Axis Attack on Elsenborn Ridge

[MikeJ19]

Decisive Victory

Although I was unable to get any forces to exit at the second set of exits, I was able to secure a decisive victory!

[MikeJ19]

After Action Report

What went well

Dislocation
I did not go after US forces directly, I focused on going for the Objectives in depth, which forced, I think, the US forces to withdraw and give up some good defensive locations.
This happened early in going after RK and later by pushing towards Elsenborn Ridge

Main effort in South
By pushing far to the West in the South, I was able to get Peiper off in time
Thanks to Daz I discovered that the southern exits closed on D3

Concentration of force
The attacks on RK and Bullingen went well because I concentrated the most force possible to make them work
this included multiple Bn attacking and lots of fire support

Stuck to the Plan
For the most part, I stuck to my original plan
Where I deviated, I did so after really thinking about it.

What I could have done better

Flank support
I did not worry about my flanks and this almost cost me in the North
Luckily, my reinforcements arrived just in time to help protect against the US attack from the North into RK.

Allocation of resources
I did not realize early that some of my artillery resources would be better suited for direct fire rather then indirect. This is especially true with the 88s. I should have assigned some of the artillery directly to the lead Bns

Recce
I did not task enough forces to find the enemy or into positions to observe what the enemy was trying to do.
I did use one recce sqn for this, but could have tasked others as well.

Observations

I was frustrated with the time it took for some units to actually conduct their attacks.
Kuhl’s forces never really engaged in the atk on Murringen or Wirtzfeld – they just seemed to stop.
In the South 6 US soldiers stopped an entire Bn for most of the day. This prevented me from possibly exiting some of the forces through the last exit points, in the end I did not need the victory points, but it was still frustrating.

The US Forces did not try to launch many counter attacks, except towards RK. They were not as aggressive as I expected.

Overall

This was fun. It is a challenge commanding so many troops, but I enjoyed having to come up with a plan, and then executing the plan.

I hope that you enjoyed this account of the battle. If you have any suggestions on how to improve my account, please let me know. I think I will now try this scenario as the American commander.

[rickier65]

Thanks for the AAR and also for the end game analysis.

I've come to realize that this game system rewards planning and punishes impetuous responses. Which is as it should be I think.

Thanks
Rick

[dazkaz15]

Very well Played [&o]

The progress you made on day one was amazing.
I'm usually not even out of the forest on day one.

The narrow front tactic obviously worked very well.
You played this is true blitzkrieg style, where the spearhead bypasses stiff opposition, and hardly worries about its flanks, leaving that to the follow up forces.

Even your AAR was fast!

Which patch version were you playing?

[MikeJ19]

Rick,

I'm glad you liked the AAR and the analysis. Planning is very important and in a game like this it is easy to get sucked into the battle and lose sight of what you are actually trying to achieve.

Daz,

Thanks for comments. I was worried during my initial assault that my forces were not moving fast enough!!

I really enjoyed this scenario and I do like the blitzkrieg style. The scenario took me almost two weeks to play - with about 5 days of staring at the map trying to figure out what to do. As I played, I took screen shots and saved them to Powerpoint and used them to make up my plan and to try to plan for the next stage. This made doing the AAR at the end much quicker.

I started the game with patch 4.6.269 and decided not to switch when the patches came out.

I noticed your comments on another post about the int bug. It seemed to me that I was fighting an Engineer division at times, as many of the US Forces showed up as Engineer units.

I really like the approach you took in your attack. At one point, I was thinking that I should have tried to fight on a narrower front with both divisions in the vanguard side by side - not quite look you did, but close. It is very interesting to observe how other players do things.

As mentioned above, I'm going to start planning as the American now. Hopefully, I can stave off the German attack.

Have a good day,

Mike

[Fred Sanford]

Good job on a tough scenario.