Barbarossa Army group North : Crossing at Jekabpils June 1941

I have been super busy over the last couple of weeks, hence the lack of posting. However last week we saw a long overdue return to our ongoing Barbarossa ‘campaign’ not really a campaign rather a series of battles tracking the progress of Army Group North. I certainly had to trawl through the blog to remember where we were upto. Anyway enough of the preamble.

Our previous battles saw the Germans attempting to capture a bridge head over the Dvina River at Daugavpils, here a small brandenburg contingent successfully captured the bridges. The Germans tried the same at Jekabpils historically but failed and became engaged in a tough fight, as the Russian pulled back the bridges were blown. Engineers were able to bridge the river and push back the 12th Mechanised who were holding the area. Our fight is one very much ‘inspired by’ the battle rather than anything historical and really it was an excuse to get all the Russian forces on the table as they have been underused for some time.

Both sides have some air support, the Germans engineers have already been at work

We did have the Brandenburg units lead the way, represented by some Fallschirmjager in Russian trucks

Basically both sides were allowed 24 units each so a chance for the Germans to bring out their artillery

German infantry in armoured carriers start to cross one branch of the river Dvina, the smoke on the ridge makes the location where the Russian defenders were wiped out by a very lucky bombing strike by German Stukas

A rush for the northern bridge

Which at the start is unopposed 

The central bridge is also assaulted

1941 and the Germans are yet to bear up their armour but they have plenty of tanks

The Germans have two antitank guns but initially set them up too cautiously near the rear

The Russians have been churning out LOTS of tanks

Infantry deploy in the town together with a KV !

Oooops in hindsight I should have limited the Russian armour but it did look impressive 

Way too much Russian armour

The Germans start to come under heavy fire from the defenders but are out gunned

The Germans do their best to force crossings, some of their infantry carry additional boats to get across and the tanks use cover to force a way over

A single German PzIII gets across the main bridge but it is pinned down by a T34

One of the German planes take a hit and is blown from the sky

Lots of German infantry advance but they are lacking effective armoured support

Germans have captured the island but can’t get off the other side in the face of the Russian armour

They do manage to force the northern bridge but again find it hard to make any further progress

The Russian big cats stalking the open ground. It is often easy to forget how the Russians outgunned to German armour in 1941, we did reduce their leadership to try and balance things but this did have a big enough effect

The German boats have been successfully used to cross the river

But it is too little too late

The northern bridge is still the scene of hard fighting but the Germans have lost to impetus

As always a splendid battle, it reminded us that the Russian tanks are deadly in 1941 and you need to make allowances for this, but as a chance to get everything on the table the battle worked pretty well. 

I also had a trip down to George’s to try out CoC2 he set up a lovely German vs French 1940 battle, the Germans were attacking, always a tough prospect unless you have very superior numbers.

 An overview of the battlefield

The french defenders are able to deploy in a strong position

The Germans do their best but ultimately they get bogged down unable to advance. We now have a 1940 campaign planned to start in the next couple of weeks.

Somewhere in the last weeks we had a few days down in the Cotswolds on a family reunion holiday, including a trip to Cirencester where there is a fairly informative Museum including some nice Roman artefacts and mosaics

In have also seen an improvement in my health leading to a return to active cycling and plenty of time out in the mountains, one recent trip with some friends saw a beautiful trip up Scafell the highest point in England.

The view North from Scafell

That’s it for now, we played a big AWI battle on Friday so I will try and post that up. I have also been spending a lot of time planning my next holiday at the end of August.

I’m heading across to Europe in the van heading to Vienna picking up as much military history as I can. No doubt I will post some of this at a later date.

Thanks as always for your patience Matt ❤️