Death Lowered its Eyes

Tags

Arab Israeli Wars, Divided Ground, Egypt, Israel, Middle East, Shmuel Gonen, six-day war, Steel Panthers, The Arab-Israeli Wars

One of my disappointments with ME67 and its treatment of the Six Day War was that I felt there was a mismatch between Tiller’s Modern Campaigns mechanics and the nature of this war. The Tiller algorithms lean towards a steady attrition in strength and morale and this seems to miss when portraying the rapid maneuver that characterized Israel’s successes during this fight. As a way to explore this potential gap, we might explore tactical-level representations of these same fights.

This my third in a series of posts on the Six-Day War. See here for the previous post in the series and here to go back to the master post.

 

As before, the starting point for tactical warfare in the Levant seems to be the Avalon Hill The Arab Israeli Wars. I imagine that the extensive order-of-battle research done in the development of the board game is too valuable a resource to not use. Whatever the reason, the availability of computer scenarios seem to flow from that Avalon Hill Rule Book.

The Sh’ot Meteor is the Israeli designation for the British Centurion.

First on my plate is a Steel Panthers scenario which offers itself to be a version of the AH scenario A-4 Rafa. Or, as the scenario text says, it is “inspired” by the AH scenario. A-4 is intended to portray the rapid seizure of Egyptian strong points just across the international border where land meets sea. The setup uses three boards but, in an tA-I Wars twist, the boards aren’t actually connected. The Israelis (and Egypt’s main battle tank force) can move from board to board in a Westerly direction, but not directly. They require a transition turn to bridge the gap between boards.

The Steel Panthers version is different, it explicitly has two axes of attack for the Israeli advance, crossing the screen diagonally from upper right to lower left. My guess is it is an attempt to recreate the first day or two of the Israeli advance into the Sinai in miniature. I’ll not try to back up my speculation, but the Steel Panthers map looks more like the northeastern Sinai than it does the immediate vicinity of Rafah. Based on this observation, I’m going to assume this scenario neither reproduces the board game scenario nor does it accurately simulate details from the June 5th battle. So what does it do for us?

Mile-long shots were pretty effective, circa 1967.

First of all, it shows us the beauty of Steel Panthers when it comes to armored combat in the desert. Sight lines routinely extend for a mile or two and the British 105mm L7 tank can make short work of even a concealed and protected enemy at these great distances. In doing so, it demonstrates the rapidity with which a small mountain of Egyptian armor can be dispatched. It also demonstrates one of the more frustrating aspects of desert warfare in Steel Panthers – the sand. I’m constantly getting stuck in the sand! It feels (I didn’t count) like I lost as much as a third of my armored fighting vehicles to sand-initiated mobility kills. Is this realistic? I have no idea, but if that much armor was really disabled during an attack by nothing more than sand, you’d think it would be notable.

Of course, it could be just bad playing on my part. This is always a distinct possibility. You can see on the screenshots, the terrain is made up of basic desert terrain and “soft sand” (especially below you can see the ripply graphic in some hexes). I tend to be a lot more focused on avoiding mines and vulnerable exposures, so I wasn’t paying close attention, but it would make sense that it is that soft sand that is doing me in. The own-side AI does not seem to consider “soft sand” as a obstacle when calculating your path. If so, game play might require being very deliberate when moving in the vicinity of this hidden tank killer. Maybe next time I can be more observant.

On the other end of the mile-long kill shots.

So that’s worth something, but fortunately it isn’t all. The Steel Panther scenario list contains another opportunity to compare and contrast different approaches in this battle. The 4th scenario in the MBT package is called Egyptian Armor — Six Day War (see screenshot above). Its the same battle as before, but played* from the Egyptian side. I was surprised to see a scenario designed to be played from the defense. Typically, an AI has trouble handling offensive maneuvers, even when that same AI is capable of reasonably mounting a static defense. Perhaps, in this case, this natural advantage is intended to be mitigated by the fact that the player takes the role of the underdog. We do all remember this was, historically, a lopsided Israeli victory, right?

Despite the differences, it is immediately apparent that I’m playing the other side of the same battle. I start out with a nice array of Soviet armor plus foot soldiers ready to engage the Israeli assault in the open. Much like when I was playing as Israel, there is some initial success as I catch the Israeli armor by surprise. In this scenario it is obvious, even more so than the first time around, that it is the Israeli air superiority that turns the tables. Once the Israeli jets start streaking through, they manage to kill everything they target. And once Israel gets rolling, their armor can maneuver freely and basically take out everything I’ve got. Even so, that only gets them about halfway there.

Dug in at Rafah Junction.

My second defensive line is at Rafah Junction (above), where I’m dug into prepared positions. Naturally, I’m not going to be maneuvering any of these units, so this part of the game is one of waiting until Israel comes in range. There are couple of things to note here. First of all, compare the layout of the map to the original. In particular, notice the mini-map if you can make it out. What you are looking at it a road leading from the international border southwest to Rafah Junction, after which it splits. If you compare this to any of the screenshots from my operational games, you’ll see this is a much more accurate representation. In the first of the two above screens, you’ll also see a black line on the north edge which, when shown in the main view, is not a road. This is the coastal railroad and it is in its historical place. If I had scrolled even further northward, you would have been able to see the Mediterranean Sea on the map. Second lesson from this scenario, and a unique less on at that, is that it demonstrates how the Israelis planned their attack, not along the expected route, but through the open desert. The bulk of my fixed positions in Rafah Junction will turn out to be nearly worthless as the Israeli tanks come at them from the side.

In the end, this scenario was a moderate victory for me giving me the pleasure of bucking history. Unfortunately, the credit goes more to the weakness of the AI than my own tactical prowess. After wiping out my first line, the Israeli’s AI could not quite pull together a coordinated attack within the time limit set by the scenario. By the end, I was still on the losing end of most fights, but the Israeli’s never made it to my defenses. It didn’t help that, once the Israeli Air Force knocked out all of my tanks, they began taking out their own. Clearly the AI isn’t quite up to this challenge. I will take the word of the scenario designer, though, and without trying to play it, assume that the AI would do even worse trying to run the Egyptians.

Recreating the board.

The best version of this battle came from an unexpected direction. I also pulled out Divided Ground: Middle East Conflict 1948-1973. Then I loaded that game’s recreation of said-same board game scenario A-4 Rafa. You might recall the series I wrote about earlier where the The Arab-Israeli Wars scenarios are recreated as accurately as possible by Alan R. Arvolds. In this case, I’ve made no attempt at setting up** the table-top game boards to compare – I’ll take it on faith that the reproduction is accurate. It sure looks right.

One surprising thing here, though, is that Divided Ground has very much the same feel as the WinSPMBT Egyptian Armor scenario. Surprising, for one, because this map (above) is not an attempt to reproduce the area around Rafah Junction – it’s reproducing Arab-Israeli Wars where all of the Middle East is created by four “geomorphic” boards. Nevertheless, I actually do feel that I’m playing the Israeli side of the Egyptian Armor scenario. Second surprise is that I can actually see the AI opponent doing something. In this case, it is retreating, which isn’t exactly “smart, aggressive AI,” but retreating is just what I did when I played the Egyptians. After knocking out some Israeli tanks during their initial advance, the smart move seems to fall back on a better defensive line. I wasn’t very successful with this in Steel Panthers, but the Divided Ground AI seems to be making a decent go of it.

One of the complaints about the scenarios in The Arab Israeli Wars is that they tend to all favor the Israeli player. I would have expected this to exasperated to twice over here. Beyond the original scenario balance, you also have the advantage of playing against a computer AI. Furthermore, it is a situation (including things like AI but also setup and unit mix) that was created for a different gaming platform (the board, the dice, and the odds tables) than how it is being implemented (Divided Ground). Instead, I found myself playing a pretty tough game. I try to advance semi-cautiously, but seem to be failing. It is difficult to cover the board rapidly enough to win and I know in my gut I am moving too slowly but, at the same time, as I venture forward, I’m losing a many a unit to ambushes and long-shot kills. To win (and lets ignore scoring in this calculation) the Israeli has got to traverse the whole map while achieving minimal losses – and that would seem to be quite the challenge.

Israel doesn’t have the massive air power that the Steel Panthers version featured and, unlike in Egyptian Armor, the Egyptians have fairly effective artillery. It’s a debate that is well outside the scope of this post, but there is a greater question of just how effective artillery is and/or was. In Divided Ground, or at least in this here scenario, the answer is that the artillery is pretty durned effect, possibly more so than in alternative engines. Finally, besides the TOAW Sinai scenario itself, this is the only version of this battle that really captures the required speed with which the player must slice across the battlefield. In this, I think it is uniquely (at least, in my trials so far) a key element of this fight and this campaign.

Divided Ground does some good stuff in terms of modeling. It’s use of 3D and sound, dated as it may be, somehow forms more of a connection that so many of the alternatives. It helps that someone has taken the time to convert every one of The Arab-Israeli Wars, making them available for solo play. The drawback is that I’m on an ancient computer (that I shouldn’t even be running anymore) fighting a decades-old user interface. I find myself,once again, wondering if I shouldn’t be springing for the reworked version of Divided Ground.

*That’s not quite right, now is it. In Steel Panthers, all scenarios can be played from either side or as a player-on-player game. Frequently the scenario designer makes a recommendation of how his creation will work best when played against the UI. In this case AIW: Rafa is intended to be played as Israel and Egyptian Armor by Egypt, so I’ll take the liberty as treating them as a playable only from that side.

