LongLeftFlank

And I was just about to ask whether anyone else out there except Broadsword is still actively working on "historical" scenarios or campaigns? (i.e. where the maps, forces and situations are reasonably closely matched to historical accounts). Awesome!

So that got my interest piqued. And sure enough, from Balkoski, "Beyond the Beachhead: the 29th ID in Normandy" General Bradley was deeply concerned about the situation west of the Vire.... An American intelligence report warned that a major enemy force was preparing to counterattack the west side of the Vire to sever the tie between the two beachheads. Bradley had no troops to spare to block such a counterattack, so the 175th was ordered to send a force to the west side of the Vire on June 12. The mission, officially designated a "reconnaisance in force" was to discover what the Germans were up to and, more important, to seize two key bridges over a [Vire et Taute] canal that the expected German counterattack would have to cross. Goode wanted the two companies to cross the Vire under cover of darkness. At 0400 on June 12 however... Companies C and E were still far from their assigned crossing sites... the [Company C] CO explained that he hadn't even heard about the mission until after midnight.... the sun had risen by the time the two companies reached the Vire. ... sixteen rubber assault boats - 8 for each company. Each boat could carry ten men. Company E was to cross the river 2-1/2 miles southwest of Isigny, just south of the St Lo-Cherbourg railway bridge. Company C was to cross a mile upstream.... As the 29ers paddled across the river, a few machine guns opened up at long range, but they were aimed too high. The Yanks were actually safer in the river than anywhere else, since both banks were lined with twelve foot dikes.... Cota accompanied Company E across the river. "It [the plan] didn't smell right from the first, and I thought maybe I could help if they got in a jam", Cota remembered. ... The day was hot and several 29ers became ill-tempered.... Cota realized that Montmartin [the rendezvous point] was occupied by the enemy, for Company E took heavy fire as it approached the town from the northeast. But the bridges -- not the town -- were the mission objectives, so Cota decided to bypass Montmartin on the north. The change of plan could not be passed on to Company C however, since the radios had gotten soaked in the crossing and were not working. ... Cota and Company E marched straight into a trap. 500 yards northwest of Montmartin, the 29ers were filing down a narrow dirt road, bordered on both sides by hedgerows as tall as a man, when a couple of German submachine guns suddenly opened up on the head of the column at pointblank range.... The Germans were on the other side of the hedgerows, pushing their submachine guns over the embankments without even looking and firing long bursts down the road... Only a handful of the enemy had scattered an entire company. Only 30 men remained with Cota. The rest had disappeared into the bocage. "What is this? 'Cota's Last Stand?'" Cota demanded of [Lt] Shea.... Like vultures circling a dying man, they surrounded Cota's party and called upon the Americans to surrender. One 29er answered by blasting an enemy-occupied hedgerow with a full clip from his BAR. "Blow it out your ass!" he shouted. One of Cota's men peered over the hedgerow and detected an odd-looking cow in an adjacent field. "One of those dumb bastards is trying to hide behind that cow!" the 29er yelled. "Look at those boots!" A fusillade killed the German, and the cow -- but a sergeant scolded the men for wasting ammunition. "You don't have to bury 'em with lead," he said. For the rest, read the book (I've ordered a copy to atone for my minor copyright infringement -- fair use). Like I said, you can't make this stuff up!

As part of my research into my le Carillon opus, I was digging backwards into the chronology of 175th Infantry, 29th ID (the first US outfit to capture, then lose, La Meauffe in June). And I ran across the following gem, proving that history can provide dramas equal to the imagination of any modern day gamer. This story has it all: ill-conceived and botched plan resulting in small bands of hard-fighting GIs cut off behind enemy lines, counterattacked by panzer forces and calling in battleship guns, dense bocage, cigar-chomping general with tommy gun, desperate relief action personally led by regimental commander (who then went MIA). Actually, screw CMBN, somebody call Hollywood. My dance card is full right now with the oh-so-conventional Le Carillon sequence, but someone really should do this one. Here's the dry high level day by day, from the XIX Corps Chronology June 7, 1944, D plus 1, the 175th Infantry landed on Omaha Beach 8 June. Fierce fight for Isigny 9 June. Capture of Lison 1800 10 June.Consolidate defensive positions around Lison 11 June. Active patrolling by all units 12 June. At 0645 a task force under Major Miller, 1st Bn XO, crossed the Vire River with their mission of securing crossing of the Vire et Taute canal against use by panzer units moving against our right. Company “E” after suffering heaving casualties, withdrew across the river. Company “C” with Major Miller and Brigadier General Cota (asst div commander), pushed through the village and occupied the high ground south of Montmartin en Graignes. At 2200 Colonel Goode, the Regimental Commander, assumed command of Company “G” and crossed the Vire. 13 June. At 1205, 13 June, Company “G” recrossed the River Vire, having run into stiff enemy opposition. Colonel Goode was missing, having been wounded or killed in this action. Rations and ammunition were dropped to the task force from the air. An enemy Panzer Division was reported to be approaching. The battleship Texas shelled the town with its 16-inch batteries, without hitting the task force. The morning of 14 June, the Division Commander ordered the task force to with-draw across the River Vire and rejoins the regiment. They fought their way back to the river and returned late that night.

