Blind attacking the Blind....

[paullus]

Over the last couple of evenings I tried a few QB's with the worst possible visibility. All three took place at night with heavy fog. LOS was down to about 10m in some places.

I played SS vs. Americans & Canadians (first- Amis, second & third Canadians). I made the mistake in the first game of picking a lot of MG's, a flak gun (for infantry suppression), and three tank hunters. I couldn't even see the attackers until they were right on top of me. It was a complete slugfest until the last turn.

It ended with a tactical US victory. I lost 161 men, Americans lost 271. I also lost all three vehicles to close assaults.

The second and third games I tried to pick mostly infantry, due to the close-in fighting. I won both games, inflicting 2-1 losses both times, but still took significant losses each time.

Poor visibility cuts both ways, as I painfully found out. I ran a Pz-IV/70 right up to a tank contact (sound only) only to find it wasn't where I thought it was, instead it was right behind me and put a 76mm shell right through the rear end.

I also had one squad fight off 6 Canadian squads in the space of two turns, inflicting 40 casualties. Of course, they were overrun two turns later by a combination of engineers and a couple of Piat teams.

The only reason I won the last two games (because there were Canadians running all over the map, and I couldn't even begin to pin them all down- couldn't even see most of them), was holding a platoon in reserve covering the last victory flag.

If those games had gone on for a few more turns, even my reserves wouldn't have made a difference. Again, in the worst kind of battles (night and fog) the defender is almost at as much of a disadvantage as the attacker, since you don't see them coming until they are right on top of you.

[Doug Beman]

Excellent observations, P. I've fought a couple of QBs with conditions set to generate low visibility, too. I had one battle in which I never really got a handle on what I was facing; I simply blazed away at whatever I could target. I won, narrowly, and was amazed to see, on the post-battle map, that I had been up against something like 3:1 odds. British troops all OVER the place.

DjB