**One thing I did do was download the Vassal module for the game. It is still quite a bit of work to set up a scenario in The Arab-Israeli Wars with Vassal because most of the scenarios are free set-up. Perhaps is some future post, however, I’ll being inspired to compare directly with the board game version knowing that I don’t have to protect it from dog, cat, and family members while I’m fiddling with my stacks of counters. I have to imagine I’d be a lot happy with Campaign Series: Middle East 1948-1985 installed on my “real” computer. But $40 for a 19-year-old expansion to the 1997 East Front? How does one justify such a thing?

Return to the master post for the Six Day War or continue on to the next article.

The Hurt You Leave Behind

Tags

Blackfoot, Cold War, Seven Firefights in Vietnam, Squad Battles: Tour of Duty, Steel Panthers, Vietnam, WinSPMBT

This post is numbered fifty-one in a series of posts on the Vietnam War. See here for the previous post in the series and here to go back to the master post.

The second of the Seven Firefights in Vietnam is a considerably shorter action than the first. While the battle at Landing Zone X-Ray was fought over days, the bulk of the action in the second battle, “Convoy Ambush on Highway 1” was winding down after the first forty-five minutes or so. As the book reads, it sounds like an impossible combination of factors conspired to produce this battle. At least, it sounds impossible unless you consider this is one of hundreds of similar small-unit actions, the rest of which were not unique enough to be featured in Seven Firefights in Vietnam.

The book gives a quick but informative background to the battle. The 11th Armored Cavalry deployed to Vietnam in September, 1966. Their mission was a specific response to the insecurity of the highways in South Vietnam at the time. The so-called Blackhorse regiment were outfitted with up-armored M113s plus three companies of M-48 Patton tanks. They had also undergone specific anti-ambush training, practicing and preparing their reaction to ambushes while escorting convoys. The regiment immediately went to work, spreading itself thin while providing highway security and simultaneously building a base camp near the Đồng Nai provincial capital of Xuân Lộc. In early November, the U.S. Army received intelligence that the Viet Cong was targeting the lightly-defended but resource-rich base camp. In response, additional supplies and far-flung units were summoned home.

It seems like a good bit of dumb luck was involved in making sure that an extra-large convoy was headed toward the base at exactly the time the VC set up a complex ambush on that highway. No doubt the VC were aware that convoys moved to supply the base but it was only the intelligence of the VC movements that resulted in an extra-long convoy – more than eighty vehicles, by one estimate – passing through the ambush zone. The U.S. Army hadn’t planned for this super-convoy and weren’t entirely prepared for its scale. The escort commander, Lt. Neil L. Keltner, had but two platoons of the light-armor M113. He did find an additional vehicle, riding with the convoy itself, giving him a total of nine combat vehicles providing defensive combat capabilities. Although he couldn’t know it, these nine vehicles would be fighting in a 1.5 km ambush zone against two VC battalions and a regimental headquarters, all experienced guerrilla fighters.

From this point forward though, lady luck switched sides. As the convoy was beginning to move, a coded radio transmission was intercepted indicated that the 274th Regimental headquarters was in play and pinpointed its location to the stretch of Highway 1 where the convoy was about to move. Rapid reaction, within a minute of receiving the intelligence, launched a pair of helicopters for air support and provided warning to the convoy escorts, even though the size of the ambush was not fully appreciated. The result was that, instead of being surprised and trapped in the killing zone, much of the convoy raced through the ambush, guns ablaze at the roadside attackers. Perhaps even the paucity of information helped the Americans. It was assumed that the ambush forces were small in number and would be composed infantry small-arms – more of a harassment than a full-scale threat. Such an attack could be bypassed so, with the convoy prepared to run the gauntlet, as much of a third of the vehicles made it through the killing zone before the VC began to use their heavy weapons (recoiless rifles). The tail end of the convoy was able to halt before entering the killing zone. Furthermore, only minutes after the ambush began, a trio of F-100s were diverted from a scheduled mission and were over the battlefield ready to deliver more air support.

Given the size of the ambush and the scarcity of forces on the U.S. side, the Americans came out very well. Seven men did lose their lives and the Army lost four trucks and two M113s. Another eight soldiers were wounded.

The Tour of Duty map provides an excellent picture of the ambush zone.

Opening up this scenario (Ambush at Xa Xuan Loc) in Squad Battles: Tour of Duty, I was immediately impressed with what I saw. The maps printed in Seven Firefights aren’t very clear in my copy, so what I saw in-game was a well-illustrated version of what I had just tried to imagine while reading. The M113s are represented one-for-one but, while there are lots and lots of trucks, the total length of the convoy is likely underrepresented. From that initial impression onward, however, my feelings for this one went downhill.

The scenario is six turns long, which means we are only looking at the initial reaction to the ambush. Engaged forces include only the vehicle-mounted weaponry on the M113s; there is no representation of infantry units or passengers. The scenario does include the arrival of the two Huey gunships although, when I played the scenario, the Hueys didn’t show up until turn six, meaning there was no chance to use them. I’m going to assume that the air support is tied to a randomly-varying delay as it would make little sense to include units that arrive on-map but are impossible to employ. Request for fixed-wing support is limited to the commander of the Armored Cavalry. In my first run-through, the command M113 was knocked out in between the time when he requested air support and when he could direct the strikes. That meant that my airstrikes were called off. More about this later.

The result was an American disaster. Huge vehicle losses, both in terms of the transports and the escorts. I lost my one infantry unit – the leader shown in the above screenshot. The lopsidedness of the victory, and the fact that the actual result was just as lopsided in the opposite direction, makes me wonder about how the modelling can be so far off. As with the battle at Ap Bau Bang, depicted in A Change of Tune, the M113s were actually very effective and rapidly moved up and down the column to break up the ambush. VC fire was effective, causing individual casualties as well as taking out two of the vehicles, but the M113s were able to prevail. Part of the reason, it is figured, is that the VC did not expect the vehicles to be as effective and deadly as they were. The insurgents were used to the transport version of the M113 and may have been surprised and neutralized by the better-equipped versions employed by the Blackhorse regiment.

Mind the gaps. The Steel Panthers take is Steel Panthers -ugly, but from the get-go adds details that improve the experience.

Unhappy, as I was, with the Tour of Duty version, I tried the Steel Panthers: Main Battle Tank scenario (Ambush on Highway 1) as well. In stark contrast, the initial impression of graphics and terrain representation in Steel Panthers is not favorable; and rarely is. The graphics are dated, the terrain bizarrely geometrical, and the scenario uses contrived terrain to fit the scenario’s parameters. For example, in both the above and below screenshots, you can see the use of “stream” hexes to represent the drainage ditches along Highway 1.

Also in contrast, the experience did improve as I got into it. Right away certain aspects of the battle, as described in Seven Firefights in Vietnam, translated themselves from the page to the gaming screen. As the convoy moved, it began to bunch up in some places and develop gaps in others. The convoy was described as containing “about every size and shape [vehicle] in the U.S. Army inventory,” making coordination difficult. Seven Firefights cites this as a factor in the battle.

Frequent overflights by a spotter aircraft helped me identify where the enemy was hidden. Note also, though, that I have a lot of trucks on fire even though the scenario is just getting started.

Similarly, another key aspect of the battle’s outcome, shown in the above screenshot, was represented. Because command was alerted to the location of the ambush, Captain Robert Smith* was was in the air above the convoy even as the shooting started. Radio discussions between air support and intelligence meant that the air units had, in some cases, even better intelligence than Lt. Keltner commanding from the ground. Tellingly, Keltner lost the use of his radio for a portion of his battle and had to transfer his command to a new vehicle. During this time overhead observers were able to continue coordination of support.

In the end, the Steel Panthers version of the battle was also particularly bloody. I lost 23 convoy trucks and 4 of my M113s. Unlike the Tour of Duty version, Steel Panthers models the crews and passengers for the vehicles and I wound up losing 89 personnel to the enemy. This high number includes the drivers and passengers in the unarmored trucks and jeeps. The game ranked it a “draw,” which, for me at least, can soften a rough time during scenario play – I feel that while I could have done better, I also could have done far worse.

Massive losses aside, the experience of playing the scenario is actually a good one. When the scenario starts, you have this awful feeling of being overwhelmed. Trucks are blowing up left and right and the VC’s recoiless rifles can knock out an escort vehicle before you even have time to shoot back. However, matching the narrative of the battle, the M113s that survived had excellent mobility and could move about the column. When the Hueys arrive, the nature of the fight flipped. It becomes my turn to move around the map wiping out the enemy while they have little recourse. The Steel Panthers M113s use some kind of grenade launchers (modeled in the game as “Claymore Mines”) that makes them very effective when overrunning insurgent infantry.

So why the huge gap between historical results and game results that persists across the different platforms (despite the very different gameplay experience)? Well, one possibility is that I played the scenarios incorrectly. I won’t dismiss this entirely; if you’ve read my posts before you’ll know I can be pretty inept at beating some of these scenarios. However, in both games I found that in the opening turns my losses exceeded the historical losses. It doesn’t seem possible that I could have missed a tactical approach (whether obvious or obscure) that could have avoided that result. It is also possible that these scenarios were never intended to be historical simulations. Eliminating certain factors which, in real life, caused the Americans to have an overwhelming victory could serve the game by turning this historical encounter into a well-balanced, difficult-to-win scenario. It seems that, for players, solving that challenge is more fun than meticulously recreating the historical result. This, too, doesn’t quite explain everything. The order-of-battles, map, and positioning certainly seem to be historically based (within the limitations of these two games to do so).

