Organising a Historical refight pt 2 : The New Zealand division on Crete 1941

 The first thing was to compile a correct OOB for both sides. In this part I will cover the forces involved from the 2nd New Zealand division.

I managed to find an OOB for the battle using the Command Decision ruleset. However comparing this document with the official historys revealed some inconsistancies and also "double counting" in places Another issue was that the New Zealand division had just escaped from the German conquest of Greece and lost all its heavy weapons. thus theres plenty of support weapons missing and the artillery is very thin on the ground (and yes, the guns are correct). The entire Division was not present as 6 brigade had taken a bit of a beating and were sent back to Egypt along with most of the specialist division support battalions. There were also a number of Greek units on Crete of dubious quality.

   NZ Division.     (Brig. Puttick)                                        DHQ stand
                                                                                          2 rifle stands
                    NZ Provost coy                                              2 rifle stands
                    Greek Gendarmerie                                        1 rifle stand
 
   4th Brigade       (Brig. Inglis)                                           Brig. HQ stand
                                                                                           2 rifle stands
             Attached Units
                    E/ 27MG                                                        1 MMG stand
                    C/ 3rd Hussars                                                2 Mk VI B lt tank
                    1 Light troop RA                                             1 3.7" how

             18th Battalion ( Lt. Col. Gray)                               BHQ stand
                                                                                            1 Engineer stand
                                                                                            1 3" mortar
                     A/18                                                               3 rifle stands
                     B/18                                                               3 rifle stands
                     C/18                                                               3 rifle stands
                     D/18                                                               3 rifle stands

               19th Battalion (Maj Blackburn )                           BHQ stand
                                                                                            1 rifle stand
                                                                                            1 Engineer stand
                                                                                            1 3" mortar
                     A/19                                                               3 rifle stands
                     C/19                                                               3 rilfe stands
                     D/19                                                               3 rifle stands

 5th Brigade   (Brig. Hargest)                                              Brig. HQ
                                                                                            1 rifle stand
           Attached troops
                     5th brigade band                                              1 rifle stand
                27 Battery, 5th NZ field regiment
                      A/27                                                               3.7" how
                      B/27                                                               75mm L18 How (Italy)
                      C/27                                                               75mm L34 (french)
                      156 LAA Battery                                            40mm Bofors AA/ truck
                      7 LAA Battery                                                40mm Bofors AA ( static)
                      Field Punishment center                                   1 rifle stand
                      1 4" costal gun emplaced on Pt 107

            21st Battalion    (Lt-Col. Allen)                                 BHQ
                                                                                            1 Engineer stand
                                                                                            3" mortar
                      A/21                                                              2 rifle stands
                      B/21                                                              2 rifle stands
                      C/21                                                              2 rifle stands
                      D/21                                                              2 rifle stands

             22nd Battalion  (Lt-Col. Andrew)                         BHQ
                                                                                           1 Engineer stand
                                                                                           3" mortar
                      recon/22                                                       1 carrier stand
                      A/22                                                             3 rifle stands
                      B/22                                                             3 rifle stands
                      C/22                                                             3 rifle stands
                      D/22                                                             3 rifle stands
             attached units
                      A/27MG                                                       1 MMG
                      B/27MG                                                       1 MMG
                      7 RTR                                                           1 Matilda II
                      RAF detachement                                          3 rifle stands ( 4/4)
                                                                                           1 MMG stand (5/4)
 

         23rd Battalion    (Lt-Col Leckie)                               BHQ stand
                                                                                           1 engineer stand
                                                                                           1 3" mortar
                      A/23                                                             3 rifle stands
                      B/23                                                             2 rifle stands
                      C/23                                                             3 rifle stands
                      D/23                                                             2 rifle stands
             attached units
                      C/27MG                                                      1 MMG

         28th ( Maori) Battalion (Lt-Col Dittmer)                 BHQ stand
                                                                                          1 engineer stand
                                                                                          1 3" mortar
                      A/28                                                            3 rifle stands
                      B/28                                                            3 rifle stands
                      C/28                                                            3 rifle stands
                      D/28                                                            3 rifle stands

         Engineer Detachement                                           BHQ stand
                      7th NZ Field coy                                         4 rifle stands
                      19th Army troops coy                                  5 rifle stands

