Fictional yet possible WWII Scenarios

[Panzer Commander]

My local miniature wargaming group was thinking about having a large scenario pertaining to the crossing of the Rhine. The catch, though, was it had to be taking place in an area along the Rhine near Cologne, so as to seem possible. The two main topics were the town/cities of Bonn and Wesseling. If anybody can give me some ideas and tips, I will be very grateful.
Thanks

[battlewagon]

I suppose if there were any bridges across the Rhine in the area that for the purposes of your scenario didn't get bombed into rubble you would have a focal point for your battle. The German player(s) would have to defend / destroy the bridge and the Allied player(s) would have to take and hold the bridge to get a substantial number of units across into Germany. Good luck, and let us know what you come up with.

[voltigeur]

I can't guarantee that this is out there but in the history of the Airborne there were 3 or 4 canceled drops for every one that actually took place.

How about an Airborne drop ahead of Patton secure both ends of the bridge and have the Airborne hold for a certain number of turns before Patton gets to them. Or if your doing 5:1 have one pair of players playing out the Airborne battle while another player commands the armor trying to break through.

[ROGER_HOUSTON2EMC-ENG.COM]

I think the Rhine crossing airborne operation was accomplished under the code name Operation Varsity, in which two US divisions were dropped to seize bridgeheads up in the 1st or 9th Army areas . I will have to research it, but I beleive they were in conjunction with Monty's push north of the Ruhr. I remember this operation , in that the 17th ABN DIV was dropped for the first time and the C-46 was used as a troop carrier in Europe. Both were not very sucessfull.The full operation was supposed to be the biggest airborne assault ever (bigger than Normandy and MARKET GARDEN), but the assaults made were flops, in that the Germans had abandoned their positions and the bridges to be seized were already blown . Parts of the 17th were dropped in the wrong place and wound up getting into a huge unnessessary scrap with a German SS Panzer kampfgruppe.(like Arnhem).

[Panzer Commander]

Thanks guys! From what you said, we will have:
Allied Main Objectives
Capture the bridge
Establish a beachhead and hold for at least 5 turns
Allied Secondary Objectives
Relieve Allied airborne units in the city
Eliminate German forces

German Main Objectives
Destroy the Bridge
Eliminate the Allied push
Eliminate Allied Airborne Elements

Thanks a bunch for you guys' help!

[piersyf]

Good luck with it! From my pojnt of view, what you are suggesting is a contested river crossing, which in many ways would be a repeat of D-Day. The Brits used DD tanks, type 50/60 rafts and LVT's along with a monster artillery bombardment (greater than anything seen in WW1). They even ferried 17pdrs across the Rhine on LVT2's, strapped to the top. LCT's and LCM's were also used, ferried to the river on semi trailers. I've played this scenario, and it's a hoot!

If done right, a problem for the defenders is that the bridge is nice, but not essential to the plan for the allies. Blowing a bridge is sort of easy, all things considered.

P

[TAMMY]

Tell it to the defender of the Remagen bridge. In any case it was the only bridge remaining on the Rhine, all the other having been destroyed.

The only doubt I have about this scenario is an assault crossing from a large bult up area to another large built up area: Cologne is divided on the two sides of the river.

Usually a town has high and reinforced bamks towards the river, very difficult both as start line and landingl line.

[piersyf]

Sure, the Remagen Bridge main charge failed, and the secondaries were not strong enough to drop the bridge. From a game point of view it would have to be explicit that the charges will fail, or the game potentially ends on a single dice roll; boom, bridge gone... OK pack up...

As to amphibious crossings in a town or city, I offer the crossing of the Waal at Nijmegen by the 504th PIR. They crossed within a mile of the main bridge, so still well inside the city limits.

I agree that a lot of medieval cities on the Rhine would build in defensible areas, but don't forget that commerce flowed along the rivers; all these cities will have landing areas for barges, any of which may be suitable for a river crossing (the ferry at Driel, near Arnhem). My suggestion is only that if there is an alternative open to the attacker (an amphibious capacity) it complicates issues for both sides as to weight and distribution of forces, and the fate of the bridge demo charges can be left as a part of the game.

