Why the Axis Lost the War: A Combat Mission AAR

[Razgovory]

I have decided to do an AAR for Combat Mission: Fortress Italy apropos of nothing.  I'll be using the Demo mission: Clearing the Niscemi Highway.  If you like, you can download and play the mission yourself.  I am playing the Axis side, on elite difficulty in turn based mode.  The mission last 1 hour and thirty minutes.   In all likelihood I will lose. 

The game can be found at http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=295&Itemid=509

Here are the Briefing screens




My forces are initially an elite Italian rifle company (which means they are only a little below average), and a platoon of tanks that were looted from the French.  Fortunately, I will get heavy air support.  Very heavy as it will come in the form of tanks and infantry.  A company of Panzer-grenadiers and a hodgepodge of armor will arrive as reinforcements as part  of Hermann Göring panzer division.


I don't know what I'm going to be facing apart from US airborne troops.  My guess is about a company worth of men, dug in and with 37mm guns and mortars.  I'm told in the mission briefing that tanks and infantry are coming up from the beaches to reinforce the enemy. There will probably be artillery as well, cause there always is.

This is a fairly interesting scenario due to motley collection of equipment I will have.  I will command Italian and German units, armed with Panzer III's, Panzer IV's, R-35 tanks stolen from the French and some self-propelled artillery.  I honestly don't know how all this equipment will stand up. I'm confident in the capabilities of the Panzer IV,  and hopefully the Panzer III's will able to hold their own.  I am less certain of the R35s.  I suspect that a 37mm gun will make short work of them.

My mission is to capture the the Castelleti villa, the hill it's on, and an orchard on the other side of the road.  The Villa itself is pretty good sized and looks fairly sturdy.  There are two routes to the enemy Villa: Straight ahead over a plateau and through the orchard, or follow the road around the hill into a small valley.

Here is the Villa



The competent company commander


And the less competent tank commander wearing a really stupid hat.




And here's a picture of the map.  The red area my starting location

[Razgovory]

s.  I have a company of Bersaglieri infantry divided into two rifle platoons and a platoon of light mortars and machine guns, a platoon of five R35 light tanks and one Semovente 75/18 self-propeled gun.  I also have a German spoter (with a Kubalwagen!) who can call some fire from 81mm mortars.  All of these forces are behind a hill and safe from the enemy in their starting zone.  At least I think they are.

I'm severely tempted to use the 81's on an initial bombardment in the orchard or in a copse of tree in front of the villa.  It would be a blind fire, but it would it hit the area accurately.  Unfortunately I don't actually know anyone is there, so that I'll hold off on that.

My first move will be move my two rifle platoons to scout out the enemy.  1st Platoon will advance on the orchard and 2nd platoon will move toward the valley.  They will be ordered to stop if they come under fire, and retreat if they come under heavy fire or artillery.  Hopefully I'll get an idea of the enemy disposition and in particular where the anti-tank guns are.  Everyone else will stay where they are.



1st platoon came under fire from a gully and some mortars from God knows where.  I ordered all of them to fall back.  2nd platoon has not made contact.   Since the gully isn't actually in the way, and I don't need to capture it, I'm going to move all my forces on the Highway.



2nd Platoon into copse of trees in view of Villa and take sporadic fire.  Mostly I just sit around and wait for the Germans to arrive.  The first batch shows up and I look them over.  I get the sinking feeling they might not be that bright.



I'm holding them back for right now.  The Italians have met some resistance on Castelleti hill.  I decided to trade some fire with from a distance, and moved into the valley taking cover behind some walls.  After I reasonably confident there were no anti-tank guns, I moved up one tank.  When it wasn't destroyed I moved up some others.  A Panzer III got a little to close and had some one shoot bazookas at it.  Also one of the Italian tanks panicked when a machine gun hit it, but wasn't damaged.



I decide this is a perfect place to move my forward observer and drop some artillery on the enemy.  Unfortunately the Americans are thinking something similar because spotting rounds start on my troops, and I just manage to send the Italians fleeing before the bombardment hits.

At the same time I sent a few hapless up the plateau Italians toward the orchard.  Surprisingly nobody shot at them, so I sent some more.  I even send up a R35 to see if its safe for tanks which it is.  As they approach the orchard they get a good view of the Villa and see that there is a tank up there.



Note: Sometime around this time the rest of the Germans showed up, but I've chosen to keep them back at this time.

I decide on a way to get rid of the Sherman tank on the hill.  I order a 45mm mortar crew to drop some rounds near the tank while I move a Panzer III to up to take a shot at it.  Unfortunately this does not work.  When the mortar rounds start coming down the tank buttons up and retreats.



A second Sherman moves forward, and fired at by my other two Panzer IIIs.  One hit the Sherman front turret, and turn ended with the second shot suspended in mid air.  This was 30th turn and marked the first third of the mission, so I figured it would be good place to stop.  I'll post the next third later so stay tuned!

[The Brain]

Lovely, if a bit greasy.

[11B4V]

At work, so I cant give this a good read through. Keep truckin' Raz, I'll poor over it when I get home tonite.   

[Razgovory]

Part II:  The Reich Strikes Back!

I stopped last time when two of my Panzer III's were engaging a Sherman.  They both hit, but after that I lost contact with it.  I figured it I may have knocked it out, but no dice.  Panzer III's don't seem to be effective against Sherman tanks.  My third Panzer III is hit near the orchard, and loses it's main gun.  My Initial situation looks like this:



I begin to move the German forces down into the valley to prepare for the assault.   My Panzer IV's come first, where they take fire from a Sherman tank.  They drive off the Sherman, but one of my Panzer IV's is hit and blows up.  Three crew make it out.



