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AXIS : Gustav Line BETA AAR Round Two - Eye of the Elefant


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The Ninth Minute

The Jpz IV took one last shot which went high before it reversed off that crest. That AT gun has still not reacted.. could he really not spot me up on Hill 130? At least he should have a covered arc onto that hill... but it remains looking down into the right side valley.

Well, now I have the Sturmpanzer in position to lay some area fire onto the ATG position.. it should be much more effective than the Jpz IV was. And yes it's hulldown.

This is why I am not a huge fan of ATGs... once in position they are pretty much stuck there. I would rather spend a bit more and get something mobile like an M-10. Won't get as many but they would be infinitely more flexible.

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As A Team comes around the corner of the Left Tit it comes under some small arms fire and hits the dirt. I only heard either one or two rounds coming in at a time.. so we are talking about either a two man recon team or something else.. maybe a sniper (probably not, the firing is not very effective)? There are only a few spots that fire could have come from and I am moving on those this next turn.

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At the end of the turn what appears to be a spotting round (medium mortar?) hits on the road that runs between the tits but closer to the Left Tit (a bit beyond it actually)... looks like he has a mortar barrage coming in on the Left Tit... smart. I will be off of it very quickly next turn however... he might catch one squad or team but everything will either be in front of that hill or reversed off (the halftracks are backing off a bit).

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Here is the latest SITMAP showing my current positions. Also note the position of the enemy ATG.. sure looks like it was placed to cover the right valley approach. Note also that my left side Brummbar is repositioning to link up with 1st Platoon in order to better cover the S-Ridge.

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"An obstacle, not covered by direct or indirect fire, is not an obstacle." This is the first great tactical mantra of the old NTC OPFOR and 11th ACR. The second is like unto it... "If you build it, he will come..." The final mantra is to always, "make him fight in two directions at once."

You said he had a lot of points. I would think a TRP and two batteries or more of 105+mms would make those tits less than comfy to hang onto. A real thinking opponent would try to figure where you would go after the first spotting rounds, shoot mortars to get you to light off the hills to cover, and then put the nasty TRP where he figures you are going to.

These AARs are fantastic. This game should be mandatory at Maneuver BOLC.

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That's just what the Mujahedin did, in smaller scale, in the 80's. Ambush a convoy and mine all the places they predicted the Russians would move to or set up support weapons. the Taliban try to do that now, especially trying to predict likely dust off points, to catch soldiers trying to evac wounded comrades, or where soldiers will take cover from ambush.

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"An obstacle, not covered by direct or indirect fire, is not an obstacle." This is the first great tactical mantra of the old NTC OPFOR and 11th ACR. The second is like unto it... "If you build it, he will come..." The final mantra is to always, "make him fight in two directions at once."

You are preaching to the choir. ;)

You said he had a lot of points. I would think a TRP and two batteries or more of 105+mms would make those tits less than comfy to hang onto. A real thinking opponent would try to figure where you would go after the first spotting rounds, shoot mortars to get you to light off the hills to cover, and then put the nasty TRP where he figures you are going to.

These AARs are fantastic. This game should be mandatory at Maneuver BOLC.

I agree he needed to fight me for the Left Tit... an HMG, Bazooka, etc. fighting a mobile delay type action could have really made me pay for this objective. He could have a TRP on or near the Left Tit.. I expect he does that is why I am not dawdling on the objective.

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Bil,

If you really did put a 15cm shell that close to the ATG, I'm surprised it isn't flying through the air. In any event, I would think both the gun and the crew would be in a bad way, considering a U.S. 155 shell's detonation pierced the side of an M60 turret with a shell frag. I doubt it's a reach to assert the side of the M60's turret is thicker than the shield on that ATG. In any event, that burst can't be more than 1 AS away from the one the ATG sits upon, if that. Certainly, it's well within what I'd take to be lethal radius.

Erwin,

The first one had no firing footage, but I thought I saw an all-too brief firing event in the second. That was the one with the late model Brummbar in it.

Regards,

John Kettler

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Sorry if i ask something that has already been answeared before (i didnt follow the AAR for the whole time), but are those SITMAPS something you did manually (ie Photoshop) or are they a new feature of the upcoming Gustav Line module? They kinda look like a mixture of both.

Here is the latest SITMAP showing my current positions. Also note the position of the enemy ATG.. sure looks like it was placed to cover the right valley approach. Note also that my left side Brummbar is repositioning to link up with 1st Platoon in order to better cover the S-Ridge.

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Finally, I told you earlier that I would update these overlays as I received more information.. so here is the updated Obstacle overlay showing the recently discovered barriers on the Left Tit and Right Tit objectives:

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Bil,

Your SITMAPs are cool, but this whole discussion is entirely too clinical.

(VO breaks in)

"Return with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear."

Okay, 8-22-2001, the revived Invitational Tourney. Capitalistdoginchina, a worthy foe if ever I met one, is describing how he failed to hide a rather large bee behind a tree...Said bee lasted exactly four (4) seconds.