Looking beyond those first two explations, this suggests that the modelling within these games are either a) more lethal than reality or, b) biased toward the insurgency, or possibly a mix of both. It does seem to be a pattern across a number of different scenarios. One possibility is that it is morale-based, as I alluded to above. I would imagine that the performance of guerrillas forces, particularly against U.S. and Free World Allied units, would have been hit and miss. Even if so, a scenario rule that said you had 50-50 chance of all VC being worthless might be accurate, but it would be a game-killer. So perhaps the reason is that, in game, the VC are always at the top of the potential whereas in real-life they were thrown off their game by morale factors. In this case, the fact they were surprised by the effectiveness of the M113s certainly blunted their attack.

A similar calculus applies to equipment. Communist equipment was not of the highest reliability. When reading The Boys of ’67, I recall several actions where the VC grenades were described as mostly harmless. They often did not explode and, even when they did, did so with reduced force. But while the odds may have been in your favor, that doesn’t mean you wanted to be sitting atop one when it went off. I wonder if the games might over-represent the effectiveness of the VC equipment, again necessary for good gameplay if not entirely historically accurate.

Another possible source of error when comparing game results to after-action-reports is one of definition. Consider, in this case, the board game origins of games such as these two. In many a cardboard game, the result of a combat action is often all-or-none. You roll the dice and either the target of the attack survives or is removed from the board (it might even say KIA in the combat table). But does that really mean “killed,” as in everybody dies? In a tactical game, removing a counter really means that unit is unavailable as a fighting force through the end of the scenario (perhaps on the order of another 20 minutes, give or take). That could mean killed or wounded, but it could also mean scattered, or out of ammunition, or cut off from command. Sometimes these other factors are more explicitly modeled but the fact is, if a counter is going to be non-functional for the remainder of the game for whatever reason, you might as well remove it from the board. In Seven Firefights in Vietnam, the author describes the harrowing effect of recoiless rifle hits, particularly on the armored M113s. In most cases, however, while damaging, they don’t result in “kills.” Steel Panthers provides an explosion sound effect and a smoking wreck when a vehicle gets removed from play, but that is certainly a simplification of the wide range of complex conditions that takes a vehicle out of a fight.

Another notable point from the Seven Firefights in Vietnam is that, while VC rockets are mentioned in the narrative, none of the killed vehicles are attributed to RPGs. In both Steel Panthers and Squad Battles, on the other hand, RPGs are very common to the communist forces and result in a large number of the casualties, particular to the softer vehicular targets. It makes me wonder whether, given the 1966 scenario date, the the RPGs are either over prevalent or over-powered.

Whatever the case, this is mostly me taking myself too seriously. Particularly the Steel Panthers version of this scenario is a decent representation of this battle. It provides a nice, and fun, companion to the chapter in Seven Firefights in Vietnam.

A second ambush, taking place a bit more than a week later, also provoked a response and pitched battle during this the this operation. I explore that in another article. You could also return to the the master post

*With his overhead view, he is the one that provided both the estimate of the number of vehicles as well as the “every size and shape” quote.

Can’t You Hear the Thunder?

Tags

ANZAC, Australia, Cold War, Men at Work, New Zealand, Steel Panthers, The Operational Art of War, Vietnam, Vietnam Combat Operations, wargames, WinSPMBT

This is the forty-second in a series of posts on the Vietnam War. See here for the previous post in the series and here to go back to the master post.

For much of 1965 and the early months of 1966, the Royal Australian Regiment (RAR), 1st Battalion, fought as a part of the 173rd Airborne Brigade of the U.S. army, engaging the enemy in the vicinity of Saigon. After a year in Vietnam, the 1st Battalion returned to Australia, being replaced by the 1st Australian Task Force. The 1st ATF was a brigade-sized unit which could operate independently of the 173rd. Under Australian command, the 1st ATF contained both Australian and New Zealand forces.

After their arrival, the 1st ATF and its two infantry battalions, the 5th and 6th of the RAR, established a base at Nui Dat, in the Phước Tuy Province, south and east of Saigon. The location placed them so as to interfere with Viet Cong supply routes and nearby a suspected VC base area. The force was tasked with securing the area around Nui Dat, protecting the local population and government from VC harassment, as well as supporting the bigger picture in the III Corps tactical zone (the area outside of Saigon). From their initial deployment, there was intelligence warning of a VC attack of up-to-four-battalion strength .

While the 1st ATF pursued the rumors of enemy formations throughout the late spring and early summer, it wouldn’t be until mid-August that significant contact was made. While the evidence of large VC units in the vicinity continued to build, fighting was, at its most expansive, in company-sized engagements. Follow-through never managed to locate the suspected enemy positions. On the night of August 16th, into the morning of the 17th, the base at Nui Dat came under heavy mortar attack, once again indicating a significant enemy presence nearby.

Three Viet Cong formations are detected north and east of Nui Dat. This may be more than the Aussies want to confront on their own.

Naturally, the scenario Vietnam Combat Operations, Volume IV, depicts this encounter and the subsequent operations around Nui Dat. The fight also is shown in detail within a pair of scenarios from Steel Panthers: Main Battle Tank (SPMBT). This gives an opportunity to offer some thoughts on the limits of The Operational Art of War (TOAW) to depict the ground covered by Vietnam Combat Operations.

If you look at the above screenshot, you can see that two VC battalion-sized units are identified in the vicinity of Nui Dat (best located via the 1st ATF headquarters unit at the center of the shot – with an ATF in the center of its graphic). A third, and stronger, enemy unit is located to the east. This additional intelligence may be due to my adventurousness. Feeling pretty confident that the area around Nui Dat was secure ahead of the historical schedule, I pushed west to contest a village, Xuyên Mộc. An ARVN airborne unit holds that strong point and the ahistorical location of that force may be providing additional intelligence.

The point of this detail is that, to my TOAW eye (such as it is), it looks to me that I am facing a superior enemy force. It is speculated that the VC were planning an attack as they knew that the the 5th RAR was operating away from the immediate vicinity of the Australian base. In response to the possibility of being attacked, the Australians sent out company-strength patrols (companies of the 6th RAR) to, once again, attempt to locate the enemy formations. However, the mechanics of TOAW suggest I do differently. Given the knowledge that I am facing strong enemy units, I am not going to move without superiority both in quality and number of units. You may or may not be able to see it in my screenshot, but I immediately returned the 5th RAR to the operational area by helicopter. I brought it, not back to base, but instead into a blocking position to the north of the enemy. At this point I’m trying to calculate how much ARVN support I have nearby and assessing both the practicality and necessity of bringing in U.S. forces to augment my Australians.

Initial contact in the Rubber Plantation. There appear to be a lot more of them than there are of me.

Before I go there, I decided to take advantage of the trio of tactical-level scenarios that are available to me. The first one I tried is Diggers at Work, a Steel Panthers: Main Battle Tank scenario. I started with this one because the date in the scenario description is four days before the actual battle depicted, an error in the scenario write-up. It quite clearly depicts the fighting on August 18th. It begins, as the screenshot above shows, with a company strength patrol through the rubber plantation near the Australians’ base and their encountering of enemy positions. If you’re counting units, the patrol is divided into 3 platoon-strength forces, and this pictures shows the middle fork of the advance.

As I said, the scenario begins with initial contact between the advancing Australian platoons and small groups of VC. It quickly becomes apparent to the Australian player that he is facing a much larger VC force to his front. At this point I was shy of the victory locations, but felt that I had to be on the defensive against this obviously-superior force. The Australian, also around this time, receives the historical artillery support that allowed the 6th RAR to prevail against vastly superior numbers.

A reinforcing company arrives in M-113s on the enemies left flank, ready to carry the day.

The design of this scenario again brings up the question of how battles are represented in the game engine. The forces appear to be historically sized, although its not clear (neither in the historical record nor because I didn’t turn off the “fog of war” settings to examine the VC side) if the full strength of the communist formation is represented in Steel Panthers. Similarly, the size of the battlefield appears reasonable. The duration of the battle, however, is significantly compressed. The infantry transports carrying the reinforcing A Company arrived some 3 hours after the fighting first developed, almost triple the duration of the entire scenario. By contrast, in a little more than half-an-hour into the scenario we, the player, receive our reinforcements. Perhaps one way of interpreting this is that the “downtime” is stripped out of the gameplay. So the first 10 turns should not be seen as 30 minutes of clock time, but rather as the most interesting 30 minutes (out of 3 hours) for each of the 3 platoons that are engaged. In fact, one might consider that while you are fighting with all three of your platoons simultaneously, the reality you are simulating actually has these fights staggered across several hours of time. Lulls between VC attacks are likewise raced over to get to the next burst of action. In this way, reinforcements arriving half way through the scenario might make sense.

This does, of course, cause problems. I’ve mention before that the tactical-level wargames are generally restricted to the 45 minute-to-an-hour timeframe. As explained elsewhere (perhaps in the PanzerBlitz manual?) the limit on scenario duration is to bring the game to an end before the likes of ammunition shortages, fuel limits, and unit exhaustion become dominating factors. The critical elements for an operational-level game, things such as supply, are ignored in a shorter length game. In this battle, however, during the 5-6 hours in which the heavy fighting took place, ammunition resupply was a major factor. The initial patrol was sent out with just three magazines per infantryman, sacrificing fighting ability for endurance. Where the expected encounter was to consist of chasing small groups of enemies through rough terrain, having a lighter load seemed more important than being ready to engage in an extended firefight. At the same time the relief company was on the way to provide relief, command was desperately trying to get ammo resupply to the besieged platoons.

