Choosing reverse or forward slope defense

[Zalgiris 1410]

Originally posted by Corvidae:

Ah,, i stand corrected, so my positioning of units just behind the crest is what???

given that its my prefered defence i would like a name for it,

Crestline or ridgeline positioning defence!

If you deploy your units like in the pic above then that is an example of 'crestling', where your units can see over the crestline themselves to fire at targets well over the hill, but are fully protected by the hill/ridge and out of both LOS and LOF of the attacker when they hide or take cover in CM.

A forward slope position would have your troops & direct fire guns over the crestline and exposed to attacker LOS/LOF. They may be in improved positions in foxholes and trenches or in coverred terrain such as woods or buildings etc, but are all over the hill.

A reverse slope position is having the main body of the MLR a distance behind the crestline be that 30 or 50 or 75 or 100 or 125 or 500 metres or more etc from the crestline. It may still have a portion of units either LPing or OPing on the crestine itself or indeed in forward slope positions or neither but the main body is behind the crestline with fields of fire up the reverse slope as far as the crestline. The difference in the distance can be described in terms of depth and by the sounds of it Corvidae your RSP is extremely shallow if your not entirely crestlining.

As to weither there is any real difference between reverse sloping and crestlining before anyone asks is what the Germans chose to do on the defence in Italy. Rather than deploying as usual in reverse slope positions, they built themselves defensive fortifications on the tops of ridgelines rather than further back down the slope behind them. One good reason they calculated to do this was that the Allied artillery in front of the ridge would have a hard time accurately hitting such ridgeline positions with mostly either over shooting or undershooting such positioned targets. Another reason was that they would retain excellent LOS for their own artillery spotters. The Battles of Cassino attest to the soundness and effectiveness of this tactical reasoning.

[ August 11, 2006, 11:19 PM: Message edited by: Zalgiris 1410 ]

[Corvidae]

Thankyou Zalgiris, You have validated my deployment.

[C'Rogers]

Generally there isn't a hard and fast rule as is kind of evident here, and how you choose to deploy is based largely on your equipment you have and the terrain.

Though as general rule I have noticed one thing. A forward slope position does a good job of slowing the enemy down. On the other hand a reverse slope position does a better job of inflicting casulties. So it depends what you want (my experience at least, not sure if others as well).

Also I find machine guns to be of much better use in a forward than a reverse slope position (do to their suppressing nature).