Need suggestions on points.

[ErikinWest]

I am playing a game where the defender (Russians) is defending the hilly areas or the Caucasus. Now he has lots of spots for guns, MG's and nasty surprises. It has lots absolutely awesome hills to barrage the Germans attacker from. Now I need to know what a good Point ratio is.

Since the defender is not dug in, I was thinking that he should get 1000 points to buy anything and 500 points for fortifications. While the attacker gets 2500 to buy anything, 500 in air and artillery and 250 in transport (trucks and kubels only). What do you guys/gals think?

Erik

[Kingfish]

What dates? Also, you said the russian are defending, but aren't dug-in. Seems odd.

[Richie]

Seems odd... the Russians always dug in, matter of course.

"Comrade, you seem to be having some spare time yes? Here's a shovel... Now dig for Stalin!"

[ErikinWest]

Ok its '41. And lets say the russians are dug in. Then what seems fair?

Erik

[Bigduke6]

EW,

You are to be commended for developing a scenario in the Caucasus, the rougher part of which is really spectacular terrain, about as far from boring flat steppe as you can get. There is a reason the Russians are having so much trouble rubbing out the Chechens these days, for instance.

As far as I know the Germans only reached this region in 1942, not 1941, so there may be a time coordination thingie you need to iron out.

The typical Soviet mountain force of the period was heavy on infantry, mountain 76mm guns, MGs, and animal transport. I don't now about ATRs, but I would assume ATRs were issued to the mountain infantry as well. They would be light on armored vehicles, regular vehicles, and heavy artillery. On air, forget it.

If they were setting up a deliberate defense they would be limited in major earthmoving, as that required shipping thousands of civilians with shovels to the defense sector, and the major Caucaus nations - Georgians, Chechens, Abkhaz, Ossetians, Avars, and the rest - were not typical Soviet masses easy to get out digging things.

So if you're setting up a scenario, go light on the Soviet trenches and I would say forget concrete bunkers, and probably other fortifcations requiring lots of materials like minefields and wire.

Russian troops based in the Caucasus have always been a degree better in combat efficiency than the rest of the Russian army, because of periodic local insurgencies and the need for higher-quality soldiers to police the borders with Turkey and Iran.

So, I would make my Soviet mountain infantry force relatively high in quality for the period, majority regulars and more than a few veterans. A crack platoon or even two is not beyond the realm of possibility, IMO. (But I am prejudiced.)

So for your example I would suggest maybe 1100 points for infantry and infantry weapons. Figure one '41 mountain company regulars, and a second '41 mountain company veterans. Another 200 points or so would go to on-board medium mortars, mountain guns, heavy MGs, ATRs, extra Maxims, and MAYBE some ZiS-3-type cannon.

Pick whatever floats your boat, remembering Soviet batteries usually were four pieces. The remaining 100 points or so goes to fortifications. Limit fortfications to MG bunkers, trenches, and daisy-chain mines, plus of course TRPs if you want.

For the German force I would suggest a 42A Jaeger Battalion, backed up with a mix of halftrack-mounted guns, mortars, and armored cars. No air, the weather in the Caucases often sucks.

This force mix is just a rough guess, there are others out there that can give you a much better picture of a typical German force mix in the Caucasus than me.

Hope this helps.

[Kingfish]

I would also suggest trying a Romanian formation, either Cavalry or Mountain.

Look here

Hmmm...always wanted to design the battle for Nalchik.

[ErikinWest]

Thanks for the information Bigduke and all the others.

Erik

[JasonC]

Um, half tracks? Armored cars? I think not.

The lowland steppe up to the foothills was indeed a race with armor. That includes the coup de main that took Maikop, and farther east the last river crossings achieved on the road to Grozny - which they never actually reached.

But the mountain fighting wasn't about tanks, it was the German attempt to push south across the mountain ranges, grab the passes, and deploy on the southern side, to the Transcaucus. They did not succeed in that either, but came darn close, and that was the mountain infantry bit.

The Russians on the north side when the Germans grabbed the lowlands were not mountain divisions, they had no idea what to do in such high country. They simply got pushed back against the mountains and tried to get over them on foot, to get away and stay alive. They failed. The Germans took the most important passes in night attacks.

The Russians created their mountain infantry formations to stop this drive. The Germans already controlled the crest. The Russians blocked further moves south by mounting their own mountain infantry efforts to retake the passes. Which worked. That blocked any further German successes to the south.

