German III Corps?

[Fusilier]

Hey,

Anyone know if any of the books mention the a detailed location for the German III Corps. Its the other half of German 3rd Army that US 11th Corps was a part of during the 2000 offensive.

German divisions, 6th, 21st, and 29th are all listed as "Northern Poland"... but where?

I'm running a game on RPoL set on the Baltic Coast and was only going by the maps and orbat locations of what is printed. Then I realized the entire other half of the Army is mentioned but not shown.

I can't seem to find more detail in any of the source books. Help or suggestions?

[Graebarde]

One of the modules gave the locations of the divisions, but don't recall which and don't have access to the books ATM, however IIRC the III Ge Korps was to the west of the US corps, mostly NW Poland from the coast south to the river that runs through Poznan, and from the Oder east to the corps dividing line. I'll see if I can comeup with the 'exacts' unless someone else can that has ready access to the info.

Grae

[Marc]

Navigating through the web I've found a nice map that I think it will be useful.
You will find the units of the III German Corps in the Baltic Coast (green stars). No idea about the information sources used to draw it.

http://leonpoifiles.googlepages.com/...ampaignMap.pdf

[Graebarde]

That lone blue star at Kalisz sure stands out bold. Makes you wonder what genius planned that operation?

Grae

[Marc]

I was thinking the same

I've been reading the movements of the 5ht Infantry Division, described in the "Escape from Kalisz" adventure for the campaign we're running. These movements seems to me somewhat strange, if the objective of the offensive was the Baltic Coast. The advance of the 5th ID from the departure position follows the South / South-East direction during more than 150Km! Too far away as for cover the southern flank of the advance, if it is what the genius planner had intended for the 5th. Anyway, the commander of the 5th lead his unit to a good mousetrap showing great gallantry.

For sure the response to "Good luck, you're on your own" could be "Don't worry, better alone than in bad company".

[Snake Eyes]

The 5th was sacrificed as a smokescreen to cover the Reset mission in Lodz.

[Legbreaker]

B Troop of 116th ACR was actually tasked with retreiving the Black Madonna and had nothing to do with Operation Reset. Problem is they never linked up with the person carrying their orders so all they know is they were to meet somebody or group of somebodies in central Poland for further orders....

Although the books state the aim of the offensive was to clear the Baltic coast of Pact forces, the presence of the US 5th in the Lodz area implies a more ambitious objective - that of swinging behind the Soviet lines and potentially cutting their line of supply (minimal as it is in 2000). The very threat alone of encirclment, even partial encirclement would force the Soviet and Polish unit to withdraw at least several hundred kilometres.

Unfortunately, the 4th Guards Army appeared and destroyed the spearhead of the offensive (the US 5th ID) while at the same time, instead of the expected withdrawal, Pact units went on the offensive forcing the units which were to have followed on behind the 5th ID to be committed on the German-Poland border.

In my opinion, the US 8th ID were to have halted and established a defensive line from the vicinity of Kalingrad to Olsztyn, the 50th AD fill between there and west of Warsaw with the 5th took responsibility for the southern section down to around Lodz.

The German III Corps would continue the drive down to (and perhaps through) Czestochowa, with a little luck reaching the mountainous Czech-Poland border. Far reaching and ambitious perhaps, and possibly more than could be achieved, but bearing in mind that the aim may have been to force the withdrawal of Pact forces from Western Poland....

The British, the only other force of significance in Europe, would be called upone to fill between the German III Corps and their own positions in the vicinity of Frankfurt.

I believe, even with the various holes and shortcomings, the above is a reasonable assessment/guess on why the 5th were so far to the south. Why they were allowed by the XI Corps commander, or even German 3rd Army Command to move so far ahead of supporting units is a question for another day.

[Adm.Lee]

Now you've got me thinking of something else. One division, even full strength, couldn't "cut off" much from that deep in the Pact rear. BUT, if there was a single-point to attack, it could do that. What if NATO intel had uncovered tales of a really important supply dump at/near Lodz, and the 5th was tasked to destroy/seize the said items. Same for the 8th?

It didn't have to be a secret, like Reset, but maybe a tale of real petroleum products?

