For the November scenario, I turned to a somewhat famous YouTube clip which shows the surrender of the 512th Panzerjaeger Battalion at Iserlohn. The 512th had bedeviled US forces in the build up to a potential fight at Iserlohn. But then...the Germans decided to throw in the towel rather than incur the potential devastation to Iserlohn that any fight would bring to the German city. The film clip has always amazed me. As an ASL player there is just something awful about watching perfectly good Jagdtigers just casually surrendering. Of course, in real life, this surrender is one of the great humanitarian gestures of any Germany unit during the war. This surrender saved a great many lives both military and civilian.
Here is a link to the clip, if you have not had the opportunity to see it previously.
It's fascinating to see the quality of the surrendering troops and equipment at Iserlohn. So often the surrendering troops of almost any side look bedgraggled and worn out. Not the men of the 512th. These guys are in high quality uniforms with plentiful Panzerfausts, MG-42's, etc., etc. It definitely appears to be a high quality formation.
So having seen the video and the various available pictures, I wondered to myself...what if the 512th had decided to fight and defend Iserlohn against the US 99th Infantry and 3rd Armored Divisions. In the weeks before it arrived at Iserlohn, the 512th inflicted serious losses on the US armored formations it fought against. So it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that this force would be very tough to overcome in an urban environment. With limited approaches, one would imagine that under-armored US tanks would not be successful in a head to head fight with a platoon of Jagdtigers. And here is a scenario to see if my thoughts had any validity.
Now, I also wanted to use the ASL Deluxe boards...which with Jadgtigers reduces the engagement distance more in favor of the US forces, who can bring bazookas and DC's into play more easily. Certainly, the reduction in range does take a way a key German advantage of their 128mm guns and heavy armor. But it also limits even more the opportunity to flank these German beasts. So I definitely found the DASL boards to add a fun element to this scenario.
As always, I hope this scenario gives an idea of how this fight might have gone down.
As always these monthly "Basement Quality" Scenarios are offered for fun only and as a thank you to the readers of this blog.
Remember to open pictures in a new window in order to maximize the size.
And as always, these scenarios can be downloaded from The ASL Scenario Archive
(just search on Grumble Jones).
No comments:
Post a Comment