I don't sink them. I'll take a look at your crater idea though. Btw, you're covering 320th operations north of St Lo, right? Check this paper out.

Haven't read the book myself and my knowledge of it is limited to what I've read here. But if you do a Forum search (include the CMx1 forums) using the title and author you'll find that his thesis is .... heavily disputed and far from the last word on the topic.

Got a workaround for that too. I lay out foxholes and wooden bunkers in various useful spots and then lay bocage on top. That way the deviish Huns have fortifications built right into the bocage, like in the real deal

Just resurrecting this thread to report an anecdote from a playtest of my Le Carillon submap (conditions are Wet). I've made Low Bocage areas crossable by inserting Hedge segments on top of Mud (i.e. crossable by vehicles at risk of bogging). Results: my first M8 successfully broke 5 of these crossing points without bogging (did sustain some wheel damage). My second M8 (see pic) bogged down while negotiating a diagonal sunken Dirt Road. To keep it narrow, this road only has diagonal road segments on the south side (so vehicles encounter the "roadside ditch" in a strange way - moving from Dirt Road to Grass and back again -- you can see them bumping up and down). Now I'm delighted that CMBN vehicles Bog frequently in Wet conditions, including on Dirt Roads -- that was a large part of the reason armour was so ineffective and roadbound, and that should be reflected in the game. But given that my first vehicle never Bogged going overland, it doesn't seem right that Dirt Roads should be worse than Mud for bogging in Wet conditions. I will playtest further.

Yes, I will definitely get back to Ramadi in 2012.... probably do the Army/IA raid on the Saddam Mosque (a non-Marine scenario for those only owning basic CMSF). While setting up a recon platoon for playtesting, I took this fun shot, capturing a classic "green troops" deployment error by the light mortar squad (in their defence, it's the map edge and there isn't much alternative parking). (a) jeeps parked under trees close to the mortar position instead of behind bushes well back. The Luftwaffe ain't much of a threat these days (trigger happy Tactical Air Force fighter jocks are another matter), but Jerry's artillery spotters are sure going to wonder what's going on in and behind that house.... ( parking right next to a bridge on a main road, a very likely spot for a German TRP.

C'est magnifique!

Thanks for the offer, gents. I think we can do that soon. Unlike my Ramadi map which I jealously guarded it's my intent to make my maps and submaps available for QBs sooner rather than later. But I would definitely like some experienced players to give me feedback on how the high vegetation density and particularly, those streambeds, work for you tactically, gameplay-wise and PC performance wise, irrespective of the force mix and mission type. Also, by cutting down most of the High Bocage to Low + more windbreak trees and reducing the number of orchards, these maps can easily be repurposed for non-bocage fights elsewhere in France. One other note; I find it silly that Low Bocage cannot be crossed (with a delay). Therefore all stretches of Low Bocage have at least one Hedge + Mud tile inserted to allow men and AFVs to cross, at the risk of bogging. I'll be interested in seeing how that works or whether it gives non-Rhino AFVs too easy access to the interior fields.

And now, 90%. Tell me this s**t ain't looking pretty photorealistic.

Spotting is possible, just challenging. About 3/4 done at this point.

Interesting thought, but it seems like that kind of TacAI judgment call would be hard to implement well: 1. the TacAI doesn't presently seem to recognize fortifications as "cover terrain" (they're more like some kind of vehicle). So you might get men leaving their entrenchments to crawl to buildings or forests when the most sensible thing would be to keep your head down. 2. that aside, you could also easily get unintended consequences where troops are crawling into the grazing fire of MGs in their overriding routine that says get out from under the stonk. The calculus of survival is a complex one. My gut feeling says that it would be better for PixelPBI to get down and stay put under shellfire until they either Panic / Rout or are explicitly ordered to move elsewhere. In another thread I suggested Charles might induce a simple Hit the Dirt reaction to incoming by modeling each plunging shell (not flat trajectory rounds) as having "2 bursts" instead of one. The first one would be undetectable to the player (you'd still hear the incoming whoosh!) and inflict no actual damage, but induce the TacAI's existing Take Cover reflex in the troops a moment before the "real" burst occurs.

