CO2 BEDA FOMM Quick AAR

[john connor]

14.38 and the 'ambush', such as it is, seems to be doing ok. The 11 Marmon-Harringtons are firing on the Italian column (at about 1,200 metres across flat desert) and the Bn mortars have pinned the lead unit. The 25 pounders are hitting the back of the column. The column has ground to a halt.



Within a short space of time, however (around 45 minutes), the enemy starts to probe other routes south, coming over the hill shielding my ACs.

 

[john connor]

For the next two hours or so the battle continues without much incident for me.
1. The Italians sneak 2 units over the hill shielding B. Sqd, but they don't pause to engage B.Sqd. They are heading for the more minor road closer to the sea. B. Sqd engages them and they end up halted before even reaching the defenders by this time well dug in on Objective 1.
2. I move the RAF Sqd of ACs (my ineffective advance scout) round the back of my units and into a reserve position. It has taken no losses during it's quick attacks on the Italian column, but I doubt it caused any either. It did show a distinct lack of aggression! It gave me something to do ordering it around though.
3. I continue to manually direct my 2 arty units (the mortars and the 25 pounders) to bombard the column of stalled Italians in various places. The new FS window is excellent as when you select one of your arty units in the window you get, amongst other info, a slider showing how much ammo it has left. Very useful!
One of the vanguard Italian units is either destroyed or surrenders or disbands, not sure which....
4. The Marmon-Harringtons of B Sqd continue to rake the Via Balbia.
5. As far as I am aware I have no losses yet. I have been bombarded once - D Co, 2RB unit dug in on the slopes to the east of the road was shelled, though I imagine the Italians were trying to get the mortar unit just behind it. D. 2RB hasn't fired yet! Nor have any units from 2RB, in fact. So far it's been the ACs of B Sqd and the arty only. But between them they have effectively stopped the Italians. 11 armoured cars and artillery. So far....
6. All my units are now dug in and over to the East my tanks have arrived....



That bunched up, pinned Italian column looks ripe for an armoured attack on its flank, no? I'm assuming there are no tanks in that column (or they would have broke out of that killzone, no?) but I'm wary of misidentification of armoured units as Daz has already posted about a bug in the intel which means tanks are not being identified, even when obvious. I will have to watch closely for that.

 

[Ripppe]

Really nice AAR john connor! Keeping an eye out how you'll succeed.

 

[john connor]

Thanks Ripppe.

The heroes of the piece, so far, seem to be the Marmons, the mortars and the 25 pounders:



A Marmon-Harrington. I'm guessing the long gun poking out of the turret is the Boys AT and shorter barrel (barrels?) the Vickers .303. But I could be very wrong....

And another, this time with a captured Italian Breda AA/AT gun mounted. In the scenario the 106 RA AA unit has these guns, but not mounted on ACs like this:




And Marmons on patrol in the western desert somewhere:





3 inch mortar crew at work in Lybia, 1943:




And some Australians firing a 25 pounder at Alamein:

 

[john connor]

A good number of tanks have arrived at the eastern edge, under 4th Armoured. These are 3 sqds from the 2nd RTR, 3 sqds from 3rd Hussars and 3 sqds from 7th Hussars. In all there are around 110 tanks, but most of them are light Vickers tanks armed only with machine guns. There are around 32 cruiser tanks of various types that have proper guns, but the top level of armament is the 2 pounder AT weapon I have mentioned above, which has (now I've properly checked) an effective range of....wait for it...100m.....

This type is the best we have, but there's only around 8 of them:



The Mark IV Cruiser, with 2 pounder gun and additional armour. Given the gun only works well out to 100m they'll need that additional armour....

 

[Daz]

The AAR looks great Peter

I love the images especially the 25 pounder from Alamein.
There very good quality.

I haven't taken a look at your planning though, as I haven't played any of this pack yet and don't want to spoil it for myself.

 

[john connor]

Thanks Daz. I haven't had time to progress it further, and won't have until the weekend now, but I was watching out for the intel bug you posted about. It's possible there are tanks in that Italian column, of course.

 

[john connor]

So here's 4th Armoured over at the Eastern edge of the map:



I've already noted, above, that of all these tanks there are only about 30 that are armed with a 'proper' gun, the remainder being light tanks, built (the info tells me) for a colonial policing role, armed with only machine guns.

It's 16.45 now, sunset at 18.00 (which typically means at 19.00, an hour later as there's usually an hour of twilight from the time given in the weather picture.

I've moved onto build 5.09 now. Seems to be working good with the save. Nice to be able to use the OB window without the picture jumping around. However, I am finding the pointer accuracy bug a bit annoying. The first thing I did when coming back to this after a few days away, was opened the save and checked all units. I found that all bar one had their facings set to generic north - a bug that's already been posted about. I went round rationalising the command chains. To select (using CNTRL-click) each unit of 2RB then issue a Defend in-situ order to them all (in order to bring them back under the control of their HQ but keep them where I've positioned them) took a while due to 2 bugs. Firstly, the Cntrl-click mechanism has a bug attached which means you have to do it a few times before it will work, then there was trying to actually get the click to select the right units when two were close together. Maybe I'll post these bugs properly later, though they're tiny irritations, no more, and could wait, obviously, until more serious things have been sorted.

