Slapdragon

If it was in Moselle, it could be the 11th. Oral histories are great historical tools, I use them in much of my research, but you find that eye witness accounts are slightly inaccurate in small details. Thus, if you read other units oral histories the interviewees know in depth what they did and can recount great detail about running through this field, doing this thing, or watching this event. In the case of 761, the oral histories are better than the reports from 3rd Army, since apparently someone in Army would trash can medal requests and action reports as unimportant. Oral histories though are rarely detail specific. Thus, men will be facing "Rommel" months after he died, they are almost always attacked by an "88" and the tanks they fight are often "Tigers". That is why both 21st and 11th could make sense. Notice how close the numbers are. So, my next question is, how well were they equipment when the firmed up in the Moselle and faced the 3rd Army?

Epée may want to site the source here to aid in historical support and or refutation. This list is taken directly from Dunnigan, James F. and Albert A. Nofi (1994). Dirty Little Secrets of World War Two. William Morrow: New York. Dunnigan is rather well known for his ability to take complex facts and simplify them. Sometimes he goes to far, and sometimes he hits the mark well historically, but his use of factoids (started in "How to Make War") make him easy to read. Sort of like "History Light".

Also, if anyone has some lines on the 761 equippment it would help. Oral histories claim that they only had M4A3 tanks until 1945, and were never given 76 armed tanks, like several other indepedent tank battalions. Is their a confirmation on this? Steve Jackson

In honor of the recent unpleasantness with children from the outback, which I lurked but did not add to, I felt it was a good idea to start developing a series of scenarios based on the 761st Tank Battalion in support of the 26th "Yankee" Infantry Division near the Moselle in November 1944. I have aerial photos of all the battlefields from 1950, and French geomaps of the whole Valley, plus a bunch of the oral histories that run down the 761st order of battle. I am planning four scenarios: "Come Out Fighting" (Vic-sur-Seille, 7 November), "The Panthers in the Snow" (Chateau-Salin, 8 November), "Caught in the Act" (Morville-ls-Vic, 9 November), and "River of Death" (Guebling, 16 November). These scenarios will hopefully honor a hard fighting tanker unit who had to wait 40 years for official recognition. (In one fabled case 761 was ambushed by an 88 battery, destroying 6 tanks in short order. The tank crews, many wounded or deafened, rallied and charged the battery on foot giving the rest of the unit time to withdraw). My problem that I need help with is German order of battle. According to the oral histories they faced elements of the 12th Panzer Division, and I do not know anything about that unit (or even if they did face it). Does anyone have a line on German units defending the Sielle and Moselle in November 1944 which faced the 3rd Army?

<FONT FACE="Times New Roman">The issue of ethics in gaming is a tough one, maybe a little easier in a wargame, but still present. For a "normal" one-on-one game, the answer of course it to not play with the person who cheats. With tourney games though, things get more difficult.</FONT></P> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">During the breakout from Normandy, the British spent tanks like water to hold down German forces, often charging into death traps just to distract attention from the combined allied breakout. The trick of it was that the crews often survived the destruction of their vehicles, and were soon back into new tanks. Some of this can be simulated as follows-</FONT></P> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">The loss of a tanks is a blow to your victory points, but if you can retreat a crew off board, you get some of those points back. In a campaign game vehicle crews would be harder to replace than tanks, especially for the allies.</FONT></P> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Forward observers should always have a small chance of unexpected artillery. More so with the American artillery system, but their is always a chance that soem coppuld be freed up for all sides.</FONT></P> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Create some way in the game to handle casualty and prisoner evacuation. Although in a 40 minute game this is not a huge issue, members of units that had been chopped apart would often be assigned to these sorts of duties. Also, as a unit takes casualties, more units will stop to render aid (less so for veterans who have good medics behind them). That way sending little units to their doom will cause other units to drop out to handle casualties.</FONT></P> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Create "scout" units. Oral histories of the Big Red One (1st Infantry Division) talk about people in platoons assigned to scout duties despite it not being an official organic duty of the unit. The need to charge bazooka and crew teams about the board would be less if platoons could calve scouts, or scouts were available in the form of recon troops.</FONT></P> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">The big issue of course is that in one-on-one play things are unrealistic to some extent. When I was getting my master's degree was had a Steel Panther's league that tried to campaign, with interesting results. Sometimes, in different tactical situations, a player would just say "to hell" with attacking. The objective was not important enough and the defensive situation way too tough. The player just decided to save his strength, probed the defenses, used up his artillery, and withdrew to a defensive position. Now of course, this makes for a boring contest, but a realistic one. World War One bogged down in part because local commanders started parking their troops rather than take huge casualties.</FONT></P> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">If you know each crew and each half chewed up squad can be rebuilt for the next game, you may have more incentive to save them rather than winning the battle and loosing the war.</FONT></P> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Finally, hacks could be handled by a set of checksum bits that look at unit statistics in the binary files. If the checksum does not add up for each category, then the game has been hacked, and the game could be designed to say. "This game has been modified from the original". I am, of course, not talking about what color your Hetzer is, but if you have a Stuart with a 90mm gun, some number is changed somewhere and it wont add up. </FONT></P> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman"></FONT></P> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Steve Jackson</FONT>