Immediately, the feel of this one is better than in Steel Panthers. The background thundershower noise probably helps a lot.

For contrast, we’ll move on to the Squad Battles: Tour of Duty representation of the same scenario, The Battle at Long Tan. By contrast this does not attempt to portray much beyond the initial contact between the searching companies the the Viet Cong positions. What this means is that the resulting game is much more plausible in terms of actual (or at least potential) fighting keeping it to that first forty-five minutes or so.

Also supporting realism, and contrasting to some of the other Squad Battles scenarios I’ve played, the Australian forces do have artillery support in the form of a single battery on call. It isn’t enough to allow the player to bring in the full impact of artillery support that was so critical in winning this battle but, if we’re sticking to that first 45 minutes, it is likely it was before most of the off-board support would come into play.

The ambiance is helped by the thundershower sounds in the background. The miserable weather was another important factor in this battle, although I can’t say how important it is in the the Squad Battles math, much less the other game engines where there is no indication that we’re caught in a storm.

From a purely gaming standpoint, the scenario isn’t so bad either. The map differs from either the jungle or the rice paddies maps that we are used to playing, so that’s a good thing. The plantation terrain helps to create much more interesting lines of sight. It allows allows the occasional long distant shot, but it also creates nooks and crannies of hidden spots, even very close by. Movement is also much more similar to the open terrain of the rice fields as opposed to the one-hex-per-turn of the jungle. In this one, the Australians have well-maintained roads along which to advance, adding to the their tactical option.

All things considered, I think Squad Battles does this fight best. That said, I imagine most of us would have a hankering for those reinforcements to come in to save the day. Without them, there is no real way to achieve a satisfying victory. One can accumulating the victory points to achieve victory, but you do so knowing that the worst is yet to come.

Here comes the human wave again.

As I indicated, the Steel Panthers scenario package contains two versions of this battle. The second scenario, Made of Stern Stuff, is correctly located in time by its scenario notes. Because of this, it ended up being the last scenario chronologically. In truth, it is simply another representation of the same battle.

I like the map better than the one in Diggers. It is more expansive and more chaotic. In Diggers, if you know what happened in the battle, you can anticipate how the scenario plays out. You know, to start, that the enemy is somewhere near the map’s victory locations. It only makes sense to advance those positions cautiously, ready to fall back on a defensive line when the enemy appears in force. Note that the line of advance is along the rows of the rubber plantation. It means there are long lines of sight which must be broken up by advancing either behind or along the trees.

Contrast that with Stern Stuff. Having just played Squad Battles, I immediately miss the dedicated plantation terrain and the much clearer graphics of that other title. However, this third scenario, using the tools at hand, creates a map that, yes, feels a bit more like a cultivated plantation rather than just wild jungle while still providing an unpredictable landscape for the battle. Lines of sight are less obvious. Also considerably less obvious, particularly at the outset (it is much more obvious by the time I took the screenshot at Turn 7), is where the enemy is. Playing the Australians, you have to begin the scenario attempting to reconnoiter the enemy’s positions. Once the shooting begins, you remain uncertain. Is the entire enemy to your front. Will they be coming around your flanks? Maybe there is another platoon or two behind you.

More support rolling in.

Steel Panthers also, in general and in this scenario in particular, shows an advantage in depicting fire support. As critical as it was in the Vietnam War, it makes a huge difference in gameplay when it works as it should. In Squad Battles‘ The Battle at Long Tan, the artillery support is from a single battery. Granted, this is very early on in the contact and it makes sense that the Australians had yet to bring the full weight of their air and artillery to bear. However, it emphasizes the weakness of artillery in Squad Battles. With a single gun, it can be difficult to do any noticeable damage with indirect fire. This is a combination of the fact that indirect guns are not particularly deadly and that it is very difficult to consistently achieve direct hits without a line-of-sight from the shooter to the target. In Stern Stuff, catching advancing VC in open ground allows them to be ripped apart by concentrated artillery fire. The trick is to have ground units that can keep track of the enemy’s movements so that artillery can be walked onto the moving targets. In this regard, this scenario gets it right, more so than any of the others.

I think this one also reinforces the idea that in a turn-based game, the “clock” can be a soft and fuzzy thing. Trying to interpret this scenario as an 90 minute slice out of the fighting August 18th fails to capture the intent of the scenario designer. Better to interpret it as bursts of 15-20 minute actions with the 30-40 minute lulls between fighting simply ignored. It would feel a lot more authentic if there were a way to acknowledge the down time and perhaps even model its effects. However, we are talking here about user-made scenarios for a long-time engine, so we shouldn’t get too greedy.

Lastly, in this version of the scenario, I get the feeling (more than the others) that it was made based upon a memoir or personal history. The named locations and other details have the feeling of being pulled from a soldier’s personal recollection of the battle. I’ve gotten used to seeing the War in Vietnam purely from the American perspective. This is one battle where there is extensive information from the Australian’s point of view. It is no wonder that it has been well covered.

Return to the master post for more Vietnam War articles or move ahead to a book review.

In Defense of Dominoes

Tags

Cold War, England, Southeast Asia, Steel Panthers, Vietnam, Wall Street Journal, WinSPMBT, World War II

This is the thirty-fourth in a series of posts on the Vietnam War. See here for the previous post in the series and here to go back to the master post.

At the end of January, the Wall St. Journal ran an editorial written by author and former National Security Council staff-member, William Lloyd Stearman. The subject of his article was how America’s active participation in the Vietnam War, while not saving South Vietnam as a nation, likely saved the region from communism. The article is titled, America Lost Vietnam but Saved Southeast Asia, and is likely behind a paywall for you.

He makes a number of interesting points which, despite my immersion in books from the period, hadn’t quite occurred to me in just this way.

First off, he suggests that it was Vietnam that brought the United States into World War II. More than a year before Pearl Harbor (the article actually has a mistaken date for the events in question), Japan had demanded military transit rights in French Indochina. The French acquiesced to their demands after rapidly surrendering under the threat of Japanese military invasion. Ultimately Vichy France, under Axis diplomatic pressure, turned over the whole of Indochina, making it a Japanese protectorate. President Roosevelt quickly announced sanctions which froze Japanese financial assets in America. The British and the Dutch followed, within days, with similar policies. Says Stearman, it was this act by the United States which convinced Japan that the U.S. would, in the end, use its fleet to block Japanese expansion in the region. In an effort to preempt an American attack, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

The author then continues on to talk about the effects that America’s active involvement had in South East Asia, possibly saving Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Indonesia from communist takeovers. The U.S. ramp-up, he says, inspired British intervention in Malaysia and Indonesia. Similarly, Suharto may not have fought the Chinese-backed coup, which took place in Indonesia on September 30th, 1965, had he not witnessed the actions of U.S. forces in Vietnam. Had that coup in Indonesia succeeded, it is likely that the Philippines would have been destabilized by their own communist insurgents. Given that the U.S. had a long standing defense agreement with the Philippines, and that a civil war there would have likely triggered that agreement, this would have begun a U.S. involvement on an even larger scale than the one in Vietnam. At least, so opines Stearman.

He also draws one more controversial conclusion about the Vietnam War. He says that contrary to popular opinion, which generally declares that the Vietnam War was unwinnable no matter the U.S. strategy, North Vietnamese sources acknowledge a path to American and South Vietnamese victory. This line of thinking says that, had the U.S. and ARVN blocked the Ho Chi Minh Trail, particularly through Laos, the communists in South Vietnam would have been denied critical supplies and reinforcements. In fact, the North Vietnamese did not understand why Washington did not authorize such an action, particularly as everyone knew that the “neutrality” of Laos had already been violated by the communists.

This jives with one of Moore’s points at the end of We Were Soldiers…, although in his case he is talking more about the pursuit of combatants into Cambodia and Laos as opposed to preemptive disruption of the inbound troops and supplies. Of course, Stearman doesn’t address the counter-argument that extending the war into Laos would have either turned domestic opinion against the war or, perhaps worse, caused the conflict to spill well outside of Vietnam’s borders and across the Cold War -embroiled globe.

This discussion of Britain, Malaysia, and Indonesia prompted me to pop open a Steel Panthers scenario, called Operation Claret, that deals with British Fighting in Malaysia and Indonesia. It models an encounter between British special forces and Indonesian Marines which took place in October, 1965 as part of England’s secret operation across the border into Indonesia during the Indonesia/Malaysian hostilities of the mid-1960s.

Defending the bridge.

This is a different kind of scenario altogether. The British, the preferred side for a player versus the AI, are on the defensive. They start in possession of all the victory locations but with insufficient forces to hold them. In the fight that is modeled, the British must cover their withdrawal across the international border back into Malaysia.

My game ended up in a draw, perhaps due to some confusion about how the scenario should be played. The British forces are insufficient to hold all of the the victory locations. Further, the victory point tallying overemphasizes losses on the British side, meaning it is even more important to give ground so as to reduce your own casualties. At the same time, the British teams are unusually effective, often neutralizing multiple Indonesian units in a single turn. This might be the most effective I’ve ever seen units in Steel Panthers and, I can only assume because I didn’t try to look it up, must be due to a mismatch between unit quality in this scenario.