I'd actually LIKE to see them lay down ("hit the dirt!") proactively, as prone units in the game as it is now are noticeably less vulnerable, especially when entrenched. Even the "whisper" of mortars should give a split second of warning, especially to veterans already Alerted. Problem is, entrenchments and many other terrain types have units not Hiding or Cowering "take a knee" to get better LOS. Same with gun crews. That's fine, except that they just quintuple their vulnerability to shrapnel, then sit there stoically through the stonk like Graebner in his track until they're prompted to Cower or become casualties. This "take a knee in cover" reflex, btw, is also why you see Spandau LMGs being fired from the shoulder in foxholes, or tripod-mounted MGs have the gunner oddly bolt upright behind it, instead of with the bipod resting on the parapet and the firer prone behind. Some tweaks to unit positioning and cover-seeking are clearly required, although I recognize that the new animations needed will not be a simple matter.

It seems that BARs still did make an outsize contribution to American squad killing power though, and there are numerous accounts from both WWII theatres and Korea of gutsy BAR men singlehandedly holding off or killing huge numbers of enemy. I can hypothesize several possible reasons for this (1) generally assigned to a reliable squad member; less special training required than for a machine gunner (2) full automatic fire capability, even if inferior to true LMGs, encouraged more aggressive suppression firing, especially in low visibility terrain like bocage (3) unlike the Garand toters, failure to fire would be more obvious to comrades. There may be other reasons as well. A close friend's grandfather was a BAR man in Korea and he liked the weapon much better than the 30 cal.

Great post. I agree -- OBL and Salafism have far more in common with Che Guevara and his urban guerrilla theories of the 1960s -- romanticized saint/hero figures "fighting the Imperialsts" but essentially ineffective, easily coopted and above all incapable of articulating an attractive alternative vision for economy and society other than to wind back the clock to some fuzzy idealized notion of the Prophet's First Caliphate. Their attempts to establish a base of support in any "developed" area of the Islamic world have been dismal failures -- Chechnya, Bosnia, Algeria, Iraq and now (it seems) Libya have failed simply because the local rulers see them for the naive crackpots they are and generally kill them. Even worse for them, the only places these folks have been able to last any length of time amidst are failed societies like "Pushtunistan" (AfPak), Sudan or Somalia. The Taliban, a semi-illiterate rural movement whose non-philosophy is akin to that of Pol Pot has made a pretty uncomfortable bedfellows. Even the ailing OBL himself found himself unable to endure their lifestyle and ended up hiding back in civilzation. Typical -- Guevara was also busted once he tried to come out of the jungle, having hit his bourgeois limit on virtuous rural privation. Absent the continued presence of a foreign force to keep stirring up the natives, these people will eventually either wear out their welcome, intermarry and melt into the tribal pastoral tribes, or retire into either impotent obscurity or police custody.

I was also annoyed initially with the overparticipation of the sniper team burp gunner (same problem occurred with the Uncon RPG teams in CMSF, btw -- all too often they end up joining a firefight and achieving martyrdom before they even fire a rocket). However, as I recently noted elsewhere, I've found this unit to be a very useful "budget stretcher" for chronically understrength German infantry screening a series of smaller hedgerow fields. At short ranges, the MP40 gives much of the short range suppressive value of a LMG, which seems consistent with historical accounts. And at longer ranges, you have the sniper.

At this point tree density on my 1.5 x 1 La Meauffe East "submap" has reached the point where my elderly PC has jumped the shark on redraw distance. But this view back up the 2/137 advance route through La Meauffe and Launay gives you some idea of how the map is shaping up. Note the deep railway cut on the left -- more good cover terrain, especially for armour. I'm about 2/3 done at this point. Work schedule permitting, another week or so should finish up the bocage and orchards.

Here's the final version of my streambed/irrigation ditch tiles: Heavy Forest (for vehicle uncrossability) plus a Hedge running along it to encourage infantry (with short waypoints) to stay down in the protective ditch rather than wandering back and forth in and out of it. The ditch itself is 2-3m deeper than the terrain on either side and provides excellent tactical concealment.

Just a guess here, but in CMSF vehicles would occasionally move through buildings like they weren't there. I believe that the cause was that the scenario designer had added the new objects after the units in question were on the map. That might have been fixed in a patch though, so this may be a long obsolete observation on an earlier iteration of the engine.

