Anyone know the actual makeup of KG Peiper?

[vondeath]

I know I've seen it somewhere, I can't find the site. I am tweaking a scenario to try and represent it.

If anyone has a clue as to number of tanks, support and infantry, let me know .

[Jeff Cansell]

From memory (and originally from Michael Reynolds book).

KG Peiper:

1st SS Panzer Regt:

4 Panther companys/4 PzIV companys = 75/80 AFVs.

1 Panzer Pioneer (Engineer) Company (Halftracks).

1 AA Platoon (Wirbelwind(?) or AA Halftracks).

3rd (Armd) Panzergrendier Battalion (Armd Halftracks).

13th Inf Gun Company - 150mm Bisons (5 or 6)

501 SS Heavy Tank Battalion - Tiger II (Probably about 30).

84 Flak battalion - Approx 20 Halftrack or Truck mounted light (20/37mm) Flak guns.

Other elements joined up once Peiper reach the Stoumont/Stavelot areas. E.g. Knittel's Recon KG and additional infantry (on foot) from KG Hansen.

I think that's roughly right.

[CombinedArms]

That sounds about right to me. Troop total was roughly 8000. You might check Charles MacDonald's "A Time for Trumpets" for more info.

A couple of points to keep in mind as you design a scenario, though no doubt these have already occurred to you:

1) Given the choppy terrain where Peiper's force was for the most part deployed--convoluted even for the Ardennes-- he never got all of it into any given battle. It was generally stretched out over many miles and engaged in different fights in different places.

2) The full Peiper kampfgruppe is almost certainly too big to fit within the CM scale. Probably better to focus on a single battle or series of battles.

[CombinedArms]

Sorry--double post.

[ October 09, 2002, 07:30 AM: Message edited by: CombinedArms ]

[Kanonier Reichmann]

Topic: Anyone know the actual makeup of KG Peiper?

As far as I know they didn't wear any however I'll check my sources to be doubly sure.

Regards

Jim R.

[Kanonier Reichmann]

I've now checked my sources and confirm they wore a lovely milky white face cream made by Schwartzkopf in order to blend in better with the surrounding snow covered countryside.

I hope that helps.

Regards

Jim R.

[vondeath]

Thanks for the info, guys .... "The Sanatorium" sceenario available from the Scenario Depot has a decent representative sample of the forces involved in the Staumont attack.

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Jeff Cansell:

From memory (and originally from Michael Reynolds book).

KG Peiper:

[KG Peiiper snipped]

I think that's roughly right.

Roughly right, yes.

Here's what Mike's books says:

HQ 1 SS Regt (Peiper) 2 x Panther

- 1 SS Pz Bn (Pötschke)

-- 1 Coy (Kremser) 17 x Panther

-- 2 Coy (Christ) 17 x Panther

-- 6 Coy (Junker) 17 x Pz IV

-- 7 Coy (Klingelhöfer) 17 x Pz IV

- 501 SS Hvy Pz Bn (von Westernhagen)

-- 1 Coy (Wessel) 14 x Tiger II

-- 2 Coy (Möbius) 14 x Tiger II

-- 3 Coy (Bimschein) 14 x Tiger II

- 3 SS Pz Gren Bn (Diefenthal)

-- 9 Coy (Leike) 16 x SPW

-- 10 Coy (Preuss) 16 x SPW

-- 11 Coy (Tomhardt) 16 x SPW

-- 12 Hvy Coy (Thiele)

-- 13 Inf Hvy Gun Coy (Koch) 6 x 150mm SP

- 9 SS Pz Pnr Coy (Rumpf)

-- 1 Pl SPW

-- 2 Pl SPW

-- 3 Pl bicycles

-- 4 Pl motorized

- 3 SS Pz Pnr Coy (Sievers)

-- 1 Pl SPW

-- 2 Pl SPW

-- 3 Pl motorized

-- 4 Pl motorized

- 10 SS Pz AA Coy (SP) (Vögler)

-- Pl 4 x 37mm

-- Pl 4 x 20mm

-- Pl 3 x Wirbelwind

- 1 SS Pz Arty Bn (towed) (Kalischko)

-- 1 Bty (Neugebauer) 6 x 105mm

-- 2 Bty (Werner) 6 x 105mm

-- 3 Bty (Freist) 6 x 105mm

- SS Pz Supply Coy (Unger)

- SS Pz Repair Coy (Ratschko)

- 84 Luftwaffe Flak Bn (-) (Wolf) 20 & 37mms

Hope that helps.

All the best,

John.

[CombinedArms]

Wow, that's an impressive amount of detail. I'll have to check out Michael Reynold's book.

And Peiper left all of that equipment behind! Actually, when you think about it, Peiper's whole escapade didn't accomplish much--he squeezed through the Allied lines, shot up a few rear area units, got himself boxed into a winding, steep-sided river valley and isolated from the rest of the Axis assault, where his advance was delayed and then blocked by numerically inferior forces. When he was ultimately surrounded by superior strength, he ended up losing his entire impressive array of vehicles, which were boxed in and completely out of fuel, and getting out on foot with about 800 of the 8000+ troops he went in with. Pretty much a disaster all around. Maybe the disaster wasn't his fault, but it was a disaster nonetheless, by any reasonable standard.

[vondeath]

Considering that Mantuffel<sp> made it within a mile of the Meuse(but 2nd Pz ran out of gas)and also considering that Heer Panzergrenadier units never had enough SPWs and had to make do with trucks(or horses), makes one wonder about the notion of the SS being "ubertroops".... Especially if you read the account of the 99th and the 2nd Inf's fight against the 12th SS... They basically got nowhere... of course in the end they were confronted with the Big Red One, also... .

