Monday 16 November 2015

Operation Blau : Battle for Voronezh June 1942

For our next foray onto the Eastern Front we are moving to June 1942. Hilter had ordered the summer offensive to destroy as much of the Soviet forces in the south as possible but his principle goal was to secure the Oilfields in the Caucasus. As part of the first phase of this the 4th Panzerarmee under General Hermann Hoth was tasked with pushing through the Soviet defenses and taking Voronezh on the River Don.

Campaign map for the Battle for Voronezh
One of the attractions of this part of Operation Blau is that a series of tank on tank battles took place with various German Panzer Divisions involved including the 11th, 9th and  24th. The Soviets threw increasingly large numbers of Tank Corps in to combat to delay and counterattack the Panzers as they broke through. Ultimately the Panzers forced their way through on their way to Stalingrad. little did they know.

We are going to fight three battles which all took place on or very close to the 29th June 1942, as shown on the campaign map above. We'll be using Blitzkrieg Commander and my 6mm collection.

The details for the campaign and the map are from Robert Forczyk's excellent book Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front 1941-1942. Our first battle will see the Katukov's 1st Tank Corps and the 16th Tank Corps under Pavelkin attacking the 11th Panzers who will be dug into a defensive position.

Hope to play it soon when work and other commitments allow.

6 comments:

  1. Massive intelligence failure on both sides. Neither side knew that the bulk of each other's forces were concentrated in the exact same place. Had the Germans known this they could have knocked Russia out of the War. Instead easily the greatest battle in History unfolded...leading to the greatest attritional struggle in History. "Voronezh" was the opening gambit in the greatest clash of arms in Human History...and sadly History has had almost nothing to say of it.

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  2. Massive intelligence failure on both sides. Neither side knew that the bulk of each other's forces were concentrated in the exact same place. Had the Germans known this they could have knocked Russia out of the War. Instead easily the greatest battle in History unfolded...leading to the greatest attritional struggle in History. "Voronezh" was the opening gambit in the greatest clash of arms in Human History...and sadly History has had almost nothing to say of it.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks George for your info

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    2. Thank you for posting. The destruction of Sevatstapol was another blunder as having taken Kerch (Operation Busterd Hunt) the Wehrmacht had an opening straight to the Kuban thus cutting off Russia's oil supply.With Air Supremacy guaranteed from Crimea the OKW could have allowed Sevatstapol to be surrendered intact to the Romanians but instead Germany destroyed Sevatstapol and then blundered into Stalingrad.

      Ooops...

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    3. Thanks I have been thinking of gaming some of the crimean conflicts but I keep getting distracted. Although we do occasionally manage an air combat game.

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