[TAMMY]

I agree that the bridge is the focal point of the scenario. If it blows up the scenario change completely.

After all even at Nijmegen the German failed to destry the bridges but the position is completely different from the Hogenzollern bridge at Cologne.

A) Nijmegen is on the south side of the river only (Here the Waal river run from east to west) and the northern side is completely open even today (see Google Earth)
B) Even on the south side there are no embankments
C) The assault corssing was done by one battalion only in various trips. At the start there were 26 boats only with a load of 13 paras and 3 British engineers each. The bots decreased inb the following trips.
D) The crossing was carried out downstream of the raylway bridge (the western most of the two bridges) toward a completely open area.

Cologne is a very large town on both sides of the Rhine.
The Hohenzollern bridge (the last to be destroyed by the German) is practically in the middle of the built up area. It starts near the famous cathedral on the west bank.
Mostly of the river banks are lined by embankments

My point was that these embankments will make difficult any crossing. It is true that there are loading points but for an assault crossing you need to put in the water as much boats as possible at the same time and a ferry landing may not be enough.

There is another big difference in the scenario. Taking a bridge is a more or less straightforward fighting of land troops. Making an assault crossing require enginering resources which has to be brought forward and this need times as they are nor normally kept at the head of an advancing force.

At Nijmegen the paras had to wait two days to receive the boats while the fighting for the bridges was going on from the south side of the river.

[Mk 1]

For the sake of wargaming scenarios interesting bridge-crossing games can be set up in the following manner:

Side A = attackers, who's objectives are to secure the bridge and a bridge-head.
Side B = defenders, who's objectives are to prevent side A getting the bridge

Scenario 1:
Side A has already siezed the bridge by a coup-de-main. But the force they have on the bridge is exceedingly small. Depending on the size of your scenario, perhaps a recon platoon.

The game revolves around both sides trying to rush forces TO the bridge. Side A has a significantly larger force, including armor or mobile troops, but needs not only to get to the bridge but over the bridge to build a defensible perimeter (or achieve some other key objective). Side B has mostly infantry, perhaps a precious few AT weapons (towed or SP), and needs mainly to deny the crossing, but ideally wants to control the whole bridge so that the engineers can figure out why the charges did not blow, and do whatever is necessary to prepare the bridge for demolition. (Finding and fixing the issue can be accounted for by scoring a low probability die role once the engineers have gotten control of the bridge.)

Scenario 2:
An alternative on this theme is to set up the scenario such that the side B defenders hold the bridge, but have only just arrived in position, and so must face side A's attack with a hastey defense and NO prepared demolitions.

This is very similar to scenario 1 above, but the starting positions are reversed. In both cases, side A has the larger force and the requirement to achieve something on the OTHER side of the bridge. In scenario 1 it is side A, the side with the larger force (in total) who holds the bridge with a hastey defense, while both sides try to rush in re-inforcements. In scenario 2 it is side B, the side with the smaller force (in total), who hold the bridge with a hastey defense.

Remember that bridges are natural choke-points. Even an overwhelming force can be hard to deploy against a determined defense.


In my most recent game the Italians managed to hold-up an overwhelming Soviet force, with significant armor, for some time by the simple expedient of disabling the lead tank as it crossed the bridge.

In the end I got stomped. But it was a great game!

[Luca]

I played two river crossing games.

In the first there was a bridge, heavily defended with AT guns, and slighty to the south of it a ford, less defended. The attackers pinned up the defenders at the bridge with a feint attack, wile the real attack developed at the ford. The defenders knew something like that would happen, so they swiftly counter attacked with the reserves at the ford. The situation got messed up when the feint develop well and the attackers finally put the foot on the other shore and started to run behind the undefended defender lines.