[LAW0306]

The reason 5th division is inside Poland is that the Game designers had to find a way for characters to be cut off and behind the lines. Thats the only Reason. As the DC group has spent many hours looking over every aspect of the Game our best Ideas is. That the Designers were a army centric group Of Vietnam veterians with not alot of access to referance materials.(Ie books and computers). Now that we do have the stuff its easy to point fingers but we should not. They over looked the Navy and Marine Corps because they had no Idea how to use them. Same with the Air force. So we as a group are trying to fix this under the version 1 timeline without destroying the game integrity. So look to the future for the Maritime guide (Navy, Marine and Coast Guard) Vehicle Guide (Air force and Army) and our US Survivors guide. We also are working on in the future a Commonwealth forces Guide.

The largest factor now that I'm having trouble with is the US Navy. With over 750 ships in service or going into service this is more navy in size and power than the next 5 countrys navys combined. They also have a Air arm thats as large as 4 or 5 countrys air forces combined and much more advanced. With almost 20 carrier wings and 3 Marine wings (Over 500 aircraft just with the marines alone) . Its just hard to kill them all.

On 2d Marine Division in Europe. A Marine division never deploys by itself. It Goes as a Corps level unit(II MEF)( Marine Expeditonary Force)With 2d Force service support group and 2d Marine Aircraft wing making up the MEF. This is over 60,000 Marines with 200 some aircraft! So there will be small changes.

And on the marines gaining vehicles. Its historic for this to happen every war we(USMC) have been in we have come out with more either we steal/accuire from our other sister services or from the enemey. Expect 2 MEF to have vehicles from every country in theater.


(All comments posted here are my own and are not the comments of the DC group thoose are only posted by Chico our editor in chief)

[Legbreaker]

One statement covers all the above.

It's 4-5 years into a global war which turned nuclear 2 1/2 years before.

Divisions with a full strength of roughly ten thousand men and several hundred MBTs are now lucky to number a third of that in manpower and are likely to possess barely enough tanks to deploy a short company.

Nuclear weapons are not just targeted at cities. They were also aimed at factory complexes, transportation hubs, mining centres, and I'd be supprised if even agricultural capacity wasn't a factor in some of the larger nukes (even just at assessing the fallout zones). Note also troop concentrations were also targeted regularly with some divisions effectively wiped out.

Why wouldn't warships also be targeted? Some of them have crews numbering in the thousands and they're certainly not spread out the way a division is.

Airfields, even roadways capable of landing aircraft on would also be viable targets once restraint had given way to desperation. The planes themselves might be more than capable while in the air, but if they've got nowhere to land, and nobody left to service them once they're there.....

Supply of essential parts, munitions and fuel has been mentioned on many occasions both by the writers and players/GMs. Take the Krakow helicopter as another example - the machine is in perfect working order, but ammunition supply is limited to little more than it flew in with and fuel amounts to just a few hundred litres - maybe an hour or two of flight time. I'm almost certian theres plenty more aircraft out there, grounded for the very same reasons.

Shorthanded as they are (1000 men) the US 8th ID possesses an OH58, two Blackhawks and an Apache, all grounded (most of the time) by lack of fuel (and parts for at least one of the Blackhawks) but still so valuable as to be dragged around Europe by the Division on trucks.

The 2nd MARDIV likewise possesses at least one CV-22 Osprey based on the USS Tarawa (Plate C1, Nautical/Aviation Handbook). This reference also implies (along with the reference to the USS John Hancock in Going Home) that there is still at least some naval capacity (mostly likely heavily damaged from the aformentioned nukes and conventional attacks) but limited once again by lack of fuel, munitions and spare parts.

With regard to a marine division not deploying alone, the 2nd Marines in the spring offensive certainly did not! They were a part of a MUCH larger operation which involved the forces of at least four countries (the US, Germany, Canada and Denmark - the British possibly as I have written previously) with wide reaching aims. The 2nd Marines were also the only NATO marine force in Europe (besides the 500 strong UK 1st Royal Marine Brigade in Norway) and therefore the only unit capable of fulfilling the task of "launching amphibious assaults against the Polish Baltic Coast and across the estuary of the Vistula".