One question I don't have any answer at all to yet: what would be the typical scale of German counterattacks, and with what forces? If I Battalion 897th Grenadierregiment, already badly understrength, is stretched paper thin as noted above with all 3 companies on the line and battered squads and weapons teams holding 130m field frontages, then what's not sitting in the line already -- call it a reserve platoon (Zug) per Kompanie -- might be enough to scramble out to reinforce the attacked sectors and stop the American advance. But even if you have the entire platoon, this seems far too meager to mount a vigorous counterattack even against badly bloodied and exhausted GIs. Would the counterattacking forces be drawn from a reserve battalion of the regiment or KG? If so, once the counterattack was completed, would these units then remain in the line to hold the gains, or swap places with the frontline unit? Bueller? Anyone?

And that, mein freunde, is the central historical question I hope to shed some light on with this project! Part of the answer unquestionably lies in bringing armour support to bear wherever possible, in close cooperation with infantry, using hedgerow cutters, demolitions, etc. -- the Doubler thesis. Smart, flexible and efficient American use of artillery -- especially 60mm and 81mm mortars controlled at battalion level and below -- is probably another important piece of the solution. Tactical fire support seems to be an area where green US forces were initially very weak for a number of reasons but improved very rapidly during July. Once the MLR has been established, rain nonstop hell on it, on its supply and approach routes and above all, counterbattery fire on the German artillery positions. Unlimited ammo has a corrosive quality all its own, even in the bocage. The last, and most important part, of course, is probably just plain old willingness of the PBI (or Bradley and his Corps commanders Corlett and Collins) to shed American blood, and keep shedding it. A well entrenched German squad backed by mortars can indeed probably stop a platoon cold for several hours, but what about two platoons? a whole company? After a few days getting hammered in front of Le Petite Ferme and Le Carillon, 2/137 organized small assault detachments of 4 proven killers armed with tommy guns and grenade throwers who used infiltration tactics (those muddy ditches, draws and treelines again!) to flank and close assault the undermanned German positions. 60mm mortars and MGs were attached at platoon level and put right up in the front to ensure suppressive fires would be both accurate and effective, in spite of the high casualty rates that resulted. I'll requote JasonC's 2005 magisterial observations on the brutal arithmetic of the July hedgerow fighting, as they are as good a summation as I've read anywhere on the topic.

OK, call me a crazy old buggah, sitting here on New Years eve having a nice conversation with myself. I killed plenty of brain cells back in the day, and have no more to spare now Here's some further corroboration that for the GIs, breasting the top of a hedgerow bank, clearing an aperture and putting a bunch of weapons on the Germans on the opposite side was anything but a straightforward matter in the real deal, unlike CMBN. Green Books: Usually we could not get through the hedge without hacking a way through. This of course took time, and a German machine gun can fire a lot of rounds in a very short time. Sometimes the hedges themselves were not thick. But it still took time for the infantryman to climb up the bank and scramble over, during which time he was a luscious target, and when he got over the Germans knew exactly where he was.... It was difficult to gain fire superiority when it was most needed. In the first place machine guns were almost useless in the attack.... the only way to get them in position was to set them up on top of a hedgerow bank. That was not good because the German was in the next bank and got you before you set the gun down. Anyway, it had to be laid on the bank, no tripod, just a gun barrel lying unevenly on its stomach. On the other hand the Germans could dig their guns into the banks in advance, camouflage them, and be all set to cover the roads, trails, and other bottlenecks our men had to use. Excerpts by a monograph by the S-3 of 3/137. The machine gun platoons following Companies I and K were of little use in this initial action mainly because of their bulk and high silhouette when mounted atop the hedgerows. The Heavy Weapons Commander decided to abandon the heavy mounts and use the guns laid across the tops of the embankments or thrust through the hedge. This proved to be successsful but costly in crews, in that whenever a gun was pushed through the brush and fired, a well-aimed burst came back, and in a few minutes a barrage of mortars would descend on the area. The [mortar] observers in the hedgerows became casualties in attempting to spot targets.... The failure of great numbers of individual riflemen to fire at targets, target areas or likely targets (all hedgerows presented likely targets) resulted in a greater volume of enemy small arms fire and observed mortar and artillery fire than would have been possible had all riflemen fired constantly as they advanced. Well aimed and distributed small arms fire on a position will prevent the enemy from returning fire. To bring out this point, all one has to do is point to the effectiveness of the Germans' hated and respected "BURP" gun, one blast across a hedgerow was all that was needed to gain fire superiority and thereafter easily maintained. Green book again: The Germans, being on the defensive, profited by these minor items of the terrain. They could dig in, site their weapons to cover the approaches, and prepare tunnels and other covered exits for themselves. Then when our men appeared, laboriously working their way forward, the Germans could knock off the first one or two, cause the others to duck down behind the bank, and then call for his own mortar support. The German mortars were very, very efficient. By the time our men were ready to go after him, the German and his men and guns had obligingly retired to the next stop. If our men had rushed him instead of ducking down behind the bank, his machine gun or machine pistol would knock a number off. For our infantrymen, it was what you might call in baseball parlance, a fielder's choice. No man was very enthusiastic about it. But back in the dugout I have often heard the remark in tones of contempt and anger: "Why don't they get up and go?" German counterattacks in the hedgerows failed largely for the same reasons our own advance was slowed. Any attack quickly loses its momentum, and then because of our artillery and fighter bombers the Germans would suffer disastrous loss. In fact we found that generally the best way to beat the Germans was to get them to counterattack- provided we had prepared to meet them.

