Korosten Campaign Finishes

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IV/JG7_4Shades
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Korosten Campaign Finishes

Post by IV/JG7_4Shades » Sun Feb 02, 2014 11:10 pm

By mutual agreement of the active commanders, we have decided to bring the Korosten Campaign to a finish at 2300 hours on 29 Decmber 1943. The campaign statistics are here. A more complete analysis will follow shortly.

In brief, Korosten fell to the Soviet First Ukrainian Front forces after heavy fighting and continuous artillery barrages. PzAOK forces withdrew to the south and southwest in the general direction of Volodarsk-Volinsky. V-V was unassailed in the campaign due to the excellent blocking tactics by PzAOK forces near Dabryn in the south. The Dabryn action was costly for both sides, but necessary for the German forces to provide an avenue of withdrawal, especially since Soviet forces were to establish control of Ushomir in the south-west and had blocked the western railway routes.

Armour losses on both sides were high, but the PzAOK managed to preserve most of its Tiger tanks. This may prove crucial in following scenarios. A counterbalance to this success was the loss of 4 Korps commanders and 8 Kompanie commanders - the Korosten action has dealt a severe blow to PzAOK leadership which means German organization in future scenarios may be detrimentally affected.

Neither side achieved victory conditions in the Korosten campaign. This was a tough and gruelling experience and both sides need to re-establish cohesion and strength before pursuing further goals.

From a gameplay point of view, the Korosten campaign was excellent. Hosting was easy and there were no significant technical issues. Artillery barrages worked very well and were used to good effect by both sides.

Air missions were extremely challenging with poor weather, intense flak and short missions (30 minutes). There were just enough air actions to keep pilots looking over their shoulder as they performed their ground support operations.

On the ground the visuals were simply spectacular. I remember driving my jeep over a snowy hill in the dawn light to see friendly barrages lighting up the defended village of Luginy, with enemy fire returning to my position. This kind of compelling scene was repeated at a lot of different localities many times over the 43 missions in the campaign.

Many thanks to all commanders and participants. Some took a fearful beating and were soon rendered hors de combat (e.g. Charlie's Korps Abteilung C bore the brunt of the Soviet attack north of Korosten, and Badger's 30 Rifle Corps ran into a tank trap near Dabryn, etc) but they will be back for the next stage.

Cheers,
4Shades
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II/JG77Hawk_5
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Post by II/JG77Hawk_5 » Sun Feb 02, 2014 11:49 pm

I would just like to say a big thankyou to 4Shades for putting together and hosting a compelling campaign which I thoroughly enjoyed. Very little flying in this one for myself as running around in the jeep and getting close to the action provided plenty of tension and excitement. Especially when I got a little too close!

Following on from the Serata campaign this one further developed the ground war capability of SEOW and we were able to explore in more detail the ability of IL2 ground units in action in conjunction with a modified technics file to provide as realistic an action as we have seen to date in an IL2 SEOW campaign. There was not, as I thought there might be, infantry on infantry action, to my knowledge anyway. Most of the battle was fought by mechanised/armoured units and due to the results these could provide in daylight, it was no wonder we (the Allies) went through so many of them. Trying to get infantry close enough to actually become engaged in battle was impossible when facing tanks, AAA (devastating rate of fire), artillery barrages and mechanised forces (half tracks etc.). I found infantry became a good defensive line but still was not match for a heavy tank counterattack which could engage any target at arms length with good result.

As is usual in IL2, human flown aircraft could inflict devastating attacks on enemy forces if left unchecked. To me, this is a lesson that can only be learned the hard way (again) that all ground forces require significant
AAA support so that any low level ground attacks are very risky and probably fatal ventures. In my books one for template designers and ground commanders to keep an eye on.

From here things can only get better.

We have now moved on to HSFX/SEOW7 and we will now be able to utilise the further improvements to the game and SEOW system. Hopefully we can bring some of these new capabilities into our ongoing campaigns which we still have on simmer here at HQ to add further complexity to older campaigns which would clearly benefit as would we in campaigning with them.

Thanks to all my fellow commanders for a well fought campaign. It was tough going and everyone made the effort to make it as challenging and authentic feeling a battle as one could have in IL2.

Cheers everyone,
Hawk_5
Last edited by II/JG77Hawk_5 on Wed Feb 05, 2014 8:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
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II/JG54_Emil
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Post by II/JG54_Emil » Wed Feb 05, 2014 5:05 am

I enjoyed it as well! Especially the short missions seem to give the scenario a good dynamic, which is especially important for close combat scenarios.

