In this battle I used the Venhola program to build a map of Höfen/Monschau/Kaltherberg. Interestingly the 200x160 also includes the Wahlersheid crossroads – an American objective just prior to the start of the German offensive.
I selected and deployed the American force I later played against. I set up one American 105mm Artillery battalion on map with ammo bunkers to arrive as reinforcements on turn 10 – this to symbolize loss of comms immediately after the German opening barrage - and three off map 155mm batteries (with no reinforcement delay).
The American force was made up of one infantry battalion (green troops, the 3rd Bn, 395th Infantry) defending HÖFEN and one Cav Recon Company (Co C, 38th) along with one light tank company (Co F, 38th) defending MONSCHAU. The Cav behind extensive entrenchments and obstacles (wire) as some sources claim the Cavalrymen were well dug in.
American reserves included one engineer company and one Tank Destroyer platoon.
One company's worth of 3in AT-guns were deployed in the area of the infantry battalion (i.e. Co A, 612th Tank Destroyer Bn).
A few log bunkers were deployed in the American zone along with some minor minefields. Other than that I did not add any of the Siegfreid line bunkers or obstacles...
The German Campaign core force was made up of:
Stab
VB
Stabskompanie GR751 (one Bike Recon Plt, one VG Engineer Plt)
I Btl/GR751 (three VG companies, one VG heavy company)
II Btl/GR751 (three VG companies, one VG heavy company – heavy company has 7,5cm Howitzers instead of infantry guns.)
13./GR751 (infantry gun company, with 7,5cm IG and 12cm GrW).
(14./GR751 – AT-company, assumed to be the inf-at teams already attached to the VG rifle platoons)
AA Platoon – two 3,7cm sfl-FlaK from the 3/PzJgAbt 326.
AT-Gun Platoon – four 88mm Pak43/41 guns (no transport) from PzJgAbt 683(mot).
Sturm-Mörser-Kp 1001 – four Sturm-Tigers.
1/StuG-Brig 902 – one StuG company.
Aux forces for this battle:
I/GR752 (4 VG companies, one VG heavy company)
1/PiBtl 326 (Engineer company)
Artillerie-Regiment 326 (Four battalions – off map)
Volks-Artillerie-Korps 405 (Five battalions – off map)
schwere Artillerie-Batterie 1100 (24cm battery).
Volks-Werfer-Brigade 17 (four Nebelwerfer batteries)
(The German side had no ammo units.)
Reality vs Fiction
I based the German forces on Timm Haasler's very detailed book
Die 326. Volksgrenadier-Division in der Ardennenoffensive 1944/45.
Historically the attack on Höfen was made by three weak battalions of the 326th Division without any AFV support. For some reason each regiment of this division was tasked with forming a small reserve battalion without heavy weapons which drained manpower strength even before the attack began. The real attack was however supported by more artillery than used in my setup – I used two batteries of Nebelwerfers from the 88. Werfer-Regiment, and two batteries of Nebelwerfers from the 89. Werfer-Regiment. In reality the 88. Werfer-Regiment fielded thirty-six 15cm and eighteen 21cm Nebelwerfers, while the 89. had thirty-six 15cm and eighteen 30cm Nebelwerfers). The real battle also saw the four artillery battalions of the 272. Volksgrenadier-Division added to the weight of the attack.
The attack went in in the early morning of December 16 - in poor visibility. I turned up the visibility to
15 hexes in order for the AI to make its long range weapons more dangerous.
In reality the German attack failed to make much of a dent in the American lines at Höfen and American artillery caused heavy losses among the attacking German infantry. The heavy German artillery on the other hand didn't do all that much against the dug in Americans.
Observations
When playing the battle the rather heavy artillery fire on Höfen killed one American AT-gun and maybe the odd bazooka team. As long as the American units remained dug in the artillery appears to not have done too much damage – which echoes reality IMO. Many times the artillery was unobserved. However, it seems unlikely that even a human American player would not have been able to maneuver the (green) infantry much under that weight of artillery fire with out substantial risk of casualties and routed units. The German attack was limited by the slow going of the leg infantry moving under winter conditions/winter fields. A human American player could probably have delayed the infantry advance more through use of the armoured cars and especially the light tank company than was the case in my game. I thought the ammo supplied 105s were going to be more devastating than the 155s overall because of the length of the game (88 turns) but really the most losses were due to heavy American off-map artillery.
At games end (turn 88) Gren-Rgt 751 was in possession of HÖFEN and had two footholds on the western side of the Perlenbach. A small platoon size force made it to KALTHERBERG.
MONSCHAU and MÜTZENICH remains in American hands, i.e. no clean German breakthrough.
The Sturm-Tigers were pretty useful for bunker busting work. Don't ever remember having played a game with this unit before...
Herbstnebel vs the AI
Hybrid Mode
