SCS #8, the “Air Assault on Fortress Holland” campaign. Can I beat the game’s own VP math without walking into the mistake that wrecked the real paratroopers in 1940? The answer is probably not ! LOL 😊
In May 1940 the Germans dropped paratroopers in two places in Holland. One won the campaign. The other was a massacre. The cruel joke of this game if I can call it a joke, is that it puts its single biggest Victory Point prize right on top of the massacre so before I drop a man, I have to decide whether to repeat history or outsmart it.
First, the ground we’re fighting over.
The Setup: Fortress Holland
Holland wasn’t the main event. The real German blow came through the Ardennes; the push into the Low Countries existed to pull the Allied armies north while the panzers cut in behind them. Holland was the northern shoulder of that push, and the job was to crack the Dutch heartland fast. MMP’s The Blitzkrieg Legend covers this soup to nuts.
The defensive redoubt embraced Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam, screened by water: its line ran from Muiden on the Ijsselmeer east of Amsterdam and south, the Dutch trading space for inundations and river barriers (Osprey p.15; History of WW2 pt.04 p.19). The Dutch had banked on those rivers. From the German border to Rotterdam is only about 60 miles (Osprey p.14), but every mile of the approach crossed a bridge that could be dropped — and the Dutch intended to drop them.
The Germans knew it. Warning even reached the defenders: Colonel Hans Oster fed the Dutch attaché Colonel Sas the attack date, and the codeword Danzig went out on the evening of 9 May — yet Sas struggled to convince The Hague, and the Maas bridges were not blown until 3 a.m. on the 10th (Osprey p.15). To beat the demolitions the Germans reached for two tools: Brandenburger infiltrators in Dutch uniform to rush the bridges by guile (they failed at Maastricht, succeeded at Gennep — Osprey p.15), and, decisively, airborne troops to seize the western bridges from above and hold them until the panzers arrived. That is the whole engine of the campaign — and of the game: a coup de main against the bridges, racing a relief column that is at least 48 hours away (Command #42 p.62).
The Cast
Kurt Student — the father of the German airborne arm, running the operation personally. His paratroopers would be the whole gamble.
Hans Graf von Sponeck — commanding the air-landing division aimed at The Hague, with orders that included snatching Queen Wilhelmina herself. (The British were tipped off; she reached a destroyer and formed a government-in-exile instead.)
Henri Winkelman — the Dutch commander-in-chief, holding a garrison that was mostly second-line troops but stiff with numbers and dug into good defensive ground.
What History Did
The Hague — the disaster. Three airfield drops around the seat of government Valkenburg, Ockenburg, Ypenburg. All three failed. The paratroops scattered, the follow-on transports bogged in soft fields and blocked their own runways, and the Dutch clawed the airfields back by evening. Cost: over 200 transport aircraft destroyed and around 2,500 casualties for almost nothing.
The bridges — the triumph. The southern approach worked much better. Waalhaven airfield fell, opening it to fly reinforcements in. Seaplanes set men down in the middle of Rotterdam beside the Willems Bridge. And at Moerdijk, paratroopers dropped onto the bridge and cut the demolition charges before the Dutch could fire them. Then a brutal hold on Dordrecht island where, tellingly, half-trained Dutch recruits wiped out an entire elite paratroop company. The lesson history keeps repeating: paratroopers are deadly on landing and potentially fragile in the hours right after.
The relief and the end. German success hinged on 9th Panzer getting across at Moerdijk in time, late on 12 May. Then, with surrender already being negotiated, a botched recall sent bombers over Rotterdam anyway: roughly 97 tons, about 900 dead. Student himself was gravely wounded in the city. Holland capitulated on 15 May. Five days,the bridges were taken, at an outstandingly high cost. The FJ’s arm was mauled, a bill paid again and far worse over Crete a year later.
That’s the history. Now you know what we do now: #rolldice.
My approach will be different:
Figure 3 LAnding zones for Germans. One Bn. in reserve
The Germans plan is to focus on Waalhaven and South. With a modest effort on Ypenburg. Which will be reinforced if it goes well or probably if it goes terribly to be honest.
The Dutch plan is simple. Attack, attack, attack. Any attack 2:1 has 80% chance of inflicting a step loss, which eliminates the enemy platoon. But also carries a 55% chance of an attacker step loss. But Dutch can handle that.
Turn 1: The Germans Come Down (10 May, 0430)
The air phase was a horror show. Fifty percent of all air strikes aborted, and the ones that went in had zero impact. Not an auspicious start.
Where I chose to drop is where I hope to change the course a bit for the Germans, But also have the Dutch be VERY, aggressive. The biggest VP location sits right on the historical massacre, so I elected to take a different approach. There are a handful of airfields and supply points that actually matter, and the first is here on the southwestern side.
Southwest — Moerdijk. The bridge is cleared. Along the two major rail/road bridges, 1/FJR secured the area, eliminating the artillery and the flak, and now controls both ends. Further along, near Dordrecht, no combat some units [2, with 1 elimination] scattered on the drop.
Center — Waalhaven / Rotterdam. The airfield was surrounded one platoon scattered, another lost to a landing in the city. Three companies of infantry went in, reducing everything in the hex and killing a small armored-car platoon. But the field did not fall on Turn 1.
The LL 16th Company came down by seaplane into central Rotterdam and pushed deeper in. Second FJR cleared a hex of Delft, and its 3rd and 4th companies knocked out the AA around the high-value target of Ypenburg . Setting up a possible clearing attack on Turn 2. Not because I want the death-trap, but because I want the option. I’m a big believer in the path of least resistance, husbands fighting power and preserves options.
Losses after the German turn: Dutch 14 steps. German: 3 Ju-52 transport steps (those feed the Dutch VP total) plus two troop steps from bad landings.
Turn 1: The Dutch Answer
Given the surprise, the Dutch are restricted to half movement on the 0430 and 0530 turns but that doesn’t stop them hunting targets of opportunity. And here’s their edge: the Dutch can afford losses. Most units have two steps, so a hit still leaves something in place, defending at reduced capacity.
Their air went in first, and had no effect.
[“Combat values are significant for a lot of Dutch elements — villages offer ×3 defense.”]
Then the ground work. Engineers rallied and attacked into the village to root out the paras, going in at 2:1 — and eliminated 5/II 1./FJR on a roll of 10.
Spurred on, teh Nederlanders rushed Waalhaven, combining an attack with support from the eastern quarter, and smashed 6/II.
Ypenburg looked ripe too. They attacked at 2:1 for an even trade : attacker loss 1, defender loss 1, but it killed the para platoon.
By the end of their turn the Dutch had reinforced Waalhaven, begun moving forces onto the threats, and adjusted their posture around Den Haag to fend off attacks across the rivers and canals.
Where It Stands
German troop losses: 4 steps. Dutch losses: 15 steps. Exchange rate: about 4:1 in my favor comfortably past the 2:1 the designer says the German needs, and my own goal of 3:1.
But the raw ratio flatters me. The Dutch have concentrated exactly what history says paratroopers can’t survive and my Waalhaven push, the one I already suspected was “slightly too little,” didn’t take the field and is now being reinforced against me. I’m winning the arithmetic and losing the ground most needed. Turn 2 decides whether the different approach was clever or just cost me the airfield I built the whole plan around.
Turn 2 next.
Sources: Osprey, The Fall of France · Command Magazine #42, “Fortress Holland 1940” · Keegan, Who’s Who in World War Two · the 6505 Fallschirmjäger unit history. The battle’s been made three times, incidentally — the SPI-era Fortress Holland, the Command #42 game, and the MMP/Gamers SCS title on the table here.