3 platoons of Shermans face off against the last remanents of the Wermachts mighty Tiger formations and assorted Panthers. This was a scratch battle pulled together by Mike to demonstrate how tanks work. I’ve called it Lambs to the Slaughter ! 😉

The interesting thing about Last Hundred Yards when dealing with armor in isolation is..well you better be thinking of these units as more than just a bit of equipment. These vehicles have men. Men have feelings. Most of them either don’t want to die, or better don’t want some dumb arse to make a bad decision for them that will have them end up in the aforementioned state! – Dead.

There are a raft of technical details here that I wont go into too much detail on, suffice to say the ability to split fire on a tank, is fricken cool. Well if you are a Tiger facing down 5 Shermans racing across the open fields, it is very bloody and very cool.

The ability to shoot and scoot or halt and fire both have benefit also. I’ll apologise now for the picks, I’ve been having issues with the phone, and I did not check these images before I uploaded them for orientation. My wordpress software is a bugger to use to manipulate images with. sorry!!!!

Of course Tigers are not an easy target and in fact the only way you are killing on of these suckers in enfilade. But to do so you got to get “around them”. In order to do that…well you better be quick and damn lucky. Or yes you guessed it you die quickly. But what did tankers really do?

As Mike Denson and I chatted, we talked about how tank commanders and platoon/squadron leaders who would jump out of their tank, survey the topo ahead and make a plan. Once they knew where an enemy was, or surmised a likely location they coordinated to make a plan. This would of course involve applying suppressive fire against the target to reduce the enemies ability to effectively hit, trying to drive them off their concealed location. Then while the enemy is suppressed or distracted, pushing units to the flank. Flanks shots will take out a Tiger….allegedly.

 

So the opening salvos…the effort to suppress, to reduce the shooting effectiveness of the enemy, lets just say it was underwhelming

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One of the unique and distinct features about the LHY system is it’s circular nature, of action and reaction. Naturally the enemy now has an opportunity to react.

The Tigers drop concealment, and open up.

Panzer IV’s light up the Shermans as well.

The German fire is deadly, the first rounds of shells exchanged have a distinctly lopsided effect. 4 US tanks brew up for one German tank. On the right one of the US units from Bravo pltn is suppressed.

As the next turn starts you can see the carnage. This is 4 minutes elapsed time. LOL…

So needless to say the carnage is extensive. Playing again I would take more time to softly approach, under cover until we could get better shots. The other thing to note here is that this is a tank on tank battle. More than likely in a real engagement we would have combined arms to deal with. Infantry, some arty laying smoke or mortars popping smoke and a very different situation.

Here in a gallery are the rest of the shots I took of the game play. We called it after a few more turns as the battle was all but over. But I’ve included them for you to take a look at.

I’m going to solo a scenario with tanks now and see if we can do some combined arms action.