TF Peterjohn PBM RED AAR (rare RED victory)

[Rattler]

As I believe this PBM with its unexpected and unique outcome can be quite instructive especially to people that so far only have played the AI:

The replay file can be found here: http://www.eventfoto.com/privat/mil/dls/cpx_replays.html.

Passwords are BLU = armor4, RED = silento.

Enjoy,

Rattler

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Baghdad, FEB 22, 1991 (Reuters)

The outcome of a major battle in Iraq near the city of Hafar-al-Batin and a highway commonly called "Pipeline Road" has been heavily contested verbally between the involved parties yesterday.

The Iraqui Information Ministery informed yesterday that, quote, "...under the spirited guidance of our Great Leader Saddam and the Baath Party the balance in the Mother Of All Wars has finally tipped in our favor, as was predicted long ago. A great part in this had Gen. Madda Al-Ratla, commander of the 12th Republican Guards Tank Regiment, the "Hero of Hafar-al-Batin", who dealt a smashing blow to the infidel invasion forces with the help of Allah..."

Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, Iraqi Minister of Information (informally known also as Baghdad Bob), stated: "All international media are invited to join me on an excursion to the town of Hafar-al-Batin where you then can witness with your own eyes the smoking wrecks of several hundreds of American tanks who were no match to our elite Republican Guards T72s. My feelings - as usual: We will slaughter them all, our initial assessment is that they will all die. I can say, and I am responsible for what I am saying, that they have started to commit suicide under the walls of Hafar-al-Batin. We will encourage them to commit more suicides quickly."

Mr. Saeed al-Sahaf went on: "The supposedly technically much superior tanks fell like flies facing the spirited determination of our troops, and the smoldering wrecks are just one more proof of the hilarious exaggerations and lies of the American infidels. We expect the Americans to understand that they never will make it to Baghdad airport and to leave, humiliated and as the proven cowards they are. As I am speaking, by now, even the American command is under siege. We are hitting it from the north, east, south and west. We chase them here and they chase us there. But at the end we are the people who are laying siege to them. And it is not them who are besieging us. We are not afraid of the Americans. Allah has condemned them. They are stupid. They are stupid..." - here he made a dramatic pause - "...and they are condemned."

Journalists were somewhat taken aback a bit by a statment of a miltary spokesman for the US Department of Defense which they couldnt relate to the issue at hand at first glance: "The heathen infidel pagan louts have been routed. God willing, they will scalp themselves before we do it for them. They might have a chance if they could ride horses. But they fall off. We have been surprised by this. They think that by surrounding us, they will gain the advantage, but the lying cowards will see who is surrounded. I am just reporting what anybody will tell you has to be obvious from looking around. Indeed, I doubt we will need to meet tomorrow, since they will all be dead or prisoners, because not only can´t they ride, they are cowards, too. God praise General Custer!".

It is widely belived that this is supposed to mean a denial of an Iraqui victory in this battle and that the spokesman wanted to refer to Col. Mark Rosser, commander of the 2-8 Cav Battalion of the 1st Cavalry Division but in the heat of action got him confused somehow.

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This is the RED forces commander AAR for a "TF Peterjohn" PBM played between DEC 23, 2004 and JAN 11, 2006, resulting in a total RED victory

Players:

BLUE: Marc Rosser (US?)

RED: Matt "Rattler" Ohlmer (ES)

Game was played with factory settings (RED no thermals nor improved warheads) except no enemy OOBs shown.

1. The Plan

When Mark, a guy new to TacOps PBM (I think it was his first game versus a human player after playing the AI up to then), challenged me to a TF Peterjohn game I really did not expect to have much fun victorywise: Too strong is the technical advantage of BLUE over the RED forces, BLUE attacking under smoke cover with thermals left me (w/o thermals) theoretically no chance of even getting close to victory despite the huge numerical strength difference. The layout only allows valid side shots on enemy tanks, and this only if theyre outside smoke, also the RED tanks and ATGMs did not have improved warheads.

Still, I promised to give a good fight and set up without much of a plan really (first time for me to play Peterjohn ever), but carefully calculating the points where I had to stop my units outside enemy agressive envelope in intitial advance to have a chance to spring traps against advancing enemy tanks in case their expected smoke cover slipped for a moment.

My basic guess was that the southern advance straight to Objective would be well covered and that in order to put up a fight I would have to take the northern heights and cross to the WEST of the map in order to attack objective from NW and NE simultaneously and that to stage anything with chance of success I would also have to take the central high ground plateau vic 0303.

So, my strategic goals were to interdict enemy movements right north of the town, and to not allow any movemnts outside smoke, thinking to wear support down to a point where a charge had a chance of success. To achive this I sent one whole tk bn north, one south, and distributed one as a faint all over the center to occupy "trap" positions, grouped together with the majority of my APCs (at game start I still thought that the BMPs could also affect side shots at the M1s, which proved to be wrong).

