Leffrinckoucke Bridgehead and Breakout

Introduction

Having failed to stop the Prussians from getting to the beach, Danone-Yoplait had to now hurriedly re-organise his forces to prevent the Prussians capturing the Yoghurt Factory and breaking out into the Dunkerque countryside. His honour and his command were now hanging precariously by a thread and his only hope was to throw the enemy back into the sea with his remaining naval squadrons and the “Singes Capitulards”.

Deployment

If you read the previous post you know that we had intended to play the full game all the way through over a weekend, but circumstances overtook us. We decided to play the land element of the game at the next club night and so the land terrain and about a foot of sea were laid out on the ubiquitous 6 x 4.
We agreed that any land or air resources that survived the invasion game would play the breakout game. All models would be back to full health (just to avoid bookkeeping).
This left the French with only the Tourbillon in the large vessel category, while the Prussians had all except one Pflicht from the previous scenario and all of the armoured forces except the Metzgers. The French did have GNE cruisers and frigates.
The Prussian deployment was fairly standard and broadly mirrored the deployment of the landing force from the previous game. Pflichts on the far left with the Imperium and an Aufseher, then all the landing forces on their barges and the second Aufseher on the right flank.
The French similarly deployed roughly as they had been at the end of the last game. GNE naval assets and the Tourbillon on the right flank (facing the Prussian aerial forces), mainly bombards with some small and medium tank support in the centre and on the French left flank the majority of the medium tanks.

The Battle

The French started as they meant to go on, pushing forward in an effort to deny the Prussian landing any space. In the first turns firepower was concentrated on Prussian aerial assets, while the Prussians fired on targets of opportunity. Prussian ironclad forces and infantry (including cavalry from the elite 12th Oldenburg Grenadiers) were quickly ashore, duelling with advance elements of the French mobile artillery and their ironclad support.
In the following turn the duel became a rout as the Prussian aerial fleet started lending support to the armoured forces on the ground. Two French bombard squadrons were decimated and the French started to fall back on the factory and their GNE support vessels. The Tourbillon stood at bay firing at targets on the ground and in the air covering the retreat below. Prussian fire started to tell and before the Tourbillon could be boarded by Luftmarine squads from the lead Pflicht squadron, it burst into flames and crashed to the ground. Prussian elation was short lived though, as the Aufseher of the Göteborg Commandery was brought down by the concentrated fire of artillery and GNE ordnance.
In the third turn , the second Aufseher was also brought down by concentrated ground fire. However, concentrating on the airlanding ships had distracted the French from the main Prussian force and the Sturmpanzer and A6-V squadrons pushed ashore and spread out along the beach. French medium armour engaged at close range but as more and more Prussian force was brought to bear, the battle of attrition shifted towards Prussian victory. Although the firepower of the French Foucault tanks was telling there were not enough of them to stem the tide and so the Prussians took the factory as the French fell back towards Dunkerque.

The Aftermath

Danone-Yoplait did the best he could, but was heavily outnumbered due to the errors during the landing assault. The plan to concentrate on Prussian heavy air assets while the rest of the Prussians disembarked was probably a good one, but a lot of firepower was needed to bring down the first Aufseher. The second Aufseher was easier to eliminate but it was right in the middle of the French forces and was taking fire from all over the place. By the time both Aufsehers were destroyed the Prussians had landed in force and the Tourbillon had become so much smouldering wreckage in the workers garden at the Yoghurt Factory, so I think the game became unwinnable from there on in.
The star of the game was the Foucault. I’m going to have to pay attention to them in the future. Hopefully the introduction of the HM-1 Recke heavy transport will help beef up the Tesla weaponry of the A6-V which proved woefully inadequate.
I got deployment wrong yet again and hadn’t thought through my landing strategy. Len pointed this out but as part of my counter psychology I pretended I knew what I was doing and as I won it’s patently obvious I must have done! So if I have learnt anything it is stick to what you know. My mine laying and amphibious operations skill are essentially more down to luck rather than judgement.
Len has been a good sport and an excellent opponent in all of our games (not just these last three). I wonder if I can get him to play some sort of harbour raid scenario where the Prussian land and naval forces attack Dunkerque…