Back to the Frontline
Questions?

MISSION: Defend Akimovka from the Red Army and prevent them from gaining an entrance to Crimea.

DATE: 25 October 1943 - 20 turns

LOCATION: Akimovka, 20 km SW of Melitopol in Ukraine

FORCES: Elements of 79th Infantry Division and Colonel Hake's Kampfgruppe from the 13th Panzer Division: 6 Pz IVH, 6 Pz V, 3 StuG IIIG, 1 StuG IIIH, 3 Pz Jg III/IV, 6 AA 20 mm, 4 81 mm GrW Mortar, 6 lelG 18 75 mm AT guns, 2 SIG 33 150 mm Infantry Gun, 8 Pak 38 50 mm AT gun, 4 Pak 97 75 mm AT gun, 4 Pak 40 75 mm AT gun, 6 105 mm Howitzer, 48 Rifle, 12 MG and 9 Engineer platoons.

REINF:No reinforcements!!

No air support and no smoke were allocated.

Enemy forces: 6th Guards Tank Brigade. The enemy seems to have many different types of tanks: 12 T-34 plt, 3 SU-76, 2 SU-122, and 4 SU-85. I noticed some BM-13-16 Rocket Launchers. (I hate these things.) The infantry units consisted of 24 Rifle, 3 Guards Rifles, 6 SMG, 7 Guards SMG, 18 MG, 1 Guards MG, 4 Engineer, 9 ATR, 2 Guards ATR, 1 AA Rifle MG, and 3 Guards AA MG platoons.

They had At least 14 rounds of smoke and 8 Airstrikes.

CONDITION: Major Defeat: 100
Minor Defeat: 300
Minor Victory: 450
Major Victory: 650

TERRAIN: The map is upside down meaning top is south and bottom is north.

Most noticeable feature on the map is Hill 372 which is near the center. A town of Radionovka is located west of the map in a valley. Tashenak River runs through the town. This is a swampy area. There is a larger valley east of the hill where Akimovka is located. There are other towns located in this valley: Dmitriyevka Sosnovka and Aleksandrovka. There is a paved road connecting these towns in the valley. Uelyuk River runs through this valley. Just north of the hill is Ternovka. The northern most of the map is Davilo State Farm. Most of the Victory HEXs are located in little towns and Hill 372. The ground is muddy but the visibility is excellent.

Opponent: Chris Covert

There was no hiding from this. The enemy charged straight from north toward my defensive positions with all his units. My defensive line, Wotan Line, was about 1500 meters from the enemy's position. The strongest enemy position was near Davilo State Farm. Since most of my KG Hake's units are fixed, I did not have many mobile fire brigade units except for 2 StuG IIIG, 2 Pz V and 1 StuG H platoons. (What are they waiting for????) Akimovka is located near swampy area so that only infantry units were able to advance there.

The enemy was using smoke shields. Most of my AT guns were knockout by turn 3 from tank fires. The enemy was concentrating on AT guns, as he should. However, the artillery was inflicting heavy casualty to his infantry units. The victory point level seemed way too difficult for the enemy. By turn 5, most of his infantry units were disrupted thus making his advance very difficult. However, I was not doing much damage to his tanks. Pz V "Panthers" were the only effective units against the Red Storm here. Therefore, I decided to send all engineer units toward the front to deal with enemy tanks. Even with all my engineer units, Ternovka fell on turn 5. However, enemy paid heavy price doing so. MG units were doing the most damage. Akimovka seems quite secure since most of his infantry units in this area were disrupted.

By turn 7, Russians were able to penetrate deep into Hill 372. The enemy commander was quite aggressive and send some of his T-34 tanks far beyond his infantry support near Arnosov State Farm which was located south of the hill. These units were quickly captured by my engineer units that were moving forward. This was the turning point. My engineer units reinforced the front units and the battle became a stalemate. My artillery fires were doing plenty of damage to the enemy infantry units. At this point, it was clear to me that the enemy could not win. He was 350 point from Major Defeat.

By turn 10, it was clear that the enemy could not even get to Minor Defeat level. He surrendered after 10 turns.

RESULTS Axis Major Victory

LESSONS: 1. It is difficult to knock out SU-122 even with Panthers.
2. BM 13-16 Rocket Launchers are deadly!
3. Russian ATR units are useless. Concentrate on other Infantry units.
4. AT guns are very vulnerable against enemy fires. Try to shield them if you can.

CONCLUSION: This was an extremely difficult, if not impossible, scenario for Russians to win. Because of excellent visibility and wide open terrain from which the Russians had to advance, they were easy targets for direct and indirect fires from Germans. Even if the Russians captured all the victory HEXs, he could not have won the scenario. This is not a good PBEM scenario.

Chris Covert was an aggressive fighter, but I cannot comment on his tactics since this scenario was too much in favor of Germans. However, he seemed somewhat overly aggressive at times. He could walk into an ambush easily, but this was not a good scenario to judge this.

Yong Park
XVIII Airborne Corps
"Not all pain is gain."