10th Brigade ( Lt-Col Kippenberg)                                 Brig. H stad
                                                                                        2 rifle stands
             attached troops
             28 Battery, 5th Field Regiment
                      F/28                                                          75mm L18 How ( Italian)
          NZ Cavalry detachment                                      3 rifle stands

          NZ Composite Battalion ( Maj. Lewis )               BHQ stand
                      4th NZ Field regiment                                3 rifle stands
                      5th NZ Field regiment                                2 rifle stands
                      NZ supply coy                                           3 rifle stands
                      NZ petrol coy                                            5 rifle stands
                      NZ RMT coy                                            4 rifle stands

          6th Greek Regiment                                          BHQ stand
                                                                                      16 rifle stands

          8th Greek Regiment                                          BHQ stand
                                                                                      12 rifle stands

          20th Battalion (Lt-Col Burrows )                         BHQ
                                                                                       1 engineer stand
                                                                                       1 3" mortar
                      A/20                                                         3 rifle stands
                      B/20                                                         3 rifle stands
                      C/20                                                         3 rifle stands
                      D/20                                                         3 rifle stands

Other Units ( from Suda area)

         2nd Greek Regiment                                           BHQ stand
                                                                                      10 rifle stands
 
        2/8 ( Australian) Battalion                                    BHQ stand
                                                                                      1 3" mortar
                      A/ 2/8                                                      2 rifle stands
                      B/ 2/8                                                      2 rifle stands
                      C/ 2/8                                                      2 rifle stands
                      D/ 2/8                                                      2 rifle stands

        Transit Camp/ ‘Royal Perivolians'                      BHQ stand
                                                                                      8 rifle stands

Organising a Historical refight pt 1 : The New Zealand division on Crete 1941

 A couple of weeks ago I managed to recover the Paradise.net web pages on our refight of Crete 1941 from 2002 on the Wayback website. As its the pre-digital age there were not a lot of pictures taken of either the game or the planning and setup. I thought I would post it all up again as it may be of some interest to those thinking about doing something similar.

In the series of blog posts I'll go through the process of researching the battle and transfering it to the tabletop though a lot of its going to be a bit hazy as it was 20 years ago. The overall process from idea to staging the game at Call to Arms was about 7-8 months. I started off by doing as much reading as I could. Being employed at Victoria unversity at the time gave me access to the university library collection which surprisingly enough contained several translated German accounts of the battle. My main souce was the New Zealand official history by Davin. This is part of the Official history series compiled after WW2 with Sir Howard Kippenberg (a brigade commander on Crete) in charge of the project. Most of the books have been digitised which is just as well as they fetch high prices on the second hand market. The Wellington Library had a full set which also proved handy. I also read the chapters on Crete in each of the battalion histories. This assisted in sorting out a correct OOB and deployment map. It also gave some ideas for changes to the base Spearhead rules.

In the next part I will cover the OOB for the NZ division.

On the workbench

 After a week of typie/readie stuff, time for a wee bit of workie stuff.

First up a picture of an armored infantry stand with everyone outside walking.

 A long time ago I came up with an idea to add passengers to the US halftracks. I see now that Heroics and Ros sell a halftrack with passengers, all nice sat in their seats in 2 neatrows. However in combat They would be a bit more animated.

Done using G182 german assault boats with a bit of cutting and filing. I also had a go fitting them into a Sd Kfz 251 but it didn't quite go in.

Variety is the spice of life pt 3

In the last part of this series I'm going to cover the US supplied Lend-lease AFV's.

The M3 light tank was the first lend lease tank provided in late 1941 with a combat debut of mid 1942. I couldn't find a huge amount on the deployment of this tank, so I would assume that it can be subbed in the light tank slot for any Russian unit for 1942 and 1943. In later periods It should be used in cavalry divisions and on secondary fronts as a light tank.

The M3 medium tank was supplied At the same time with a combat debut of mid 1942 as well. At this time the Soviets tried to issue brigades with lend-lease tanks from the same country to simplify spares and ammunition supply. Like other units in 1942 the lend-lease tank brigades took a horrible beating due to poor tactics rather than any difficiencies in the actually tanks. Both M3's served on the southern front at Kursk 1943, with the M3 medium knocking out a surprising number of Panthers as the 75mm AP round was more effective than the T34 76mm. The M3 medum continued to serve later in the war, in 1944 in mixed units with T34 and T34/85. 1 M3 even took part in the invasion of Manchuria in late 1945.

