War Anecdotes
I love to hear about peoples game experiences especially if they stand out of the norm. I.e. one that left a nice impression after a good or bad game.
Usually there is always a several situations in a battle that are worthwhile and entertaining but only a few will stand the test of time. Through a hundred games and a thousand kills these are the ones I recall the most.
German vs Russia, 25 campaign 41-45:
Its close to the end in 45. I seldom loose any units at time as most tankers are veterans, except for Halftracks and infantry as Russian artillery and Katyushas is really flattening ground. I have a meeting engagement and is close to the enemy third of the map. The majority of the Kampfgruppe is hitting the enemy hard and most of the victory objectives is under my control. They are counterattacking in mass and the KG digs in.
On my right flank I have deployed three STUG III on some dirt roads close to some houses at the outskirts of a small village. There is about 150-200m of open terrain before a treeline cuts the LOS with light wood behind it. The Stugs I thought would be out of the battle acting as a reserve. A fourth Stug is a few hundred meters back inside the village if anything was to happen.
Suddenly to my surprise, this far down T-34/85's suddenly roll out of the trees trying to outflank my KG and rolls directly in to my Stugs who takes them on. Fire is exchanged at maximum rate and T-34's is exploding everywhere. The Stugs are taking a few hits but non fatal, those T-34s that have time to fire have a bad aim. The fire fight is intense. After two turns of contact the Stug crews are getting tired of all reloading and I have to pull back in to the village as my ROF is down to 3 rds per turn. Artillery is crashing down and my 4th Stug enters the battle attacking the T-34's from their side. I feel a little stressed as T-34's are stopped at point blank 50-100m. If a 85mm round hits home my Stug is a goner. One Stug is immobilized by artillery and two others redeploys to cover his flanks. I use every available tactic I know to keep them alive and force the T-34's to move first. With houses covering the sides of the Stugs the road network bottlenecks the T-34's to get into front arc combat. On the fourth turn the artillery shifts northward to the rest of the KG and battle dies down. 21 T-34's are left burning along a 300m front from the tree line into the village with one Stug immobilized and one damaged.
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Time is around 1943. I end up in a Kursk like scenario. I have enough acquisition points to upgrade a tank destroyer to an Ferdinand. Knowing my Kursk history well Im very aware that it has nil defense against infantry and really slow but as SPWW2 is only a computergame I never thought more of it.
I was elated at finally being able to field a machine like this in my KG. The battle starts and the KG races forward toward the Russian defenses. I engage some hills with objective markers and my whole KG is in contact. Except for one tank; the Ferdinand. It is still a good km back rolling slowly through the landscape at a painfully low speed. It pushes forward all alone for several turns as the rest of the KG is disintegrating the Russian defenders. Suddenly out of nowhere a Russian engineer squad appears and pursues my Ferdinand. I try to divert tanks to save my Ferdinand but it is stil too far off. They assault it from behind blowing it up along with the crew. I was gob smacked. No way! I got the eiree feeling that history was repeating it self.
I later realized that although the Russians where dug in close to their objectives they had a few scattered squads deployed all along the front. My KG had apparently passed between them by sheer luck. But as their objectives fell to my troops they where activated and fell back just as my slow Ferdinande rolled by. One of them apparently starting to run after my Ferdinand and managed to catch up with him. It was a depressing fact effectively ending my use of Ferdinand/Elefants in my KG.
***
Mid of a Eastern Front Campaign Ger Vs Rus:
I got a mission on a meeting engagement and a report telling me that I had to cross a river. Loading up with some extra barge carrying trucks I begun the game. Due to the extremely limited setup zone, heavy woods on rough with two dirt roads leading up to a 300m wide river that cut the map in half my KG bogged down with only some scout elements and Pz IV's managing to break loose. The rest of the KG had a long slow ride infront of them.
With still some 5-6 turns of movement between the front units and KG, the separated group reached the river. The small force was taking fire almost immediately as they reached the coast line. A few T-34/76's and a one or two KV-1 stood on the other shoreline engaging my long and less effective short barreled PzIV's. The Pz IV's scattered and took firing positions and duelled away. The scout element (Aufklärung) was quickly deployed but it was only some two Mg teams and four squads plus their 250 halftracks. My Pz's took hits and soon one was on fire and two immobilized. Some light artillery came down causing my infantry to hold on to their helmets.
A few T-34s where knocked out and one KV-1 but my fire power was slowly reduced when rounds where hitting close to my immobilized tanks suppressing my crews and even damaging my main armament. This when awe and behold the river was absolutely swamped with waves of rubber boats. It was shooting gallery, suddenly I had 30-40 targets of Russians trying to get over.
Although depleted and damaged the majority of firepower where shifted to the landing fleet. It was insane. It was soo frustrating having so many sitting duck targets and such a low amount of effective fire. Still trying to silence the remaining T-34's and under artillery fire knocking out my halftracks, rubber boats went down as fast as my scouts and MGs could fire. It was amusing at the same time as disturbing having so much firepower clogging the road not far away. Then the game suddenly froze, when reloading I got another map and never was able to enjoy more turkey shooting. It was depressing. Apparently according to a later enemy force roster probably two Russian infantry battalions tried to cross the lake at the same time.
/ Stefan
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