Point being, what looked like initially a very strange scenario due to its very low unit count actually did turn out to be an interesting exercise for this game engine.

Return to the master post for Vietnam War articles. Going forward, you can return with me to the speculative scenarios in Squad Battles and Men of Valor.

Blood for Oil

Tags

England, Jebel Akhdar rebellion, Middle East, Steel Panthers, WinSPMBT

I took a step back in time from my Vietnam scenarios and played a British action whereby they involved themselves in a Middle East crisis in the late 50s. While the U.S. may have inherited the Vietnam mess from the French, it was the British that had long experience in intervening in internal disputes within the third world.

From its foundation as a British protectorate in 1892, the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman had experienced conflict between the coastal and inland tribes. Inland Oman practices a form of Islam unique to the region that, actually, predates the Shia and Sunni denominations of that religion. In 1920, in order to quell the conflict within the Sultanate, the Imam of Oman was granted substantial autonomy from the coastal government. For 34 years, this resulted in relative peace.

Starting in 1954, a complex conflict caused the Imamate of Oman to rebel against the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman, instigated by disputes over oil drilling rights. The Imam was backed by Saudi Arabia and Egypt while Britain supported the Sultanate. From late 1957 through all of 1958, rebel forces were isolated on the mountain Jebel Akhar, unable to extend their reach but also unable to be dislodged.  A Steel Panthers scenario, The Height of Battle, depicts the final assault by British SAS forces against the mountaintop fortifications.

The British sense of humor attempts to capture Objective Beercan.

This scenario has some unique features. Of course the antagonists are forces we haven’t played before, with British Special Forces taking on Arab tribal rebels. The nature of the fight is also reminiscent of the Hill 43 fight in Squad Battles. At least I think so. I failed pretty miserably in my assault which, in real life, involved very minor losses from the British side. The scenario scored me with a minor defeat but, given that I was unable to take control of the stronghold or destroy the Omani weapons cache, I would consider it a complete failure. The way I interpret this scenario is that a head-on fight is not going to be feasible. The British player must find a way to use the quirks of the terrain and smoke shells to turn this battle to his advantage.

Despite suffering losses, I retained hope that I might eke out a victory. That is, until the Camel Patrol made its appearance.

I think success, as in The Battle for Hill 43 would involved finding protected approaches up the up the hill (can you tell that’s a mountaintop in the screenshots?) to allow closing with the enemy while avoiding fire during the approach. The shabby UI of Steel Panthers prevents easy navigation of protected paths up the hills. By way of contrast, Squad Battles allows a shaded UI effect to easily see lines-of-sight for both friendly and enemy forces, just by clicking. It didn’t seem worth figuring this out in Steel Panthers.

 

Come a Little Bit Closer

Tags

Cold War, Neil Young, Squad Battles, Squad Battles: Vietnam, Steel Panthers, Vietnam, WinSPMBT

This is the thirty-second in a series of posts on the Vietnam War. See here for the previous post in the series and here to go back to the master post.

Shortly after the the campaign in the central highlands, the Marines in the northern part of South Vietnam organized a search and destroy operation near Tam Ky code-named Harvest Moon. It lacked the major engagements of the Plieku Campaign, but I again found a pair of Steel Panthers/Squad Battles scenarios set within it. The scenarios are, to some extent, speculative and in any case lack the strategic importance of more recent tactical scenarios. Playing them, I consider what works and what doesn’t at this level and in these game engines.

This scenario has the US and ARVN defending a village centered around a large church.

First to the Steel Panthers scenario. The setup is similar to several other base defense scenarios that I’ve played recently. The Marines are in a defensive perimeter around their camp and the NVA infantry, played by the computer, comes at you in a sudden attack. The uniqueness of this one is that the Marines are defending a stone church, giving them a type of fortified position not often seen in Vietnam scenarios.

The scenario takes place in the unlikely village of Bi Phu. I say that because, first of all, I’m unable to find any reference to the village name or to any fighting that may have taken place here. Secondly, if Google translate can be relied upon (which is hardly a given, I know), the name means “tragic,” which would be a terrible thing to call your home village. The scenario notes source this battle from Don’t Bunch Up: One Marine’s Story by Captain William Van Zanten, a book I haven’t read, so I am hesitant to doubt anything about its authenticity. Reports for the unit described in the scenario notes don’t line up with the action reports referencing the unit at that time. Of course, even a minor typo in creating the scenario could just make it impossible to look up the information.

Like many of the base-defense scenarios, the player has little “strategy” to figure out. As the attackers come, you must halt them with small-arms fire as well as a couple of off-board assets. Eventually, you kill them and they stop coming. I think my only move in the whole game was when a section of the church caught on fire and I relocated the ARVN soldiers in that hex out of harms way. I appreciate having a unique village map created but otherwise I don’t see this one does much for me.

They enemy came out of the jungle and I chased them back in.

Squad Battles: Vietnam models an encounter occurring during the wrap-up phase of Operation Harvest Moon in the scenario The Battle at Ky Phu. A Marine battalion of three companies is returning to base along a road when they are assaulted by the Viet Cong. The placement of victory locations, three along the Marine’s road and three in the VC-controlled bush, incentivizes both sides to be on the attack.

I had just complained, somewhat, about the smallness of the LZ Albany scenario which, essentially has the same order of battle. No off-board artillery here, but the player does get one flamethrower. Accounts of the battle describe the Marines’ use of both Huey gunships and accurate artillery support. Nearly three-quarters of the VC losses were caused by artillery fire.

That said, the setup of this one does make a difference and it is enough to put it over the threshold to “interesting.” I would say the key to making this one worth playing is that, first, the player commands a full battalion. Second, the ground being fought over is varied and interesting. There are hills, fields, streams, and fairly substantial sight distances around the map. Third, the player’s goals are spread out across the map, but not so spread out that there aren’t some decisions to be made. How much do you hold back to defend the victory locations you hold at the beginning? Do you assign, basically, one company per enemy held objective and take them in parallel or do you try to use one company to support another? If you can’t plan to take all of the objectives, should you even waste lives trying?

On top of those details, the programmed opponent is able to do a little bit with this one. Like the player, the program sees it should both attack and defend. Variety is the spice of life.

Return to the master post for Vietnam War articles. The next article covers Operation Masher, renamed to White Wing.

X Marks the Spot

Tags

Air Assault Task Force, Battle of Ia Drang, Cold War, Operation Silver Bayonet, Seven Firefights in Vietnam, Squad Battles, Squad Battles: Tour of Duty, Steel Panthers, The Star and The Crescent, Vietnam, We Were Soldiers Once...and Young, WinSPMBT

This is the twenty-sixth in a series of posts on the Vietnam War. See here for the previous post in the series and here to go back to the master post. You could also start with my earlier post on the Silver Bayonet operation

Of all the tactical-scale scenarios on Vietnam, the LZ X-Ray battles were always my favorite. One obvious reason is that we have, courtesy of Mel Gibson, a nicely vivid visual representation to connect to. Like Mel, the various scenario builders who have tackled this battle with one engine or another have Hal Moore’s book as a source. There is also the U.S. Army publication Seven Firefights in Vietnam, which was written during the war itself. Enthusiasts have the ability to create very detailed and accurate reconstructions of this battle without an inordinate amount of primary-source research.

For my first step, I returned again to Air Assault Task Force. I had a beast of a time getting it to work for the Battle of Mogadishu. Eventually I got it to do something and I hoped that my experience would improve when it came to other battles in this package.

The game, as distributed, includes a four-scenario version of the Battle at LZ X-Ray, each covering a multi-hour snippet over the several days of fighting. One somewhat-unique feature of this package is that it builds the scenarios over scanned maps of the battlefield so as to provide realistic and accurate terrain. In this case, the game map stretches from the 1st Cavalry staging point at Plei Me, through the fire base at LZ Falcon, onto the area of the battle. Part of the challenge is to manage and coordinate helicopter insertion and resupply across that long stretch of jungle.

First wave of landings inbound, I prep the LZ with artillery fire. In contrast to much of the UI, fire mission plotting works fairly well.

Immediately, I’m frustrated by the UI in this game. The game’s first scenario begins with the 1st Cavalry elements on the ground at Plei Me and the helicopter transport and gunships nearby, ready for action. This means that the first order of business is to get the infantry loaded onto the helicopters.

Good luck with that, eh?

As I described in that last article, the insertion mission just doesn’t seem to work for me at all. Manually loading the troops also wouldn’t work. Finally, in desperation, I switched between the multiple versions of this system that I own (namely the newer, but horrific UI, of Air Assault Task Force and its predecessor, The Star and the Crescent). What I found was that, using Air Assault Task Force, I could successfully order the infantry to load up onto the helicopters. I could then save and load back into The Star in the Crescent to manually order my troops to the landing zone.

Flush with success, I sent my helicopters back to pick up more troops and ordered my initial company into a defensive position. The scale of the game doesn’t encourage micromanagement of tactical position. In fact, my initial positioning attempts, for some reason had them wandering off to the north, into the jungle. Hoping to make use of the game engine as it was intended, I gave them the mission “Support by Fire,” to try to get them into the proper defensive position while they waited for reinforcements to arrive. Big mistake.

My AI subordinates are deranged. Or treasonous.