After march to contact I would take it from there and react to enemy intent and setup, given that 60 minutes is a fairly long time for the straight 10 min drive to objective I figured I would have time to regroup and re-organize along the way.

2. How it went

The game started out much as expected, in the first four turns BLUE laid a nice smoke screen all over the central portion of the map, impeding my LOS and slowing my advance. All I could do during this time was to register arty accuracy and proceed as planned, but I registered that BLUE had expedited all his 155er smoke in those first minutes and intended to make use of that.

In turn 5 enemy adjusted his 155er ***behind*** my forces, clearly out of his LOS, so I expected inaccurate enemy arty for some minutes. Also in turn 5 we made contact in the very center of the map, 3x APCs versus 4x M1, enemy popped smoke and my APCs were lost.

In turn 6 I got a first idea of enemy layout: Obviously I was facing one full blown tank coy in the south of the center valley, one more in the north of it and one more in the north on high ground. This - and the fact that I had advanced in the direct southern approach to objective to Easting 043 without being attacked - made it clear that the southern approach was completely undefended. Inaccurate ICM started coming in, and after the 2nd minute of contact I had already lost 8% - but: My trap positions had successfully been ocupied in the center. I decided to lay low in the southern and northern part of the center and to try and rush towards the central plateau, and to make the best of the direct approach while it was undefended and get as close to objective as possible while being unobserved.

In turn 7 I realized I could never make the last 600 mtrs to the central plateau, my tanks in the center fell like flies (casualities now 14%, one turn took out the better of two companies in the center), but I also realized that 1. the enemy tanks fell back after firing, that 2. they were not firing on APCs in the north, 3. the southern approach still was uncontested, and enemy was *not* employing mortar smoke (and was out of 155er) but entirely relying on his units popping smoke. I drew first blood by elimminating 3 M3s on the central plateau from the northern high ground, and my arty was ready to supress enemy positions.

Turn 8 showed that enemy had also understood that he had to take care of my APCs in the north, he eliminated a major portion of them but then *withdrew* from the high ground there. As I knew I could not go on like that I bet on little arty smoke and unloaded infantry along the whole line of my advance to bait enemy tanks to fire on them and to use up their smoke pots on their tanks.

The next two turns had me move infantry only, with the exception in the south, and enemy took the bait: The mortars started firing HE on the moving inf, the tanks fired on them, and in the south a M2 platoon came up to high ground w/o smoke cover and was quickly dispathed of. In the south my forward APCs had reached 500 mtrs to twown and stopped there unloading their inf, and their position became a key element in the plan that slowly started forming: As far as I could see the majority if not all M1s were engaging me north of the town, which in turn meant that only 6-10 Bradleys were defending objective, nothing I could not overwhelm in a last minute charge.

Turn 11 sprang one of my traps (UTM 048036) when enemy tried to penetrate my lines in the north, rewarding me with my first two M1 kills (losing 4 myself, casualities now at 20%).

I decided to wait my time: Enemy was hitting my inf with arty, leaving my vehicles alone; his tanks were also engaging my moving inf, allowing me to get a fairly clear picture about his setup despite the smoke: I now had confirmation that all enemy tanks were north of town, popping smoke after firing and retreating 100 mtrs every time they fired. I switched to recon-by-explosion, moving only single vehicles to provoke fires on them and so keep my nowledge about enemy positions up-to-date. Also I saw 4 northern tanks running without smoke into one of my traps, to be lost quickly, totalling enemy losses to 10 tanks of the northern coy. I also realized form my recon-by-explosion that enemy started shifting forces away from the center, something I did not want, so now I made my plan:

In turn 15, I decided to withdaw major forces from north AND south (enemy had seen them, so whithdrawing them would make those approaches a credible faint to bind his forces there) and concentrate them in the center in a vertical line to get side shots in a final assault through the center. I hoped like this to draw all his tanks to the center, while I planned to use my forward APCs in the south (stopped, and with 1:30 travel time to objective) to make the final charge right at minute 58 and to use everything else to distract enemy from this (gamey) idea.

At 0716 my suspicions were confirmed, when enemy made a big mistake: He withdrew from the high ground north (this from the replays, during the battle I was not sure about complete withdrawal until 0719), so that my re-positioning into the center went completely unobserved.

At 0719 enemy loses 4 tanks in the south on high ground close to the objective ( confirmation: !!! he had repositioned allright !!!) due to having run out of smoke, a central psycholical vicotry as I knew he would not come up high ground there in force anymore and positioned my tanks and APCs to cover against such an attempt (just inside the 2km line covering the crest EAST of town and with hard DRP 500 mtrs asround and to protect my APCs that were so dangerously close to it). As by now i had figured that the northern high ground wasnt occupied anymore, I rushed forward there to make it to the crest, and pushed inf to gain LOS into the valley, keeping my vehicles just 20 mtrs out of enemy LOS.