The second game was a nice german attack against an heavily defended group of russian bunkers somewhere on the Stalin Line in central Russia. I was playing the soviet. The germans had to cross a river, and they did it. I let do them, because after they landed on my river bank, I started to shell them with an hell of artillery fire. I could fire on them wile they were on the rubber boats, but I preferred to hit them wile massed up on my side of the battle line. In the end It didn't worked that well. After my opponent managed to deploy his FO, he started to shell with smoke my bunkers, so I got blind, and couldn't adjust the artillery, wich was my best defense instrument. He managed to get across the river three battalions of infantry, one of them engineer, wich took one after another the bunkers I had to defend myself. I then committed the little armour I had, but it was no deal with his mounting numbers.

In the end it was a great fun, in boh cases. The problem with such attacks is that when the defender has to keep such an important line, is in real strategic trouble, because once the attacker pass the river and he don't have enought strike power to send him back across it, it is better that he regroup somewhere fare away and re-think about his whole campaing strategy. Big rivers are big test times.

[piersyf]

Like I said, my previous comments were only in regard to game play. If the bridge is blown, the scenario isn't changed, it's ended. The US engineers holding back KG Peiper with a single 57mm while the bridge was prepped for demolition... when it went, game over, Peiper leaves to find another crossing point. Get to the Rhine; bridge gone, look somewhere else. It is a game ender, not a game changer.

I like Mk1's ideas, and Luca's.

I've played several river crossings as well, and just knowing I had a squadron of LVT's kept my opponent guessing, even if the crossing points were limited. I believe there were several river crossing done (Moselle?) where small bridgeheads were established by infantry who basically swam/rafted across. Not in built up areas, though.

Actually another alternative is to have the bridge blown, but only one span. The defenders leave a watch garrison only. Attacker arrives, engineers think it could be made a viable crossing, so an infantry assault crossing is made to gain a foothold. First encounter favours attackers (infantry only, but lots of direct and indirect fire support). Then roll a d6 for the defenders to see when a response force can arrive (score is hours). Race is on to secure a foothold strong enough to let engineer teams onto the bridge or push it back. You may end up with street fighting at night... you just won't know. A longer scenario to be sure, but challenging.

[TAMMY]

There were also failings like the Rapido river in Italy.

In any case this topic is relevant to the Rhine which ar Cologne is more than 400 meters wide. Statistically there were about 50 bridges on the river and only one (Remagen) was not blown up and by accident not by will.

I think that is important to state that a bridge not blowing up is a surprise for both parties. For the defender as he has not prepared any sstrong defensive positions or strong forces as its best defense was to be the demolition of the bridge.
Fpr the attacker as the bridge is unexpectly standing.

From this moment is a question of who reacts quickier and strongly. Try to rush the bridge immediately is the best option for the attacker before the defender would collect enough forces to defend the area. The main consideration here is that it is not enough to establish a bridgehead on the other side but it has to be an EXPANDING bridgehead to allow for the transit of the following forces. So you have to move fast, before the enemy could block your expansion.

It is exactly like any landing, remember Anzio

[SSgtBuck]

TAMMY,in your post about the amphibious assault by the 504 PIR at Nijmegen you said that the paras had to wait 2 days for the boats. I would disagree with that. The decision to make the amphibious assault was made late in the evening of the 19th and the assault went ahead midafternoon of the 20th, ~3:00pm. The boats were late, yes, but coming up the single road throughout the night and being halted by a Luftwaffe attack at Eindhoven, they were only a couple of hours late.

[Luca]

An interesting game variant of the river crossing scenario, could be the bridghead game. Consider what the russian managed to do in the autumn of 1942 on the river Don. During the summer they've been pushed all the way back to Stalingrad. The germans with the aid of their allies secured the corridor in southern ukraine wich led to the besieged city. The Don was part of this line, but not all the suthern shores were watched. The Don is a river with many turns and bends, and in many of this places the russians managed to build up very big bridgeheads.

An objective for a game could be to smash one of these bridgheads, wich would turn to became a bulge for the defender. If the attacker manages also to cross the river and pursue the enemy, this could increase the tactical and strategical gain.