"Dearest Kelter,

My Hummel was attempting to hide in scattered trees - however, since trees are abstracted how was i to know that that large Oak tree was actually a sappling, or a twig even ! My Hummel was doing its best to think like an elephant - if I can't see him surely he cannot see me hiding ....wrong....Kaboom!"

(VO)

"We now return you to our program."

Regards,

John Kettler

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The Tenth Minute

The ATG

Finally the crew of the ATG wake up and rotate the gun in order to engage my Sturmpanzer.

Note the red circles indicate the position and move to a new position for the Jpz IV.

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The gun's activity would prove far too late...

..first the Sturmpanzer fires and hits directly in front of the gun.

Then the Jpz IV fires, hitting on target knocking out the gun.

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Immediately after destroying the ATG the Jpz IV spots what looks like a bunker far in the the enemy's rear area. I'll keep an eye on it, but this isn't a concern for me at this stage. It does add to the intelligence picture however.

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2nd Squad, 3rd Platoon creeps up the Right Tit objective, near the top a mortar round hits.. shrapnel from this round takes down two members of the squad. My first casualties... I'm sure there will be more.

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The only boring thing that may be found is the fact that the enemy does not seem to defend the Tits or is he ? Besides these mortars rounds, resulting casualties and that AT knocked out, the enemy seems strangely quiet, that may change in the coming turns. Is Gaj gone on vacation ? :D

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I wanted to discuss that gun's positioning... if I had an ATG and needed to place it I would have used the terrain much better than GaJ did in this incident. The ATG in this game was deployed pretty much in the open. GaJ should have used the trees on the Spur to hide his gun.

I showed the power of using the trees as cover and concealment in my first AAR... how this is accomplished in CM is to place the gun as deep into the woods as possible in a position where it can still see out to cover the desired area. The trees themselves will be a terrific hindrance to incoming rounds and may indeed interfere with some rounds going out... but it is far harder to spot and to hit a gun or tank in trees than it is for those tanks and guns to fire and hit whatever is outside of the woods.

In the AAR referenced above and at the top of my list of links below, I had one tank that was behind multiple treelines... this single tank continuously and effectively engaged the enemy armor blunting his advance, and additionally was never spotted.

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I showed the power of using the trees as cover and concealment in my first AAR... how this is accomplished in CM is to place the gun as deep into the woods as possible in a position where it can still see out to cover the desired area. The trees themselves will be a terrific hindrance to incoming rounds and may indeed interfere with some rounds going out... but it is far harder to spot and to hit a gun or tank in trees than it is for those tanks and guns to fire and hit whatever is outside of the woods

A valuable lesson I learned from you in that first AAR even before the game was in my hands. I have been benefiting from that lesson ever since. I usually remember it:-)

Thanks!

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What works for tank does not work for troops and ATG crew. It works in CM, but not in RL.

The German doctrine was for the troops not to stay at the edge of a wood, and surely not in the wood. That is unless they had been able to dig trenches with overhead cover.

That doctrine was meant to prevent troops to be caught with time and or proximity artillery rounds set to detonate in the trees height resulting in considerable injuries from wooden splinters. The US troops attacking the Hürtgen forests did pay highly from that. One way to counter that when caught in the open was to stand still against a tree to offer the less possible part of the body from splinters going down. It appeared that someone lying prone was stitched by the wooden splinters going down, all around.

In such an artillery barrage, the grunts had really “steel balls” to remain standing still.

Never the less Bil advice is to be taken like it is for CMFI, since that is probably not modelled in the game

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Bil,

Not boring. I thought you might get a kick out of CDIC's similar "hiding" tactic and was using "clinical" to create contrast with the lighthearted fare that followed. There was nothing light, though, about the one-two your forces delivered on GreenAsJade's antitank gun. Certainly, a new approach to hard kill of antitank weaponry!

Regards,

John Kettler

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Well that graphic, IIRC, *is* from a German training manual. And I do have an AT gun that has shredded 4 Shermans in CMFI. I have positioned the AT gun a ways back in the woods along a rail line. It has a sight line down the rail line and a couple of keyhole sight lines between the trees. My opponent has thrown several HE shells back at me and none have made it through the trees. I expect more HE pain to arrive but 4 tanks for one AT gun - colour me happy.

All thanks to Bill :-)

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021woods.jpg

That's a good tip if you have to position an AT gun frontally.

To be sure, the feasibility of that can also depend on the way the woods have been mapped. If the mapper just put trees on heavy and light forest tiles, it's a completely different tactical effect than woods made with outer bands of brush and bushes and weeds, and with small gapped bocage pieces scattered around to block LOS and create realistic thickets. But then again, there are places in Germany or Holland where I've read the undergrowth was nil and you could actually see quite a distance along the neat rows of tall evergreens.

From what I've seen (at least for the Germans) they put a big stress on placing AT guns behind slopes at 90 degrees to the expected enemy axis of advance. That way, they could remain protected and unspotted and get flank or rear shots on the enemy after they passed through the forward defensive line.

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