Piercing Fortress Europa - Sicily

Finishing out the weekend with a quick play of the Sicily scenario of Piercing Fortress Europa.

A game to go along with my current reading, Atkinson's The Day of Battle.

I'm using Chemkid's fantastic map and counters mods.

Hill 1234 Part Two

In which I continue I Company 3/39th's effort to clear Hill 1234 of German defenders.

I'm keeping my armor hidden by staying in the low ground as I move them up the slope. If I were the Germans I'd have AT guns in the woods overlooking the road. Any guns so positioned would have excellent side shots on the thin armor of these light tanks.

Hill 1234

It has not been a great start to the week, and mentally I've not been up for much in the evenings. Still, the siren call of virtual shot and shell is tough to resist. Tonight I found myself back in Sicily, near Troina, leading I Company 3/39th Infantry Regiment, 9th Infantry Division in a assault on the German positions on Hill 1234.

I've been reading this excellent site about infantry tactics of WWII, and I can see how much of what I've been doing in CMFI and CMBN is  not historical. I'm going to try and play this scenario closer to what I'm reading about the actual tactics employed.

Mission briefing.

That Fleeting Moment - Map Preview

Here's a preview of the map I've put together (with help from Chris and Tim) for what I plan to be my first Command Ops scenario.

The map is of the area around Gela, Sicily. The scenario, That Fleeting Moment concerns the counterattack on July 12, 1943 by elements of the Herman Goering and Livorno Divisions against the beachhead of the US 1st Infantry Division. With the map ready to go comes the tough part - creating and ESTAB that contains the Italian units necessary for this theater. Hopefully using the ESTAB editor is as easy as the Map Maker was. Even so, there's a lot of research to be done.

Bon Giorno Tomahawks

I spent a good part of yesterday playing Chris Maiorana's latest Command Ops masterpiece, Across the Tartar Ditch. Chris just keeps knocking out great additions to Command Ops in a theater not yet part of any of the official expansions. Look for this one later this week or next on Sharp End Gaming. This is not an easy scenario for either side!

All of that blizkrieging left me homesick for Sicily though. I returned to the sunny Mediterranean today at a very tactical level with Aris' semi-historical scenario for Combat Mission Fortress Italy: Bon Giorno Tomahawks.

Pz. Kpfw IV's brew up as they're flanked by a platoon of Shermans. More tanks support infantry in the village

Operation Husky JOSS Force Day 2

This post is a continuation of my playthrough of the HPS Sims Sicily '43 scenario "0710_01 ALT JOSS Beach." The first part of this post can be found here.

Dawn D-Day+1

At dawn the situation has not changed a great deal as I've left most of my troops rest over night. An early morning attack by the 177th Bersagliere and a battalion from the 179th Panzergrenadier Regiment pushed 2/7 and a battalion of combat engineers out of the trenches along Highway 115. Otherwise, most units were static overnight, only moving to maintain contact with known enemy formations.

Operation Husky JOSS Force, Day 1

I learned this week that while I may own a number of Tiller/HPS games, I've mostly "played around" with them rather than actually learned to play them. I picked up Sicily '43 a couple of weeks ago and started to work through the tutorial scenario - where I found I very quickly that I didn't really understand this game engine nearly as well as I thought! This past week is actually the longest stretch I've actually played any of the games - and I really am beginning to understand what people see in them.

After playing it a few days, with frequent restarts to compensate for totally botched attempts at various scenarios I think this weekend I understand it well enough to try a play through worthy of an AAR. I'll be playing "0710_01 ALT JOSS Beach" which covers the initial assault of Truscott's 3rd Infantry Division at Licata on July 10th-11th 1943. From the Designer's Notes:

Operation Husky, JOSS Beach, in the early morning hours of July 10th 1943: The easiest of all the landings occurred at Licata, where Truscott's JOSS Force encountered feeble resistance from the Italian 207th Coastal Division. The first wave came ashore in 45 minutes but, once ashore, quickly by-passed the enemy gunners. By 1000 it had successfully established itself on its objectives and broken up a lackluster Italian counterattack against a roadblock established at Station San Oliva. By the evening of the 12th July, the force beachhead extended from Palma di Montechiaro, inland to Canicatti, and northeast to Riesa.

Lots of shiny, shiny optional rules