aid. This stabilized the situation at the cost of more casualities. The arrival of US Apaches cut the Tank force down a few pegs and the result was a stalemated front line. Worse yet despite rolling over the Panzergrenadier battalion, much to my chagrin two panzer platoons had managed to slip through my advance and get behind my lines, wreaking havoc on logistical and artillery assets until the Helos could come in to stabilize the situation. I had been mostly keeping them back until I had a better idea of the location of enemy AA protection. That is how we reach the midgame screenshot.

The victory conditions at the time of that screenshot were already marginal win, but I wanted to see if I could push it further. At this time, I believed that I had done some damage to the US forces, possibly 20-40% of their number. This was because I had taken the intelligence for granted that I was only up against a slightly strengthened Mechanized battalion, with only a dozen or so M1A1s in support. This intelligence was not correct, as it turns out, it was two battalions, not light ACR support but a whole battalion and what I had erroneously thought were more Panzers were in face about 25-30 M1A1s with all the bells and whistles accompanying them. Furthermore, I had not been able to locate and destroy enemy artillery assets. This was firstly because of the limited range of my first line artillery and secondly due to the chaos of German Panzers slipping into my rear lines.

So between the midgame and endgame screenshot there was a confused scramble. The 67th went off in all directions, sending a company back to the rear lines to eliminate the runaway panzers, redirecting most of the 1st Battalion towards Schonreuth to stabilize the front and driving the T55 battalion forward straight into the prepared US defences that ate them all up for breakfast. The 11th Tank Regiment drove forward, meeting minimal resistance on it's drive to Pressath, clearing the town with ease and continuing north and north west, the issue however was that US maintained eyes on their advance and kept hammering them with artillery. More tanks were lost on this advance than in the entire battle to destroy the Panzergrenadier Battalion. This both delayed and diluted the 11th advance and it would end up failing to breach north of Kastl in time to make any effect on the drive to capture Kemnath. All the while as I advanced I kept meeting more and more US resistance, in all directions and I began to finally understand that there was more forces here that I had initially been led to believe. At least I was lucky enough to bring down two of the three Apaches with the 11th's mobile AAA. In the final 30 minutes of the mission, I halted all advances across the front and focused on just bombarding what I could see of the enemy to inflict some more casualties and maybe bring my result over to the tactical victory side if I was lucky. Alas, no dice. And that is how we get the endgame screenshot. In retrospect, with such a robust US defence, there wasnt going to be much of a chance of taking Kemnath at all.

I interpret Marginal victory in this circumstance to mean the Czechoslovakian forces were unable to inflict crippling losses on the US brigade forces, but had broken through tactically significant terrain to the extend that their foothold in Kemnath would become untenable hence forcing a withdrawal.

In retrospect, perhaps it would have been a smarter strategy to drive the 11th forward with the 67th for a head on collision with the two US battalions but I could easily see that amounting into a blood bath mixed with scrap heap disaster. And the Germans would be given a much greater ability to threaten the entire 19th Motorized Division's MSR. So if I was to attempt this again (not knowing what BP I could be up against) I would yet again attempt to spoil the German attack, but I would drive up divisional artillery assets even closer to the front and set up the 67th in a way to reel in US forces to more effective artillery kill zones and then walk that artillery forward into a slow advance into Kemnath, while hopefully doing a better job of suppressing the M109s so the 11th can move faster and more cohesively into the southern flank of Kemnath with time to spare in engaging what remains of the US forces. But all that would certainly be tough. Even tougher against a human opponent. Hope you enjoyed my debrief.

[GeorgeCostanza]

Battlefield screenshots attached

setup.PNG (6.59 MiB) Viewed 510 times

midgame.PNG (7.1 MiB) Viewed 510 times

endgame.PNG (6.85 MiB) Viewed 510 times