Stalingrad refought - well a bit of it!

I had the honour of refighting a bit of Dougie's Stalingrad terrain that was posted earlier on my Devizes report. It was a great days gaming and I say that even though I lost. I was the commander of the much reduced 120th regiment of the 39th Guards Division, occupying the central position and in particular defending the Red October Factory. As usual I seemed to be too involved in the game to take enough pictures.

The table before the start, the dice indicated the German start line and the arrows where patrol would endeavour to find our positions







Luckily they would find very little except the bread factory Militia who would suffer in the subsequent bombardment and air attack, In general we suffered few casualties as most of our troops were in the cellars, but the consequence was they were unable to use reserve fire on the advancing Germans.

The first of many brave attempts to stop the Fascist hordes - a miss





Germans overrunning the bread factory


and crossing the railway line


German armoured support working through the rubble




One round of katyusha fire and it was pounced upon by a Stuka


On the northern flank the German armour runs into a Minefield and a dug in T34


Germans consolidate after crossing the railway and taking the Russian forward defence line, They were virtually wiped out, and the remnants routed.


retribution - a Stuka is shot down!


The German meat grinder gets to work on the Red October factory complex


despite heroic resistance the Russian northern flank crumbles


The same in the South, A trickle of reinforcements from across the Don move up to attempt to stem the tide.


The Stukas return, luckily one was intercepted y a Yak-3


More minefield fun for the Germans, but not enough to stop the advance


The end, the Germans push on and bring the Don crossing points under direct fire

I was left with my RHQ and band of invalids (a proportion of casualties were recycled) holding the last building in the factory.

A great days gaming at Bristol Independent Gaming the dice gods were certainly on the Germans side