The German foxholes had been cleverly dug. Using every advantage of the hedgerow they had tunneled and bored into them from all angles so that only a direct hit from artillery could dislodge them. They were deadly elaborate in every respect. Abandoned machine guns had strings attached to the trigger so they could be fired at intervals without exposing the gunner. Dugouts were constructed by tunneling under the hedgerow, and the entrance was covered with layers of hugs poles and dirt. The dugouts were equipped with mattresses and cooking utensils. These had been pillaged from French homes. Many of the trees were equipped with a ladder leading to a "crows nest" that was neatly camouflaged in the top of the tree for observation and sniping. Every conceivable angle had been taken into consideration. How many more of these honeycombed hedgerows lay ahead only the Germans knew. Attacking such ingenious positions seemed futile..... Each foxhole had been dug very deep along the hedgerow, and as an extra caution, some men had tunneled back into the sides in order to avoid the shower of deadly steel shrapnel coming from tree bursts. I am going to revise my test assault a bit to give the Yanks some artillery support and the third rifle squad (the full platoon), but swap a "sunken" German HMG bunker for the entrenched LMG.

Doubler goes into that in a lot of detail as you doubtless know -- his thesis is that "busting the bocage" was mainly a matter of refining armour-infantry cooperation, which I don't entirely buy. At the end of the day, to paraphrase Wellington, it was about "that article there" -- the infantry. I'd also add a point Doubler doesn't stress enough IMHO, that the actual track record of armour support in bocage depends heavily on the specific terrain and conditions, and above all on the proximity of roads. This from the Green Book: The tanks are no better off. They have two choices. They can go down the roads, which in this case were just mud lanes, often too narrow for a tank, often sunk four to six feet below the adjacent banks, and generally deep in mud. The Class 4 roads were decent in spots, but only for one-way traffic, with few exits to the adjacent fields. Here too are some instructive quotes regarding effectiveness of armour support for the 137th during the Le Carillon attacks of July 11-18, which took place in rain and mud in dense hedgerow country cut by (unfordable) irrigation ditches and streams. First a summary pamphlet whose accuracy is questionable -- the writer was some WWI vintage PR officer and I doubt he was a participant in the fighting, even rear-echelon: Yankee ingenuity began to assert itself early as Americans became battlewise. One method used very effectively in negotiating the German Hedgerow was to place a tank destroyer behind the hedgerow and fire point-blank into the machine gun positions of the enemy, ordinarily in the corners of the field ahead. As this was being done, the infantry moved across the field and encircled the enemy positions. Then when the tank destroyer lifted its fire, the infantry liquidated the already battered machine gun nest. That probably happened in hedgerows adjoining Route 3, the main road along the Vire. And in sharp contrast, Buckley's The Normandy campaign 1944: sixty years on. 2/137 actually stormed the main German defenses at Le Mare-Le Carillon. That ground was marshy and broken and the approach roads were narrow and heavily mined. On 11 and 12 July the 35th Division assaulted a most elaborate defensive position at Le Carillon. The 2/137 found the armoured support provided entirely ineffective. The tank destroyers were wrecked by mines and mortars, and of four tanks sent in, one was blown up on a mine and two became bogged in the mud. These misadventures reflect the German policy of always separating enemy armour from infantry where they could do so. Now this thread is primarily concerned with the German defense, so I suppose the best counter is to expect that defenders in fields bordering roads will come under tank fire. So mine and shell those roads and cover them with AT guns if possible. But also have fallback positions dug out in the adjacent fields farther back from the road. I suppose I'd also heavily mine those vulnerable bordering fields. Counterattacking with tank-killer teams is risky given the US infantry.