Scenario - Storming The Waidhaus Gap

This years game was an Air Land battle extravaganza played out by the usual crew, the guilds Panzerfaust 200, and Mausman were once again the Germans and Myself and Elhiem ran the Soviet horde. The detailed scenario can be downloaded from the link at the end of this post and the AAR will be the central theme of the Autumn magazine.

I started work on this project almost as soon as we had finished last years marathon. It all started with a desire to take my VDV units into the late Cold War period (Post 1985) after that it got a bit out of hand, resulting in the construction of 26 Aircraft of various types, which turned out to be a fairly large commitment.

It continues my fascination with the Soviet forward detachment, but starts to examine it in the context of offensive operations against the NATO covering force and in cooperation with Air Assault assets. The Scenario was set in the context of the military operations that formed the back ground to the Wissenberg Counter Attack, looking at the initial actions taken by 22 Combined Arms Army in crossing the German Czech border at Waidhaus. This present the army commander with a few interesting problems:

• The crossing point is a terrain constraint or bottleneck
• The Terrain opens up exposing the flanks shortly after moving through the constraint
• He needs to maintain the momenttum of the main body in negotiating the crossing point

To which the answer was to secure the gap with a forward detachment and the flanks with Scaterable mines and an Air Assault force. This then is the Soviet context of the scenario and provides a broad scope for the examination of Soviet Doctrine of the period.

The NATO plan in this part of the battelfield is also interesting, Germany pursued a concept of forward defence and so I have deployed a strong covering force along the border, the nature of the terrain allowed a degree of focus on the main crossing points with a mobile reserve left to deal with any other incursion routes identified by a weak recce screen across the more difficult approach routes.

The Divisional Recce unit was concentrated at the two primary points and reinforced by elements of the Divisional reserve 12 Pz Bde and the Korps Reserve, 25 Luftlande Brigade as well as being strongly supported by Air and Aviation assets. This made for an interesting German force structure and is broadly in line with their doctrine.

In terms of the scenario design I wanted to keep all 4 players amused and broadly have the game play out to a conclusion without it bogging down in any particular place. This required the following activities to happen:

• The Soviets had to get on the ground with the air assault force.
• They needed someone to fight before the reserves turned up.
• The reserves needed to be controlled and ultimately taken out if the Soviets were to reach the far end of the board.
• The Germans needed to be able to snatch victory at the back end of the game.

To meet these needs we developed an air superiority rule which allowed us to play a very full ground attack game but with the balance alternating between the two sides in the early part of the game. The Soviets had turns 1 - 3 the NATO team 4-6 and thereafter it was to be randomly determined. This should allow each side to dominate in turn the early phases of the game. Giving each early success and allowing the game to progress to plan.

This also met the need to create effectively two games one at the front of the board and one at the back. As we had an 18 foot by 8 foot table to play with I knew this would be broadly achievable. The Terrain was derived from the Google earth imagery but simplified to contain the main settlement, the main roads major wooded features and three prominent ridge lines.

The broad scope of play was therefore that the German covering force built around:

• 2 Recce Companies
• 1 Tank Company
• 1 FJ Battalion

would fight the ground battle forward against the heavily reinforced 480 MRB:

• 3 MR Coy
• 2 Tk Coy
• 1 Mobile Support Group
• 2 Bns of Guns

and that the covering force of 10 PG Bde together with the Air Defence assets of 4 FLAK Bn:

• 100 PzAufZug
• 100 PzJgrKp
• 41 and 42 AD Bty

would initially take on 901 Air Assault Battalion and its accompanying aircraft after the landing phase the germans would be reinforced by 2 Kp of Leopard 2s and towards the end of the game receive a further Kp and a lot of Artillery and Air to enable them to pull back.

Related Posts:

TTP

TTP-Forward Detachments and Tactical Air Assault

Scenario:

Scenario - Storming The Waidhaus Gap
ORBAT - Soviet Air Assault Capability Part 1, Overview and Lift Assets
ORBAT - Soviet Air Assault Capability Part 2, Army Air Assault Battalion
ORBAT - Soviet Task Org, Fronts in the Western TVD

Wargames Unit:

Wargames Unit - Soviet Late 80's Independent DShV Battalion
Wargames Unit - Soviet Late 80's MRB
Wargames Unit - The German Army at Waidhaus
Wargames Unit - Soviet, Combat Helicopter Regiment, Assault Helicopter Squadron
Wargames Unit - Soviet, Combat Helicopter Regiment, Attack Helicopter Squadron

AAR:

AAR-Storming The Waidhaus Gap, Part 1 Ground and Deployment
AAR-Storming The Waidhaus Gap, Part 2 Soviet Air Land Battle
AAR-Storming The Waidhaus Gap, Part 3 Counter Attack

Downloads:

Storming The Waidhaus Gap, 19 Mb

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