I would also point out that the divsion, listed on the 1st of July 2000 at a strength of 4000 men, is far stronger than the real life US 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th_Ma...ditionary_Unit with only approximately 2,200 men. I'm fairly certain there's plenty of support personel amongst the 4000 of the 2nd Marines and as mentioned above, air support is likely to be virtually nonexistant for all sides by that stage of the war. The Osprey above may in fact have been the only operational aircraft of any type within several hundred miles and reserved purely for emergencies (URGENT casualty evacuation for example).

Now the point I think most people tend to forget is units even of divisional size do not act without orders from above. Other divisions within the Corp undoubtably have their own missons, sometimes in support of each other, sometimes seperate, but there is almost always a guiding hand at the Corp or Army level.

Take the Allied operations in Europe in 1944-45. Eisenhower was in overall command of all allied forces with Patton and Montgomery in command of seperate armies consisting of a number of divisions. Breaking it down further and using Operation Market Garden as an example, we see individual divisions, all operating within a relatively narrow corridor, tasked with individual objectives, some of which were acheived, others which were not (the British Airborne at Arnhem springs to mind).

Therefore, I believe the only way possible to justify the presence of the US 5th ID at Lodz is if you take a step back and look at the big picture. Even just stepping back to the Corp level isn't far enough though - it only begins to make sense when you look at the European theatre as a whole and consider that the 5th ID was just the spearhead of a drive designed to force the Pact armies to withdraw and secure their lines of supply and communication (limited as they were by 2000).

Individual objectives such as securing coal fields would be simply a side benefit of the overall offensive.

[kato13]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

Shorthanded as they are (1000 men) the US 8th ID possesses an OH58, two Blackhawks and an Apache, all grounded (most of the time) by lack of fuel (and parts for at least one of the Blackhawks) but still so valuable as to be dragged around Europe by the Division on trucks.

The 8th Mechanized, if we are to believe the order of battle, actually has more firepower man per man than a prewar division. I always felt that was insane. I chalked it up to a 60%+ causality rate from a particularly virulent flu after the 2000 assault began. This left the 8th trapped by the volume of equipment they had. I literally spent months trying to build a realistic support structure for the amount of equipment described in the Eastern European sourcebook, to no avail.

I mentioned this in an older thread (unfortunately lost in the great purge before we moved to our new home)

[Webstral]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

Although the books state the aim of the offensive was to clear the Baltic coast of Pact forces, the presence of the US 5th in the Lodz area implies a more ambitious objective - that of swinging behind the Soviet lines and potentially cutting their line of supply (minimal as it is in 2000). The very threat alone of encirclment, even partial encirclement would force the Soviet and Polish unit to withdraw at least several hundred kilometres.

A very interesting supposition. I like it. Certainly, the occupation of Poland west of the Warta would have been a high priority for the Germans. I do believe that SACEUR would have wanted the Baltic coast cleared as far east as possible for access to fishing and shipping. Nevertheless, causing the Pact forces in western Poland to withdraw east and south would have provided NATO with a lot of advantages. As an added extra-special bonus, a southward thrust oriented behind the "front line" Pact forces in western Poland would have been a far less costly means of displacing the Pact formations than frontal attacks. The light infantry actions of 1999 would have revealed that both sides were building extensive defensive works that would be expensive to break by frontal assault. All very interesting...


Webstral

[Marc]

Bon dia!

We're still working in the material of our future site and we would like to add the following map about the 3rd German Army in northern Poland:

Ofensiva2.pdf



The map is based in Legbreaker's analysis about the operation and our purpose is to give only a visual help for the referees running our pre-Kalisz campaign, with only the "main lines" of the NATO plotted movements. The typical map we find in the history books without entering in many details.Take into account that it is a map about the plan and not about the development of the offensive itself. Before add it to our site I would like to know any opinion from you, guys. Do you think that anything important must be changed or added?

Of course, the initial positions are fruit of our imagination, but we have followed the clue that we know that the British Army was facing the Soviets around Frankfurt and that the 5th ID starting point was in the Chojnice/Człuchów area. So we have chosen the line between Frankfurt and Chojnice/Człuchów to distribute the starting positions for the NATO units implied in the offensive, roughly along the main road between Gorzów Wielkopolski and Gdansk.

Thanks in advance!

[Marc]

Mmmmm... I've just edited the map in he last post. All the units and lines seemed to be displaced to the east.

[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.

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.

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.