Unfortunately RL kept me from continuing. So big thanks to the commanders taking over my units. I hope you still enjoyed moving them around, though my nicest tanks got busted way too soon. One lesson I learned is , that tanks are better defenders than attackers. Never thought about it too much beforehand.
Unfortunately out maneuvering isn't effective in IL-2 tank vs tank battles.
Now I know. ;-)


A thorough analysis of close combat would very good, in order to tweak the technics.ini properly.
Especially in respect of infantry, attack and counter attack tactics, etc..

What can be expected and what would be ideal?
I would think in any normal scenario the infantry should have a major role.
But let's not forget this is a Russian winter scenario. What combat effectiveness can infantry have at - 15°C and knee deep snow.


Let's analyse and discuss.
If we can improve it, why shouldn't we.
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Post by LW/JG10_Armwaar » Fri Feb 07, 2014 7:24 pm

I agree it was lots of fun. The campaign used all the major features of SEOW, providing the opportunity to come up with lots of creative strategies. Ground action was rather intense at times, and the air missions for me ranged from flawless victories to blowing ones self up due to neglecting fuse timing.

It seems like the table is set for a continuation of sorts. We could make some adjustments, perhaps a reduction of some kind to the Germans due to the lost commanders, but a reward for holding on to a little more ground than historically achieved.

Looking at the maps in this thread

viewtopic.php?t=2362

It seems like we could add some depot related objectives and expand or move to a different sector of the map. We could also test the logistical features and strategies by trying to get each side to re-supply in preparation for the next round.

I think we could do this by leaving the current units largely where they are, consolidating the remnants of some unit names and identifying what reinforcements each side should have. We would probably also want to activate some other air bases and resupply points.

Perhaps some kind of scenario where each side is trying to resupply the Korosten sector while the FUF attacks against Zhitomir more directly jumping off from the Fastov depot.
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Post by IV/JG7_4Shades » Fri Feb 07, 2014 7:59 pm

Agreed Armwaar. In the way I originally envisaged these scenarios, I had lined up Korosten, Zhitomir, Berdichev and Kazatin as pressure points. The problem with that is that they were all active simultaneously, so if we ran them as a series of campaigns we would lose some of the consequences from one to the next.

The good thing is that there was a lot of re-assignment of units (especially armour and artillery) between different parts of the front as the days went by in the actual battle, and we have an exhaustive documentary resource in the book. So we could cannibalize remnants from Korosten and send somewhere else.

As you say, we could also just retain the OOB in Korosten and add another focus point further south starting from the morning of 30 December, but the German retreat was very rapid in the southwest so we may run off the IL2 map quickly.

I am wondering if we should switch to the SE corner and consider the FUF breakout from Fastov and the subsequent development of the Korsun pocket. We have the major localities on the map and the rail line between Kanev and Fastov has no blocks. This may need a larger OOB, but everything is configurable.

Cheers,
4S
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Post by IV/JG7_4Shades » Mon Feb 17, 2014 9:15 am

Some preliminary statistical analysis of armour losses during the Korosten scenario:

Korosten Armour Mortality

There are two tabs at the bottom that switch between Allied and Axis armour loss views.

This page shows quite neatly how the Soviet tanks were destroyed almost 60% by armour and 30% by artillery, whereas almost 90% of the German tanks losses were by Soviet tanks (or friendly fire). Air and infantry actions were relatively insignificant.

One way to interpret this is to say that the Soviets were advancing over open ground against prepared positions, bringing German AT artillery into play.

Charlie made the point earlier that more infantry action would have been desirable. I agree, but given the difficulty we had in advancing, massed infantry assaults would have been suicidal.

I will work on the infantry loss tables next.

Cheers,
4S
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Post by IV/JG7_4Shades » Tue Feb 18, 2014 5:56 am

And here are the infantry mortality tables:

Korosten Infantry Mortality

We can see that German artillery took a fearful toll on Soviet infantry, and German armour was also very effective. On the other side, Soviet artillery was not as lethal and most German infantry losses were caused by breakthroughs of Soviet armour into rear areas.

As an individual Soviet commander in this campaign, I found it hard to coordinate infantry and armoured assaults together. The difficult transportation logistics meant that my infantry was always lagging 5 km behind the front, forcing me into attacking German weakpoints with armoured thrusts supported only by artillery barrage.

Cheers,
4S
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Post by IV/JG7_4Shades » Tue Feb 18, 2014 8:04 am

IV/JG7_4Shades
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Post by II/JG54_Emil » Tue Feb 18, 2014 4:45 pm

Great statistics!