I bring all my German infantry into the valley where they take sporadic fire from machine guns in the upper stories of the Villa and a small copse of trees in front of the villa.  I bring up my Grille Self Propelled Artillery gun which silences fire from the Villa proper.





An American Infantry platoon (which I suspect is reinforcements) begins an assault on the orchard from the direction of the villa, but they come under fire from my Italian infantry situated behind a low wall, along with a Panzer III.



They are cut down fairly quickly by the Italian infantry.  At the same time I move my forward Observe back up the hill into the copse of trees with the Italian infantry and order him to call down 105mm artillery on the villa.  This proves to be a major mistake.  After he has called in the artillery, an American spotting round land right on the FO killing him leaving only the radio operator alive.  A few seconds later the copse of trees is bombarded by artillery killing most of the Italians hiding there along with an R35 tank.  I move my German infantry away from the bombardment and down the hill, (though one guy is wounded).  While my Italian troops are fighting the American attack on the orchard, another group of Americans comes up from the direction of the gulley and tries to flank.  Fortunately, my guys cut them down as well.



The situation looks a bit like this


Unfortunately I'm in real trouble here.  A spotting round come down near my German infantry, so I need to push them forward, but there is still an artillery strike called on the Villa.  Because the FO is dead I can't cancel it, and I don't have anyone to direct it.  So I move up my Germans half way, where they are exposed.  Fortunately they don't take much fire.  After a while the artillery comes down on the southern half of the Villa,  I have no idea if it's actually hitting anyone.  I move up my German infantry for the assault, supported by the remaining R35s.  We make it to the base of Casteletti hill without casualties.  After that I begin the assault.



As the Germans assault the hill, I order my remaining Italians to charge the orchard.



One of the German platoons comes under fire from a Half-track on the other side of the map with a 75mm gun mounted on it, forcing them to fall back with heavy casualties.  The other two platoons seem pushing up the hill alright.  The Italians capture the Orchard and are able to look down on the other side of Casteletti hill.  They get a good view of the unfolding disaster.



I don't know how many Shermans are on the hill, but I guess a platoon worth.  There is also plenty of infantry.  While dramatic (Germans charging and artillery crashing down the on the hill), I have a sinking feeling that I'm not going to win this.

[sbr]

Nice read.

[The Brain]

Pasta la vista, baby.

[FunkMonk]

Good AAR. Keep it up. 

[Razgovory]

Part III:  The part where I fail.


I continue my assault up the hill, hoping that my tanks will be able to destroy their tanks, or at least my infantry will be able to get close enough to knock them out.

The current situation as I know it


My men valiantly charge the hill


Things don't go well here.  In fact, they go remarkably bad.  My German infantry attack the copse of trees which are defended by dug in Americans. 

The fighting is intense, but they manage to capture the woods, but they take heavy fire from a tank on the other side of the woods. I try to use my two Panzer III's against the self-propelled guns on the ridge firing on the orchard.



In the process I lose one Panzer III and another one loses a track (it later is destroyed as well).



I do manage to knock out that half-track, but I found out it was not alone, so it really hasn't gone over very well.  The panzer IV's fare even worse.  One gets hit and loses it's main gun, two other are knocked out.



In desperation I use the R35s to try to move around the Sherman and maybe knock them out.  Doesn't work.  All but one R35 is lost.  It's not that my tanks haven't hit any Sherman, they have.  The Sherman just don't seem that fazed, and every time they hit one of my tanks, even if it's only a partial penetration it's either a loss or I lose some functionality (like the main gun or tracks).  It's actually rather annoying.

I make a last desperate gamble, I move what remains of my tanks along with my Self-propelled artillery and move to the orchard overlooking, the Villa.  For some reason, I started having trouble with taking screen shots, so I don't have any pictures of that.  I lost one Grille, but I finally did knock out on Sherman tank, all it took was a 150mm shell to do it.

With only one functioning tank, I couldn't hope to take the Villa, so held on to the Orchard and the Hill and waited out the clock.





And a map of where the units were at the end of the game

[Syt]

That was fun.

[The Brain]

Raz, give me back my platoons.

[FunkMonk]

Do another one. 

[sbr]

Thanks for the AAR Raz, and I agree with the Funky one, do another.

[Razgovory]

I do not actually own Combat Mission: Fortress Italy, all I had was the Demo which I've had on my PC forever and never got around playing the third mission.  However, I'm reinstalling Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy along with the Commonwealth expansion.  I may also get the newest release: Market Garden (for some inexplicable reason the Fortress Italy and Gothic line games are not compatible with the Normandy ones, despite being the same game.

I had a lot of fun making this AAR, and forgot how much I liked this game.  So I may make another one for Normandy or Market Garden.  I took a spin as the Americans in the scenario I just played to see what I was up against and to see the mistakes I made.  I was surprised the US had no towed anti-tank gun (though they had did have two 75mm Pack howitzers, and their initial numbers were fewer the I expected..  A much stronger push with the Italian forces would probably have been advantageous.  The nearly invincible Sherman weren't so invincible when I played them, so I must have suffered some really bad luck.

One thing of note is that defensive and offensive plans of the AI change each time they are played.  They aren't randomly placed, but they have say, three defense plans one of which is randomly chosen each time., so where the enemy is hiding may differ in each play through.  Same thing for the offense.  It's a actually a clever system, and the AI plans will some times surprise me, as the infantry counter-attack I faced while playing.  The counter attack failed, but It was an interesting move.

I do recommended it, but that recommendation comes with a caveat.  It's expensive.  They don't really do sales, so you'll always pay full price (or near full price) which can be hefty for a small developer.  They are also not exactly mod friendly.  Equipment and formations are hard coded.  I suspect because they are small a operation, and modders would really steal their thunder making mods for other battles, battles Battlefront would like to cash in on.