New Scenario: SPANNOCCHI'S DREAM II

[Siddhi]

would welcome comments on the scenario


SPANNOCCHI'S DREAM II - Thousand Needles**
Hungarian Advance vs Austrian Defend*

Burgendland, Austria, RSZ16*
October, 1985*
Turns:40**

Scenario Size: 140 x 160**


YOUR ORDERS:**
The Hungarians have crossed the border an hour ago and already your forward scouts report that that the reinforced Tank Regiment coming your way has lost unit phasing while struggling to deal with large amounts of obstacles. The Hungarians probably believe that as this a "Raumsicherungszone" (Delay Zone) and not a "Schluesselzone" (Key Zone) it will be lightly defended, and are attempting to "bull through", without a dedicated advanced guard besides the scouts. Your Landwehr battalion however is heavily fortified and well-prepared, and can call on some support from heavy fortress artillery positions and some Jagdpanzers from the Corps reconnaissance regiment. In the least, you should be able to give the Hungarians a bloody nose.**


BRIEFING NOTES**
In this scenario, the day is D+3 of the Third World War. The relative success of NATO Armies in Germany and Soviet victories in the Atlantic indicates that the War will not be a matter of days, as had been hoped. Correspondingly, the Warsaw Pact plan to invade Austria and threaten Southern Germany and Northern Italy was put into effect. Partial mobilisation of the Austrian Army went into effect on D-3, and although full mobilisation was put off for political reasons, at least all local defence forces (Landwehr) were activated. Nonetheless, on D+1, with the opening assault on NATO and following concise indications of an impeding attack, active forces and the Landwehr were deployed and put onto the highest state of alert. It was noted that, while The Soviet Forces were at full strength and deployed, the Hungarians were experiencing serious delays in their mobilisation process. Only the tank division was able to deploy within the minimum alert requirement WPHC had ordered. On D+3 Warsaw Pact troops invaded Austria.**


SCENARIO NOTES**

Gen. Spannocchi invented the concept of Raumverteidigung - Area Defence - by subdividing the entire country into mostly two types of zones: a delay zone and a defence zones. Although fielding only a small 40,000 man standing army, this force would be augmented by up 270,000 trained reserves within less then 48 hours - of these nearly 30,000 would deploy to fixed and local defence positions. The SZs (Key Defence Zones) were to be the operational areas for the mobile army formations - most of which were in mountainous or alpine areas and protected the Austrian Alpine heartland - with hundreds of heavily bunkered positions (called FAN = Feste Anlagen) providing everything from Anti-tank fire to artillery support. These would be backed my mechanised units that would destroy penetrations when they occurred. The RZs (dealay zones) were not officially defended - these were to be delaying zones aimed at slowing and channelling the enemy advance, and were areas where Jagdkampf - small unit hit-and-run warfare - was to be practiced. Each RZ was however defended by at least 1 battalion of Landwehr militia, who had their own fortified positions and which, like every possible route in Austria, was saturated with mines and obstacles (officially the most heavily fortified country besides Switzerland). The RZs were often equipped with multiple fortified defensive lines on the routes of advance, and the idea of "delay" was mostly the same as "destroy". The effort to force these zones was calculated to be immense, with stunning casualties resulting from the enemies need of keeping at least a minimum rate of advance in either to forestall full mobilisation or reinforcement from NATO. Indeed, the brilliance of the concept was that this alone was supposed to be a deterrence to a likely invader and prevent the invasion from happening in the first place - and as recent documents have shown, this too was successful.**

Emil Spannochi's concept of Raumverteidigung was was never forced to face a trial of arms. However the fortifications and the highly flexible local defence concept that utilised the Austrian countryside to the full was highly developed and the source of some considerable consternation in Warsaw Pact circles. The Hungarians in particular spent substantial resources in trying to prove that their army was in no shape to deal with it. Following an exercise in early 1980s, in which an entire Schluesselzone (Key Defence Zone) located in Upper Austria was reconstructed, an attack to defender ratio of 10:1 was worked out, leading the later Hungarian Defence minister to despair. Only substantial Russian threats were capable of getting the Hungarians acquiesce to upholding their part of the "Central TVD - South West Front" Operational Plan - the advance of Czech, Hungarian and Soviet Forces through Austria in North-West operational direction VIENNA-LINZ-MUNICH and South-West GRAZ-KLAGENFURT-BOZEN. The Hungarians consoled themselves that such a plan was unlikely to be put into effect.**

COMMENTS ON PLAY**
- a small "role-playing" element has been added to the game - try not to sacrifice the control post squad at the first defence line, it will cost you a lot of points.*
- use your fortress artillery wisely, even a couple of guns can wreck havoc on a tightly concentrated enemy.*
- anything less then a major victory should be considered a defeat**


DESIGN NOTES - SPOILER ALERT**
- the amount of obstacles (mines and tank blocks) was decreased compared to RL (mine fields tend to be larger, higher density, and wider)as the AI does not deal with them well. For the same reason more tank barriers are used them in mines, although the ratio in RL was the opposite.*
- where necessary, forested land was given a combo of impassable and swamp terrain as base, to attempt to accurately represent the RL hindrance they are all to all vehicle movement (despite what SPMBT says, tanks cannot and do not drive through any real forest)*
- the bunkers were heavily adapted to conform with their RL armament and performance expectations. If the bunkers in question seem immune to T-55 direct fire - they are not. But it does take a bit lot of work to get through a 1m+ of reinforced concrete.*
- The Hungarian and Austrian TO&Es have been adjusted.**


Although this scenario uses a much enlarged version of the GROSSPETERSDORF map provided in SPMBT and is accurate as far as the geography is concerned, the bunkers and dispositions are speculative and do not knowingly represent actual fortified locations presently active. However, other parts of Austria had dispositions that were very similar and faced similar threats with similar means.**