Interesting with the capital statistics is that every large casualty suffered by Axis forces is followed by large amount of casualties of Soviet forces one or two rounds later.
I would have expected this the other way around in this scenario.
IV/JG7_4Shades
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Post by IV/JG7_4Shades » Tue Feb 18, 2014 7:20 pm

One thing has occurred to me about the heavy armour action in this campaign, and relatively light infantry action. When I designed the OOB I consciously included historical numbers and types of tanks for each side, but only one-third historical infantry numbers. This latter choice was to keep playability and command load manageable.

This design caused a couple of problems:

1/ It biased the action towards armour, out of proportion to infantry action.

2/ I created full-strength armour platoons, which also increased friendly fire tank losses.

In the next campaign, I suggest we use 1/3 historical numbers for all unit classes.

Cheers,
4S
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Post by LW/JG10_Luny » Thu Feb 20, 2014 6:15 pm

Great campaign. I have to admit I voted for the extended campaign instead of the one we played, as I thought such a small scenario would not be so interesting asthe larger one. I was totally wrong, of course.
I also noted the enemy arty barrages and artillery worked better than the red one. But probably was just my personal view. The slow advancing speed of the infantry made almost impossible a charge against enemy positions. Only the transport of the soldiers in vehicles made possible the forward advance.

My single mission experience was absolutely great, driving across the frontline, spotting friendly units trough the mist.

To be repeated.


Thanks all. Special ones to 4S and my frontline neighbours _5 and Badger.


Luny
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Post by LW/JG10_Armwaar » Fri Feb 21, 2014 7:15 pm

Interesting to see the comparison of the effectiveness of artillery in the results and the perceptions from the players.

I had little faith in the effectiveness of our artillery, but kept it firing when it seemed prudent. However, The red artillery barrage was the primary reason behind our decision to evacuate Korosten. The success against the armor left me thinking we could hold against the armor and chip away at enemy supplies, but the continued falling morale of units and commanders and attrition forced the withdrawal.

The overnight move of red in Ushomir wasn't particularly damaging to the fighting units, but it did cause some limitations in where I felt we could maneuver.

I wanted to counter attack with the RG212 infantry against the flak guns that were moved into position on the second day, but as others have noted, the infantry couldn't move much on its own.
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Post by IV/JG7_4Shades » Fri Feb 28, 2014 9:13 pm

We were reflecting about this campaign on TS the other night and it seemed worthwhile to post about it here.

I did not read any of the Axis discussion of course but I gather there was some consternation on the Axis side about the outcome of the early armoured attack north of Korosten. It is always dangerous to jump to conclusions early in a campaign, and in fact that armoured attack was a major influence on an abrupt change of Soviet tactics. I'll explain how below.

The initial Soviet tactics were, unsurprisingly, advance and make contact, then mass armour and barrage for an assault on Korosten while our eastern forces were applying pressure. We were part of the way through our preparations when the German Panthers attacked north out of Korosten.

In fact, I was on the northern highway in my jeep at the time. I witnessed the Panthers driving north and destroying things left and right. I was shot at about 15 times as I zig-zagged away over a hill. We called Devill in to attack the Panthers in his Pe-2. It was mayhem.

The Panthers and PzIV tanks took significant losses, but our northern strike forces were smashed and we could not have resisted any other armoured attack north of Korosten. The way to Ovruch was open! We immediately went on the defensive to regroup and set up anti-tank positions.

Around the same time, Badger met heavy resistance around Dabryn and had his armour 80% destroyed. Stavka was disturbed, most of our armour forces removed and the Tigers had not even been sighted yet! We were facing defeat! We changed our tactics to rely on continuous barrages to suppress German morale and flanking manoeuvres to attack weakpoints. This meant we could not achieve rapid breakthrough to Korosten or Volodarsk-Volinskiy and hence we did not meet our victory conditions.

On the German side, I suspect that the reaction to the attack was similar. A large proportion of attack tanks were lost quickly in the advance, and Soviet advances and barrages continued all around the front line. The Tigers were held in reserve in case they too were lost quickly, in which case the German resistance would fail. The German forces went on the defensive in order to preserve strength to counter any breakthroughs.

So the Panther/PzIV attack was costly to both sides but it profoundly altered the campaign. It decimated the Soviet armour force and the looming threat of the undetected Tigers removed Soviet freedom to concentrate armour and attack at will. That effectively guaranteed the ability of the Korosten garrison to hold on to the town for 12 more hours. The Soviets did not gain any identification recon on the Tigers until well into the second day - and that delay constrained Soviet plans significantly all across the front line.

It was a great campaign. Both sides made mistakes, but even mistakes can have very positive consequences in SEOW.

Cheers,
4S
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