The system decided that the best way to accomplish such a support mission was to march, on foot, all the way back to Plei Me then turn around, march all the way back to the a position in the jungle near the landing zone and then… well, who knows what would happen then, the scenario would have timed out. I’ll point out that I am explicitly trying to defend the cleared area where I will be unloading my helicopters. Even reproducing this bizarre situation is difficult but what appears to have happened is that, because of the limited capacity of my helicopter transport, I’ve split the command that I gave the order to and so the engine’s first order of business is to reunite the command before moving into position.

Reload, try again. My second insertion is complete, but I don’t think they brought any soldiers with them this time. Too bad, the enemy is here.

After reloading and reissuing all the orders, my initial elements appear to be in a defensive position at the landing zone. While the graphics show them to be standing around in a cluster, their status is actually “defilade.” It also appears that all I’ve got there is a company commander and a weapons platoon. When I tried to bring in another group of troopers, everything seemed to go as before, but it looks like the helicopters arrived empty (screenshot immediately above).

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. It baffles me as to how this game has survived to this day is this state. My only guess is that with a saintly amount of perseverance, one can learn to overcome the UI and get the game to do something close to what was intended. Once one puts that amount of effort into it, perhaps there is pleasure to be derived from the game. It is hard to see wasting so much time, though, when moves have me wondering whether helicopters are going to unload units or they have once again shown up empty.

Lt. Col. Moore has set up a headquarters and directs his troopers into position.

Contrast this with a very similar scenario in Steel Panthers. In this scenario also, the clock begins with the 1st Cavalry troopers at Plei Me, ready to be transported, but this time with the first wave embarked. While the map isn’t actually to scale, there is a wide distance between the base and the landing zone, requiring 2 to 3 turns for transport. The victory hexes are awarded largely for gaining control of the landing zone, although there are several more to the west of the LZ. Presumably these additional points represent Lt. Col. Moore’s actual task, which was a search and destroy against suspected enemy positions just beyond his landing site. It wasn’t until after landing that he realized he was fighting a defensive battle against a vastly superior (numerically) force.

As I played this scenario all the way through, my biggest regret came in that opening move. The initial set up not only has the first load of infantry mounted on helicopters but the artillery are loaded-up and waiting at Plei Me also. This is a bit of a departure from reality as one of the LZ Falcon artillery batteries had been in position already for days. The second was to be set-up that morning but planned to land well ahead of the infantry insertion. Not quite realizing what I was dealing with, my artillery was put into place simultaneously with the first infantry landing in LZ X-Ray. I’m quite sure that it didn’t make any difference in the outcome, but I feel cheated not being able to “prep” the landing site with an artillery barrage. That felt import to me.

I also felt the game took a cheap shot at me [SPOILER WARNING – FOR THE REST OF THIS PARAGRAPH]. There are snipers positioned to hit the in-bound choppers. I didn’t loose anybody to them, but a couple of hits meant that my helicopter “retreated” from the map without having unloaded its troops. The position of the snipers is in a place, and I’ll give it away without being explicit, where the lazy player will get shot up. Problem is, I’m pretty lazy. So even having lost a couple of transports, I continued flying into the same (or at least similar) traps because I wanted to save myself some mouse clicks. Point is, I feel a little cheated in that I was being punished for trying to cut down on the clicking. More clicking is not better gameplay.

Overall, this was a positive scenario from the realism perspective. This wasn’t a precise simulation, but it does tackle the portion of this battle that fit within the limits of the Steel Panthers engine, namely that first hour-and-a-half. It may not, however, be the most interesting part of the battle. While landing, the American forces were slowly realizing the quantity of enemy they faced. This scenario has an unknown quantity and position of the enemy facing you and, certainly, if you push out too rapidly from the landing zone you’re going start suffering losses. The length of the scenario doesn’t give you time for the full encounter to develop and, admirably, the scenario developer didn’t try to squeeze the extras in.

For that we go to Squad Battles.

Squad Battles: Tour of Duty has a LZ X-Ray scenario (as well as an LZ Albany one, which I’ll get to later). Its purpose is, apparently, to capture the moment of the battle where the first three cavalry companies have landed and have the player fend of the initial NVA assaults. With this in mind, there are no helicopter insertions over the course of the scenario. Also, and disappointingly for me, there is no off-board fire-support either from LZ Falcon, from close air support, or from helicopter gunships. This means that the player has only the support from the battalion’s mortar company in addition to direct fire. Furthermore, that direct fire is typically only against adjacent units. This is another scenario set in dense foliage where it is rare to be able to spot enemies across more than one hex.

The Lost Platoon is in serious trouble. Can I get them back in time? No.

All of this means we are looking at what I’ve described before as a typical Squad Battles scenario. The choices are few and you’re already in control of the objectives, so there is little in the way of maneuver that makes sense. The biggest choice is the “lost platoon” and the extent to which you try to rescue it. I probably took something close to the historical path in that I made an attempt to get to it and then stopped when I realized that I couldn’t do it. For what its worth (and, hopefully, not ruining the scenario for anyone), failing to rescue the lost platoon, losing it in its entirety plus incurring casualties among the rescuers; this still gave me a decisive victory. Point being, this isn’t a scenario where you have to pull a rabbit out of the hat and do something that was deemed impossible in the real fight. Simply not being overrun, apparently, counts as a win.

As far as the Tour of Duty scenarios go, this one is average. Average in both size and scope as well as in game play. While it is pretty hemmed in, it doesn’t have quite the frustration level of the “take these three victory locations in six moves” scenarios. Still, given my expectations for this battle, I’ve come away from this one extra disappointed.

There is another LZ X-Ray scenario, one built by an end-user, that I played many years ago. Sadly, it seems to have been lost in the shuffling of website ownership (it used to be stored at wargamer.com when Wargamer archived scenario files). I must have the file on an old hard disk somewhere around here but, up to this point, it hasn’t seemed worth booting up old systems to try to find it. It’s a shame to see this stuff vanish from the internet so arbitrarily, especially as cloud storage becomes ever more available.

In this one, the focus is more on that “broken arrow” moment of the battle; the point when things were at their worst and the maximal air power and fire support that the Americans could muster was brought down around their defensive perimeter. Titled LZ X-Ray – First Contact, it struck me as a truly “fun” scenario in a ways that the above version was not. I’m not sure if it is really much of a challenge from the U.S. side, but you sure get to control a lot of firepower. As a challenging fight, it may be more interesting from the Commie side, trying to get your soldiers to survive the American rain of fire, but I never tried it that way.

If I ever find that file intact, I’ll let you know.

The situation on November 17th. This doesn’t look like what was in Moore’s book.

By way of contrast, I include for you another screenshot of my Ia Drang ’65 scenario, this time where the clock has advanced to the point where the U.S. has seized initiative and what would be the assault on LZ X-Ray. What we see, instead of a recreation of the historical battle, is a typical TOAW scenario. The forces spread out across the map trying to maintain cohesive lines while simultaneously cutting off and isolating the enemy. Engagements are somewhat limited by the scenario’s withdrawl schedule, but the engine would seem to encourage continuous attack right up until the time limit runs out, so as not to leave any victory points on the table. At least that’s the way I and my computer opponent are playing it.

What should have happened just before X-Ray, I found out by reading Seven Firefights in Vietnam, was that the NVA was regrouping for another shot at Plei Me, likely to take place within a few turns had the U.S. not took the fight to them. Communist forces were largely idle, preparing themselves for their own attack. Likewise, the 1st Calvary units were moving about the map trying to find an elusive enemy, not perpetually engaging them as they retreated or counter-attacked. This lead to a period of relative quiet between the breaking up of the attack on Plei Me and the three days of fighting over the landing zone.

Seven Firefights in Vietnam is, as I said, another reason why this battle gets the simulation love that it has. Reading it, as I did, well after reading We Were Soldiers Once…, it can feel somewhat anticlimactic, but certainly not a complete waste of time. Seven Firefights is but a chapter in a book that’s only 150+ pages total, so you know its going to not have the depth of the later work. It also focus on tactics. It was meant to be a learning tool for the professional soldier about a war that was still ongoing. Moore’s book, by contrast, is in part a tribute to the fallen soldiers of the battle and the war and tends to have a lot more focus on the personal rather than just tactics and command.

OK. So this is … unique.

Seven Firefights is a nice, easily digestible account of the battle that is made all the better by the fact that is available for free as a electronic book. While mostly encompassed by newer accounts, it still gave me some unique insights into the fight.

Speaking of available for free, the website for the book has battle animations that illustrate the fight in a way superior to most other attempts that I’ve seen. Again, very valuable for helping to all that happened over those three days into a proper perspective.

Return to the master post for Vietnam War articles or move on to the next article, where I discuss two more U.S. Army publications.

Hit the Beach

Tags

Cold War, Operation Starlite, Squad Battles, Squad Battles: Vietnam, Steel Panthers, Vietnam, WinSPMBT

This is the twenty-fifth in a series of posts on the Vietnam War. See here for the previous post in the series and here to go back to the master post. My series of posts about Operation Starlite starts off with a board game discussion, here.

Although I had made a note to myself to look up the Squad Battles: Vietnam scenario that took place during Operation Starlite, when it came time to do it, I forgot.

The scenario called The Battle at LZ Blue takes place during Operation Starlite and covers some of the worst fighting of the entire operation, near the Viet Cong entrenched positions on Hill 23. The Marine infantry company tasked to land at the southern-most landing zones (designated Red, White, and Blue) found that their landing areas were coming under fire, with enemies both to their front and their rear.