The M4 combat debut was on the northern front at Kursk in 1943 with a single regiment. It remained rare in 1943 but was increasingly common in 1944. The M4(76) started to be used in late 1944 and was the most common M4 version supplied to Russia. As the Russian records done distinguish between the 75mm and 76mm versions at this point a mix in any M4 unit should be allowed with probably 1/3 only before 1945.

So, thats a rough summary of lend-lease tanks in service on the eastern front. Hopefully its of some use to wargamers as an introductory primer and a lot of it has been simplified. The real story is a bit of a rabbit hole to go down.

Variety is the spice of life pt 2

 In part one of this topic there was a brief summary of lend-lease AFV's on the Eastern front in WW2. It was one of those topics that I thought was going to be fairly quick, but has snowballed somewhat to the point that I will need several posts to do it justice. So lets get started. I'll comment at the start that some of this informatuion may not be correct but I'm just going from what I have found in my reading.

This post I'm going to try to cover the use of British tanks on the Eastern front.

Matilda II: The first examples were in service in time for the battle of Moscow. Zaloga sugegststhat tanks tended to be of one type in the different battalions (usually consisting of 20 tanks), but there could be a mix of different types in the regiment (if that makes sense). However the Tank Archives site suggests a slightly different story and I'll just list the reported mixes in a battalion

 21 Valentine, 10 T-60; 15 Matilda, 6 Valentine, 10 T-60; 5 KV-1, 18 Valentine; 3 Matilda, 9 Valentine, 10 T-60, 10 T-34; 12 Matilda, 9 Valentine, 10 T-60; 

It appears that mostly the tanks were grouped in companies according to type.

Soviet tank strength was almost completely wiped out around Moscow by the start of 1942. British tanks formed a small but important proportion of the newly reformed tank and mechanised corps in 1942. In 2 examples, the 10th Tank corps had 2 battalions of Matildas and the 11th Tank corps had 4 battalions. Only 1 corps was entirely equiped with British tanks, the 5th mechanised corps with a mix of Valentines and Matildas (but with no notes on the actual composition). This unit fought in the Stalingrad offensive, was largely destroyed in the German counter-offensive, then rebuilt mostly with Valentines by the autumn of 1943. The final major combat use was with the 201st tank brigade on the southern front at Kursk with 18 Matildas and 31 Valentines. However oddly enough there are 40 Matildas listed as in service in a return from 20th May 1945 but this is probably only for training.

The Russian disliked the Matilda as it was not good in snow (a maximum of 12 ") and only had a 2 pdr gun. The Soviets somehow managed to fit a 76mm gun into the turret but no other conversions were performed.

Valentine: The longest serving lend-lease tank from the battle of Moscow to Manchuria in August 1945. The 6 pdr versions started to be used in combat in the autumn of 1943. They were frequently mixed with 2 pdr Valentines as the Mk IX did not have a co-ax machine gun and there were no supplies of 6 pdr HE shells until mid 1944. The information says that the Valentine was relegated to subsidary duties in late 1943/early 1944. However this isn't technically correct as many continued to serve in tank regiments (20 tanks) attached to cavalry divisions (brigade sized units) from this time period. The 151st Independent tank regiment attached to the 9th guards cavalry division in late March 1945 (I was surprised but the towns discussed in the account are all in Slovakia and the Czech republic) is listed as having 6 Valentine IX, 4 Valentine III (2pdr) and also 10 M3 light tanks. The 267th tank regiment attached to the 59th cavalry division in Manchuria in August 1945 is listed as being equiped with both Valentine III and IX.

Churchill: Only 250 were delivered mostly Churchill III and IV (225) as the Soviets really didn't like the 2 pdr. Unlike the other tanks The Churchills were used in separate heavy tank breakthrough regiments. First combat usage was in the winter of 1942/43 and some lasted in service untill 1944. By this time some/most were used in mixed units with KV1-s. As an example 26th heavy breakthrough regiment in Finland in the summer of 1944 had 6 Churchills with the balance of the unit KV-1s.

