Friday 16 May 2014

Lesson Learnt. DON'T BELIEVE ALL YOU READ!

During the course of my 25 year odyssey to find my ideal set of WW2 rules & scale I've bought easily 20 sets of rules & probably double that for scenario books etc.
It was one such scenario book which first inspired my choice for this year's OML2 game of Benouville.
Written by an American company in the late 90's, when the internet wouldn't have (I would have thought) been such a mine of information, it describes the German forces as a very broad "Soldaten of 8th Heavy Gren. Batt. & 192 Pz. Gren. Regt."

er.......WRONG!

The actual attackers WERE from 8 (schw.) Kompanie 192 which had NO inherent grenadier strength, instead possessing an assortment of French converted half-tracks mounting either 75PaK or 20mm AA guns (hence HEAVY company)

It lists ALL infantry (supposedly Pz. Gren.), with only one LMG per squad instead of two & has one of the four squads carried in a SdKfz. 251

er....... WRONG!

21st Pz. Div. did NOT possess a SINGLE 251, with all of it's half-tracks having been converted from French Somuas or Unics.

My first error was here. Knowing there were no 251's I decided to substitute in two Unics as transport for the single squad. So I painted these:
These are NOT the Unics I was looking for!

er....... MY WRONG!

 Only to find on later reading that the attacking troops were from Kampfgruppe Rauch's II Batt.192, which, as the non-gepanzert (armoured) companies, would be using trucks (largely French again) & NOT half-tracks of ANY sort at all. Furthermore in CoC the trucks would not figure as the troops would have de-bussed way before entering combat zones.

Then was the crowning glory.

Also listed as support was 2 x 75mm PaK40 L/48's auf 39H(f) & Major Becker HIMSELF!!!

Ignorance had me blissfully paint these from my collection:

These weren't needed either!
Only to discover that Becker's Sturmgeschutz Abteilung 200 (& Becker) was attached to Kampgruppe Luck on the OTHER (eastern) side of the Caen Canal!

So.....

I decide that I'd use a standard panzergrenadier platoon from the CoC main rules as representing troops from any of the 5-7th companies (as none - as far as I could ascertain, were referred to in specific), with supports of:

1) An extra Pz. Gren. section with Junior Leader - list 5
2) 2 x S307(f) (PaK40) (substituted from Marder III's) - list 6
3) 1 x U304(f) 2cm Flak (substituted from SdKfz 250/9) - list 6

for a total of 23 support levels.

I'd need to buy the 3 vehicles. All I could think at this point was "thank goodness I'm going to Triples tomorrow"

1 comment:

  1. Get you Mr detail :-)
    Add you to my following list.
    Guess we will see your Starship Troopers exploits up tomororw.
    Cheers
    Stu

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