A hot LZ, but the real one this time. The map leaves selection of LZ-Blue up to the player.

In contrast to the Steel Panthers map, this one seems to get the scales (time and distance) accurate, as well as the size of the forces engaged. The scenario runs for about an hour-and-a-half, starting with landings at LZ Blue. At the same time, not far to the east, a Marine infantry company, having landed at Green Beach, is accompanied by a mix of armored fighting vehicles. Objectives have been marked within their combined area of operation and the player is free to mix and match these forces so as to best take all the objectives within the allotted time.

Although this setup is much closer to being historically accurate, the fighting is, nevertheless, compressed to fit into the available number of turns. The setup also encourages more coordination than, I think, could possibly have taken place during the actual battle.

As I try to compare the scope of the computer battle with the historical ebb and flow, I find that The Battle at LZ Blue has renamed all of the units. I think a big part of this is that Squad Battles has a policy of not using real names in their stock scenarios. It was felt that the possibility of Vietnam War veterans who might either a) come across their own names in a scenario or, perhaps worse, b) come across the name of a fallen friend in a scenario would be disrespectful and best avoided.

Armor from the amphibious landing is on its way to help the helicopter troops out of a tight spot.

But Squad Battles goes a step farther. Despite the rather obvious connection between small unit actions and the forces they involved, the stock scenarios (mostly, always? I haven’t done a comprehensive check) rename the units themselves. In this case, the company tasked with securing Landing Zone Blue and then taking Nam Yen was Company H of 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, 3rd Marine Division. To their immediate east was the sector of Company I of 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines, who had made an amphibious landing. Despite the consecutive letters designating these two units, they hold very different places in the chain of command. It is true that as the first day of battle progressed, Company I mixed with armor from the landing and one platoon from Company H, owing to the difficulties they faced in their sector. This wasn’t, however, because they shared a common battalion commander.

So contrast the real situation for how it is set up in The Battle at LZ Blue. The order of battle employs two infantry companies, E and F, both of the 2nd Battalion, 14th Marine Regiment. Historically, the 14th was not even in Vietnam. Furthermore, placing all of the scenario’s infantry within the same battalion provides a coordination of commands (there is a Lieutenant Colonel represented in the game which is superior to all infantry units) that shouldn’t exist. One explanation may be the that “attaching” platoons outside their chains of command is not possible within the Squad Battles ruleset and this structure allows that fictional Lt. Col. to bridge the gap.

As Squad Battles scenarios go, this one is very big and very expansive. However, by allowing the mixing of several different units over fairly focused objectives in a short period of time, the resultant battle will necessarily be far less chaotic than the reality. The real Company H, upon landing, realized that it had unexpected enemy on its rear and launched its initial attack in the opposite direction from plan. By the time they began working towards their initial objective, they had already sustained casualties. Delays meant units weren’t where they were supposed to be and enemy units still occupied zones that should have been cleared.

Now, the fact that I can analyze what’s wrong with this scenario in such detail is itself a testimonial to how much more fidelity this has than the Steel Panthers version. When playing Steel Panthers, I lamented that there could have been battles, subsets of the operation, modeled correctly to scale. Instead, the game tried to shrink the entire battle into the engine’s parameters. Here we see an example of just what I was talking about. One of the more dramatic sections of the battlefield is isolated and modeled close to the correct scale. As before, we are mixing up something like six hours worth of fighting into a little more than an hour of game action, but that is probably necessary to provide a complete “story” with the scenario.

The result defies some Squad Battles‘ weaknesses. Being so much bigger than the typical fight, the player isn’t hemmed in to a single course of action. Particularly with helicopters and AmTracs at your disposal, you could probably hit all the objectives in almost any order you want. The lack of opponent AI is mitigated by the fact that they are placed in defensive positions to guard nearby victory locations. Little is required of them except that they shoot at you when you approach.

That said, in stark contrast to the battle portrayed, the scenario seems fairly easy to win. The real Company H fought well throughout the day but, in the end, returned to Landing Zone Blue without taking their objectives. This was no failure; their objectives were likely untenable given the unexpected location of enemy, particularly those on the wrong side of their landing location. Given this, how meaningful is The Battle at LZ Blue as a lesson about the actual battle? Or is this perhaps just a somewhat-more-accurate version of the Steel Panthers versions, giving the player a chance to mess around with a combination of helicopters and amphibious vehicles in a situation that resembles the reality?

I wrapped up my discussion of the Steel Panthers scenario with a thoughts on the artillery woes during the first day of Operation Starlite. I’ll do the same here. Notably lacking in Squad Battles: Vietnam is the massive artillery support which was available to Americans (in this and many of the other Squad Battles scenarios). The end of the fighting for Company H, indeed, involved the calling in of artillery and airstrikes onto the VC positions as the Americans withdrew. Yet in this scenario, there is no off-board artillery (or on-board, for that matter) and no air support. Again, it probably doesn’t pay to speculate too far on why the designer did not include it. The peculiarities of the artillery support that day may not have fit the model of artillery in Squad Battles. It may be that, having already made the scenario “winnable” by isolating the battlefield, throwing in huge amounts of artillery support would have been pointless. Whatever the case, I do feel that I’m missing out on one of the defining features of this fight.

All that said, I’ll give credit where credit is due. Squad Battles: Vietnam comes the closest to hitting Operation Starlite’s mark.

Return to the master post for Vietnam War articles or move on to the next article, for a tactical look at LZ X-Ray.

Lying Out There Like a Killer in the Sun

Tags

Bau Bang, Bruce Springsteen, Cold War, Steel Panthers, Thunder Road, Vietnam, WinSPMBT

This is the twenty-fourth in a series of posts on the Vietnam War. See here for the previous post in the series and here to go back to the master post.

Steel Panthers presents us with another “base defense” style scenario. In this one, it isn’t the base of the previous example, but rather an temporary defensive position that is part of a larger road clearing operation. By attempting to disrupt the operation and striking at the base, the local Viet Cong commander tried to grab a propaganda victory. He concentrating his forces on one element of the the U.S. operation and, in doing so, he thought he could defeat U.S. armor with his Viet Cong guerrillas.

Like that previous scenario, this one seems to be correctly scaled in terms of an accurate representation of the battle. Turnwise, this scenario lasts for 45 minutes out of what was several hours of battle. It also seems to represent only the initial portion of the Viet Cong assault and so seems to restrict the actions modeled to that portion of time. Once again, it seems a bit counter-intuitive to give the player the static-defense side of the scenario. Unlike the earlier one, though, there are only a couple of turns where the automatic defensive-fire becomes annoyingly extensive. One the scenario settles down, the turns become very playable.

Here they come.

Although this is a “user-made” scenario, the author of this one is long-time wargaming Veteran “Wild Bill” Wilder. The purpose of this creation is to demonstrate the effective use of armor in a war where deployment of armor units ran counter to doctrine. Seeing a name like this attached to a scenario makes me think of it more in terms of a “stock” scenario than a fan production.

The actual fight was another early engagement of the recently arriving units from America. The Third Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division (the Big Red One) was in the area and high command wanted to see them tested in live operations. In the area north of Saigon, the ARVN units were hampered in their operations by Viet Cong ambushes, which would plague them as they attempted to move along the roads. This, in turn, prevented ARVN units (in this case, the 5th ARVN Division) from engaging and displacing the enemy. U.S. assistance was required to clear and secure Highway 13 for a pending 5th Division operation. Someone began referring to Highway 13 as “Thunder Road,” a name which would seem ever more appropriate as the war unfolded.

The site covered by the scenario was located central to the operation and thus provided a good location for artillery support (not represented in the scenario) and command elements for the operation. Units had been positioned there already for a day when they drew an Viet Cong dawn ambush on the morning of the 12th.

The scenario’s written introduction in Steel Panthers emphasizes the employment of maneuver and its role in the success of the American defense. Indeed, the time-period within this scenario concentrates on the initial dawn assault, which was repulsed by a series of armored-vehicle counter-charges.

Unfortunately, that’s not how I played it.

Never quite sure how Steel Panthers applies its defensive bonuses, I always figure that a moving unit is more vulnerable than a stationary unit and that this applies double when it comes to initial scenario positions. Furthermore, not knowing where the attack was coming from or how extensive it might be, it seemed most effective to use my units to neutralize the enemy attacks with fire to the greatest extent possible rather than move. While I lost some M113s in the chaos of the initial mortar barrage (historically, the enemy mortars were not effective), my gut feeling was backed by the fact that I tended to lose vehicles to enemy anti-tank teams only when I moved them. My early movements involved only pulling back to more defensible positions and only moved forward again to secure victory locations once the enemy attack was broken up.

I’m not sure if the U.S. command learned the lesson expounded in the scenario description, that armored units could be effective in Vietnam. However, I am pretty sure I did not learn the intended lesson. Tanks can be really good against infantry, especially if they can fight from well-supported positions on the defense and not be unduly exposed to anti-tank teams. Blind charges with armored vehicles against unseen and unknown enemies is generally not effective in Steel Panthers.

But about those tanks.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the scenario developer made a mistake when creating the order of battle for this one. At the Second Battle of Bàu Bàng, which would take place in March of 1967, Troop A (of a different Cavalry unit) had six M48 Patton tanks. From all the reading that I’ve done (though I’ve still got a source or two waiting to be read), Troop A of the 1st Squadron of the 4th Cavalry Regiment operated, on November 12th of 1965, only M113s, no tanks. The Viet Cong’s intelligence identified the armored personnel carriers (and some mortar carriers) as “tanks” (a mistake that continues to the here and now), but I don’t think any were actually there.