This regrouping and cat-and-mouse playing (plenty explosive recon) took until 0726 when a major strategic goal of mine was reached: I had LOS into the valley off north, clear view on the rest of the northern tank coy deployed there. During this time also some inf units had reached the central plateau which allowed me to clear it from the remaining M2s, and now I knew the center was getting weaker. Of cause, my recon-by-explosion proved costly, by now I had lost 32% of my forces.

At 0729 the scales started fianlly and unexpectedly to tip in my favor: In a resupply I received 2 rounds ICM for each battery. While historically surely not correct, it was much welcome and allowed me to attack the known northern tank positions (7 tanks left) and I got rewarded with a series of explosions (4 tks killed): Enemy withdrew to a containment line around NORTHING 04, and I figured that would open the way for crossing the gap in the north on the long run, which proved correct assessment.

0734 tested my luck by pushing forward some recon APCs into the gap and realized enemy wasnt firing on inf nor APCs anymore (red priority tanks?). So, I decided to make use of that and move inf forward into observation range in one big push with APCs.

0736 executed the move, worked like a charm: 450 mtrs of more observation space w/o losing one vehicle of the 10 involved. Observation made it clear that only 4 tanks were blocking the move over the gap, I calculated that I had until 0745 to cross it, so devised tactics to get rid of the major threats there and push the rest of the forces to over 2000 mtrs distance to northern map edge (having been hammered by my arty whenever I had a fix enemy was using retreat-after-firing SOPs, so provoking him to fire on inf constantly pushed him back some 150 mtrs).

I focussed my ICM on the norhternmost tanks gaining accuracy first, and grouped into coy markers to prepare to cross the gap (high risk, as one good ICM would have hit 42 tanks all bunched up).

0739 ICM had killed two tanks, leaving two, and the rest was out of the 2k envelope, so I started my move 0740, counting on the numbers and side shots to take out the remaining two tanks (had LOS to them and under supressive fires). I figured that once the remaining two tanks had been taken out I could cross rather unobserved, so I started some distraction movments in the center as well to fix enemy forces there and keep them from re-inforcing north. APCs that were closer to the northern tank threats were used to bait enemy tanks to fire on them and so keep an eye on developments (shielding tanks and recon-by-explosion again)

Again this worked like a charm: 0741 had my tank coys well advanced into the gap, enemy had fired on APCs and inf and was under supressive HE, the move in the center made him flinch and he lost 4 tanks there instantly when they tried to withdaw. Obviously he had been unaware of my buildup there and I used the extra space to advance rapidly into the temporary void (I knew there were 10+ tanks lurking to cover the center) and set up a trap in case they should want to move in.

0742 return fire of one of my northern tk coys had taken out the 2 remaining tanks and now I started to hit the accelerators big time (calc showed I had only 3 more minutes to waste did I want to make it ino objective from north). At this point for the first time I saw a realistic chance to win this and crush enemy between two hammers coming from WEST and EAST and to sneak in my souther APCs in the last minute.

Now I counted on my numbers: 80 tanks left, well distributed to two sides of more or less an enemy tk coy, so 0743 I pushed in and took the heights in the map center first to get more observation on enemy positions. Plan was a coordinated charge into the enemy tks AO from two sides bringing in the numbers to get him piecemeal.

At 0746 I had the central plateau heights taken in numbers and clear LOS on enemy positions, my northern coys were ready to move into the 2k range on enemy, and my center had taken out a fairly annoying 4 Brads in the town. I set up everything to bring all tanks at the same time into range, and again it worked like a charm, enemy vehicles started dropping like flies...

0749 no enemy vehicloes were left, and now it was all about pushing into town without losing too many more troops to the dragons, of whom I had no idea yet where they were.

0751 I had them spotted and they were quickly dispatched of under supressive fires.

0757 started the final charge, and by 0759:45 had all troops into the town entering simultaneously from all 4 directions, killing the last remaining inf team in the act.

End game status: Enemy losses 100%, friendly losses 57%.

3. Lessons Learned

- You can beat an enemy that does not use smoke by using numbers even if you are way technically inferior if you employ good tactics.

- In order to get side shots on M1s it is imprescendible that you move in perfect lines spread out over 2+ kilometers and to face one tank platoon every time only.

- under 2k the T72 can do damage

- NEVER give up LOS into high ground as defender in this scenario if you dont have to

- Recon, recon, recon. Knowing where the enemy was exactly allowed me to tip the scale when ICM arrived for my batteries and to position my tanks always in a manner that allowed me to charge in perfect synchronisation. OTOH enemies failure to do good recon had him suprised more than once and cost hiim piecemeal but adding up.

I had a lot of fun after all, I think the replays will show that...:->

Thanks to Mark for keeping patient and holding out to the end, I am sure this outcome also will have opened his eyes about difference between playing the AI and a human, I can only hope he also enjoyed it despite losing so severely.

All in all: Good Game!