Edit: I just read an account on a website.. one of these days I'm going to remember to bookmark these things.. that had some little tidbits about ObStbf Peiper himself. One had him giving up his command Panther to one of his company commanders whose tank had broken down and actually leading an attack in an SPW(his Panther had actually broken down according to another website). The other has him grabbing a Panzerfaust to knock out a menacing Sherman, only to have one of his staff NCOs beat him to it.

Unfortunately, the stuff on this site is so pro Peiper and anti Allies ( They contend that Patton hated Germans when in actuality he had much respect for many of them) I wonder how much is true.

I did find a decent account of the battle under

http://www.geocities.com/wolfram55/ardennes.html

[ October 11, 2002, 10:53 PM: Message edited by: vondeath ]

[Tom TCMHQ]

Originally posted by CombinedArms:

And Peiper left all of that equipment behind.

Nope , only a part of the Kampfgruppe was encircled at LaGleize. Other units fight elswhere , were destroyed before or didn´t make it to the frontline. The book " Ardennes - Then and Now " gives a good account of what was found at LaGleize after Peipers men were evacuated:

6 x Tiger II , 13 x Panther , 6 x PzKw IV and more than 60 misc. vehicles ( SdKfz 251 etc. ).Only 1200 - 2000 SS soldiers of the KG were involved in the LaGleize fightings. Has somebody the concrete numbers ? ".

Cheers

Tom

[vondeath]

A quote from the website I posted the link for:

"A small supply group manages to provide Peiper with enough fuel for his attack towards Stoumont. At this point, 22 Mk.IVH, 9. Mk.IVH and 27 Mk.VIB did even attain Stavelot because of fuel shortages or mechanical breakdown."(Obviously one of those "Mk.IVH" means Mk.V) 12 tanks were destroyed in the initial actions according to this account.

So according to that account, 70 tanks never made it to La Gleize to be encircled. Who knows how many men didn't .....

[ October 13, 2002, 02:00 AM: Message edited by: vondeath ]

[Nippy]

Unfortunately, the stuff on this site is so pro Peiper and anti Allies ( They contend that Patton hated Germans when in actuality he had much respect for many of them) I wonder how much is true.

I remeber in the Manual for the Board game "Battle of the Bulge" the manual stated:

"Peiper was killed in the mid 1960's at his home, when he opened a mail bomb. Obviously sent by someone with a very long memory."

Edit: I did some research. He was killed in a fire bomb attack on his home in France in 1976.

[ October 13, 2002, 08:50 AM: Message edited by: Nippy ]

[Lawyer]

My scenario "Baugnez -- What If" (available at Scenario Depot) has a good description and represenation of Peiper's force. I researched books by MacDonald, Parker, Pallud, Cavanagh, Reynolds, and more. The consensus seems to be that Peiper himself had about 4,800 men in his battlegroup, along with Skorzeny's 150th following, but not under Peiper's command.

Peiper also had MkIV tanks in addition to Panthers and Tiger II's. At Baugnez, there were still some Fallshirmjager troops that Peiper picked up at Lanzarath who were riding the tanks up front.

As someone noted above, this force was so large that it stretched for 30km on the Ardennes roads. Peiper never employed his whole force at the same time. Battles like Baugnez, Stavelot, Trois Ponts, and Stoumont only featured the leading spearhead elements. Of course, these leading Peiper elements alone were still far more powerful than what the US had facing them. I had to use a little "alternate history" to give the US a fighting chance in my scenario.

CMBO scenarios are (thankfully) too small to employ the whole Peiper force. I had to jigger the reinforcement turns for Peiper just to get his lead platoon on the map in time to play the game. It is a lot of units to get on the map and still have time to maneuver in a normal sized game.

BTW, I wouldn't trust unofficial web sources for facts about Peiper. His name still brings up strong emotions. I had a neo-Nazi in Holland send me a VERY lengthy rebuttal to my scenario description because I used the word "massacre" to describe what happened to US prisoners at Baugnez. He ended his diatribe by talking about "Ike's Death Camps". I chose my words carefully based on solid research, but I nonetheless was "corrected." War is hell, eh?

[ October 13, 2002, 10:03 AM: Message edited by: Lawyer ]

[aka_tom_w]

I recently played the ASL Stoumont Scenario (its at the scenario depot and it is VERY GOOD

I don't know how historically accurate it was but ti was a GREAT scenario to play!

THere are several KG peiper scenario's out there and there is a FULL blown Peiper Operation.

Good luck

-tom w

[CombinedArms]

BTW, speaking of Stoumont, I ran into this interesting clip about the forces OPPOSING Peiper at MilitaryHistoryOnline.com:

" some separate [tank] battalions were temporarily stripped of equipment to provide replacement stocks for the battalions that were already in combat. One battalion, the 740th, was stripped when it arrived in Europe in December 1944. Then it was hastily refitted from a British tank repair depot on 18 December and was flung into the path of KG Pieper during the Ardennes Offensive. The 740th's odd lot of equipment included M4s, Fireflies, M10 and M36 tank destroyers, and M8 armored cars, all of which were equipped with British radios -- which the Americans didn't know how to use! Despite this handicap the battalion (actually a reinforced company) materially assisted in halting Pieper's advance west of Stoumont Station by a combination of good luck and excellent gunnery."

MacDonald describes M4's and M36s in this odd-lot battalion knocking out the lead Panthers in Peiper's Stoumont spearhead, blocking the road and blunting his attack. Interesting to consider that a green company of tankers in unfamiliar, mismatched tanks blunted Peiper's elite, SS Panzer spearhead driving late-model Panthers.

[ October 18, 2002, 09:17 AM: Message edited by: CombinedArms ]