In my game, I found the M113s extremely vulnerable to hidden anti-tank positions and did, in fact, rely on the Pattons to dominate the battlefield. In real life, the initial M113 charge was a tremendous success, running off the Viet Cong attackers without the loss of a single vehicle.

Return to the master post for Vietnam War articles or go on to the next article, which returns you to Operation Starlite for another tactical-level game.

When Will this War be Over and the Madness Leave the Air

Tags

Cold War, Flogging Molly, Men of Valor, Operation Starlite, Steel Panthers, The First Fight, The First Fight: US Marines in Operation Starlite, Vietnam, WinSPMBT

I had originally intended to comment, to whatever extent necessary, within the context of one big Operation Starlite post. The more I thought about my experiences with Steel Panthers and Men of Valor, the more I wanted to address these games individually. (See also the Master Post for Vietnam).

Operation Starlite was the first major engagement of U.S. troops in Vietnam. Yet, as a subject of popular culture, it receives short shrift relative to Ia Drang, Tet, and even the non-specific chaos of the period of maximum U.S. commitment. Perhaps the quick and one-sided U.S. victory lacks the requisite drama. Still, this operation was no walk in the park. U.S. casualties were within an order of magnitude of those at, for example, Landing Zone X-Ray.

While I’ve looked at it before as the operational level – a turn or two within a full-Vietnam game, I though I’d take a look at some details. Starlite is included in both the Steel Pathers and Men of Valor selections as a scenario and an operation respectively.

First to Steel Panthers.

A Hot LZ, and a fictional one to boot.

A quick summary of the fight on the Van Tuong Peninsula might be that the U.S. Marines used a combination of amphibious landings, helicopter insertions, and good, old-fashioned infantry marches to surround the VC position on all sides and then squeezed in upon them until the enemy was defeated. The Steel Panthers Starlite scenario incorporates all of that, but on a map that is roughly an order-of-magnitude too small. In shrinking the the battlefield, we can (and do) also compress the timescale. The bulk of the nearly-week-long operation is expected to be completed in about two hours by the game’s clock.

The battleground in perspective. The actual battle was scaled down by an order of magnitude to fit the game engine.

Steel Panthers remains a fun game engine to play with and what is nice about this scenario is you get to fiddle with the range of assets used for the operation. Amphibious units, tanks, close air support, and off-board artillery all play a role in helping your backbone of infantry capture a series of villages. However, I feel like a major opportunity to do better was squandered here.

It seems like there should have been ample opportunity to find battles within the operation that fit the scale of Steel Panthers. Should someone have taken the time to model that, playing the games would have been instructive as a unique view on the challenges of various, specific pieces of the battle. The problem, of course, is that a realistically-sized battle won’t have all the nifty pieces. The helicopter insertions weren’t “assaults,” in that that the landing zones were heavily defended. At its worst, debarking troops were subject to longish-range fire while they began moving forward. Certainly, this wasn’t a case of having to take and hold landing zones as would happen later in the Ia Drang valley. While fighting did occur on near the amphibious landing locations, in that battlefield sector, night came before significant number of the enemy were engaged.

The point of the “insertion” part of the operation was to get the units are in the right place to make infantry and combined-arms attacks against the VC positions. The primary reason the Steel Panthers treatment fails to reproduce the historical situation is, again, due to the compressed scales. The order of battle seems to be fairly accurate as is the placement of defenses. Just for one example, Landing Zone White was under fire from machine gun and small arms fire from a position over a kilometer away. While this caused some casualties, the Marines still spent nearly the next two hours completing their landings and organizing for an assault. In Steel Panthers, the main objectives are barely over a kilometer away from the landing sites and two hours would be the end of the game.

First (Person) to Fight

From Men of War, I don’t expect any kind of realism or much of a reproduction of history. But if Steel Panthers was bad, the opening sequence in the Starlite operation may be worse. We kick off our scenario conducting a helicopter assault on a defended beach.

RPG got one of my helicopters.

At least, that’s what they tell me in the mission briefing. While the terrain looks fairly beachy, I can’t spot any actual ocean, so I’ll have to take their word for it. Immediately upon exiting the helicopter, my squadmates start getting hit and I see that the beach defenders are using rocket-propelled grenade launchers (RPGs) to clear the skies of the inbound Marines. This sets up the first part of the mission. The player is to wipe out all RPGs so as to allow the follow-up helicopters to land intact.

The connection to the actual operation is made with a narrated video sequence which precedes the actual gameplay. This does provide an accurate summary of Starlite as well as some (presumably) footage from the battle. Back in the game itself, we rapidly depart from reality. The missions are tenuously related to the operation, but only tenuously. After scrambling off the beach, the player is required to capture several hill-top bunkers, which sounds like something Starlite-related, but the time and geography is all too compressed to imagine this fitting into the historical fight.

It is a far cry from Medal of Honor (and I’m thinking of the D-Day sequences) where the missions were so evocative of the their historical counterparts it became possible to forget that you were running through a linear mission. Then again, it is a linear mission that consists of gather “power-ups” from the ground as you run through the jungle, so any failure of expectations is probably more my problem than the game’s.

It also tosses in the “good lieutenant, bad lieutenant” story that it cribbed from the movies, augmenting the racial angle introduced in earlier parts. It’s an attempt to add a high-production value type of “drama” using a medium that no longer supports it. It’s easy enough to ignore. If only there were a way to skip over the cut scenes after you’ve seen them, it would be even easier. On the plus side, the game introduces the bunkers and tunnel systems that we realized were part of the Viet Cong’s operation, probably for the first time in the war.

True Accounting

I’ve dwelt on this before but I’ll use it again here – the mid-sixties represent an inflection point of sorts in transitioning from the post-World War II weapons system development to the institution of the modern weapon systems. I can also see an introduction of modern management thinking into the operation of the army. Going back to the Second World War and earlier, details of battles can sometimes be hard to come by. In reconstructing a battle for gaming purposes, one generally has to rely on the research of professional historians and published history books to get the details. For the battles of Vietnam, we have much better access to detailed after-action reports. Is this qualitatively different that Korea? Or earlier? I don’t have the expertise to judge, and some of it may be the way records were preserved as opposed to the way they were created. In any event, the War in Vietnam has been well-documented.

Furthermore, the military has made an effort to turn the data the it has on Vietnam into history-book style narratives for the purposes of training and memorialization. Perhaps, here, we are also seeing an effort to preserve the perspective of aging veterans before their knowledge passes on from our society along with the individuals who remember. The military may also be reacting against the contemporary narrative of the Vietnam War which, as often as not, was written from an anti-Government, anti-Military perspective.

Whatever the case, I was able to accompany my gameplay with a reading of the U.S. Marine Corps’ pamphlet The First Fight: US Marines in Operation Starlite, August 1965. It’s a solidly written summary of the battle, absent any obvious moralizing or slant. In addition to helping me make sense of the distortions in the several game treatments of this battle, I learned a thing to two more.

According to this book, the concept that has the basis for explaining this entire battle is apparently not true. I’ve seen in source after source that the U.S. stole a march on the VC, pulling off a rapid attack on them just as they were preparing to hit the U.S. base. In here we read that the VC were nowhere near ready to assault Chu Lai. In fact, it is questionable whether they were intending to do so at all. The concentration of the 1st Viet Cong Regiment was for the purpose of resting, recovering from earlier losses, and recruiting new troops. We now know that the unit had no specific or immediate plans to attack the American base.

There is no indication that the intelligence was deliberately twisted nor willfully, selectively misinterpreted to create the “need” to launch an offensive by U.S. Marines directly against the VC. Intelligence was simply incomplete and, in this one key aspect, inaccurate.

Another enlightening tidbit, given the mission structure in Men of Valor, was within the section analyzing how well the different pieces worked or didn’t. One area of weakness was in the directing of indirect fire support, especially naval guns. The fire support, when it arrived, was generally accurate and effective. The biggest problem, the book explains, was in the communication which resulted in delays between when fire was ordered and when it landed. Artillery support that is delayed 15 minutes against a moving enemy is not going to be effective.

There were a number of instances where friendly fire casualties were narrowly avoided. Many of these close calls were likely due to the multitude of simultaneous moving parts present on the battlefield. Throughout it all, again, we are seeing a consequence of the communication difficulties and the delays. It can be easy for an area recently occupied by enemy forces to, 15 minutes later, have friendly forces in it. There was also a theory, which has not been positively confirmed, that the VC had access to American communication networks and were directing naval fire and airstrikes onto American positions. It is also possible that communication errors were responsible, but the book makes a strong cases that there were a few too many coincidences to not point the finger at VC penetration of U.S. communication systems.

It is said that one learns more from one’s failures than from success. The difficulties the U.S. faced in an overall-successful operation made for some solid learning opportunities that improved the effectiveness of American warfighting power going forward. It is fortunately that lessons regarding close artillery support were learned without tragic friendly-fire casualties. This aspect of the battle adds a little more meaning to the plot point in Men of Valor where the player’s unit is unable to move artillery bombardments off of friendly positions. It did actually happen (although probably nothing like in the game) and was, truly, a defining feature of the Operation Starlite fight.

I take a look at another Operation Starlite scenario in this post, if you want to skip ahead to that. You may also want to return to the master post for Vietnam War articles or go on to the next article, which moves the action to the Central Highlands.