Fulda Gap!

 

This Sunday the Wollongong Wargamers' Sunday Demo game at the Illawarra Plastic Modeller's Show was a Team Yankee extravaganza: 2 big tables, each representing an adjacent valley in the Fulda Gap:

On my table, the Rasdorf - Leibolz corridor, my Soviets would be attacking Peter's West Germans. On the next table, Ed's East Germans were liberating the Grusselbach - Ufthausen corridor from the US 11 Armored Cavalry Regiment. The mission was, of course, Valley of Death, slightly modified as a result of our previous Covering Force Battle game.

For more detail of the mission, forces and the game briefing, please checkout my batrep of the rehearsal game, which, as an evening game, only covered one valley: Rehearsal: Fulda Gap Demo Game.

The Grusselbach valley table, from the NATO perspective. More on the action here later:

Soviet preparations on the Rasdorf table. 40% of forces are in Immediate Reserve on the edge of the table:

The valley was bordered by two heavily wooded ridges:

Both within Milan 2 range of the MSR, which was mined...

My BMP-2 Scouts led a sacrificial T-55AM company to clear the southern ridge:

The NATO view. Peter's Bundeswehr were limited by the mission to deploying on the table sides:

Covered by the BMPs and T-55s, my first T-80 company dashed forwards at cross country speed, their gas turbines whining in protest. My second T-80 company and Motor Rifles followed more sedately, reluctant to leave the cover of the crop fields:

Note the lack of Soviet Frontal Aviation! I had suffered at the hands of Peter's Roland SAMs in the covering force game, so was happy for Daniel, the overall Warsaw Pact Air and Artillery commander, to allocate it in the other valley.

The Luftwaffe, on the other hand, was scornful of my Gopher SAMS...

It was all going so well, my plentiful artillery keeping the NATO Milan teams honest...

When two Tornadoes dropped cluster bombs all over my gun lines!

This was a major blow to the plan, and sure enough the West German infantry got much bolder with their Milans!

And their shorter ranged hand held AT missiles - not to mention Gepards!

Having wiped out most of my arty, the Tornadoes returned to harass my Motor Rifles and their very expensive BMP-3s!

However my initial T-80 dash had developed an unstoppable momentum...

And my Motor Rifle's humble Gremlin MAPADS brought down one of the damned Tornadoes!

The survivor continued to press home attacks against the Red Tide!

Peter then committed his last argument - Leopard 2s!

But there were enough surviving T-80s to deal with that counter attack and claim the objective!

So that was one Fulda Gap Corridor open to the Beasts from the East. But what of the Grusselbach corridor?

With the National Volks Armee der DDR, Ed had little option but to go for even more of a horde army - cheap T-72s, T-62s, BMP-1s and BTRs. But remember, Daniel was supporting him with the entire Warsaw Pact Frontal Aviation!

Actually, the action in this valley was something of a horde army show, as Stuart's US forces were also very light, as befits armored cav:

In fact the heaviest unit was a platoon of Abrams - but even these were the earlier M1 105mm armed version:

Which all meant that the fighting was protracted...

But still deadly! However, in the final reckoning, the Ossies were able to seize the objective by Turn 6: 

A rare Warsaw Pact victory across the board! Thanks to Daniel, Ed, Peter and Stuart for their efforts and enthusiasm in making this Team Yankee mega game such fun!