Anyway, though my command load when Combe was in charge was pretty high for the forces on the map (it was 11, I think) and allowed me to move all those units individually into place, now that Brigadier John Alan Lyde Caunter has arrived with 4th Armoured HQ and taken over the role of on-map boss with a command load of only 16, I will have to be careful about giving individual orders. Hence, I go round all the units I've previously given individual orders to and try to bring them under a higher sphere of control.



This is Caunter before I rationalised the command lines. As we see the mere arrival of his force put me near his command capacity of 16. As I play the game a bit now I'm hoping the load will come down a bit as a consequence of my re-attachments, though I've still to give orders to his units.

 

[john connor]

So, perhaps foolishly, I'm going to do this with 7th Hussars. They are the 'lightest' of the 3 tank formations I have, having only the Vickers light tanks armed with MGs. I'm going to drive them right up to the road (it will probably be getting dark by the time they arrive) and park them within 1km range of the bunched up stalled Italians, in line formation (I selected line, though I'm not sure that means it will happen that they fall out into a line with a unit this small - I'm still confused about at which level of command the formation controls work as mandatory instructions to the engine to set that formation), to see if they can do some damage up close. I'm doing this on the assumption that there are no tanks in the Italian column so far.

 

[john connor]

3rd Hussars I will be a little more cautious with:

 

[john connor]

And I will keep 2 RTR with 4th Armoured and move them into a reserve position:



I might not leave them there long but will need to check that I have some units, at least, resting during the night out of the line of fire, I think.

 

[john connor]

As the tanks start to move off I try to shift this 91 man enemy infantry company out of the victory location circle using my 25 pounders. Its presence is stopping me getting points:

 

[john connor]

Interesting route planning from 7th Hussars! Straight across the highest ground, in full view. I suppose I should have specified 'covered' if I had wanted more caution. But I don't see how driving over this ground makes things faster.

 

[john connor]

In the last ten minutes this unit in full view in clear conditions about a km away from my men has been identified as a 145 man heavy MG unit, a 90 man motorcycle unit and a 91 man infantry company. And I guess it's not over yet. The intel says it's halted right now, but a moment ago it was assaulting, which since the 25 pounders had actually dislodged it from what were estimated as dug-in positions, I would guess that's wrong. More likely retreating. This COULD all be working as intended, but I don't recall the ID shifting so rapidly in CO1 and maybe this is another example (though, perhaps, not with armour) of the intel bug Daz has posted about?

 

[john connor]

More bugs, perhaps....

 

[john connor]

 

[john connor]

Coming up to 9.30pm. A few things have happened:
1. I've tried to change the orders for as many units as possible to either rest in-situ or 'normal' for the task they're doing (defend, usually) so as to try to let them get some rest in. Nearly every unit I have is now fatigued at least around 50%. Though I'm sure there will be night attacks (and unsure what the effect on a unit's defensive capabilities is if it's resting when attacked - anyone know?) it's going to be realy important to get those fatigue levels down as there are almost 48 hours left to run and (I'm guessing) many, many more Italian units yet to arrive. We have to be able to fight throughout tomorrow without fatigue wrecking everything. Fighting by night, I know, significantly increases fatigue levels, so I will try to avoid it, though mostly the choice is out of my hands.
2. I've moved back B.KDG (the 11 Marmon-Harringtons) from their ambush position to a position guarding the extreme west, near the beach, where they can hopefully rest a little. They've done their job and taken no losses.
3. 3H and 7H I'm leaving where they are for the time being, though 7H is very exposed only a hundred metres or so east of the Via Balbia. So far 7H has taken no losses. I will pull it back if that starts, but for now I want them to continue their 'attack' on the columns on the road. 7H aren't doing anything anyway as they arrived in position next to the 2RB mortars and promptly went into a rest mode, they were so exhausted.....
4. The enemy has suffered heavily so far. There are 9 disband/destroyed/surrender crosses on the map now. Note the one furthest south. This was the unit the intel kept changing its mind about. It was shown as assaulting towards B.2RB and I dropped another barrage on it from the 25 pounders, causing it to promptly surrender, making me think it wasn't assaulting at all, but probably running.....as has been noted by Daz elsewhere, there is definitely something going on with the intel...probably something broken...
5. I've moved up my southernmost rear guard units (the AA and AT units) to a closer blocking position as I feared otherwise they would sit down there and not be used throughout the scenario...
6. If I can rest I feel like we're in good shape right now, relatively. In particular, we've suffered very few losses and we have a significant reserve capability.



The same area with counter auto scaling on, and some crap graphics from me.....but I'm sure you get the idea...



The damage inflicted so far:



This unit (below) - which was involved in a clash with the nearby enemy destroyed unit (or surrendered, I forget which) before my 25 pounders resolved the fight, and is one of the few units to have taken some casualties - has fatigue stats etc that are fairly typical. Some units - the AC units and the tanks that have just deployed - have higher levels though.

 

[nicwb]

Hope you are going to complete this AAR - I've been enjoying the read!

 

[john connor]

Thanks for reading, Nicwb. Have been busy with a deadline and not much time to play. Will finish asap, tho. There are so many little bits of buggy behaviour too. I need actually to go slower and post them all.

 

[john connor]

I was trying to just play through and enjoy it, but to be honest I think it's a bit soon for that.