The Stalingrad counterattack then forced a full German withdrawal, and the Russian mountain infanty followed the withdrawing Germans and retook all the high ground previously held by them.

The steppe portion of the campaign doesn't have anything to do with the mountains. Leave it aside. There are four possible phases after that. In phase 1, green ordinary Russian infantry tries to climb the north face of the mountains without any idea which points are critical or what they are doing. The German mountain formations know exactly what to aim for and the routes to take to reach them.

In phase 2, a few Russians at the critical points at the passes, having reached them just by being pushed back basically, are outmaneuvered and set upon by the German mountain forces and lose the passes. Some of which takes mountain infantry skill (more on that below), some is just coup de main action, crack on green.

Phase 3 is the one that actually pits the rival mountain formations against each other - the Russian ones brand new as formations, but formed around picked men experienced in mountaineering etc. And the story there is, the Russians succeed in retaking the passes through mountain infantry skill, of which more below.

Phase 4 is an afterthought, the Germans conducting a fighting withdrawal that the Russians follow slowly and positionally, until the high terrain is all clear.

What does mountain infantry skill mean? It means the farthest thing possible from armored cars and halftracks, that's what. It means legs. Strong ones. It means alpine hiking, maneuvering for high ground up this ridge or that. It is all about movements, because the terrain is so hard and the forces that can operate there so small compared to the scale of the terrain, that only key points can be held strongly let alone attacked, with no more than outposts elsewhere.

The Germans are on a pass here. So you pick the next spur off the main ridge to the left, and go into the valley on the left side of that spur. Out of sight of the Germans and the pass. You hike up that valley as it rises, staying below the crest of the spur. Where it meets the main ridge, you have a face or wall to find up route up. You climb said face. Now you are on the main ridge left of the pass. You ascend the left shoulder of the pass, higher still, up the main ridge. Then turn along it, still below the absolute crest. Now the pass is down below you and to your right. Anyone leaving said pass, you can now see - and hit.

To do such things, you have to think nothing of committing yourself to multiple thousand foot climbs in a row, maintaining as much stealth in the movement as possible as long as possible. Sending small parties ahead to avoid the main body being ambushed - because in the wrong spot, a few MGs would stop a regiment. You have to live for days on the side of the mountain in alpine cold and wind. You have to be able to maneuver above the snow line when the maneuvering demands it. You have to haul mortars or mountain guns and heavy MGs with you, something with the range to close the pass by fire threat if you succeed. Supplies by pack mules to base camps, and by man packing above them. All of which requires survival gear, experience to gauge practical moves and routes, an eye for terrain both of a climber and of a tactician, and above all, strong legs.

When the forces do clash, the positions reached already before others got there and the amount brought (numbers, heavy weapons with range) will usually decide the local action. With the result being possession of a particular terrain feature, the enemy withdrawing to some other strong position of his own. There are strong positions everywhere, lots of them. They are so strong because nobody can move up to them rapidly. But they can move half around and up, slowly, if they pick their routes cleverly.

But it is all very much infantry fighting. Light mortars and a few mule-packable mountain guns, and medium machine guns, are the heaviest weapons you would see.

A site by a Russian mountaineer enthusiast tells a little of the story from a Russian perspective, here - http://www.russianclimb.com/library/yasen.html

FWIW...

[Bigduke6]

Jason,

Thanks for the input.

For any one interested, here is an anecdotal story I have been told by both an Ossetin and Chechen war veteran:

In the dark days of summer '42 when the Germans kicked the Reds out of the Transcaucases, it was panic time in Moscow because if the Germans kept going, it was next stop Tbilisi (then Tiflis) and no Soviet commander wanted to have to tell Stalin he had lost Georgia to the Facists.

So, the Georgia republic KGB got busy, and besides hauling in as many young men as they could catch to fill out the mountain units (which were built on border units pre-dating the war), the word went out to the tribes: "The Motherland needs experienced mountain guides".

These were of course the smugglers, all sorts of ethnicities but none Slavic, who knew the passes and how to get pack animals through them. The story is the KGB met in negotiations with the bosses of the criminal clans and cut a deal: you add your people and animals to stopping the Germans, and we will give you weapons and lay off you after the war is over."

So, as the story goes, the Red mountaineer units that eventually stopped the Germans had honest-to-John Wayne native guides; typically three generations of men from some of highlander family so removed from civilization, they had never really acknowledged the Russians, as Russian soldiers never got to their valley.

