Bulge 16.01s alt

[Plain Ian]

Turn 81 German – 2am 25th Dec Snow – Hoes Venn – Chession
 


Well 10 days into the campaign and the snow is back, just in time for Christmas! It was a quiet but interesting turn.

Unfortunately the Germans have forgotten the Christmas cheer and the 3-39th learn what werfers can do to you when not dug in to TRENCH level. Two blasts take out 39 men and some more artillery and direct fire from the 277th adds in further misery. The 3-39th disrupts and joins its partner2-38th which although low fatigue stays disrupted. The 3-39th is down to 163 men. (21%)

The 1-395th and 2-395th are also struggling to ecover from disruption.

Things are not that rosey for the Germans though as patrols show that they are not immune to disruption recovery failure. (1) and (2).

Further south the 1st Divisions forward troops 3-26th and 3-16th are hit hard by artillery. The 3-16th suffers the worst barrages and is disrupted. Its crime.....digging in.

The god news though is that the 12th VGD is still suffering from bent shovels and fails again to dig in. 3 battalions digging in and no sign of a TRENCH.....Adolf will not be pleased. 

And here is the interesting bit. He assaulted the 1-33rd tank Bn. (6) I had left it on its own after pulling back the battered 2-26th and he hit it with his 12th SS/KG Hansen group. They were pushed back but have recovered from disruption. I lost 3 B quality M4’s and he lost 35 A quality men.
To fill the gap he brought up two more battalions of 12th SS (7) and selected the 38th Cav for some artillery bombardment. (he ignored the 2-33rd stacked with it) It lost 2 armoured cars There seems to be a small offensive happening here as he has also advanced some Pioneers. (9)

The 3-60th were hit by direct fire from his Panther group. (8)

North of Stoumont he was content to use artillery against my armoured cars (?) and ignored the British M44’s. The British M4’s only have a defensive strength of 12 (compared to the US M4 strength of 20) but an M8 (Greyhounds) of the 24th Cav has a defensive strength of 3. 2 more B quality vehicles to add to his VP tally. I assume he gets the same points for an M8 as he does for an M4.  

I patrolled the Stoumont road and there were no surprises to find that he has set up double defences with a VGD Bn and VGD Pak unit in each hex. (11) and (12)

What is a surprise is that he has blown the bridge over the river at Chession. In the replay I wondered why fire was triggered against his Pioneer uni,t but if Cesar had not mentioned the bridge blowing in his email I probably would not have realised for a few turns. I’m not sure of the implications of this act? Nor the reason he blew it?

The 31st Tank Bn was hit by quite a few artillery shots but did not lose any more tanks this turn. It did recover from disruption hooray! The 740th Tank Bn to its north in Chession did not recover. Boo hoo...but its yellow fatigue 160 anyway.

And that was as much as I could cram onto the map folks. Maybe too much. I blew up the Spa area. Interesting situation. I have a few infantry units with reasonable fatigue in the area but my tank strength is pretty low. (see numbers on tank units) I think his units are reasonably ok in terms of fatigue and I guess his units are possibly around about 500 strength apart from his Pioneers. (KG Hansen could be 600+)

In the Hoes Venn I might advance the 741st Tnk Bn to stop his disrupted units recovering fatigue.
I’ll continue the attacks against 12th SS/12th VGD but I’ll wait for dawn before I start any other moves.....