So a fair bit of information to digest there, but some interesting options for mixed units.

Variety is the spice of life part 1

 I've been reading an Osprey book by Zaloga on lease-lend tanks in Soviet service in WW2. Quite "dry" in places but has a fair bit about how the various AFV's were used once you dig into it. This is of interest to wargamers who want a bit of variety in their Soviet armies. Some of its quite simple ie M4's for T34's but thats not the whole story. When did the 76mm version arrive etc. After a bit of thinking I decided that the easiest way to present the information is just do a list and deal with each vehicle one by one. I'll also split this into 2 parts and discuss the actual usage in the second part.

First up the US. According to the book everything as delivered in overall olive drab and seldom was repainted in Russian green

M4. The Soviets liked the M4, probably because they got the diesel version that didn't burn if you looked at it funny. Deliverys started in late 1942 but large numbers were not available untill early 1944. The 76mm version was not available until early 1945.

The M3 collection. Who would want to be a supply officer for this lot...

M3 medium tank. The Soviets were not so keen on this, however it was what they could get and it was far more reliable than the 1942 T34. First combat use in mid 1942 and was used on both the Northern and Southern fronts of the Kursk sailent. Again sub in for T34.

M3 light tank. From what I can tell it was generally used in units instead of the T series of light tanks. Again served from mid 1942 to Kursk.

M5/9 halftracks. Oddly enough only 850 or so were supplied so would not have been overly common in general company use. Maybe just useful for HQ stands?

M3 scout car. A real surprise in that 3000 were supplied. The Soviets liked these and issued them to recce units and as HQ runabouts. I would propose the real possibility of these being the "correct" M3 to use in the divisional recce battalions.

M10 tank destroyer. Only 50 supplied but equiped 2 SP artillery battalions in tank corps. Substitut for Su-76 in the 1944 list as the main gun is about the same size.

SU-57. Basically an American build of a 6 pdr on a halftrack. Like a few other items by the time they were in production the British didn't want them any more. The Soviets got 650  and used them in independent AT brigades and as fire support for recce battalions starting from late 1943. I would suggest it could be used to replace the 45mm AT gun in the divisional recce battalions.

M17: An M16 on a different halftrack base. 1000 were delivered and I'd propose being able to replace MG AA stands in Tank and Mechanised Corps with an M17 stand.

Then the British. The Russians regarded both the Matilda and Valentine as light/medium tanks. Initial shipments were painted in khaki, and from mid 1942 in British brown.

Matilda Mk2: Initial shipments were in time for the battles around Moscow in 1941/42. Some even managed to survive untill Kursk (and why wouldn't you want to be in a tank with a 2pdr against a Tiger 1...). Just under 1000 delivered (600 in 1942 alone) which seems to be more than ever served in the British tank units.

Valentine: Over 3000 supplied (about 1/3 from Canadian production) with 1/3 of those the later 6 pdr versions. Again the first shipment arrived in time for the battle of Moscow. Later deliverys replaced the T series light tanks and allowed the Soviets to concetrate on SU-76 production.

Churchill: the Soviets only recieved 240 Churchills with 6 pdr guns. These were issued to heavy tank regiments.

Bren Carrier: 2000 were delivered and were used like the M3 scout car in Recce units and in HQ's. I would use it in HQ stands as a marker vehicle and posibly as an artilelry spotter.

So this is a rough summary and its by no means compete. Stay tuned for the second part.

Quick, to the lab

With the completion (for the time being) of my IHMN town project, I've had a look at what was sitting on the workbench. Looking at the bits I decided to make a start on my Victorian Sci-Fi laboratory (I'd say steampunk, but I'm not sure if theres going to be gears involved yet...). I dug out the 2 Deuterium lamp thingys that I had perloined/liberated from my real life lab (well, intercepted before ladfill so I'm doing something good for the environment). I also had some metal half bell shapped items from some of the DIY house renovations (but no idea precisely what). The issue was that the hole in the top was not big enough to fit the bulb housings in. 30 minutes and 3 fret saw blades later I had enlarged the holes.

So, a couple of nicely sized electric something-or-others for the terrain stash.