These guides and their animals allegedly were critical in helping the newly-created Red mountain units lower the boom on the Germans, as without them the Red army units would have had little idea how to move through the region. Roughly, at the time Red border units knew the paths on the Turkish and Iranian frontier, but the only people who knew the paths between the Krasnodar province and Georgia were the smugglers.

The Reds of course eventually won, and the Chechens supposedly to this day destest Stalin as a Georgian who reneged on the deal. Once Soviet control over the region was re-exerted, Stalin's regime exiled every Chechen it could catch to Siberia.

Like I say, no idea if it's true or not, but a great story.

One comment, as I was told a lot of the "mountain" fighting actually took place in the high foothills, i.e., not pure Alpine terrain but leading up to it. Fir trees, meadows, lots of scree, rushing brooks, most roads a mule path, like that.

[JasonC]

http://www.peakware.com/encyclopedia/peaks/photos/elbrus4.htm

That's the peak. 5000 meters. No armored cars up there.

The passes run 2500 to 3500 meters, 8000 to 10000 feet. Count as very large mountains in most of the world, but those are the -low- points through the great Caucasus range.

Of course, if you aren't trying to cross the range, you are just staying on one side of it, then you don't have to cross such things. But if you do want to cross it, and to exert actually military control over such high passes in such forbidding terrain, you need specialist mountain troops.

Incidentally the terrain becomes alpine much lower down, long before the ice line (which is called a glacial zone, rather than an alpine zone). Meaning you get rocky most places, scattered rough, scattered patches of brush, occasional trails of open, in CM terms. With slopes of 30-45 degrees common.

[Bigduke6]

Jason,

You're talking about the highest spur of the entire Caucasus range. Military activity took place along a line much longer than the Elbrus spur, and aside from that spur the terrain was a lot lower and flatter than you are implying.

The German summer 1942 advance reached high water in the Caucasus region on a line with Cherkessk, Nalchik, Novorossisk, and Mozdok under firm German control. The Germans on Elbrus photos were taken in August 21 in what effectively was a propaganda stunt.

Army Gruppe "A" attempted to push further south in late September and early October. The main Soviet defense was to the south of the Terek River.

The German advance stalled along a line of roughly of Novorossisk, Achikulak, Alagir, Ishcherskaya, and the northern outskirts of Vladikavkaz. There was no line further east, both sides decided to leave their flanks up in the air.

Here's my source:

http://eng.kavkaz.memo.ru/printenc/engencyclopedia/id/592533.html

Here's a relief map of the Caucasus. As you can see, the left part of the line of fighting, or at least contact, was in high mountains; but the center and right part wasn't.

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/commonwealth/caucasus_region_1994.jpg

Elbrus and the far left bit of the mountains excepted, the German September-October advance stalled in the foothills of the High Caucasus, not major passes. Combat on high snowy peaks requiring belaying gear and ice axes was an exception, if it took place at all.

As to how hard or easy it is to move infantry and combat vehicles across the lower mountains, high valleys, and foothills; I have talked to teenagers and women refugees who walked from Chechnya to Georgia on foot. They told me most of the way is in the trees, although a small part of it is in the snow. All of the route is, they said, quite passable to pack animals.

They seemed to be pretty tough people, but obviously none of them had gone through Gerbirgsjaeger school.

I can add I have done some hiking in the Caucasus foothills myself and from what I could see all you need to get around is time, decent shoes, and a reasonable amount of physical fitness. It's not the Himalayas.

As to vehicles, where there is agriculture in the southern Caucasus, it seems to me you certainly could find use for light armored vehicles. Since most people live by sustainance agriculture, even in the higher (but not highest) regions the ground is pretty intensely tilled.

The Russian Army operates BTRs in that part of the world today, the idea being the vehicle is light enough to deal with the road grades, and its gun is powerful enough to handle insurgents, especially since that big MG has a long reach to the other side of a valley. So I figure the Germans would have used halftracks and armored cars when they were in the region, a half century earlier.

If the Germans didn't use combat vehicles during their Caucasus campaign I stand corrected. But from my point of view they certainly could have, as a good portion of the terrain allowed it.

[Kingfish]

The Germans would disassemble each vehicle into man-portable packs, lug them over each mountain range, then reassemble them when they reached the lower elevations. This was done time after time, allowing them to move entire Panzer Korps over the mountains.

[Bigduke6]

*Slaps forehead* Doh!