[Marc]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

From my research for the analysis, the north end of the start line is way too far east. With a startline where you've marked, it makes much of the first few weeks of the offensive a cakewalk for NATO, totally changing the ultimate outcome. I'll try to mark out the start positions as I assessed them in the next few days.

Great, then I will redraw the map with your modified initial positions.

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

I also envisaged the offensive as more of a fish hook in shape, III Corp pushing eastward several hundred kilometres before swinging south to cut off Pact units, or at least threaten encirclment against the mountains to the south.

I've drawn the plotted movements of the German III Corp in south-east direction to not interfere with the path of the 5th ID as described in "Escape from Kalisz". Perhaps it would be better to make this movement a little longer and then turn them to the south or even the south-west to look for the soviet rear, with the fish hook shape you say.

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

The 2nd Marines were also conducting an encirclement operation, but on a much smaller scale. It was their task to take the river delta, but also push inland to cut off the northern Polish troops and allow the 8th ID an easier time of it.

Obviously almost no unit actually reached their objectives for a variety of reason. However, the 8th was probably the most sucessfull of all the NATO divisions, overshooting their objective by an embarassing distance.

One possibility is to attribute part of the success of the 8th to a quick victory over the Polish units directly in its path of advance before the other Polish units "dissoluted" in front of the III Corps (or even in front of the 5th ID) initiated their movement toward the north to harass the left flank of the NATO. Althought the 8th archieved successful deep penetration, a more slower advance could have helped to consolidate the Baltic Coast wiht the 5th Armored and the 2nd Marines once the things started to fall apart.

BTW: What about the gap between the 50th Armored and the 5th ID. Perhaps it was supposed to be covered by the Canadians and the 116th ACR?Could they delay in disengage from the British/Soviet "front" have been the cause for the dangeroulsy exposed left flank of the 5th ID?